Tag Archives: books

Book review: “The Drowning Eyes” by Emily Foster

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It’s been a busy couple of months, friends. Between posting Three Keys in the Desert in June, submitting a thesis draft in July, attending Nine Worlds in August (\o/ STILL TO WRITE A POST ABOUT THAT!) and now going abroad again in a week, it’s been.. a lot. A lot of really great things! But a lot nonetheless.

Which is why I’m especially pleased that I managed to squeeze in reading Emily Foster’s “The Drowning Eyes”, a novella I’d been wanting to get my hands on for a while, and review it for Strange Horizons.

Emily Foster’s debut novella is everything I like about modern fantasy. The world it builds is not a fictional Europe or a fictional North America; instead it’s set in a tropical climate, in the middle of an ocean, with many small islands dependent on the weather for trade and survival. The characters are a seafaring crew who don’t shy away from illegal work, people from the margins whose life philosophy is that money and happiness should be grabbed wherever they happen to be found. The cast is ethnically diverse and most of the action is centered on women, including older women, who occupy positions of authority within the small world a story of this length allows. All of this is refreshing and a pleasure to read and the reason I was excited to pick up the book in the first place.

And yet, as much as I wanted to fall in love with The Drowning Eyes, as much as I liked its setting and magical elements, as much I enjoyed its characters individually, there were a few structural problems that stood in the way of the book having true momentum. It’s not that the story isn’t enjoyable; it’s just that, considering its premise, it comes across as a little underwhelming.

Read the full review at Strange Horizons >>

 

You can now buy a book with a story by me in it!

51le-xafxfl-_sx331_bo1204203200_My short story “Life and Death in the Frozen City” has now been published in a real book that you can really buy!

The story is about a traveler who has to survive on an occupied planet where gender is binary and It’s part of FUTURISTICA 1, an anthology of really great scifi stories I still can’t believe I’ve really been included in.

It’s especially “wait, is this really happening?” for me because “Life and Death in the Frozen City” was the first original short story I ever wrote, about 7-8 years ago, and the version in my final draft from that time is almost identical to the one in the book. I’m a very different writer these days, but I still love that story, and am so, so happy to be able to share it with people at last.

You can get FUTURISTICA on Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo and Barnes & Noble.

And of course, if you do end up picking it up, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads. (As a reviewer I am… ridiculously excited about the possibility of there being reviews of something I wrote.)

Review of “Sorcerer to the Crown” by Zen Cho

25855734I recently wrote a review of Zen Cho’s excellent debut novel “Sorcerer to the Crown”, for Strange Horizons.

“Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown is set in nineteenth-century London, where magical resources are scarce and only men of a certain standing are encouraged to practice sorcery. It tells the story of Zacharias Whyte, protégé of England’s premier magician, and Prunella Gentleman, the prodigy who can restore English magic to its former glory. Both essentially orphaned as babies, Zacharias and Prunella have grown up as outsiders in their home culture, and have had to navigate a social landscape that doesn’t quite know what to do with them. Zacharias was born to enslaved parents and purchased as an infant by the wealthy Englishman who would raise him as his son, and Prunella is the daughter of a British officer who came back from India with a daughter of mixed heritage and a bag of mysterious magical objects.”

Read the rest of the review at Strange Horizons >>

Review of “What Makes This Book So Great” by Jo Walton

9780765331939_p0_v1_s260x420Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great is a collection of essays, originally published as blog posts on Tor.com. Familiar with Walton’s fiction, I was drawn to review her collection of non-fiction essays partially because of what I’d heard of Walton’s reading habits and what she herself reveals at the beginning of the book—Walton chooses what books to read the way some people choose which ingredients to cook with, relying on a mix of old, trusted favorites and exciting, untested novelties.

Read the full review on Strange Horizons >>

Review of “iD” by Madeline Ashby

id-144dpiAshby’s second novel, a sequel to her first, is engaging and better written than her debut, but it doesn’t address many of the flaws of the original. Ashby’s novels are set in a universe where humanity has created human-like robots, called “vN,” designed to carry out the tasks that human beings are no longer interested in undertaking. The technology was originally developed by New Eden, a cult that ostensibly wanted to create companions for all the sinners who would be left on Earth after Judgment Day.

Read the full review at The Los Angeles Review of Books >>

Review of “vN” by Madeline Ashby

13033939Madeline Ashby’s vN chronicles the life of Amy, a sentient vN-model robot born into a mixed robot-human family. Amy’s human father has slowed her rate of growth to that of a human child, in hopes of integrating her seamlessly into human society, but when Amy turns five her maternal grandmother, Portia (who is a perfect copy of Amy and her mother), shows up and tries to steal Amy away.

Read the full review at Strange Horizons >>

Review of “Never at Home” by L. Timmel Ducamp

51vxdgi-cal-_sx314_bo1204203200_“Never at Home” is a collection of seven short stories which range from fantasy to science fiction, some taking place in mundane, contemporary settings and some having to do with intergalactic wars and alien species. The stories all feature female protagonists and deal with questions of human nature, morality, and the price one pays for interacting with the fantastical. However, the tone, pacing, and quality of the stories vary greatly. Some stories sparkle off the page while most drag on and seem to arrive nowhere.

Read the full review at Strange Horizons >>

Review of “Corvus” by Paul Kearney

"Corvus" by Paul Kearney

“Corvus” by Paul Kearney

Corvus is set in a fictional world heavily influenced by Ancient Greece and follows the rise to power of a character loosely based on Alexander the Great. It follows the author’s previous novel, The Ten Thousand (2008), and although each novel is a self contained story, the two books share a protagonist.

Read the full review at Strange Horizons >>