A welcome quieter month—with only two of my regular magazines releasing new issues—allowed me to get to an ARC of an exciting new short fiction anthology, leading yet again to a magazine round-up coming at the very end of the month. But I thought it was a very good reading month, and I have a… Continue reading Tar Vol Reads a Magazine (or Two): Reviews of Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus (October 2023)
I was a bit late to the party on the Wayward Children novella series, but since I’ve started voting in the Hugo Awards, I’ve made an annual event of reading last year’s entry. This year is no different, with Seanan McGuire’s seventh entry in the series, Where the Drowned Girls Go, earning her seventh consecutive… Continue reading Fantasy Novella Review: Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The Digital Aesthete will be released on November 14, 2023. I haven’t read much of Alex Shvartsman’s work as an editor, but I’ve enjoyed a bit of his translated short fiction, and I’ve been… Continue reading Sci-fi Anthology Review: The Digital Aesthete, edited by Alex Shvartsman
I heard so many rave reviews about Spear by Nicola Griffith that I decided to put it off until its inevitable Hugo nomination. Tordotcom novellas seemed unstoppable, and it was getting nothing but praise. And then it ended up not making the list—perhaps due to category confusion, as the word count puts it in that… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Spear by Nicola Griffith
Team Tar Vol On is back with our second batch of SPSFC3 first-round eliminations. This finishes up our consensus cuts–which very much does not mean that they were all easy decisions–but we’ll be back with another round of split-decision cuts before announcing our quarterfinalists. If you’re new to the competition or need a refresher, I… Continue reading SPSFC First-Round Eliminations, Batch Two
I read T. Kingfisher for the first time a couple years ago when a friend highly recommended A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, and since then I’ve added a fair few others, from the excellent children’s book Harriet the Invincible (as Ursula Vernon) to adult fairy tale retellings and even horror. But Nettle & Bone… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Starling House was released on October 3, 2023. Alix E. Harrow burst onto the scene in the late 2010s with a blend of beautiful imagery, bingeable prose, and fabulist plots featuring sharp moral divides… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Generation Ship will be released on October 17, 2023. When I saw Michael Mammay’s Generation Ship pop up on NetGalley, I was intrigued by the blurb, but I’d never heard of the author and… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Generation Ship by Michael Mammay
I’ve been working through my own personal subset of my team’s slush allocation for the third annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC3), and one of the books that immediately intrigued me from the cover and blurb was The Mimameid Solution by Katherine Kempf. The Mimameid Solution takes place after a series of environmental disasters, in… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: The Mimameid Solution by Katherine Kempf
My judging team in the third annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC3) has been given 24 books in the first round, with the charge to whittle the list to two semifinalists by the end of January. Because our judges are all volunteers and 24 books is a whole lot to read in five months, we’ve… Continue reading SPSFC First-Round Eliminations, Batch One
