House of the Rain King by Will Greatwich is one of the few self-published novels that I’ve actually picked up in its publication year. A glowing review from someone who likes a lot of my favorites and a selection for an online book club was enough for me to take the plunge and see what… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: House of the Rain King by Will Greatwich
The Phoenix Pencil Company seems to have gotten more hype in general fiction circles than speculative fiction ones, but author Allison King caught my eye with her interview in Clarkesworld, and given my recent fascination with stories that play with memory and family, it moved up my TBR quickly. The Phoenix Pencil Company is essentially… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King
When Ella Enchanted came out, I don’t think I even knew it existed, despite its popular acclaim and the fact that someone in my immediate family was reading it. Had I known about it, would I have appreciated a book that was For Girls? It’s hard to say. But as an adult, I had no… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
My September short fiction reviews are coming out of order because of some travel early in the month, and GigaNotoSaurus remains on a two-month hiatus, so let’s do a rare late-month, single-issue review and take a look at the September 2025 issue of Clarkesworld. Clarkesworld This issue of Clarkesworld features five short stories and two… Continue reading Tar Vol Reads a Magazine: Review of Clarkesworld (September 2025)
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The Summer War will be released on September 16, 2025. I haven’t read much of Naomi Novik, but I’ve liked what I’ve read, and given that I’m always looking to try novellas from… Continue reading Fantasy Novella Review: The Summer War by Naomi Novik
I’d been following Jon Bois on Twitter for quite a while before the publication of 17776, and I’d greatly enjoyed the first few chapters before beginning to suspect that it was too long to finish in a single sitting. I set it down and forgot about it for years. But when a Not a Book… Continue reading Weird Internet Sci-fi Review: 17776 and 20020 by Jon Bois
When I returned from genre-reading hiatus in the mid-2010s, Malazan was inescapable. Tell someone you read fantasy and they would inevitably ask about one of three things: Kingkiller, Malazan, or Brandon Sanderson. At the time, I’d read none of the three (apart from Sanderson’s Wheel of Time co-authorship), but a decade later, I finally decided… Continue reading Fantasy Book Review: Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
Early September travel has thrown off my usual reading schedule and has me swapping the order of my regular short fiction reviews. So we’ll save the monthly Clarkesworld review for later and start with Magazine Minis: short reviews of selected stories from the same magazine issues. Today, I’ll be looking at tales that caught my… Continue reading Tar Vol’s Magazine Minis: Asimov’s, khōréō, and Translunar Travelers Lounge
Travel and an unusually hefty short fiction project this month left me with relatively little time for miscellany, and what time I had was mostly spent in search of the lucky 10,000, focusing on acclaimed 20th century sci-fi that I’d somehow yet to read. And wouldn’t you know it, I found some great stuff! Let’s… Continue reading August 2025 Round-up and Short Fiction Miscellany
To mark the transition between our summer Hugo reading and our regular short fiction reading, my online book club decided to have a session focusing on the finalists for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. Why 2017? Well, the stories were all online, it was before we started our Hugo Readalong, and it… Continue reading A Very Late Evaluation of the 2017 Hugo Longlist for Best Short Story
