I’m keeping up with my four year-old tradition of reading and ranking every Hugo Award finalist in the categories of Short Story, Novelette, Novella, and Novel. Yesterday’s post was a downer about a Short Story shortlist that I did not care for at all, but today’s tone will be much different, as the Best Novelette… Continue reading 2024 Hugo Awards Ballot: Best Novelette
In each of the last four years, I’ve read through and evaluated the Hugo Awards shortlists for Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story. I try to vote in other categories as well, but I realistically don’t have time for everything, and these categories are my primary focus. So this week, it’s… Continue reading 2024 Hugo Awards Ballot: Best Short Story
Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series was a big hit within genre fiction at a time when I was mostly checked out. It sounded like the sort of thing I would like, so I’ve been meaning to circle back to it at some point. And while I still haven’t made it to the original trilogy, the… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Translation State by Ann Leckie
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Echo of Worlds was released on June 25, 2024. Last year, I described the opening book in M.R. Carey’s Pandominion duology as being exactly what you want in an epic series-opener. It set up… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Echo of Worlds by M.R. Carey
Every month, I say that I read great things. It’s always true–with as much as I read, something is going to be good enough to shout about. But sometimes slumps happen, and June 2024 saw me in the middle of one. I was going through a disappointing Hugo shortlist (more on that in the coming weeks),… Continue reading June 2024 Round-up and Short Fiction Miscellany
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Service Model was released on June 4, 2024. I’ve been a fan of Adrian Tchaikovsky for a few years now, though his tendency to release books faster than I can read them has kept… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
It’s been a busy June, with travel, the end of SPSFC, and Hugo Readalong in full swing, but I still managed to get through my two usual magazines, even if it’s later than usual. Let’s take a look! Clarkesworld I don’t know that the June issue of Clarkesworld had one story that really stood out… Continue reading Tar Vol Reads a Magazine (or Two): Reviews of Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus (June 2024)
I’d been hearing a lot about the work of John Scalzi for a long time, but I hadn’t actually read any until his pandemic novel, The Kaiju Preservation Society, made the 2023 Hugo shortlist. And with the appearance of Starter Villain on the 2024 Hugo shortlist for the Best Novel category, this is the second… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Starter Villain by John Scalzi
I’ve read a little bit of Vajra Chandrasekera’s short fiction, and I’ve been consistently impressed with his prose and creativity, but just as consistently finding myself at the end wanting a little bit more. So I decided to skip his debut novel, The Saint of Bright Doors, only circling back around when it surprised me… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
There were a pair of novels in 2023 with eerily similar—and discouraging—hype cycles. Both Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh and Witch King by Martha Wells were hailed as the next big thing, with as much pre-release buzz as anything I saw last year, and then completely fell off a cliff post-release, with a few… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
