Ancillary Justice got a ton of hype upon its release in 2013, racking up a dizzying number of genre awards and garnering praise for its inventive handling of gender and nonhuman intelligence, in addition to being an excellent space opera. But I was on hiatus from genre reading in 2013, and so while I’d been… Continue reading Sci-fi Book Review: Ancillary Justice 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. Saint Death’s Herald will be released on April 22, 2025. Saint Death’s Daughter was my favorite novel of 2022, so there was really no question about whether I’d read the sequel. The only question… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Saint Death’s Herald by C.S.E. Cooney
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Where the Axe is Buried was released on April 1, 2025. I started reading Ray Nayler a couple years ago, and I’ve been consistently impressed with his quiet explorations of how big political and… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Psychopomp was released on March 25, 2025. Maria Dong’s “Braid Me a Howling Tongue” was one of my favorite stories of 2023, so when I saw she had a new novel coming out, I… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Psychopomp by Maria Dong
My favorite reading challenge is back! r/Fantasy Book Bingo started its eleventh year on April 1, celebrating with the annual release of a new Bingo card. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s an annual reading challenge with 25 different categories of books to read for the following year. Anything you were less than halfway through… Continue reading Planning 2025 Fantasy Bingo
Do I always say it’s been a busy month? Perhaps I do. But this one has had a mix of deadlines, illness, overscheduling–oh right, and also sports–and the long and short is that it ended up being a relatively light reading month. But when short fiction is involved, a light reading month usually still means… Continue reading March 2025 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. A Drop of Corruption will be released on April 1, 2025. Though Robert Jackson Bennett isn’t exactly a new face in the fantasy scene, my first experience with his work came last year, when… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett
We’ve made it to the quarterfinals of the fourth annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition. Team Tar Vol On has sifted through 32 randomly assigned books and selected a top four. That number has since dropped to two, so we’ll be evaluating a pair of our own and a third-place book from one other team in… Continue reading SPSFC Semifinalist Review: Time of the Cat by Tansy Rayner Roberts
Because my judging team for the fourth annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4) had an unusually light group of quarterfinalists, I spent the end of the stage catching up on some quarterfinalists from other teams. And one that particularly caught my eye was the supernatural sci-fi Our Lady of the Artilects by Andrew Gillsmith. Our… Continue reading Supernatural Sci-fi Novel Review: Our Lady of the Artilects by Andrew Gillsmith
Apparently, the Danish Groundhog Day-style litfic series On the Calculation of Volume has gotten enough hype for English translations. And while I can be hit-or-miss on litfic, I enjoy weird time shenanigans and meditative stories enough to check out the fairly short first installment in the planned seven-part series, translated by Barbara J. Haveland. On… Continue reading Speculative Novel Review: On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle
