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
As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’m back leading a team for the third incarnation of the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC3), and when I saw a litRPG book in our batch featuring a suburban Mom trying to keep her three kids alive during an alien invasion, I was torn between my stereotypes of litRPG… Continue reading Sci-fi Book Review–Apocalypse Parenting: Time to Play by Erin Ampersand
A real scramble this month, with the end of Hugo reading and the beginning of SPSFC3 reading. I’m wildly behind on reviews, but I’m not forgetting my short fiction crew. I’ve got some great stuff to talk about this month, like every month. Short Fiction September Favorites Did my September magazine review come out in… Continue reading September 2023 Round-up and Short Fiction Miscellany
The second whirlwind month in a row has seen me settling into a new house, finishing up a year of Hugo reading, and opening my third year of SPSFC. So it’s been a bit of a quiet month for short fiction, but it was also a three-magazine month with the release of the bimonthly Magazine… Continue reading Tar Vol Reads a Magazine (or Three): Reviews of Clarkesworld, GigaNotoSaurus, and F&SF (September 2023)
In the past, I’ve done full ballot spotlight posts for my four favorite categories in the Hugo Awards for the year’s best in sci-fi and fantasy: Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story. This year, I’ve managed Best Novel and Best Novella, but I’ve flat run out of time before the voting… Continue reading 2023 Hugo Awards Ballot: Short Fiction
Welcome to the second of my ballot posts for the 2023 Hugo Awards for the year’s best in sci-fi and fantasy! Yesterday, I considered Best Novel, and today I’ll be looking at Best Novella, for works between 17,500 and 40,000 words. I’m a little more positive on this year’s novella shortlist than the novel shortlist,… Continue reading 2023 Hugo Awards Ballot: Best Novella
