February is a short month, and I was traveling for a good chunk of it, so my blog and my reading were a bit quieter than usual. Does this mean I have nothing to recommend? Absolutely not! Let’s take a look at what I read and reviewed this month! Short Fiction February Favorites As always,… Continue reading Tar Vol On’s February 2025 Round-up and Short Fiction Miscellany
My judging team in the fourth annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition has whittled our randomly-assigned 32 entries to four quarterfinalists. And then some off-page drama shrunk that list down to two. Come March, we will evaluate the third-place book from at least one other judging team to determine whether we would like to make it… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Time of the Cat by Tansy Rayner Roberts
A short month with lots of travel means my Magazine Minis are even smaller than usual this month, but I did read more than one story from two different magazine issues this month, so let’s take a brief look at a couple that caught my eye from the Winter 2025 issue of Apex and the… Continue reading Tar Vol’s Magazine Minis: Apex and Asimov’s
A short month with a lot of travel means my magazine reviews are coming later than usual, but coming they are. Let’s check out the February 2025 issues of Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus. Clarkesworld As with the January 2025 issue, this month’s Clarkesworld contains fewer than the usual eight stories, but with higher than average word… Continue reading Tar Vol Reads a Magazine (or Two): Reviews and Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus (February 2025)
I didn’t know that Mechanize My Hands to War even existed until author Erin K. Wagner was interviewed in Clarkesworld in December 2024. But as so often happens with Clarkesworld interviews, she talked about it in a way that caught my attention and sent it flying up my TBR. And I’m glad it did. Mechanize… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Mechanize My Hands to War by Erin K. Wagner
I’ve gotten started up with 2025 reading while scrambling to catch up on 2024, and it’s led to one of my biggest reading months. . . ever? Admittedly, a lot of the books were short, but I read a lot of things, including some tremendous work–2025 is shaping up to be an astounding year for… Continue reading January 2025 Round-up and Short Fiction Miscellany
My judging team in the fourth annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4) has sifted through our 32-book allocation and chosen four quarterfinalists for further evaluation as we seek to identify just two semifinalists to advance to the next stage. For my second quarterfinalist read, I picked up the time travel romance A Swift and Sudden… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: A Swift and Sudden Exit by Nico Vincenty
There are plenty of different pockets of fantasy fandom these days, and while I’m not sure I fit neatly into any one in particular—in part by design—I tend to spend more time reading the trimmer books popular among the Hugo-voting crowd than I do on contemporary epic fantasy. And so despite all the hype for… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan
Late in 2024, I started supplementing my regular magazine reviews with Magazine Minis, where I dip into a magazine issue for two or three stories instead of reading it in full. I’ve found some real gems that way, and I’m back at it in 2025. This month, I’ll be looking at four magazines that are… Continue reading Tar Vol’s Magazine Minis: Mysterion, Metaphorosis, FIYAH, and Kaleidotrope
I was previously unfamiliar with Jedediah Berry, and despite a striking cover, I would have let The Naming Song pass me by without a strong recommendation from a book club friend who loved the language element. So I decided to give it a try after all. The Naming Song takes place after an underdescribed apocalypse—when… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry
