Book Review: In the Lion’s Mouth by Michael Flynn

(Note:  This review was originally intended for publication, but certain professional and personal obligations prevented its completion.  My apologies for its lateness, but I could not sit on this version any longer.  Thanks to Abigail Nussbaum and others who viewed it in earlier incarnations.) Michael F. Flynn’s In the Lion’s Mouth is a space opera […]

Book Review: Silver by Rhiannon Held

Every time I read an urban fantasy, I remind myself that I am not the primary audience.  After all, much of what I dislike about urban fantasy are the very things I dislike about bad books.  Stereotypical characterization, repetitive narratives, and repetitive tropes (if I see one more tramp stamp cover I’m going to blow […]

Book Review: Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery

Reviewing Slattery’s Lost Everything will seem rather convenient in light of Elizabeth Bear’s Clarkesworld post on the doom and gloom nature of SF.  How awful of me to love another work that makes us all sad and boo hoo inside!  Except Lost Everything isn’t terribly boo hoo, unless the only thing you pay attention to is […]

Book Review: After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh

Collections of short stories are still the hardest thing for me to review, which invariably means the following review will be flawed both methodologically and stylistically.  But perhaps I can move past this by way of the  interconnected-ness of the stories in Maureen F. McHugh’s After the Apocalypse.  Unlike most collections, McHugh’s stories revolve around the […]

Book Review: Walking with the Comrades by Arundhati Roy

There’s something stirring in India.  A specter, if you will, of a dark time arisen and a dark time to come.  Whether we call it capitalism, corporatism, or new (neo) Imperialism, the fact remains that those most affected by the shifting dynamics of contemporary industrialization will be the disenfranchised and the disinherited. Arundhati Roy’s (The God […]

Book Review: Crack’d Pot Trail by Steven Erikson

Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series took the fantasy world by storm when Gardens of the Moon was published in 1999, leading to a 10-novel epic fantasy series, several additional novels written by Ian Esslemont, and a number of novellas.  Earlier this year, Crack’d Pot Trail, a tale of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, hit […]