 Alex Acks, Murder on the Titania, and Other Steam-Powered Adventures, Queen of Swords, 2018.
The title says it all really: murder mysteries, adventures, steampunk. What it leaves aside is that it is a very, very entertaining read and it'll be a perfect addition to your summer reading list.  Simon Morden,
One Way and No Way are a duo of hard scifi novels set on Mars and written by Simon Morden. I'm usually not big on techno thrillers but I had so much enjoyed Morden's Books of Down that I gave it a try. Despite a slow start for me, I ended up loving it.  Juliet McKenna, The Green Man's Heir, Wizard's Tower Press, 2018.
Audio book available on Audible. I had fallen in love with McKenna's four series of epic fantasy, all set in a fascinating and diverse secondary world. So I was eagerly waiting for this new novel of her which, while still remaining fantasy, is set in our contemporary world, in the English countryside. It didn't disappoint.  Martha Wells, All Systems Red, St Martin's Press, 2017.
Audiobook available on Audible. All Systems Red is a fun and entertaining scifi novella. Though part of a larger series with future upcoming volumes, this first book is a stand alone and can be read independently.  Max Gladstone, The Craft Sequence, Tor,
"My oh my, C..." are you thinking, "Do you really think I have time enough to read something as long as a series with 6 volumes published?" That's the beauty of The Craft Sequence, a fantasy series by Max Gladstone: each book can be read independently from the others and you could pick one and not go back to the next one for months. Unless, that is, you end up as engrossed into it as I was.  Mur Lafferty, Six Wakes, Orbit, 2017.
Six Wakes takes the old familiar trope of a "closed room" murder mystery, but renews it by having it set on a space ship, and all of the six possible suspects are amnesiac clones. Ensues an engrossing and gripping story you'll have trouble to put down.  Vincent Holland-Keen, The Office of Lost and Found, Fox Spirit Books, 2016.
The Office of Lost and Found wasn't what I expected. But I lost expectations and found a couple of great characters in an unusual world.
Emma Newman,
"Why two covers?" are you asking, "You never put two covers even if it's a series." Thank you for being so observant a regular reader (or if it's the first time you come here, welcome). Planetfall and After Atlas are both set in the same universe. They are both tied by one event: a ship called Atlas leaving Earth with humans aboard. But they can both be read as stand alone novels, you could even read just one and not the other. On the other hand, reading both as a diptych will certainly illuminate the stories more...  Art by Joshua Mays.
"Science-fiction is a white "menochrome": it's a genre written by white men for white men and in which characters are white men." Erm... No, really, no. So here are ten novels, chosen subjectively and by chronological order, that will get you on your way to discover that there are much more than just these ten novels and that scifi and fantasy is a genre as diverse as our planet's population...  Lois McMaster Bujold, (by internal chronological order (1))
The Vorkosigan Saga is one of the names given to an ensemble of science-fiction novels and novellas written by Lois McMaster Bujold. Most of the novels focus on the Vorkosigan family, and more particularly on Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. Currently, the series spans about forty years of the life of this family (apart from Falling Free which takes place 200 years in their past) and takes place on the planet Barrayar, on other planets colonised by humanity or on an orbital station...  Connie Willis, To Say nothing of the dog, Bantam Spectra, 1997.
When someone tells me they don't like reading science-fiction but would like to give it another try anyway, To Say nothing of the dog is the book I always recommend. It's also one of my all times favourites...  Charles Stross, The Laundry Files
Bob Howard is a civil servant and takes care of the IT in his department. His department? The Laundry, a parallel branch of the British Intelligence services, that deal in the supernatural threats. Because yes, magic is real. But it's nothing more than digital algorithms and equations. So it's a bit of a problem when everyone has a PC and can casually summon the monstruous horrors of the neighbouring dimension... |
All reviews are spoiler free unless explicitly stated otherwise.
I only review stories I have liked even if my opinion may be nuanced. It doesn't apply for the "Novels published before 1978" series of blog posts. Comments are closed, having neither time nor the inclination to moderate them. |
In which C. reviews the best scifi and fantasy books read recently.
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