Speculative Fiction – Page 114

All you’re getting from me this year is a half Cannonball, so it may as well be for a Magary book.

Point B by Drew Magary

November 14, 2020 by scootsa1000 1 Comment

I really want to review this book but have struggled to write anything lately. I’m such a fan of Drew and want to throw my support his way, but I just can’t make the words come out. I’m clearly not going to reach my cannonball goal this year for the first time ever. New goal: Half Cannonball! I’ve been a big fan of Drew’s for a while. I loved The Hike, I liked The Postmortal, his annual Willams Sonoma takedown is always good for a […]

The Magic is Gone. Now What?

The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold

November 12, 2020 by Ale Leave a Comment

Perhaps it’s unfair that I’m reviewing The Last Smile of Sunder City only days after finishing Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. A Hugo award winning series is always going to be an unreachable pinnacle, especially by a debut author, and I’m probably doing an unrealistic comparison to expect Sunder City to feed the depth of my expectations after spending three books in Jemisin’s incredible craft. But I did expect more from Sunder City. This isn’t to say Arnold is a bad writer; he’s not. He’s a very […]

The Best of the Trilogy

The Stone Sky by NK Jemisin

November 5, 2020 by Ale 1 Comment

While the whole Broken Earth series was incredibly deserving of the Hugo award, the Stone Sky, in particular, was a feat of literary perfection (at least in my opinion). As I’ve said with both of Jemisin’s previous novels, her ability to successfully deploy second person POV continued to astound me in this last chapter of her epic, and while hints are given in book two of who this narrative voice is, it all comes roaring to the surface in book three. As with any trilogy, […]

Make sure you vote!

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

October 25, 2020 by crystalclear Leave a Comment

Well, this was an interesting read right before the 2020 U.S. Presidential election! There are parts in this that are hilarious, heartbreaking, and harrowing. You have a romance story involving politics, and in both the book and in real life, the election of 2020 is super stressful! (In the book, if the incumbent president loses, she steps down and a gross white man takes her place. In real life, if the incumbent president wins, thousands more people will needlessly die. A bit more stressful for […]

“While I was killing him, I had to wipe my mouth with my sleeve every now and then because I couldn’t stop salivating.”

Mars by Asja Bakić

October 25, 2020 by andtheIToldYouSos Leave a Comment

Anything can become normal, if you continue to stick through it. War, murder, cults, doppelgängers, being deported to Mars- whatever world you are dropped into becomes your world. Asja Bakić is a master of normalcy in abnormal times and places. Her short story collection, Mars, is filled to the gills with the weird becoming common place. I was originally drawn to this collection for less than academic reasons: it is short and it has a pretty corner! I was looking to race through my Bingo card, […]

Stone and Ash and Magic

The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin

October 2, 2020 by Ale Leave a Comment

The more of Jemisin’s works I read, the more I fall in love with her craft. The Obelisk Gate is book two in her Broken Earth Trilogy, and even though I’m normally not the biggest fan of any middle book in a trilogy, I enjoyed this book even more than her first one. We pick up the story almost exactly where we left off in book one, and follow Essun as she pivots her focus from finding her daughter, Nassun, to assisting the orogenes of Castrima […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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