Book Review: Bookburners Season 3
With the publication of an omnibus edition, the Bookburners, one of the serial stories from Serial Box, comes to officially cap its third season and prepare the ground for the fourth. Bookburners is hardly the only serial from Serial Box, as the release of this third omnibus joyfully coincides with the release of omnibus editions of Tremontaine Season 3, and ReMade Season 2.
Book Review: Jade City by Fonda Lee
In an alternate world where a small island carries both a magical material and the scions who can wield it, the aftermath of a world war that consumed and wrapped up even the island is a tricky and dangerous time. The city of Janloon on the island of Kekon is a fraught place, with the clans that helped liberate the island kingdom from foreign occupation now the temporal behind-the-scenes powers that rule Janloon and the island of Kekon itself. After years of quiet small scale conflict, however, a change in leadership of the No Peak clan provides their stronger rival, the Mountain Clan, with a chance to push and push their advantage, to do to the No Peak what they have done to several of their smaller rivals already—to conquer it.
Book Review: The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
Brooke Bolander jumps from stories to novellas with The Only Harmless Great Thing, her #Tordotcompublishing novella. The novella is a strongly affecting and moving story that proves that her emotional strengths in reaching an audience do translate from her short stories to novella length. Brooke Bolander first came to my literary attention with “Our Talons can crush Galaxies”, her Nebula and Hugo nominated story in Uncanny magazine that mixed Gods, revenge and a very sharp, short package. When I heard that Bolander was writing a novella that was an alternate history that involved the radium girls, a part of history I only had the vaguest notions about, I was thus intrigued. What could and would the author do at novella length in an alternate history? I was not sure, but I wanted to find out.
Book Review: The Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor
Binti is a prodigy among her people, the Himba, in a mid-future world constructed by author Nnedi Okorafor. Binti’s desire to go the finest University in the galaxy breaks all sorts of norms. Binti’s like that, though, breaking norms and boundaries as she finds her way to the University, back home, and what happens thereafter. Binti’s story is told in Okorafor’s Binti, Binti: Home and the finale of the trilogy, Binti: Masquerade.
Book Review: The Armored Saint by Myke Cole
Suffer no wizard to live” Myke Cole is known for his service in the military, being the endless butt of jokes from Sam Sykes on twitter, Trigger Discipline, being a breakout star of the CBS TV show Hunted and writing modern fantasy about how the military would deal with the Return of Magic to the world (The Shadow Ops series). With The Armored Saint, Cole expands his oeuvre in the writing sphere to secondary world fantasy.
Book Review: The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune by JY Yang
Releasing books in a series in quick succession is nothing new. An author sells multiple volumes, already written, which come out in relatively short order with each other. It is far far less common, however, for a publisher to release multiple works by an author at the same time. It’s even rarer to have a pair of twinned works, who inform and influence each other. In The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune, two entangled novellas have been released by a new talent on the SF scene, JY Yang.
