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Book Review: Everfair by Nisi Shawl

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Approximately nine years ago, while browsing a local library’s new release section, I came across Filter House. A short story collection by Nisi Shawl, its description and critical blurbs promised rich literary fantasy from a talented and distinctive voice that was new to me. Reading it, I realized that promise was no exaggeration. Filter House is significant in both its quality and its revelation of a culturally non-dominant perspective (particularly within the SFF community). Nominated for a World Fantasy Award and winning the James Tiptree Jr. Award, Shawl’s collection did not go unnoticed within the critical community. Yet, I somehow felt unfulfilled after completing the collection. I had no regrets reading it; I appreciated it. But it still baffled me in its unfamiliarity and its thematic focus. Its Otherness required contemplation, attentive to the subtle graces of Shawl’s writing and listening to her viewpoint. For me, one read-through wasn’t sufficient to fully experience it.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

Reading Rangers #1: Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/ReadingRangers1ShardsOfHonorByLoisMcMasterBujold/ReadingRangers1–ShardsOfHonorByLoisMcmasterBujold.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSButterfly in the sky! I can go twice as high! I can’t sing, so just listen to the theme song… but every time it says Rainbow… think Rangers… Yes, we really ARE that nerdy!

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Book Review: The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

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I came to Kameron Hurley’s work early, getting a copy of God’s War back at the beginning of her career, and following her work and worlds since. Sometimes I’ve had questions or issues with her work, but throughout, the “blood, bugs, and brutal women” that have been a hallmark of all of her worlds and characters have sustained my reading interest and been a welcome expenditure of my reading time. It was thus with great anticipation that I picked up The Stars Are Legion, the new Space Opera from Hurley. I started this review and continue to engage with the author on a metatextual as well as a textual level because her work responds to that sort of analysis. No writer is separate from her creation, but some writers are very intimately connected to what they write, how they write, and why they write as they do. Hurley falls into this camp. So, I went into the novel with expectations that there would be strong female characters, violence, perhaps worldbuilding that might frustrate me a tiny bit, and a harsh and high contrast verse that engages my senses. In photography terms, instead of a placid and straightforward landscape or portrait, Hurley’s work pushes pixels in both directions, sometimes discordantly, to deliberate and eye-arresting effect.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

Signal Boost #6: Sophia Chester (Cosmic Callisto Caprica/Rocket Romance) and Heather Rose Jones (Alpennia Series/Lesbian Historic Motif Project)

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost6SophiaChesterAndHeatherRoseJones/Sandf–SignalBoost6–SophiaChesterAndHeatherRoseJones.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSIn today’s episode of Signal Boost, Sophia Chester, author of Cosmic Callisto Caprica & The Missing Rings of Saturn and the Rocket Romance novellas, joins us to talk about how her books tackle the civil rights era IN SPACE!!! Then Heather Rose Jones, author of the Alpennia Regency Fantasy Adventure Romance series and the Lesbian Historic Motif Project, joins Jen to talk about the characters of Alpennia, her newest venture into YA, and how she’s created a vital resource for writers and readers to learn about lesbians throughout history. We hope you enjoy the episode! Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

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A Book by Its Cover: The Dispatcher by John Scalzi

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Morgan Filchberger is the last 911 Dispatcher to be promoted to Detective after floppy-armed robots replaced the entire workforce. Anyone else might be bitter about that, but Morgan has failed the Department of Uniformed Detectives Exam five times. Now, he’s living the dream:  the pay is good and he gets to tell his high school buddies that he’s a real badass. That is until members of the Irradiated Blue Man Group start showing up dead and partially digested in the streets of Orlando. With Captain Northrup Wilkinson and the union representative of the IBMG breathing down his neck, Morgan wonders if he’s really cut out for the detective life… Enter Felicia Guffman, a smartmouthed rookie slash amateur thespian with a penchant for unfinished Greek tragedies and Morgan’s new partner. If there’s one thing Felicia does well, it’s propping up mediocre (male) members of law enforcement to make them look good. Call it a gift. Or a curse. Whatever you call it, Felicia has been putting her talents to use since graduating from the Louisiana Academy of Detective Youths four years ago. And a bunch of dead glowing blue guys aren’t going to keep her from making a name for herself, even if she has do it by making Morgan into a hero before exposing him for the fraud that he is.

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Book Review: Wilders, by Brenda Cooper

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Author Brenda Cooper describes herself as a futurist and as being passionate about the environment, and you’d better believe she’s dead serious about it. Which is to say that, unlike most of the books I’ve gotten to review for Skiffy and Fanty this month, Wilders is many things, but fun isn’t one of them. Like so much ecological science fiction (or ecopunk, if that’s a thing? I’m pretty sure it’s a thing), Wilders is written in deadly earnest. Look elsewhere for lighthearted escapism. Refreshingly, though, unlike a lot of books I’ve stumbled across in this genre, Wilders manages not to get too preachy. Herein, Cooper works under the assumption that her readers are proficient singers in the choir, and proceeds to focus on telling us a story rather than trying to persuade us that wilderness matters, that the environment matters, that extinction hurts us, etc., etc.

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