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Announcements and Errata

Worldcon 75 (HELSINKI!): Our Schedules and Call for Interviewees!

We’re just a week away from Worldcon, and we are excited! Five of us will be there next week (Shaun, Paul, Alex, Julia, and Mike, who is last here because he’s wrong about comics :P), and we’ll all be up to no good while we’re there. Whether it’s paneling, exploring Helsinki, or recording guerilla interviews in the dark, you can be certain that we’ll be busy bees! With that in mind, this post aims to let you know where you can find us at Worldcon AND how to contact us if you’d like to be interviewed for the podcast! Here goes:

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Book Review: Blackthorne by Stina Leicht

Eledore has fallen! In the wake of the near-genocidal attack on the already plague-ridden kingdom, the remnants and survivors of the attack by the Acrasian Empire have several pressing problems. First, the Acrasians, now that they have smashed the Kingdom, consider the flinders to be easy pickings. Kainen hunted for sport, territory conquered, a proud kingdom ruined. Worse, the remaining Kainen polities, like the Waterborne Nations, and Ytlain, have to deal with this new political reality, and Eledore’s fallen status means that its people must often go cap in hand to their brethren, and suffer and bargain for what they once could ask for freely. Even more of a problem is the problem that Eledore has stood athwart for centuries and no longer can: The otherdimensional, eldritch problem of the malorum. Now that the gates are opening and malorum are coming through, the survivors of Eledore are under literal siege from this threat. Not that the Acrasians are as well off as they might be. Yes, the great victory against the Eledorean menace has occurred. But in the wake of that victory, the local and resident nonhuman population, overt and covert, have been restive. Some have even been seeking escape from the Regnum, to get beyond the borders of a state slowly and inexorably tightening into Caesarism. Besides the high level political problems, seen only at a distance and remove, the street-level problems of life in the Regnum are multiplying. The malorum are now a looming threat on the streets of Novus Salernum itself. 

Torture Cinema Polls

Torture Cinema Poll: August Attack of the 80s!

We realize that you haven’t even heard our July pick, Night of the Comet, yet, but it will be up soon! PROMISE!! What you’ll find when you DO listen to that one though is that sometimes the team gets really lucky and ends up watching something really kind of enjoyable. SO PICK A REAL TORTURE THIS TIME!!! We know! We’ll make it easy! We’ll only pick movies from the official torture list that were made in the 80s. … Oh, gods, what have we done!? … These choices are SO, SO BAD! … save us.

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Being Here, Now: Moonshot Vol. 2 and Centering Indigeneity

Welcome to the latest installment of my comics review column here at Skiffy & Fanty! Every month, I use this space to shine a spotlight on SF&F comics (print comics, graphic novels, and webcomics) that I believe deserve more attention from SF&F readers. This month, I’d like to direct your attention to the anthology Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection Volume 2. (This review contains spoilers!)

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Book Review: STEEL VICTORY and STEEL MAGIC by J.L. Gribble

This Sunday I featured Steel Blood for my first offering in the ‘A Book By Its Cover’ series of humorous fake reviews. I haven’t yet read this third volume in J.L. Gribble’s Steel Empires series, but I have read the first two novels, Steel Victory and Steel Magic. Seems the perfect time to write real reviews on them. In the most general sense, at least one part of that Steel Blood cover-inspired ‘review’ is correct. The Steel Empires series is a fusion of many different genre elements that make it hard to precisely classify. Urban Fantasy/Alternate History is the publisher’s cover labeling, and indeed the series overall recalls elements of The Southern Vampire Mysteries series by Charlaine Harris (the basis of True Blood), built into an alternate history world. But added into this melting pot one can also find dashes of post-apocalyptic SF and Steampunk. All of these elements don’t mix equally, or as successfully, but on the whole the two novels have character-driven and plot-driven fun that is as solidly written as the most popular urban fantasy series out there.

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