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Book Review: Descendant of the Crane by Joan He

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Descendant of the Crane is a Chinese-inspired YA fantasy novel about politics, leadership and sacrifice. When the King of Yan dies suddenly, Hesina knows her father has been poisoned. In order to launch an official investigation, Hesina must take her place as the queen—no easy task when this involves gaining the approval of her mother. Plus, any ruler of the Kingdom of Yan faces a number of troubles. Whole villages are disappearing without a trace along the border, but Yan’s philosophy prevents the country from going to war. Within the capital there’s rumours that the soothsayers, the magic users who propped up the previous regime of profligate emperors, aren’t as dead as once thought, and neighbours begin to turn on each other. Hesina must somehow balance these concerns with her quest for the truth about her father’s death and her growing awareness of treachery from within her court.

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Book Review: Edges (Inverted Frontier, Book 1) by Linda Nagata

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Edges capably starts a new sequence of Inverted Frontier novels set in the far future universe that first made the reputation of its author, Linda Nagata. Back in the 1990s, Cyberpunk and nanotech and transhumanism had a boom of novels and idea exploration. The first wave of cyberpunk led by Neuromancer and its ilk was succeeded by novels that pushed the concept further, exploring the consequences of programmable matter, multiple lives across copies, virtual existences, and fantastic landscapes and settings across the Earth and beyond. From Kathleen Ann Goonan to Walter Jon Williams, a number of authors explored this space.

Announcements and Errata, Awards Season

We’re 2019 Hugo Finalists!!! THANK YOU!

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We really don’t know where to start. We’ve known for about two weeks now that was coming, but there was a small part that didn’t believe it. That instead believed it was some terrible hoax. Not that we don’t believe that The Skiffy and Fanty Show isn’t deserving of this, but rather that becoming finalists in 2014 was probably the one and only time it would ever happen. Yay for imposter syndrome!  We have to say, it’s a relief to see the official official announcement and know it is true (though to be amongst such amazing finalists is still bewildering!!) But then we looked at our team and knew immediately that we should never have doubted, because our team is AMAZING and deserves every bit of this nomination:

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Book Review: Infinite Detail, by Tim Maughan

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“It’s not enough to just take power away from those in charge. If we don’t use it ourselves, they’ll just take it back.” — “Anika” in Tim Maughan’s Infinite Detail “Be careful what you wish for; you may get it.” — Everybody since the 2001 ape threw a jawbone into the air Let’s think awhile about tools and how we use them, and how they end up using us when we’re not careful. Like how the human-engineered maize plant has basically turned us into a slave race frantically devoted to propagating it, defending it, etc. Let’s think about revolutions and why they tend to fail.

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COMICS REVIEW – Empowered and Sistah Spooky’s High School Hell

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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, a graphic novel that I was very much looking forward too is out, and I have thoughts. Because it’s a fave, but it might also be a problematic fave. So yeah, you better believe that I have thoughts. (This review contains spoilers!) 

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Book(s) Review: Alice Payne Arrives and Alice Payne Rides by Kate Heartfield

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Alice Payne Arrives and Alice Payne Rides form a pair of time travel novellas that stand ably alongside the other fresh and new time travel science fiction being written today. The late 21st and early 22nd century are, frankly, a mess. Even after the invention of time travel, the Earth is in a bad way. There are plans to try and move people to the future, when the climate ravages have hopefully settled down, or to the past, before the worst effects are baked in. Trying to change the past to try and fix everything has boiled down to a conflict between two time traveling factions, the Farmers and the Guides. They have very divergent ideas what to do with time travel, enough that they are in a no-win conflict  They have achieved a messy stalemate in their temporal cold war. In the meantime, though, a young woman in the late 18th century is using daring, stealth, and her lover’s clockwork automaton creation to gain the funds needed to keep her family’s estate afloat. Her name is Alice Payne, and she is soon swept into the temporal cold war.

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