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Book Review: Hammer of the Witch by Dakota Chase

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Dakota Chase continues her young adult series, Repeating History, with Hammer of the Witch, returning to a contemporary world featuring magical, time-traveling shenanigans surrounding two teenagers. To recap: In the first novel, The Eye of Ra, we met up with Aston and Grant at an unfortunate time in their lives.  After a visit to juvenile court both boys are sentenced to a year at the Stanton Boys School, where their shenanigans intertwine after an incident in their history teacher’s office (which they manage to set fire to, destroying several priceless artifacts housed within).  And it just so happens that their history teacher is the esteemed wizard Merlin.  He-who-ran-with-King-Arthur, Merlin.  Why the man would want to teach high schoolers is beyond me, but maybe he enjoys it.  Aston and Grant have never been in this much trouble before, but an unlikely solution is found when they are tasked with going back in time and retrieving some of these artifacts for Merlin.  In the first book Aston and Grant traveled back to Ancient Egypt in the times of King Tut, but the second book sends them back to medieval Europe, in the midst of the witch hunts.  

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SEA Quest: Listening To My Ancestors (Reprint)

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Joyce Chng is currently at ICFA 2018. This is a reprint from June 2014, but still relevant. Recently, I was rocked by a wonderful and startling revelation from my dad about his grandmother. My great grandmother was a herbalist and a travelling physician. From his tone, I could tell my dad admired her. She had “ben shi”, ability, talent. She could do stuff. Yet, my grandmother, my great grandmother’s daughter, wasn’t that forthcoming. She let out her stories in weak spools. She didn’t talk about things that made her sad. According to my dad, she quarreled with her mother who forbade her to leave for Nanyang (the Chinese term for Southeast Asia). My grandmother left for Singapore soon after that. Imagine the wounds still unhealed, the words left unsaid, unvoiced. My grandmother passed away last year.

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The Intersection: Context, Honor, and the Strong Female Character™

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I told myself I wouldn’t write this essay. I’m not a fan of publicly criticizing another writer’s work, particularly a living author’s work. I’ll never do that to anyone. It’s not cool, and it’s definitely not professional. However, there’s a distinction between criticizing a work in order to make yourself look bigger and genuinely criticizing a work because it’s a culturally significant piece requiring extensive deconstruction in order to examine its effect upon those who it is supposedly supporting. I’ve had this discussion with other authors who happen to be women—and well…it’s time, guys. I’ll add that if you’re a fan of the novels I’m about to discuss, no matter your gender, good for you. I’m happy you found something you enjoy. That’s what SF fandom is all about: finding the thing you love. I don’t disrespect fans for their fandom. Therefore, the following is not a personal attack. It doesn’t mean the author is a bad person, either. It doesn’t even mean that the series in question should never have gotten published.[1] Got it? Cool. [deep breath] Now, let’s do this.

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Book Review: Jade City by Fonda Lee

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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.

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Horror Review: Penny Reeve on Victor LaValle’s The Changeling

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“When you believe in things you don’t understand you suffer” Stevie Wonder’s words serve as the epitaph to Victor LaValle’s The Changeling; accurately summing up the ensuing 431 pages wherein we’re introduced to a genre-defying novel that mixes horror with the fantastic and monsters both real and imagined come a-knocking.

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Skiffy & Fanty Speculative Fiction Short Fiction Review, or SF SF SF Review: January/February

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Welcome to our newest review column! Skiffy & Fanty Speculative Fiction Short Fiction Review by our newest team member, Cameron Coulter!   It makes me really happy to write this: my favorite recent short stories are all either written by nonbinary authors and/or featuring nonbinary characters. I’m someone who has never been comfortable with masculinity, and I often wish we were more creative with gender in SF/F than we are. SF/F is a genre in which we literally make up new worlds, so there is plenty of opportunity to imagine people with alternate and/or no genders. Sure, there’s a few SF/F novels that are well known for the way they experiment with gender and pronouns, but I want more. Fortunately, I find that short fiction is somewhat ahead of the curve when it comes to diversity and inclusion. By my count, in the last two months, there have been at least six original short stories published in professional genre magazines that are either written by trans or nonbinary authors and/or featuring trans or nonbinary characters. Now, let the nonbinary party commence!

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