Search

Book Review: The Dead Cat Tail Assassins

Cover of P. Djèlí Clark’s The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, featuring a dark-skinned woman wearing dreadlocks, a gold cat mask and black leather gloves, holding a pair of swords crossed across her chest.

In all, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins is a lean and mean novella that goes down like liquid fire and leaps through the reader’s mind like dancing across rooftops in Tal Abisi.

Book Review: The Jaguar Mask, by Michael J. DeLuca

Cover of The Jaguar Mask by Michael J. DeLuca, featuring a jaguar with glowing yellow eyes, a green and blue bird, and a pictographic border that includes cars.

I started out only able to read this book in small bites, taking time for digestion, but by the end, I was eating it up eagerly, hungry for the meanings that were emerging and the inspirations I could take from it.

Review: The Warden by Daniel M. Ford

Cover of The Warden, by Daniel M. Ford, featuring a female figure apparently casting some kind of spell on a cloaked figure, amid a wilderness that's partly dark and partly pink.

… So, once things do kick off, we get a lot of fun action sequences, a main character learning to do better and learning to adapt her city and courtly ways to the wild frontier, to tackle a problem far bigger and dangerous than she imagined, and torn between wanting to stick it out and wanting to decamp for other climes. …

Book Review: The Thief and the Wild, by Seann Barbour

Cover of The Thief and the Wild by Seann Barbour, featuring a three-eyed cat on a tree limb in the foreground, in front of a steamboat on the water, with a city on the background.

This Southern-flavored steampunk fantasy is as easy to sink into as a hammock, with a nice breezy tone most of the time, narrated by a sympathetic protagonist with a wry point of view, relating an exciting plot that moves around a bayou town, up and down, and eventually strikes out into the wilderness, with a cataclysmic confrontation at the climax.

780. S&F Clacks #7: The “Problem” w/ Worldbuilding

https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/sand-f-780-clacks-7-worldbuilding/SandF_780_Clacks7Worldbuilding.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSTotalizing worlds, imagined cultures, and genre limits, oh my! Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer, and Stephen Geigen-Miller join forces to discuss the so-called “problems” with worldbuilding, the impact of worldbuilding obsessions on story, and what SF/F could be without so much worldbuilding! Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy the episode!