Book Reviews
Review: “The Goddess Test” by Aimée Carter
What I didn’t expect was to be reaching for a tissue in the first twenty pages. Ms. Carter nicely sidesteps the whole unequal romance trope by placing the emotional center of the novel in the relationship between our heroine Kate and her mother Diana. Kate’s frantic grief over her mother’s looming death drives the plot and gives more weight to the story than a YA romance would normally command.
Review: “Empress” by Karen Miller
Hekat, in Empress, is a difficult woman. And while I know that a part of me should cheer for this woman who raises herself up from a nameless no one to a ruler of her country, the other part of me can’t stand how difficult she is. Hekat is touched by the god. She is not inventing this. She really does have her deity on her side, protecting her as she slaughters the people who get in her way. Everything she does is fated. But I cannot get beyond how completely cold and ruthless she is to everyone around her.
Review: “Black Blade Blues” by J. A. Pitts
The thing I love about urban fantasy is that it doesn’t take place in some pretend land where everyone can shoot lightning from their eyeballs – it’s here, where we live. There’s always the little extra bit of excitement that it could happen when the story is set in a town you’ve been to, maybe even lived in.
Guest Review: “Hell’s Aquarium” by Steve Alten
OK a few weeks ago, there was a review of Steve Alten’s Hell’s Aquarium. I thought it wasn’t a very good review, so I decided to send in my own, since I read Hell’s Aquarium and liked it a lot.
Review: “Poison Study” by Maria V. Snyder
Enraptured. I cannot remember the last time I read an entire book in one sitting. I could not, did not, put it down.
Yelena is everything you could ask for in a heroine: courageous, clever, resourceful, vulnerable, and strong. From the outset, her situation is dire. She is given a poison that will kill her if she does not return for her daily antidote. And even if she doesn’t, she may simply die from doing her job well.
Review: “The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy”
I heard recently that eighty-one percent of Americans believe they have a book in them. I believe if you polled fantasy fans, that number would be in the nineties. And I’m just talking novels, I’m not including all the movie and TV screenplays we have in mind. It’s one of the best aspects of being science fiction and fantasy fans: you live a big chunk of your life in your imagination.
But, ask anyone who has ever tried to write fantasy, and he or she will tell you. It ain’t easy. How do you make a fantasy world? How do I make up a type of magic that doesn’t seem stupid? How do I make interesting characters? And on, and on, and on.
Review: “Empire State” by Adam Christopher
Rocket powered superheros, prohibition era bootleggers, private eyes, mysterious men in masks; and more twists and turns than you can imagine. Welcome to Adam Christopher’s Empire State, a Superhero-Noir Science Fiction story set in a dark distorted reflection of New York City of the ’30s.
Review: “Night Rising” by Chris Marie Green
The story is fast paced and filled with enough gory fight scenes to please the hard core urban fantasy reader but with a surprisingly emotional layer that may appeal to the female reader. It fails to deliver a complete world building construct and this coupled with the tendency to leave more plot threads open than resolved left this reader dissatisfied.
