I renewed my library card a couple of weeks ago, and while I was there I checked out Zombies vs. Unicorns, an anthology edited by Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black. The theme is pretty simple–the editors present one short story about unicorns, then one about zombies. Black argues that unicorns are […]
Book Review
It took me over 100 pages to start caring about this book, but I did enjoy it by the end. The opening relies a lot on setting and tone to pull the reader through, and while the setting was interesting, it wasn’t enough for me to really care about the […]
Review of The City and the City by China Miéville
As the title implies, WWW: Wake is about an artificial entity on the internet gaining sentience. This AI itself is one of the two main point of view characters. The other is a blind girl named Caitlin Decter. Caitlin undergoes an experimental surgery to give her sight. At first, nothing […]
Review of WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
This book’s greatest strength is its voice. The narrator, Adam Hazzard, tells the reader the story of Julian Comstock. The story is set in America in a future after the end of oil. The president is a dictator whose only real check or balance is the Dominion, a controlling, intolerant […]
Review of Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America ...
Boneshaker is set in a steampunk Seattle with airships and zombies. It’s a fun book. The civil war is raging back east, so there’s no outside help in sight for the citizens in and around the city. About fifteen years before the novel opens, an inventor named Leviticus […]
Review of Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
I have a subscription to Realms if Fantasy. It’s pretty much my favorite magazine. I was very happy when it failed to die last year, and I am always glad when I get a new issue in my mailbox. I enjoyed June’s issue, and I like the way the […]
Review of Realms of Fantasy June 2010
The world reminds me of Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, and Miéville thanks him in his acknowledgments. That said, while the setting is similar, it doesn’t feel derivative. The world of UnLondon is a marvelous place, full of imaginative twists and interesting characters, and Miéville’s other London serves as a fascinating […]
Review of Un Lun Dun by China Miéville
I always have a hard time buying dystopias. They just don’t mesh well with my optimistic outlook. I still enjoyed The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. A generation or two before the story starts, as the oceans swelled from global warming and the oil ran out, western calorie companies created […]
Review of The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
I like zombies, so my love for World War Z makes a lot of sense. But it’s not just the zombies that delighted me. I was most impressed by the pure scope of the story–Max Brooks managed to paint a picture of the whole world both during and after the […]