Radiant, Karina Sumner-Smith’s debut novel, is set in the same world as her Nebula-nominated short story “An End To All Things.” It’s also the first book in the Towers Trilogy, which will be completed in 2015. Defiant is scheduled for release in May and Towers Fall will follow later in the year. Xhea has never been like everyone else—she has no magic, the power tied to life itself. Survival is tough for those without much magic and even harder for […]

The Girl with All the Gifts is a stand alone post-apocalyptic/horror thriller by M. R. Carey. The author has also written graphic novels in the X-Men and Fantastic Four series, the Lucifer graphic novels, and the Felix Castor series as Mike Carey. Ten-year-old Melanie lives in a cell. On weekday mornings, she sees the adults walk through the halls and soon after that one of them bangs on the door, signaling it’s time to get ready to go to the […]

Burndive, Karin Lowachee’s Prix Aurora-nominated second novel, is also the second book set in the Warchild Universe. It follows the phenomenal Warchild, a Philip K. Dick Award nominee that was published after it won the Warner Aspect First Novel Award. The third book in this setting, Cagebird, was also a Philip K. Dick Award nominee and won both the Prix Aurora Award and the Spectrum Award. As the son of Captain Azarcon and Austro Station’s senior public affairs officer, Ryan […]

Yesterday’s Kin is the newest science fiction book by award-winning author Nancy Kress. She has won two Hugo Awards and five Nebula Awards, and her fairly recent novella After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall was both a Nebula winner and a Hugo nominee. Four months ago, life on Earth was changed forever when an alien ship arrived and settled near the moon. The aliens were quick to convey the message that their mission was peaceful, and two […]

Steles of the Sky is the conclusion to Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky trilogy, following Range of Ghosts and Shattered Pillars. Though this story has been completed, there will be a second trilogy of books set in this world with the first book scheduled for release in 2017, The Lotus Kingdoms. For this mini-review, I am not going to write about the plot. Instead, here is the book description with my thoughts on the book below. Elizabeth Bear concludes her award-winning […]

(Note: Hi! I’m John. Not Kristen. Sorry. I used to contribute to this site a while ago, but then grad school happened. And then grad school happened again. Now they’ve run out of degrees to give me, so I’m back to having some time to write here! It probably won’t be very often, but I’ll pop in from time to time.) The Golem and the Jinni is a melting pot-era urban fantasy released in 2013 and Helene Wecker’s debut novel, […]