The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Gardenby Catherynne M. Valente496pp (Trade Paperback)My Rating: 9/10Amazon Rating: 5/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.51/5Goodreads Rating: 4.36/5 In the Night Garden comprises the first half of Catherynne M. Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales duology. The second volume, In the Cities of Coin and Spice, was released in 2007. Often compared to The Arabian Nights for its style of stories within a story, In the Night Garden was nominated for the 2007 World Fantasy Awards and won the 2006 […]

Archangelby Sharon Shinn400pp (Paperback)My Rating: 8.5/10Amazon Rating: 4.5/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.21/5Goodreads Rating: 4.10/5 Archangel is a novel in Sharon Shinn’s Samaria series, featuring a world in which angels and humans live together in harmony. The Samaria series is not published in chronological order, but on her website Shinn recommends reading the books in the following order (by release date): Archangel, Jovah’s Angel, The Allelluia Files, Angelica, and Angel-Seeker. There is also a novella in the To Weave a Web of Magic […]

Marooned in Realtimeby Vernor Vinge288pp (Paperback)My Rating: 8/10Amazon Rating: 4.5/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.04/5Goodreads Rating: 3.94/5 Vernor Vinge, in the days before he became a three-times-running Hugo award winning author, was merely a two-times-running Hugo nominated author. Last year I reviewed the first of those two novels, The Peace War. The second novel, Marooned in Realtime, is a sequel to Peace in the sense that it takes place in the same universe and timeline, but you have to think rather broadly to […]

Cry Wolfby Patricia Briggs320pp (Paperback)My Rating: 6/10Amazon Rating: 4/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.08/5Goodreads Rating: 3.9/5 Cry Wolf is the first book in the Alpha and Omega series by Patricia Briggs, which is set in the same universe as her Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series. It features a different set of main characters, the werewolf Anna and her mate Charles (Bran’s son and assassin), but Mercy is mentioned on occasion, Samuel makes a brief appearance, and Bran himself is present throughout a large […]

The Silver Metal Loverby Tanith Lee304pp (Paperback)My Rating: 7/10Amazon Rating: 4.5/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.27/5Goodreads Rating: 4.51/5 The Silver Metal Lover by the prolific Tanith Lee was originally published in 1981. It has one sequel, Metallic Love, published about 24 years after the first book. The Silver Metal Lover stands alone well as a complete story, and Metallic Love, which focuses on a different set of characters, actually takes place twelve years after this one. From what I have heard, the second […]

The Mote in God’s Eyeby Larry Nivenand Jerry Pournelle592pp (Paperback)My Rating: 7/10Amazon Rating: 4/5LibraryThing Rating: 4.01/5Goodreads Rating: 3.97/5 The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle was published in 1974. This novel set in the CoDominium universe contains some hard science fiction and is a story about first contact between humans and an alien race. There is a sequel entitled The Gripping Hand (or The Moat Around Murcheson’s Eye in most countries) that was released about 20 […]