Today I’m delighted to welcome Danya! She’s a librarian and a speculative fiction fan who writes book reviews on her excellent website, Fine Print. I really enjoy reading her thoughts on books and appreciate the way she dissects the books she reads—plus she has fantastic taste, as you can see from her coverage of Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, The Midnight Queen by Sylvia Izzo Hunter, and Monstress Volume One by Marjorie M. Liu and Sana […]

Jacqueline Carey’s latest novel, Miranda and Caliban, is inspired by William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and narrated from the perspectives of the two titular characters. It’s largely a prequel since the majority of the book focuses on their childhood and young adulthood on the isle, but the end does follow events in the play with some embellishment. Most of the main plot points from The Tempest remain the same, although Miranda and Caliban’s thoughts and motivations are quite different from the original presentation. […]

Today’s guest is renowned fantasy author Jacqueline Carey! She’s probably best-known for her epic fantasy series, Kushiel’s Legacy, but she’s also written several other books, some of which fall under other speculative fiction subgenres. I love her books and think she does a fantastic job writing characters with a diverse range of abilities and personalities, particularly her unique and wonderful leading ladies. Today, though, she’s here to talk about epic fantasy and why it seems to be the last bastion […]

The second annual Women in SF&F Month starts tomorrow! The entire month of April will be dedicated to highlighting the contributions of women to speculative fiction. There will be guest posts by women who write speculative fiction and women who share their love for the genre with others on their blogs throughout the month. Like last year’s series, some guests will be discussing the subject of women writing speculative fiction, but not necessarily, since the goal is to get some […]

Today’s guests are Ana and Thea from The Book Smugglers! These two probably need no introduction from me, but I’ll give you three reasons why you should read their wonderful blog anyway: They post at least once a day so there is always something new and interesting to read on their site. Not only do they have a great quantity of posts, but they maintain great quality with their intelligent, funny reviews and articles. They have excellent taste in books […]

Saints Astray by Jacqueline Carey is the sequel to Santa Olivia. The genre Santa Olivia falls under is hard to describe – it’s been referred to as both urban fantasy and science fiction. While I thought of it as urban fantasy when I first read it (not having read much of the genre at the time and having seen it labeled that), I’d consider it science fiction now since it does deal with genetic engineering and is a bit post-apocalyptic/dystopian. […]