Kitty Steals the Show by Carrie VaughnKitty is attending the first International Conference on Paranormal Studies, in London, UK. In fact, she will be the keynote speaker, assuming she ever gets her speech written. Of course, Ben goes with her, as does Cormac (who may actually have permission from his parole officer to leave the continent). ( Read more... )

The House On The Borderland by William Hope HodgsonTechnically, this is a re-read, but from long before I started doing these write-ups ( Read more... )

So I'm pretty sure this is the last of the 2013s. After this we jump to last January. Brace yourselves!

Sing the Four Quarters by Tanya HuffThe nation of Shkoder is one of the smaller countries on its continent (un-named, so far as I know), but it's the kind of liberal monarchy that you wouldn't mind living in, if you were forced to live in one ( Read more... )

Twisted Metal by Tony Ballantyne

Surprisingly, not a tie-in to the oddly popular evil-clown* combat-racing videogame series by the same title. Instead, it's a work of soft SF, positing a world inhabited by sentient robots. These are humanoid robots, too, and they reproduce and die and have a mythology about how they came to be in the world ( Read more... )

Unseen Academicals by Terry PratchettThe title makes more sense when you realise that the book is about Football (not American football, but I couldn't tell you for sure which British football it's supposed to be based on). Even more specifically, the Unseen University finds out that, in order to keep one of their bigger grants, they have to field ( Read more... )

The Dragon Variation by Sharon Lee and Steve MillerSo, I've admitted a fondness for Lee & Miller's Liaden Universe before, and while I don't think I've publicly lamented the fact that so many of them are out of print, I have lamented it, albeit quietly and to myself. So I'm pleased that Baen is re-issuing the series, mostly in omnibus editions of ( Read more... )

Nation by Terry Pratchett

Nation is set in a world very much like ours, but with some subtle differences. There is an England, for example, but there is also a "Re-United States", and "the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean ( Read more... )

Benighted by Kit Whitfield

When last I read Kit Whitfield, it was her second novel. This was her first, published in Britain under the title, Bareback. I guess that they just don't have so much unprotected sex in Britain. Before I read it, I encountered at least one on-line conversation between Whitfield and another person (or two) in which she ( Read more... )

( Codespell by Kelly McCullough )

( Hitman by Bret Hart )