Slavery shaped Benjamin January’s life; he and his sister Olympe were born slaves, before his mother was purchased as a mistress. It’s been a prominent part of the background of previous books. But it takes center stage here, when the man Ben least wants to meet again- Fourchet, his cruel previous owner- offers to hire him to go undercover as a ( Read more... )

Benjamin January # 3! This one was way less grim than Fever Season. I realize that's easy to say, so I will give it an independent grimness rating ( Read more... )

Benjamin January is working at a hospital during a yellow fever epidemic. (Yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitos, and due to being endemic in Africa, many people from Africa have some level of immunity. The characters in the book are aware of the latter fact but not the former, and have no useful treatment even if they did know the cause.) ( Read more... )

Barbara Hambly has written some of my very favorite fantasy novels. She’s also famous for the Benjamin January series, about a free black man who solves mysteries in 1830s New Orleans ( Read more... )

This is purely for study purposes (mine) and entertainment (yours and mine). I am using fictional characters in novels as mock case studies, to acquaint myself with the DSM-IV (the American manual of mental illnesses.) I cannot actually diagnose any real person.

The Silent Tower: The Windrose Chronicles (Book One)
( Read more... )

Amazon is having a 99 cent - $2.99 sale on selected Kindle books. Here's a few that may be of particular interest:

Predators I Have Known
( Read more... )

This post was not only prompted by a remarkably stupid NY Times review of the "Game of Thrones" TV series, in which the reviewer thought the story was a polemic against global warming, claimed that women don't like fantasy, and further claimed that women do love sex, so the sex was gratuitously crammed in to please them ( Read more... )

I notice that many people have gotten curious about the original series after seeing the movie. There are also some quite good novels, many by writers known for original sf/fantasy. Here's a brief, non-comprehensive guide:

The Spirit of WonderDiane Duane did the best job of capturing the joy I felt when watching the series. You want to serve on ( Read more... )

Y: The Last Man # 6, by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, is in stores now. I can pick up my copy on Friday, and I am extremely excited about this.

Barbara Hambly's Circle of the Moon, sequel to Sisters of the Raven, apparently received a stealth release in trade paperback. It's set in a Middle-East-esque, male-dominated fantasy land where for ( Read more... )

It was coincidental that I read these two books in succession, but they turned out to make a good paired reading as fantasies of ecology which deal with how altered humans fit into a changing environment.

Peeps
( Read more... )