I've enjoyed most of Kate Elliott's books, so of course I checked out her new novella The Servant Mage as soon as I could. I...mostly really liked it. Fellian is a Lamplighter, a fire mage bound to indentured servitude under the relatively-new Liberationist regime. The Liberationists overthrew the dragon-elemental Monarchy in the name of equality ( Read more... )

How have I not recommended this already? The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein is great. Sadly, it is not yet finished, but it sounds like the next two books are coming in the near-ish future. Something to look forward to!

Rowan is a steerswoman, which is kind of like what would happen if you look everyone who said, "I want to be a traveling ( Read more... )

Short version: this book is really fun and well-written. If you are at all interested in the adventures of sixteen-year-old Leia, read it!

A few minor spoilers, but I've mostly tried to avoid them.

( Read more... )

My most recent book club book got me thinking about the difficulties of writing science fiction set only about twenty years in the future. If it's set "five minutes from now, with one wild card invention," you can write the world pretty much as it is. If it's set fifty or more years in the future, it's far enough out that any number of changes in ( Read more... )

There is a lot to like about Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma series, but also plenty that is... well, bad. Every time I read one, I am annoyed and wonder if I should just quit reading. Yet I have read about thirty of the damned things, and am almost certainly going to read that new one my library just got an ebook copy of ( Read more... )

Fuck this book.

You know what ruins a fluffy alien spy adventure? This:

"I've always viewed God as very fair. Girls in their twenties--the world's their oyster. They're beautiful. Older men want to date them. Guys pay for everything, and everyone desires them. Men on the other hand, when we're in our twenties, we're dumb, we're poor, and women ( Read more... )

Bored. So bored ( Read more... )

This won't be a review, exactly, but rather a note on books' titles and openings and how those affect expectations.

I just finished the Star Trek (TOS) novel Uhura's Song. The first chapter throws us right into a tense situation: a horrible plague is decimating a planet, and Uhura is especially affected because one of her friends is among those ( Read more... )

All the blurbs and reviews I saw about Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom talked about its neat imaginary technology and the fascinating “Bitchun Society” resulting from it. Hardly anyone mentioned the characters. This ought to signal alert readers that even most people who liked the book didn’t care about the characters much. Or the ( Read more... )

Wow, this book actually lived up to the good things I heard about it. I love it when that happens!

( Will try not to spoil the actual events of the ending. )