James Nicoll recommended this highly earlier this year ( Read more... )

Turtledove is another author like Heinlein; the rule is that if a book is less than an inch thick, I'll like it.

These two are the latest installments of the "Crosstime Traffic" series, following Gunpowder Empire and Curious Notions. All the books entirely stand alone ( Read more... )

This is an SF novel by a mainstream writer, but nevertheless it's brilliant ( Read more... )

This is a short story collection, from Tachyon Press. I bought it because it contains "In the House of the Seven Librarians", my absolute favourite short fiction piece of last year ( Read more... )

Jake Mendoza grew up in a dragon haven, in a world just like ours except that dragons are only almost extinct. Nobody has ever communicated with them, though, until by chance our hero finds a baby dragon and rears it and manages to change the relationship between the two intelligent species forever ( Read more... )

First of the Changes Trilogy. This is a re-read, but as I hadn't read it for decades, it was like reading a new book ( Read more... )

With the recent results of the Campbell Memorial award, I looked at the past results of the award in Locus's Awards listing. Browsing around there, I found this table of all awards for 2006 and was struck by what a great list it was. If you ignore horror you have by my count 45 distinct SF and fantasy novels, from all over the anglosphere (the ( Read more... )

Good things first -- the world really does feel remarkably like a whole planet, and one with real layers of history and consequences. I like the magic system, and I like the economics and the social and political systems, and I like the way the main plot resolves. I like the way things fit together. I like Stronghand and the Eika a lot. I like the ( Read more... )

This is a 1980s reprint (and edit) of a novel written in the early fifties and set in the late forties -- WWII is a major part of the backstories of all the characters, even though this is a YA novel and most of the characters are teenagers and were children during the war ( Read more... )

Book five of The Crown of StarsNo spoilers... which means I can't talk about the plot at all without it reeking of spoilers for the previous volumes ( Read more... )