Review by Abe Ziesing

Demons, angels and witches make up the cast of characters in this high-fantasy adventure novel. It’s quite the departure from the Murderbot Diaries SF of Martha Wells and her other recent works. A plethora of unusual names of people and places would be overwhelming if it weren’t for the convenient inclusion of a map and dramatis personae at the front of this novel. Instead, the originality and richness of the naming conventions enhances the world building significantly. The magic systems (plural) are wildly varied, with each race having specialties and specific rules that aren’t explained in...

Review by Abe Ziesing

When a novel is literally about building a new world, you'd expect the world-building to be the principal literary element of concern, for both writer and reader; and indeed, THE TERRAFORMERS is a stone-cold tour de force when it comes to world-building, but for me, it's much more.

Tens of thousands of years into the future, terraforming planets is big business, and Sask-E is the latest offering for investors, entrepreneurs and rich tourists to enjoy, exploit and ravage. The only problem is that this soon-to-be privately owned planet already has an 'indigenous' population consisting of the...

Review by Abe Ziesing

It takes a brave soul to take on the masterpiece of an all-time great, and reimagine it into an original work of your own, as Silvia Moreno-Garcia has done in THE DAUGHTER OF DOCTOR MOREAU.

I went into this skeptically despite having read, and enjoyed, other works by this author.  Additionally, H. G. Wells' THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU creeped me out in a way that didn't make me want to revisit its subject matter, with half human/half animal abominations and their horrific conceptions.  I found it perplexing that Garcia-Moreno would want to write this book...

Proofrock, ID. Henderson-Golding. Camp Winnemucca. Terra Nova. Fictitious places surrounding a fictitious lake, but Indian Lake and everything encompassing it are so vividly burned into my brain that I can feel the foreboding breeze blowing through the pines, hear the eerie calls of the looming elk, and smell the rusty iron scent of freshly spilled blood.

Our favorite badass final girl is back, and so are the cinematic-homage stylings of the master of intelligent horror, Mr. Stephen 'Break-out-the-trauma-kits' Graham Jones. This time around, however, Jade Daniels is a little different - a little more experienced - a little older -...

A unique, minimalist space-drama written in poetic-verse using the Orkney dialect.

Harry Josephine Giles' DEEP WHEEL ORCADIA has a simple plot - it's a love story with familiar complications taking place on a space station that's purpose is to gather resources from the gas giant planet that it orbits.  The groundbreaking originality and beauty of this work are derived from the subtle nuances of the Orcadian language, as well as Giles' gift for poetry and showcasing a minority language.

The mechanics of this 'novel' are brilliant, utilizing page-foot prose translation into English, giving clarity to the Orkney poetic-verse above.  The former includes...