Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky was this month’s pick for the Sword & Laser Book Club, and it’s a bit of a complicated book. The novel juggles two different kinds of stories, with two different levels of stakes, and which also vaguely intersect until the very end of the story. One of those stories was one which I enjoyed and looked forward to encountering – which was good because it took most of the book. The other kind of just had me on edge and wasn’t exactly a pleasant read.
Continue readingTag Archives: Speculative Fiction
The History of Science Fiction: Graphic Novel Review
I have, in the past, gotten into my appreciation of works discussing and examining works that examine the history of technology, art, and fandom, and the intersection thereof – and there is no place where those three intersect more than in Science Fiction as a genre. So, when I learned in a passing mention on the Sword & Laser Podcast about the graphic novel The History of Science Fiction by Xavier Dollo and Djibril Morissette-Phan, I knew that I needed to check it out. It is lacking in some significant ways, but they’re also ways that can be rectified in a second volume, if the creators are up for it.
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Boogiepop Phantom: Anime Review
Boogiepop Phantom was an anime that came out in 2000 that very much served as a counterpoint to Serial Experiments Lain in the eyes of American anime fans. Both works are dark psychological suspense works containing conspiracies and supernatural elements. Both works are heavy on suspense, and depict their high school-aged protagonists dealing with a heavy weight of intense personal dread, psychological pressure, and often with that trauma based on the burdens of society and how they play on their peers.
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Consider Phlebas: Book Video Review
Today I’m reviewing the actual first installment in The Culture Series, by chronological order of publication, which I read in this past year for the Sword & Laser Book Club.
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Quag Keep: Book Review
If I was going to describe the modern “Isekai” genre in brief, I’d describe it as “Game-based another world fantasy.” It’s not just fantasy where a protagonist is whisked to another fantastic world from ours like with the John Carter of Mars novels, or on the anime front with El-Hazard and Magic Knight Rayearth. This is fantasy where the characters are explicitly in a world that draws inspiration to games from gaming – sometimes by drawing the characters or their psyches into an actual game (ala Sword Art Online or Log Horizon), or a world which uses the language of RPGs like with Konosuba or Grimgar: Ash and Illusions. I would argue that if not the first of these, then one of the first of this particular genre – and was done in the ’70s by a woman.
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Book Review: Edge of Worlds
When I last talked about the Books of the Raksura series, The Siren Depths had wrapped up an informal trilogy of novels by establishing why the court protagonist Moon was from was attacked by the Fell in the first place, and what the reason for the Fell to create hybrid Raksura was in the first place. Continue reading
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This time I’m taking a look at the first published Drizzt Do’Urden novel, and the second Forgotten Realms novel.
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Book Review: The Crystal Shard
More than Darkwalker on Moonshae – which I need to get around reviewing at some point – The Crystal Shard by R. A. Salvatore is very much the introductory jumping on point for fiction within the Forgotten Realms campaign setting – and the introduction of possibly the most infamous character in fantasy fiction – Drizzt Do’Urden. Continue reading
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Book Review: Log Horizon – Books 3 & 4
When I last left the Log Horizon series, they’d gone into a political and economic thriller, as Shirou started forming the Akiba Round table with members of all the major guilds, before driving a bunch of the bad actors out of Akihabara through the unified powers of cash and good food. However, the series had also set up a new concept – that the People of the Land – the former NPCs are now fully sentient. Books 3 and 4, with the collective subtitle of “Game’s End,” get into the ramifications of that, along with what’s been going on while Akiba was getting its act together. Continue reading
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Book Review – The Sapphire Rose
This week I’m finally reviewing the final installment of David Eddings‘ Elenium trilogy with The Sapphire Rose
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