Matt Ruff’s The Mirage (2012) brilliantly realizes its high concept premise, but ultimately it feels like less than the sum of its parts. This one takes place in a geopolitical mirror universe. Here, the War on Terror begins on 11/9, when Christian terrorists fly jetliners into Baghdad skyscrapers, and the “United Arab States” retaliates by [...]
{ 3 comments }
Tobias S. Buckell’s Arctic Rising (2012) is a swift, smart, and thought-provoking future thriller that wrestles with the consequences of global warming on the arctic north. Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the United Nations Polar Guard, her job to monitor shipping traffic in the newly opened, ice-free waterways of the Northwest Passage. When [...]
{ 1 comment }
Deborah Coates’ first novel Wide Open (2012) is a compelling and atmospheric rural fantasy set in South Dakota, and it’s a wonderful combination of mystery, fantasy, romance, and attitude — this last provided primarily by the novel’s tough as nails protagonist Hallie Michaels. In the wake of her sister’s alleged suicide, Hallie returns to her [...]
{ 3 comments }
Olen Steinhauer concludes the twisty Milo Weaver trilogy with An American Spy (2012), and it’s a satisfying wrap-up to the series, rounding up the memorable characters of its predecessors for one last, tangled conflict of espionage. I didn’t find it quite as outstanding as The Nearest Exit, which I think is the most polished and [...]
{ 1 comment }
Genevieve Valentine’s Mechanique: A Tale of the Circuis Tresaulti (2011) is one of those Not My Thing books that I’m glad I read anyway, because it’s amazing how often Not My Thing books turn out to be differently rewarding than Your Thing, and then suddenly, they are Your Thing. Reading this one was a little [...]
{ 0 comments }
I went into The Hunger Games (2012) with an open mind…or so I thought, at first. I’m naturally skeptical of pop culture phenomenons this bloody popular, maybe even a little snobbish. But after fending off a subconscious urge to dislike the film for the first half hour or so, it eventually won me over, thanks [...]
{ 2 comments }
Greg Bear’s Mariposa (2009) re-gathers the cast of Quantico, pushes them deeper into the future, and entangles them in a skein of desperate operations to save the United States from the brink of total collapse. While structurally and conceptually more ambitious than its predecessor, I found it a somewhat tougher read. But after a rather [...]
{ 0 comments }
“Season six” of Stella Rimington’s Liz Carlyle series, Rip Tide (2011), is one of its stronger outings, a fast, smart read with a broader international scope than its predecessors. It starts off the horn of Africa, when the French Navy thwarts a Somalian pirate raid on an international relief shipment bound for Kenya. Apprehended during [...]
{ 0 comments }
Every once in a while I’ll read a collection that reminds me why I fell in love with short stories in the first place. Maureen F. McHugh’s After the Apocalypse (2011) is one of those collections. Often short fiction, particularly in the SF and fantasy genres, requires an entirely different set of reading eyes – [...]
{ 4 comments }