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Baba Yaga is a witch of Russian folklore, and Toby Barlow bewitches with his new novel — our starred reviewof the day. His first, Sharp Teeth, was a 2009 Alex Award winner, a story of werewolves in L.A. told entirely in verse. Babayaga is (mostly) straight prose, and offers quite a combination of genres–spy thriller, [...]
The arrival of fall marks the start of the literary awards season. Already Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is being touted as an odds-on favorite to win the Nobel Prize for Literature next month. But the cynic in me guesses that the always inscrutable Swedish committee of judges will bypass the best-selling author of 1Q84, Kafka [...]
Can creators in essence separate the “super” from the “hero” and still be said to be working with the same character?
Benjamin Percy’s Red Moon is a political thriller as much as werewolf horror novel, in the same way that World War Z is about military strategy. Red Moon reflects the current state of our world, in particular terrorism, persecuted minorities, and the importance of energy sources in today’s political decision-making. In fact, Justin Cronin (author of The [...]
Fuse: Book 2 of the Pure Trilogy by Julianna Baggott. Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group. 2013. Review copy from conference. Sequel to Pure. Part of my “vacation reads,” books for adults to read during their vacation — hey, it’s summer vacation! Also, this is a sequel to an Alex Award winner; [...]
Why do some words have more power than others? Today we look at two very different ways of looking at that crucial question. The first, Melissa Mohr’s Holy Shit, is an earnest, well-researched history of the most powerful words in the English language: curse words. Some people (for example, me) have tried to claim that [...]
More than just a craze, the interest in zombies points the way towards a new kind of literacy engagement.
It is my great pleasure to write about The Sea of Tranquility today. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a book quite so much. I read it at the same time as a few other books because I wanted it to last. Each time I checked something while writing the review I got caught [...]
… the gateway to countless worlds of pure fancy intentionally looks pedestrian—one has to transcend the importance of “surface” to be rewarded with the riches that lie beneath.
Tales of the S.S. Junky Star By the Fillbach Brothers First Comics; $6.99 Matthew and Shawn Fillbach have been making various kinds of science fiction comics for a while, from alien invasions (an oversimplified description that doesn’t do justice to the craziness of Maxwell Strangewell) to werewolves fighting vampires on the moon. They’re best known [...]
Superman, with a 75-year canon to draw upon, should be included in any curriculum that covers science fiction.
The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers. 2013. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. Book website. First in a trilogy. The Plot: It is months after the aliens first came, the Others, and sixteen year old Cassie Sullivan is huddled in a tent, alone with just her baby [...]
In The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction (ALA, 2009), Joyce Saricks divides genre fiction into four categories: Adrenaline Genres, Emotion Genres, Intellect Genres, and Landscape Genres (h/t to Jonathan Hunt for pointing me to this wonderful resource–and click through that link to read some fascinating commentary on the categories). I find this categorization much more [...]
When We Wake by Karen Healey. Little, Brown. 2013. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. The Plot: “My name is Tegan Oglietti, and on the last day of my first lifetime, I was so, so happy.” And Tegan, sixteen, was happy. No, her life wasn’t perfect or flawless. Her father, a soldier, had died when she [...]
The Water Castle By Megan Frazer Blakemore Illustrated by Jim Kay Walker Books for Young Readers (an imprint of Bloomsbury) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-8027-2839-5 Ages 9-12 On shelves now Where does fantasy stop and science fiction begin? Is it possible to ever draw a distinct line in the sand between the two? A book with a [...]
Today we review three thrillingly original works of speculative fiction. Let’s start with a post-apocalyptic, dystopian debut novel. The Office of Mercy is being marketed as a Hunger Games readalike. (I’ve also seen comparisons to recent Alex Award winner, Pure). However, debut author Djanikian is more concerned with ethical questions than fast-paced action. The Alphas had good intentions [...]
