Recent Reviews03 September 2010 For the first fifteen minutes I couldn't see how someone who had read the comics could enjoy the film. After that I found myself smiling and then laughing and enjoying the film on its own terms. But then, for the final fifteen minutes, I once again found the schism between the film and the comics too hard to overcome. The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson 01 September 2010 From its multiple prologues and preludes through to its calm-before-the-storm last chapter and indeed beyond, The Way of Kings is all about beginning. Narrative Power: Encounters, Celebrations, Struggles, edited by L. Timmel Duchamp 30 August 2010 The volume's subtitle—Encounters, Celebrations, Struggles—explains why its essays linger in the mind. Its writers have skin in the game. The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan 27 August 2010 I confess: the first time I read this book, I couldn't stand it. The second time I fell in love with it, and now I'm thinking of buying a backup copy in case my house burns down. 25 August 2010 For a film that is ostensibly for children, Toy Story 3 has already accumulated a wide range of analyses. Above the Snowline by Steph Swainston 23 August 2010 Above the Snowline is, by some way, Steph Swainston's least epic, most intrigue-driven novel. Shine edited by Jetse de Vries 20 August 2010 Dismayed by the amount of dystopian SF on the market, de Vries aims to showcase SF that depicts futures better than what we have now. I find myself sympathetic to his goal: since time immemorial, humans have complained that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, that the Golden Age or Age of Heroes is behind us, that we've diminished in some fundamental way. And yet somehow the years go by, standards of living go up, life spans increase, and we beat out Malthus again and again. Mammoths of the Great Plains and Tomb of the Fathers by Eleanor Arnason 18 August 2010 Too often we are assured that we have no alternatives. Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms. Capitalism is an unequal distribution of wealth, while communism is an equal distribution of poverty. The way it was in my dad's house in the suburbs is the way it ought to be forever. Much of contemporary science fiction, far from interrogating these assumptions, endorses them. Red Plenty by Francis Spufford 16 August 2010 I exhort you, comrades!—to read this book. 13 August 2010 The novella is an interesting form, or at least an interesting length. 11 August 2010 If this were just a fantasy action thriller it would be a standout, hard-driving and complex, consistently entertaining. But it's not just a kinetic series of exciting or fantastic images, a hyperactive body, if you will; it has a head and a heart. 09 August 2010 A Dark Matter addresses one of the fundamental problems of personal identity. 06 August 2010 The whole trilogy can be seen as an exercise in avoiding the issues raised by the world Lake has created. View older reviews in our Archive, thanks to the kindness of our authors who allow us to keep their material online. |