Reviews :: Book Genre :: Science Fiction :: Page 28

We rarely read any novels from Pyr that could be deemed a “miss.” The number of stellar novels put out by Pyr since its inception is astonishing. But every now and again even they miss the mark. THE HORNS OF RUIN by Tim Akers (Amazon) is Sword & Sorcery/Steampunk hybrid. Sounds cool on the surface. In fact a lot of this story sounds fantastic on paper…unfortunately that paper doesn’t include the actual execution of the idea.
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THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO by Patrick Ness (Amazon) is one of those wonderfully deceiving Young Adult books that reminds us all of the days when there was no such thing. It’s a simple story…in a gritty, continually plot-twisted, thought provoking and emotional thrill-ride kind of way.

I could simply call it a story about a boy and his dog, or boy meets girl, or coming of age…but then I’d have to mention that the dog talks, the girl is seemingly the only one on the planet, and that being a man isn’t exactly something worth envying here.
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ALL CLEAR by Connie Willis (Amazon) is the sequel to this year’s BLACKOUT (EBR Review). Although “sequel” isn’t really the proper word for it. “Sequel” makes it sound like the first book had some closure to it, a conclusion. “Sequel” makes it sound like this book, ALL CLEAR, is going to recap what happened in the previous volume and catch you up. Both of those things are not true of this duology. ALL CLEAR, better said is the second half of the story begun in BLACKOUT. The reason for the split in the story is that it’s so long. ALL CLEAR clocks in at 640 pages in hardback and BLACKOUT was about the same. I’ve seen Brandon Sanderson books that are shorter than these two put together (I kid, we love Brandon around here).
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Robert A. Heinlein is a god in the science fiction world, and for good reason: he brought literary quality and high scientific standards to a growing genre, as well as attention-grabbing controversy. I’m sure you all know about his classics including STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (Amazon), THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS (Amazon), and STARSHIP TROOPERS (Amazon).

But did you know he also wrote juvenile fiction?
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Suzanne Collins‘ The Hunger Games series has created a buzz in the Young Adult world. Her version of a future American dystopia is grim and disturbing. And compelling. The final novel, MOCKINGJAY (Amazon), was released in August with great anticipation… but was it worth getting all worked up about?

The series begins with THE HUNGER GAMES (Amazon), an exciting, brutal, and clever story. The setting is well done and artfully displays a society that’s rotting from both ends. HUNGER GAMES explores the themes of an influential propaganda machine and an extravagant Capital at the expense of the people, then takes it the next frightening step.
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WWW:WATCH (Amazon) is Robert Sawyer‘s sequel to his Hugo nominated story, WWW:WAKE (EBR Review). It is the second novel of a trilogy that will end next year with WWW:WONDER (Amazon).
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Where to even begin? Chris Wooding‘s RETRIBUTION FALLS (EBR Review) is one of our favorite novels. The mixture of piracy, SF, and retro-future adventure won us over within the first five pages. The main character of that novel, Darian Frey (part Han Solo, part Malcolm Reynolds, all awesome) is the captain of the Ketty Jay. He is a pirate. A smuggler. A womanizer. We finished RETRIBUTION FALLS a few hours after it arrived in the mail. We needed more. Luckily, the sequel was already coming out fairly shortly. Wooding’s second Ketty Jay novel, THE BLACK LUNG CAPTAIN arrived in the mail (love you Book Depository!!!!), and everything else in life came to a screeching halt so we could read it.

It’s every bit as good as the first novel.
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First written as a serial in 1911, A PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Amazon) was soon after published in novel form in 1917. While the story is more adventure than science fiction, it was this Mars-based pulp that influenced the men and women who would later fuel the SF renaissance of the mid-Twentieth Century–writers like Ray Bradbury, Carl Sagan, and Arthur C. Clarke.
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Happy Birthday, Ray Bradbury! He turned 90 on August 22nd (just this past weekend), and what better way than to celebrate one of his classics? A prolific writer of novels, short stories, essays, and other works, Bradbury originally published THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (Amazon) in 1950. It’s a short story collection about the human colonization of Mars–but it’s not your traditional collection.
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THE DERVISH HOUSE (Amazon) is Ian McDonald’s latest near future SF tale set in an up-and-coming country. Recently he has covered the near future of India in RIVER OF THE GODS (Amazon) and then Brazil in BRASYL (Amazon). Both of those books made the Hugo Award shortlist for their respective years and I have no doubt that this one will too.
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