Unfettered
This anthology has attached to it one of those feel-good kind of stories that just makes you want to buy the thing. The editor, Shawn Speakman, contracted Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011, accrued a bundle of debt because he didn’t have health insurance at the time, and these stories were put together as a means by which to alleviate some of that debt. Each of the stories contained in the anthology were ones that the authors contributed freely to Mr. Speakman’s cause and showed them to rally round the flag, so to speak, of a fellow author that was in need. It was a reminder to me that even big-name authors are real people with real problems too. Sometimes it can be easy to forget that. So regardless of what I thought of this anthology (it was good, people – don’t let my little misdirections fool you) my hat goes off to each of the authors that contributed to the anthology. Bravo, my friends. Bravo.
Read the rest of this review »
Ancillary Justice
Thousands of years in the future humans have created an inter-planetary empire, and they’ve done it by using powerful starships to take over human and alien planets. While the starship officers are human, the crew is comprised of ancillaries, people who resisted empire annexation of their home planets, taken into custody and stored for future use. An ancillary’s mind and identity is wiped when they’re hooked into the ship’s central AI–in essence, an ancillary is the ship.
Read the rest of this review »
Nameless
Luna Masterson can see demons. Unfortunately most other folks can’t, so she’s concerned that everyone thinks she’s crazy. Like her brother, Seth, who is patiently skeptical. She lives with him and her one-year-old niece so she can help out after his wife abandons them. Luna does her best to not shake things up so she can be there for her family.
Read the rest of this review »
The Tale of Telsharu
One hundred years ago Telsharu was imprisoned after a failed attempt to kill the emperor. Telsharu still lives, and in the opening pages of THE TALE OF TELSHARU (Amazon), he secures his escape from prison in order to finish the quest he began all those years ago.
Read the rest of this review »
Virus Thirteen
James and his wife Linda are scientists at the famous biotech company GeneFirm, where they’ve engineered a gene therapy that will eradicate cancer as we know it. But the world’s population may not get the chance to enjoy a cancer-free future when a deadly supervirus outbreak becomes a world-wide pandemic.
Read the rest of this review »
Sold for Endless Rue
Captured as a slave while a child, Laura escapes and finds a new life in the home of a mountain healer and midwife. Clever and industrious, Laura learns her new profession so well that her adoptive mother, Crescia, sends her to Solerno’s famed medical school so she can become a physician and bring her worldly learning back to the midwife’s humble cottage.
Read the rest of this review »
The Tyrant’s Law
After having only very recently lauded praises on Mr. Abraham for a great middle book in his urban fantasy series (EBR Review), I found it kind of humorous that I would now be writing a review for a great middle book in his epic fantasy series (no need to go anywhere for that review–you can just keep reading and find it presently). This guy keeps putting out quality books, and it’s no surprise that this is yet another in his growing list of entries to our Books We Love.
Read the rest of this review »
Abaddon’s Gate
I swear, I don’t have a man crush on Daniel Abraham. Neither does anyone else here at EBR…
…OK that isn’t entirely true.
Read the rest of this review »
Space Eldritch II
Disclaimer: horror isn’t a genre I enjoy. Really, in the slightest. I can count on one hand the number of horror movies I like. I’ve never read a horror anthology before, so needless to say, I wasn’t terribly excited about reading SPACE ELDRITCH II: THE HAUNTED STARS (Amazon). But I love Science Fiction so… what the heck.
Read the rest of this review »
Turn Down the Lights
Lately I’ve been trying to pay more attention to the specialty publishers out there. They put out such quality work, that I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to tell all you readers about them. This time around, let’s talk about Cemetery Dance, and one of their newest collections of short stories, TURN DOWN THE LIGHTS (Amazon).
This anthology, edited by Richard Chizmar, is a celebration of Cemetery Dance. It’s been 25 years since Cemetery Dance put out their first issue, and so this collections contains stories by just some of the people who have helped it become the amazing specialty publishing house that it is today. Here’s the Table of Contents:
Read the rest of this review »
