Ceridwenchristensen
Little Mermaids Have Teeth (and Aren’t So Little) in Mira Grant’s Into the Drowning Deep
For most of us, earthbound humans as we are, space isn’t the final frontier—it’s the ocean, as impenetrable, hostile, and…
Magic, Legends, and Real History Meet in The City of Brass
While I like me a good secondary fantasy world—shot through with inscrutable and occult powers—I have a special place in…
Terminal Alliance Proves Space Operas Aren’t Always Serious Business
Sometimes I’m not paying close attention when I start a new book, and it takes me a little while to…
John Crowley Returns with a Epic Tale from a Bird’s-Eye View
The stories I could tell you about crows. My college boyfriend was obsessed with them. He would do wonderfully dorky…
Under the Pendulum Sun Journeys to Fairyland, and Finds It Very Strange Indeed
Jeannette Ng’s debut novel Under the Pendulum Sun starts like many good fairy stories do: with a journey. In the mid-19th…
Autonomous Is a Dangerously Addictive Science Fiction Debut
Like the title says: autonomy, in all of its permutations, perversions, and absences, is the operative concept in Annalee Newitz’s…
The Library of America Canonizes Ursula K. Le Guin’s Science Fiction in The Hainish Novels & Stories
I have an ever-growing collection of horrific paperback editions of Ursula K. Le Guin’s work. She’s my favorite writer, so…
Robots Wander an Apocalyptic West in Sea of Rust
There’s something Old Testament in the way most Westerns unspool: the empty grandiosity of a dusty landscape, scratched at by…
Call of Fire Rocks the Foundations of Alt-History
Beth Cato’s Call of Fire picks up in the wake of the cataclysmic ending of Breath of Earth, and in the…
Not Just Another Plucky Heroine: Arabella and the Battle of Venus
Earlier this year, David D. Levine’s Arabella of Mars picked up the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and…
The Amish and the Apocalypse: An Interview with David Williams
While David Williams has already spent time in print ruminating on the rich intersection of science and faith (as in…
The Stone Sky Is a Trilogy-Ender That Reshapes the Face of Epic Fantasy
I know fantasy readers who won’t touch a series before it’s completed; the heartbreak of disrupted or elongated publishing schedules…
The Death and Life of Schneider Wrack Is a Brainy Zombie Romp
I don’t often have this sensation while reading, but while I read Nate Crowley’s The Death and Life of Schneider Wrack, my…
RIP George Romero, Monster of My Childhood
When I was at an impressionable age—say 13 or 14—I was traumatized by George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.…
Ilona Andrews’ Hidden Legacy Trilogy Brings the PNR Heat
Absolutely ages ago—2014 to be precise—the husband and wife writing team that publishes the bestselling Kate Daniels series under the…
Dr. Greta Van Helsing Heals the Sick Undead in Strange Practice
For nigh on half a century, my grandfather was a what we would call a family practice doctor in a…
The Amish Face the Technological Apocalypse with Grace in When the English Fall
A streak of pastoralism runs through a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction—especially novels set well after the collapse. In these bucolic…
Books on Pirates: 16 Essential Pirate Fantasy Novels
Stories about pirates fascinated people for hundreds of years. This is why so many books about pirates fill bookstore shelves…