Category: Reviews

A PLAY OF SHADOW by Julie Czerneda. Published November 2014. Sequel to A Turn of Light.

I was a little worried when I finally obtained a copy of this one. A Turn of Light had been so great I wasn’t certain that the author could do it again but she has! Jenn Nalynn is back, together with Wisp the dragon, Scourge the kaur, her father and sister, and Bannan, along with …

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Barbara Hambly – The Darwath Trilogy

This isn’t so much a review, more a note to fellow readers. For those younger amongst us, this trilogy was The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, and The Armies of Daylight, published in the early 1980s. I have just been told that the trilogy is being republished as ebooks. I bought the …

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Low Midnight by Carrie Vaughn

paperback published Tor January 2015 I started reading this series when the first one came out and have bought every book since, including the short story collection in TPB. I am saddened to hear that the next may be the last in the line as I love Kitty and don’t much enjoy the other series …

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The Nightingale Before Christmas by Donna Andrews.

Hardcover, published Minotaur Books October 2014, 18th in the Meg Langslow series. The mixture as before and thank heavens for it. Having stopped buying one mystery series that I loved because the author went off at a tangent, and with another much-loved series being on the same brink, I was really happy to find nothing …

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Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King

Hardcover, published Bantam 2015. And yes, the title’s a pun. I’m sorry to say that this series is only just holding me. It is now more the cumulative effect of the books and characters that makes me keep reading than the impact of each book. I like the characters, and yet their hold too is …

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Treecat Wars by David Weber and Jane Linskold.

Trade-paperback, published Baen, August 2014. Just a very quick review on this one. I’ve always liked the Honor Harrington series, and this is the third book of a trilogy that harks back to Honor’s ancestor, Stephanie Harrington and telling of how she first met a treecat in her planet’s wilderness and how they became inseparable …

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The Vet (My Wild and Wonderful Friends) by Luke Gamble

Hardcover, published 2011 by Two Roads, (UK) I always enjoy a good ‘vet book’, no vet runs a practise for long without having some great stories to tell so the only question becomes, can the author tell the stories well? And that ranges from adequate to terrific. This book happily falls into the terrific category. …

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XIII edited Mark Teppo, published Resurrection House, February 2015.

theme anthology of stories and poems. Reviewed by Steve Johnson. This anthology wins on both counts. The appearance of the anthology is stunning. It’s stark, a mere three colours, but it makes you stop and look and that is exactly what cover art should do. And as for the work, I really liked stories by …

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The Water Is Wide by Liz Gilbey.

Hardcover, published Robert Hale (London) 2010. I can only say that this is an excellent example of a book that while ostensibly a romance, has all the ingredients that grab someone like me who isn’t that fixated on romance books. The background of a canal and canal boats is authoratative. The characters are real people …

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THE CURIOUS CONSPIRACY by Michael Gilbert

short story collection, softcover, published Crippin & Landru, 2002. Just after the New year I settled to re-read half a dozen of the author’s short story collections. Gilbert was a wonderful writer, one of those whom readers are furious to lose since in a very long career he produced no book that was less than …

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