Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Priest, The Family Plot (2016)

Cherie Priest, The Family Plot. Tor Books, 2016. Pp. 365. ISBN 978-0-7653-7824-8. $25.99.

Reviewed by Cait Coker

I spent this past Halloween carefully reading Cherie Priest’s new novel, The Family Plot, in the daylight hours. Confession: I love ghost stories, but I also have a hyperactive imagination and am kind of a wimp, so I do my best to choose wisely when the season demands spookiness. Priest delivers the perfect kind of spookiness, familiar to everyone who has been in an old house (or any other building, for that matter) and felt sure that its past inhabitants have left something of themselves behind that is extraphysical. The action glides along smoothly, and I only ever put it down when the sunlight faded.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Scott & Rose, Mirror Image (2016)

Michael Scott & Melanie Ruth Rose, Mirror Image. Tor Books, 2016. Pp. 352. ISBN 978-0-7653-8522-2. $25.99 hc/$12.99 e.

Reviewed by Rachel Verkade

There have always been legends and stories about mirrors. From the magic mirror that Snow White’s evil stepmother chanted into to the mystic pool of Galadriel to the dark glass hidden in the back of a museum in Stephen King’s The Reaper’s Image, it seems that ever since mankind had thought to polish a piece of reflective metal the consequences of gazing too deeply within occurred to them. And the latest consequences come in the form of Mirror Image, a dark horror novel coming to us from authors Michael Scott and Melanie Ruth Rose.

Wednesday, November 09, 2016

Jacobson (ed.), Dear Robot (2015)

Kelly Ann Jacobson (ed.), Dear Robot: An Anthology of Epistolary Science Fiction. Self-published, 2015. Pp. 126. ISBN 978-1-5176-0196-6. $9.99.

Reviewed by Małgorzata Mika

A marriage of science fiction and epistolary fiction appears to be an oxymoron; to merge that which alludes to romantic spirituality with visions of state-of-the-art technology, societies and relationships in silico may generate a feeling of awkwardness. Yet, there is nothing more misleading! Examples such as Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon, Herbert’s Dune and Meyer’s Twilight series prove that the fantastic allows itself to be imbued with literary influences bequeathed after the era of Romanticism. The chimera of The Sorrows of Young Werther should not be dreaded though, as each of the novels, remembered for its more or less insightful probing of the characters, has forged a unique bond with the readers. Kelly Ann Jacobson’s book, Dear Robot: An Anthology of Epistolary Science Fiction, is no exception to this pattern.