A Pest Most Fiendish by Caighlan Smith


A Pest Most Fiendish by Caighlan Smith
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, Historical
Length: Short Story (31 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Miss Pippa Kipling and her automaton companion, the Porter, exterminate pests of the supernatural variety. What should be a typical job in your average haunted cavern soon derails in an inconveniently undead fashion. Even with the aid of her gadget collection and the Porter’s prowess, this task may prove fatal for Miss Kipling—or worse, rip her petticoat.

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The world building in this story was well done. I especially appreciated the descriptions of the revenants, the creatures Pippa encountered soon after entering the cavern. Imagining a world where such dangerous things exist only made me more curious to find out what else this character was going to have to face in order to complete her mission and earn her commission.

I would have liked to see the same attention to detail paid to the character development. While Pippa was full of funny quips, I never felt like I got to know the rest of her personality as much as I would have liked to. She spent so much time looking for the humor in her various predicaments that there wasn’t a lot of room to explore the rest of the things that made her a unique individual.

The ending made me smile. It wrapped up the major conflicts of this tale nicely, but it also left an intriguing amount of room for a possible sequel in the future. I don’t know if the author will ever continue on with Pippa’s adventures, but I’d sure like to see what happens to her next if Ms. Smith does decide to return to this world again. There were still some questions about this universe that I’d love to see answered even though I was satisfied with what I already knew about this character and the unusual work that she did.

I’d recommend A Pest Most Fiendish to anyone who loves the steampunk sub-genre.

My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows


My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows
Publisher: Harper Teen
Genre: Historical, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Full Length (491 pgs)
Age Recommendation: 14+
Rating: 4.5 stars
Reviewed by Poinsettia

In My Lady Jane, coauthors Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows have created a one-of-a-kind YA fantasy in the tradition of The Princess Bride, featuring a reluctant king, an even more reluctant queen, a noble steed, and only a passing resemblance to actual history—because sometimes history needs a little help.

At sixteen, Lady Jane Grey is about to be married off to a stranger and caught up in a conspiracy to rob her cousin, King Edward, of his throne. But those trifling problems aren’t for Jane to worry about. Jane gets to be Queen of England.

Like that could go wrong.

My Lady Jane is definitely not a story you’ve read in any history book!

When I first picked up My Lady Jane, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew it was supposed to be a humorous, alternate history version of the story of Lady Jane Grey, but since the reality of her story is far from funny I had no idea how this could work. My curiosity was piqued, and I eagerly dove in with an open mind.
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My Lady Jane is told from three viewpoints, Jane, Gifford (or G as he prefers to be called), and Edward. The switches between each character are clearly marked and never confusing. Telling the story from multiple viewpoints kept the plot moving along at a great pace. In fact, I found it hard to put the book down. Each time I finished a section I couldn’t help but keep reading to see what one of the other characters were up to.

I love the authors’ sense of humor. At times it is witty, absurd, or even tinged with a bit of seriousness.

“I asked him to change back to talk to me, but he won’t,” Jane said. “It’s disrespectful to remain a horse in the bedchamber, I should think.”

Desperate to console her he almost considered shouting, “Quick, someone get her a book! Any book!”

Quotes like these kept me giggling as I read. It takes skill to maintain a consistent level of humor throughout a book, and the authors’ do this well. It never once felt forced or overdone. Even the periodic interjections from the narrators were well timed and spaced and always entertaining.

Despite this tale being very funny, the plot is compelling. I cared about Jane, G, and Edward and could see real character growth in all three of them. Jane and G were a great couple. To say their relationship got off to a rough start is an understatement, but this made watching them slowly shift from animosity to friendship, and finally love all the more satisfying.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the magic of the Eðians as this is a key element in the story. Eðians have the ability to turn into animals. Shape shifting appears to be an inherited trait, but what sort of animal a person becomes seems to be individual, meaning members of the same family wouldn’t necessarily all turn into the same animal. It was so much fun to see not only who turned out to be an Eðian, but also what animal they changed into. The final Eðian reveal is priceless!

My Lady Jane far exceeded my expectations! I highly recommend this delightful book to anyone looking for a lighthearted tale full of comedy, romance, and magic.

Magic Flame by Sara Dobie Bauer, Em Shotwell and Wendy Sparrow


Magic Flame by Sara Dobie Bauer, Em Shotwell and Wendy Sparrow
Enchanted Series Book 3
Publisher: Pen and Kink Publishing
Genre: Contemporary, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Full length (257 pages)
Heat Level: Sweet
Rating:
Reviewed by Orchid

The third and final installment of the Enchanted series — a trio of trilogies by three amazing romance writers. These stories all have two things in common: magic and romance! “All’s Fair in Love, War and Demigods” by Wendy Sparrow: Allie Mason isn’t what Donovan Rowe was expecting from a demigoddess of love. Touchy-feely she is not. But just because she is able to drop him to the mat but doesn’t mean he’s right for her–she needs someone less battle-scarred and jaded. However, Allie has other ideas. While a matching site may have set them up, Allie is sure demigod of war Donovan is who she wants. He’s not getting away without a fight and all’s fair in love, war, and claiming your demigod. “These Resting Bones” by Em Shotwell: New Orleans college student Bradley Murphey works hard to blend into the background, which is easier said than done when you are descended from a cursed line of witches. After helping her sisters cast spells (with questionable results) Bradley would be happy to never work magic again, but when she accidentally kills a man she has no choice but to turn to her hottie best friend and her family’s cursed magic for help. But every spell has a price, and sometimes it is best to let dead things rot… “Destiny’s Dark Light Part III” by Sara Dobie Bauer: The love story of Cyan and Liam comes to its enchanted end. With the identity of the dreaded dark witch revealed, both Cyan and Liam must find ways to deal with the ramifications. War approaches at an ever-increasing pace. Dark witches and white will soon battle on the streets of Charleston. Still, Cyan remains focused on the man she’s come to love. She is destined to protect Liam, but how can she keep him safe and save the world when her powers are barely under control?

Three magical stories in one book.
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All’s Fair in Love, War and Demigods – a story which tells how demigods and demigoddesses must find their other half before their magic kills them. In this particular story the demigoddess has two demigods after her which causes problems.

These Resing Bones – three sisters who are not very well versed in magic. Two of them have already had spells go drastically wrong and when the youngest kills the man who tries to rape her, they have to pray this time the spell will work.

Destiny’s Dark Light – Part Three. This tale has an unexpected twist in it when the good guy turns bad. The Dorcha is the leader of the dark magic and the Loach is the leader of the light magic. Unfortunately for both sides they’ve fallen in love.

All three of these stories show different sides of magic and all are captivating. The first one was mystical but with spirit (as in gumption) and drew me from beginning to end without waiting for a break. The second was a bit confusing in parts, but I guess if you’d read the other stories in the series it would have made sense. Still caught the attention and held on though.

Destiny’s Dark Light: Part Three was well written and didn’t depend on me having read the previous parts to understand what was going on. It also had a few unexpected twists to it so was thoroughly enjoyable.

All three kept my attention and I read one a day and enjoyed each one.

Alphaland by Cristina Jurado


Alphaland by Cristina Jurado
Publisher: Nevsky Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (126 pages)
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Award-winning short story writer Cristina Jurado’s first collection in English is filled with the idea of the other: different lives that take place at the corners of our eyes, just out of sight. The boundaries between the real and the unreal have never before been so porous, or so fragile. Alien sex-goddesses feed off venal politicians; people have their memories wiped and their personalities changed – for a fee; a vision of the champing jaws of hell accompanies a death in the family. These six stories are six different worlds, and introduce into the English-speaking market a fascinating new author of speculative fiction.

Not everything is as simple as it might appear to be at first glance.

The main character in “Vanth” asked his campaign manager to hire a prostitute for him. When she arrived at his hotel room, he had no idea what was about to happen to him. I found the plot hard to follow due to how often it shifted from one scene to the next and how few details there were about who the characters were. Even their names weren’t mentioned. There was also a scene about a young boy in the woods included very early on that I had trouble connecting to everything that happened after it. While I did come up with a theory about how all of those sections fit together, I would have liked to have a few more clues about what was going on and if my guess was correct.
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After a sudden accident in “Inchworm,” an astronaut woke up to discover that his body was connected to many different tubes and other devices that were keeping him alive. He needed to figure out what had happened to him while also attempting to achieve the goals he’d been sent out into space to pursue. I adored the plot twists in this tale. Not only were there several great ones, the clues for all of them were released so gradually that I was able to spend plenty of time coming up with theories about what had happened to the astronaut and how someone who had been so healthy could suddenly be barely clinging to life.

“Alice” showed what happened to a woman named Alice after she woke up from a medical procedure designed to erase all of her memories of her past. She was determined to find out what she’d decided to forget but had no idea where to begin. I was fascinated by the thought of someone trying to remember a life they’d purposefully chosen to leave behind in such a dramatic fashion, but I did wonder why the clinic would allow a patient to wake up with such an unquenchable desire for this information. It seemed counter-productive, and it was never clear to me why this side effect would be allowed to persist by medical professionals that had the amazing ability to delete specific memories from someone’s mind without harming other ones.

Death was an unavoidable topic in “Second Death of the Father.” The protagonist stood vigil at her father’s deathbed and then had to deal with her conflicting feelings about the turbulent relationship she’d had with him when he was alive. I appreciated all of the details the narrator shared about her father’s absence from her life. Her anger and disappointment at being created by someone who was so uninterested in parenting his own child or getting to know who she was as an adult felt incredibly realistic. It also gave her some pretty understandable reasons for reacting to the later plot developments the way she did.

It took me a little while to get into “The Shepherd” because of how vague the narrator was about what was happening in their lives and what sort of creatures they were hunting. As soon as I figured out these details, though, I couldn’t wait to find out if their hunt would be successful. The world building was handled nicely, especially when it came to gradually revealing more and more information about how this society worked and why the audience wasn’t told certain things about it right away.

The protagonist in “Alphaland” was someone whose dreams were capable of coming back as hallucinations during the day when they were awake. As intrigued as I was by the premise, so little time was spent describing how such an ability could negatively affect someone’s life that I had trouble connecting with the main character. It would have been nice to see more examples of what happened to them when a nightmare they’d experienced one night returned again the next day when they least expected it.

Alphaland was a well-written and thought-provoking collection of short stories that I’d recommend to anyone who enjoys modern science fiction.

The Nearest by Greg Egan


The Nearest by Greg Egan
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Suspense/Mystery
Length: Short Story (32 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

When a detective, a new mother, is assigned to the case of a horrific triple murder, it appears to be a self-contained domestic tragedy, a terrible event but something that doesn’t affect the rest of the community. But it slowly becomes clear that something much darker may be at play, something that spreads out from the scene of the crime to corrode the closest relationships of everyone it touches, in Greg Egan’s The Nearest, a Tor.com Original.

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Kate was a sympathetic protagonist. While I didn’t always know what I thought of her claims that something horrible had happened to her loved ones, I did have sympathy for her distress and hoped she’d get the answers she needed as soon as possible. Figuring out if this character was interpreting the world around her correctly kept me on my toes. I liked her so much that I couldn’t stop reading until I know what was really going on in her life.

The ending didn’t fit the rest of this tale as well as I’d hoped it would. While I did enjoy the direction the author took everything, it would have been nice to have more clues about what was coming in advance. It was jarring for me as areader to see how things were wrapped up when I was expecting a completely different ending based on what the characters had said and done earlier on in the storyline.

The character development was handled nicely in general. I especially enjoyed the way Kate interacted with the people closest to her and how she began to treat them when she first suspected something had changed in their world. Yes, these scenes were a bit frightening at times. They showed off parts of the characters’ personalities that would have otherwise remained hidden, though, and this never crossed the line into something I’d consider to be part of the horror genre.

The Nearest should be read by fans of mysteries and science fiction alike.

Not Quite Narwhal by Jessie Sima


Not Quite Narwhal by Jessie Sima
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Genre: Childrens, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (40 pages)
Age Recommendation: 3+
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Growing up in the ocean, Kelp has always assumed that he was a narwhal like the rest of his family. Sure, he’s always been a little bit different—his tusk isn’t as long, he’s not as good of a swimmer, and he really doesn’t enjoy the cuisine. Then one night, an extra strong current sweeps Kelp to the surface, where he spots a mysterious creature that looks just like him! Kelp discovers that he and the creature are actually unicorns. The revelation leaves him torn: is he a land narwhal or a sea unicorn? But perhaps, if Kelp is clever, he may find a way to have the best of both worlds.

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What a creative premise! As soon as I read the blurb, I couldn’t wait to find out why a family of narwhals gave birth to a baby unicorn and what would happen to Kelp once he realized that he wasn’t like anyone in his community. The beauty of this premise lay in how many ways it can be read. It worked both as a charming fairy tale as well as an example of how to live happily for children who are different from the people around them for a wide variety of reasons.

The plot could have used some more development. All of the basic things any story needs to be a good one were implied or briefly mentioned, but the narrator didn’t go into detail about any of them. I was honestly expecting to love Kelp’s adventures. Unfortunately, I had trouble getting into them because of this issue, although I would have selected a much higher rating if it hadn’t happened.

One of the things I enjoyed the most about the characters in this book was how they reacted to Kelp. I was expecting him to be teased or bullied due to all of the various ways he stood out from the crowd. How his peers actually behaved made me smile. While I can’t go into detail about their reactions without giving away spoilers, this is something that would completely appropriate for even the youngest readers.

Not Quite Narwhal should be read by anyone who has felt out of place in the world.

Come See the Living Dryad by Theodora Goss


Come See the Living Dryad by Theodora Goss
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Suspense/Mystery, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (36 pages)
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

“Come See the Living Dryad” by Theodora Goss is a fantasy about a contemporary woman investigating the murder of an ancestor suffering from a rare disease who was a famous sideshow attraction in the nineteenth century.

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The world building in this story was so complex and realistic that I ended up googling Daphne Merwin, the main character’s famous ancestor, to see if this was inspired by a real case. While I won’t share what I found in this review, I was amazed by the author’s vivid descriptions of both the past and the present. She did an incredible job of weaving them together and making this reader forget everything around me while I explored the mystery of what happened to Daphne and tried to determine if she was based on a real person.

Among other things, this was an incredibly compelling mystery. At first I couldn’t imagine how anyone could hope to solve a murder that happened well over a century before the protagonist began investigating it. All of the witnesses were dead, and the crime scene had of course been cleaned up a very long time ago. Seeing how Ms. Goss explored what had happened with these limitations was fasciating. I was quite impressed with all of the clues she managed to plant for the readers and characters to find.

One of my favorite parts of this book was discovering the identity of Daphne’s great-grandchild. For quite a while, the only thing the audience knew about that person was that they were a descendant of the Living Dryad. Everything else about them, including their gender and name, had to be teased out of the plot slowly as they investigated Daphne’s murder. It was so much fun to put all of the pieces together while also figuring out the mystery and how the science fiction genre influenced the plot as well.

I’d heartily recommend Come See the Living Dryad to anyone who loves history, speculative fiction, rare diseases, or mysteries.

The Incredible Aunty Awesomesauce by J.S. Frankel


The Incredible Aunty Awesomesauce by J.S. Frankel
Publisher: Devine Destinies
Genre: Young Adult/Middle Grade, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Action/Adventure, Contemporary
Length: Full Length (294 pages)
Age Recommendation: 14+
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Sam Aushumness, sixteen, orphan and high school outcast, meets his long-lost aunt at his parents’ funeral—or the woman he thinks is his aunt. It turns out that she isn’t his aunt, isn’t from around here, and isn’t even from this galaxy.

It seems the person masquerading as his aunt is a refugee from a faraway world, and she’s being pursued by a small band of mercenaries who have been hired to bring her back dead or alive—preferably dead.

Secrets have to be kept, and only Sam and his girlfriend, Kym Kim, know who Aunty Aushumness—nickname Aunty Awesomesauce—really is.
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However, the secret soon gets out, and soon the mercenaries, the police, and every branch of the government are on the hunt to find Aunty Awesomesauce, what she knows, and what secrets she carries.

Aunty A, though, isn’t one to back down from a fight, and when push comes to shove, the mercenaries find out how bad she can be.

Not every alien is a little green man.

The world building was fabulous. I especially appreciated how much time the narrator spent describing what Aunt Aushumness’ home planet was like. There were a lot of details about the various creatures that called that place home that made it easy to imagine how that world was both similar to and different from Earth. Having all of this information also meant that I couldn’t wait to see what would happen when humans and aliens began to interact with each other. There were so many opportunities to show what this sort of thing would be like, and Mr. Frankel took advantage of all of them in order to make the setting and characters come alive in my imagination.

There were some mild pacing issues. I noticed them about halfway through this tale, and they popped up here and there until the characters began moving towards the ending. While they weren’t serious, I would have liked to see the middle section move as quickly as the beginning and end did. I would have selected a much higher rating if this hadn’t occurred.

Sam was an interesting and well-developed character. He didn’t always know what would be the right thing to say or do in an unusual situation, and he dealt with a lot of unusual situations in this book. The fact that he occasionally struggled with this made him quite relatable to me. I liked the fact that he behaved so much like an ordinary person while being involved in such extraordinary events.

I’d recommend The Incredible Aunty Awesomesauce to anyone who is in the mood for an adventure.

Vivia, Waking by Mary Patterson Thornburg


Vivia, Waking by Mary Patterson Thornburg
Publisher: Uncial Press
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Historical
Length: Short Story (40 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

For almost thirteen years, Vivia has been a child. Now, suddenly, she’s a woman. That’s startling enough, but she’s pretty sure she can learn to handle it. She’s not so confident, though, about other things. She’s begun to know what people are feeling. She can change what they’re feeling. She can make things happen—make water boil, make the wind around the campfire slacken—just by willing them to happen. All this is unsettling, but even scarier is the fact that she’s been careless with her new-found powers. Her older brother knows what she can do, what she’s becoming. Witchery, he calls it, and he also knows what will cure her. Now Vivia has a choice to make, and she’d better make it fast.

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Vivia was a brave and mature character who seemed much older than her chronological age. Some of this was due to the people and situations she was exposed to while growing up on the road, but it also seemed to be part of her natural personality. When I first began reading, I wondered if this was supposed to be written for a young adult audience. Based on Vivia’s personality and all of the unseemly things she was exposed to during her family’s travels, though, I soon realized that this was definitely meant for adult readers.

There were pacing issues. After the characters were introduced, it took a while for the plot to develop the amount of conflict in it that I was hoping to see. While I still enjoyed the storyline itself quite a bit, the slow beginning surprised me. I had to encourage myself to keep reading until it picked up and I figured out what the choice was that Vivia was going to have to make.

One of my favorite pieces of this tale had to do with all of the cultural differences that exist between our modern world and the rural, medieval-like one that Vivia lived in. Everything from the medical treatments that were available to people in that area to how they dealt with dangerous troublemakers was nothing at all like life in the twenty-first century. I genuinely felt as though I were visiting a society that was completely different from my own. That’s exactly what I want to find when I read stuff set long ago and somewhere far away.

Vivia, Waking should be read by anyone who enjoys the fantasy genre.

The Last Novelist (or a Dead Lizard in the Yard) by Matthew Kressel


The Last Novelist (or a Dead Lizard in the Yard) by Matthew Kressel
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short Story (27 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

“The Last Novelist (or A Dead Lizard in the Yard)” by Matthew Kressel is a science fiction story about a dying writer who is trying to finish one final novel on the distant planet he settles on for his demise. His encounter with a young girl triggers a last burst of creativity.

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Reuth’s friendship with Fish, the creative little girl he met after settling into his new home, was charming. Despite the large age gap and other differences between them, I was surprised by how much these two new friends had in common. They were both creative people who were misunderstood by most of the folks around them. Stubbornness was another trait they shared in common, although neither of them would have ever admitted it. The more similarities they discovered, the stronger I hoped that Reuth would live much longer than his doctors had predicted so they’d have plenty of time to inspire each other on future projects.

I would have liked to see more attention paid to the world building in this tale. Ardabaab sounded like an interesting place when Reuth first mentioned it, but I never really got a sense of how this planet was different from Earth. Everything from the wildlife to the climate seemed pretty similar to what someone would find here based on the main character’s descriptions, and even those details were only mentioned briefly.

The ending fit the tone of the story nicely. There was exactly enough foreshadowing of what was about to occur. While I did catch onto those hints early on, they weren’t strong enough to spoil the final scene or make me feel like I already knew everything that was going to happen. It was precisely what it needed to be, and I appreciated that.

The Last Novelist (or a Dead Lizard in the Yard) was a bittersweet tale I’d recommend to anyone who has ever wondered what their own legacy might be after they die.