This is a review of Chalice by Robin McKinley. The mass market paperback was published by Ace in November 2009. Amazon Canada has it listed for $9.99. The great temptation when reviewing a book by Robin McKinley is that you simply quote her beautiful prose. The second temptation is that one can so easily get distracted [...]

The Comet’s Curse will appeal to YA readers on many levels. The story is about 251 teenagers, none over 16, who are sent into space to preserve the human species. Multiple perspectives are used to tell the tale, with main protagonists Triana, called Tree, the leader of the voyage and Gap, Head of [...]

Let me start off by admitting that I love both Zombies and Regency novels. So, naturally, when I saw a zombified portrait of Jane Austen on the cover of a book, I was intrigued. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a parody (or as the back cover describes it, “an expanded edition”) of Jane Austin’s [...]

“In a labyrinthine superstructure in New York Harbor known as the Big Shell, enemies, allies, secret agents, and double-dealers converge: Russian commandos, a blood-thirsty vampiric assassin, a long-legged, leather-clad, rifle-bearing beauty named Fortune, a deformed, finely manicured bomber called Fatman, and a mysterious Mister X. Somewhere in the maze, as well, is the president himself-his [...]

Review by Michael Hickerson (Slice of SciFi Editor) Last year, Daniel Suarez’s “Daemon” left us on one heck of a cliffhanger. Now, “Freedom (TM)” picks up that cliffhanger, resolves it and delves even further into a scary but all too possible near future in which a computer bot can seemingly take over the world. In terms of [...]

Review by Michael Hickerson (Slice of SciFi Editor) “Horns” starts with two of the most ingenious opening paragraphs I’ve read in a long while about Ignatius Perrish waking up from having spent the night before doing horrible things and getting ready to do a lot more. Also, Ig (as he’s called) has a pair [...]

Review by Michael Hickerson (Slice of SciFi Editor) “Star Trek” novels (and media tie-in novels in general) walk a very fine line when it comes to revisiting familiar elements from their original source material.    This can especially be true when it comes to giving the details behind the romantic liaisons of various character that took [...]

Review by Michael Hickerson (Slice of SciFi Editor) If you’re not careful Stephen King’s latest tome may hurt you.  Weighing it at close to 1100 pages and almost four pounds, “Under the Dome” is a return to form for one of the best-selling authors of the past thirty years. King says he began writing this novel [...]

Review by Lora Friedenthal Summary: An unwanted girl from a distant land is purchased from her father’s farm and brought to Copper Downs, a city of sleeping gods, where she will be trained as a courtly lady of wealth, taste, and fine breeding. All this so that she may have a chance at becoming the next [...]

Review by Dragon Page Teen correspondent Darcy Low Hi guys, Been a while since I done a book review. This time I got a great one for everyone to enjoy! “Raised by monks, the orphan Tristan never dreamed that he might see the world or discover the truth about his past. But that changes the day that the [...]

Review by Sandra Welch OK a few weeks ago, there was a review of Steve Alten’s Hell’s Aquarium. I thought it wasn’t a very good review, so I decided to send in my own, since I read Hell’s Aquarium and liked it a lot. Hell’s Aquarium takes place a few years after Angel’s escape and return from [...]

I really, really liked Paul Melko’s “The Walls of the Universe.” The problem is I wanted to love it. The first third of the novel unfolds at a breathless pace as we meet John Rayburn and his double from a parallel universe, John Prime. Prime has come to John’s universe with a device that allows [...]

Good science fiction speculates on things that are theoretically possible given some of the conditions and advances of our current level of technology. In many cases, the advances may be years or decades away from becoming reality, but in the case of Robert J. Sawyer’s new novel, “WWW: Wake,” part of his speculated [...]

A modern day retelling of “Dracula” Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan originally conceived “The Strain” as a serialized television series for the Fox network.  After Fox execs balked at the original vision, insisting the writers inject more humor into the storyline of a modern-day vampire apocolypse, del Toro and Hogan decided to take their [...]

Billionaire computer software mogul Matthew Sobol has died and he wants to make sure he leaves behind a legacy.  That legacy comes in the form of a daemon, or a computer programing running in the background of every system that has installed his massively popular on-line, multi-player video game.  When news of Sobol’s death hits [...]

Reviewed by Michael Hickerson (SoSF Editor) At long last, a “Star Wars” novel that remembers the “Star Wars” universe is supposed to be fun. Set after the events of “Return of the Jedi” and a couple of other books in the continuing series, “Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor” tells the story of Luke’s first and [...]

A Slice of SciFi Book Review Reviewed by Michael Hickerson (SoSF Editor) Slice of SciFi Rating: 5 out of 5 stars “A fascinating, complex and entertaining (novel) that will keep the pages turning” The success of the Harry Potter series with both children and adults has opened a lot of doors in the fantasy genre. Publishers have [...]

Review by Lora Friedenthal Commentary: The About the Author segment at the end of The Magicians and Mrs. Quent says this: What if there was a fantastical cause underlying the social constraints and limited choices confronting a heroine in a novel by Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë? Galen Beckett began writing The Magicians and Mrs. Quent to [...]

Review by Darcy Anna Low Cover: “It is green here and very big. Light comes from the sky….” When Lina and Doon lead their people up from the underground city of Ember, they discover a surface world of color and life. The people of a small village called Sparks agree to help the Emberites, but the villagers have [...]

Review by Lora Friedenthal Summary: Huckleberry Lindbergh is returning home to New Seattle for the first time since his wife Abigail died. He’s not sure what he’s looking for or intends to find, but it seems like the right time to stop wandering. What he stumbles into, however, is nothing short of a plot to put [...]