Jane Litte's Blog, page 63

REVIEW: Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk

C. L. Polk turns their considerable powers to a fantastical noir. A magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago’s divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life. This sapphic period piece will dazzle anyone looking for mystery, intrigue, romance, magic, or all of the above.

An exiled augur who sold her soul to save her brother’s life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one paymen...

Review: A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2) by Freya Marske

Magic! Murder! Shipboard romance! The second entry in Freya Marske’s beloved The Last Binding trilogy, the queer historical fantasy series that began with A Marvellous Light

The most interesting things in Maud Blyth’s life have happened to her brother Robin, but she’s ready to join any cause, especially if it involves magical secrets that may threaten the whole of the British Isles. Bound for New York on the R.M.S. Lyric, she’s ready for an adventure.

What she actually finds is a dead body, a d...

Open Thread for Readers for November 2022

Got a book you want to talk about? Frustrated with a book or series? In love with a new one? Found a buried treasure? An issue that keeps popping up in the books you are reading? Just want to chat about stuff in general?

JOINT REVIEW: Liberation Day by George Saunders

Jennie: When Janine suggested reviewing this collection of short stories together, I was only vaguely familiar with the author. I remembered that Janine had mentioned him in our joint review of How High We Go in the Dark, and indicated that Saunders was known for literary fabulism. It was only after I looked the author up that I realized he was the author of Lincoln in the Bardo, a novel I’ve heard a bit about, though I haven’t read it.

Janine: He is. Sirius and I have been planning a review of ...

REVIEW: An Early Engagement by Barbara Metzger

Adventurous Lady Emilyanne had no one but Viscount Stokely to turn to when her guardian tried to force her to marry his awful stepson. So the viscount married her while on leave and returned to his army unit. Which left Lady Em to attend to estate and ton matters pretty much as she saw fit—even if he didn’t quite agree with her methods. Regency Romance by Barbara Metzger; originally published by Fawcett Crest

Dear Ms. Metzger, 

This is another of your books that I’m now going back and rereadi...

REVIEW: In the Family Way by Sheri Cobb South

With a beautiful and clever wife, a growing investigative business, and a baby due any day, former Bow Street Runner John Pickett finally has a respectable life far removed from his beginnings as a juvenile pickpocket in the rookeries of St. Giles. Then his father returns from transportation to Botany Bay, and Pickett’s hard-won respectability threatens to collapse like a house of cards. When a person from his mother’s shadowy past surfaces, followed less than twenty-four hours later by the di...

Review: Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell

Ocean’s Echo is a stand-alone space adventure about a bond that will change the fate of worlds, set in the same universe as Everina Maxwell’s hit debut, Winter’s Orbit.

Rich socialite, inveterate flirt, and walking disaster Tennalhin Halkana can read minds. Tennal, like all neuromodified “readers,” is a security threat on his own. But when controlled, readers are a rare asset. Not only can they read minds, but they can navigate chaotic space, the maelstroms surrounding the gateway to the wider ...

REVIEW: Return to Glory by Jack McDevitt

Jack McDevitt’s passion for astronomy was recognized in 2008 when the International Astronomical Union put his name on an asteroid. NASA has given him an award for “keeping the science in science fiction.” Stephen King described Jack as the “natural heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.”

Life is full of mysteries. Or at least, Jack’s fiction is. His earliest story, “The Emerson Effect,” shows how a hundred-year-old package that had been lost in the mail turns up at a post office and c...

Review: Bonds of Brass (The Bloodright Trilogy #1) by Emily Skrutskie

A young pilot risks everything to save his best friend–the man he trusts most and might even love–only to learn that he’s secretly the heir to a brutal galactic empire.

Ettian Nassun’s life was shattered when the merciless Umber Empire invaded. He’s spent seven years putting himself back together under its rule, joining an Umber military academy and becoming the best pilot in his class. Even better, he’s met Gal Veres–his exasperating and infuriatingly enticing roommate who’s made the Academy f...

REVIEW: The Ransomware Hunting Team by Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden

A real-life technological thriller about a band of eccentric misfits taking on the biggest cybersecurity threats of our time.
Scattered across the world, an elite team of code-cracking techies is working tirelessly on your behalf to thwart the most notorious cyber scourge of our time. You’ve probably never heard of them. But if you work for a school, a business, a hospital, or a municipal government, especially if its cybersecurity is imperfect, chances are that you’re painfully familiar with ...