Alexander Pyles's Blog, page 11

Review: Red Sky Blues

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Recalling famous magical detectives, like Harry Dresden and others, Matthew Davis’ RED SKY BLUES goes in a completely different direction with occult mysticism, zombie pigs, and clouds of cockroaches. Not your thing? Well, it isn’t exactly Thomas Grey’s thing either, but he has had quite a day.

Thomas, short on cash, is hired by the magical “mayor” of his hometown to track down a book that contains world ending powers. Aided by his ancient, grumpy mentor and his rather kind, but ruthless mus...

Hugo Finalists 2019: Novella

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While there are some repeats from last week’s Nebula post, there are a couple new books below! Don’t miss out on those!

Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing) 3 out of 5

Wells does it again! Murderbot is so much fun, but this one seemed to take some time going. And there were some themes that I missed from the first that was either untouched or underdeveloped. Murderbot’s awareness of their lack of humanity takes center stage, but her apparent clear human-like behaviors...

Review: Switchblade Magazine #9

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Switchblade is a relatively new magazine (to me), but one that I’ve been itching to read. Low and behold when they dropped their first color issue with #9, I had to pick it up via my e-reader.

Not for the faint of heart or the soft in temperament, these stories encompass, vengeance, revenge, injustice, and vice. Switchblade, true to it’s name, is quick and dirty when telling stories of crime noir and they do not pull punches or stabs for that matter. It is bleak, brutal, and bloody. Despite...

Review: The Lifecycle of Software Objects

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This might be a novella, but it is one of the longest works by Ted Chiang. THE LIFECYCLE OF SOFTWARE OBJECTS is a complex, yet simple sort of book. It’s a study of empathy, relationship, and artificial intelligence. Chaing is one of those writers who can execute an idea within a sentence or in a page and this novella is no different, over the course of 150 pages, he unpacks what it would be like to bond with AIs generated from code.

Our entry points are Ana and Derek, the former who used to...

Nebula Finalists 2018: Novella

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And here we have the Novella finalists!

Enjoy!

Fire Ant by Jonathan P. Brazee (Semper Fi) 3 out of 5

This was a somewhat middle of the road story for me. I enjoyed the world building of it, but the style didn’t exactly have the flavor I was looking for and left me rather disappointed. I think Brazee does an excellent job with pacing and action, but some of the extra details feel pointless, such as our heroine’s height and a few others, but that would be too nit-picky.

Otherwise, this is a gr...

FUTURES: A Science Fiction Series

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So, I haven’t really spoken about my forthcoming short story chapbook that is being released by Radix Media yet(announcement link is here), so I think I will finally talk about it in full.

First, the quick and dirty on the FUTURES series:

The Futures series explores critical contemporary issues in an imagined future. You’ll find stories about climate change, dystopian politics, animal uprisings, interpersonal relationships, reinvention of the self, and more. The series is comprised of seven...

Review: Changing of the Guard

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It has been a while since I’ve read a good ‘ol sword and sorcery story and I was pretty excited when Matt Spencer sent this e-ARC along and it was a wild ride! CHANGING OF THE GUARDS is a brutal adventure set in a grimdark fantasy world where the land may eat you, while intrigue may stab you in the back for fun.

Captain Severen Gris gets more than he bargains for when given a mission out on the frontier. He is tasked to put down a local group of bandits, but what he ends up stumbling upon, i...

Review: Red Sun Magazine #4

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I’ve had my eye on this magazine for a while and luckily, Editor-in-Chief Ben Richards was nice enough to send me a copy for review! This was a fun issue and as someone going cold into Red Sun‘s purview, I was quite pleased with what I ended up finding.

Before getting to the stories, I want to talk about the articles, reviews, and interview with Nancy Kilpatrick.

All the articles were top notch, I especially enjoyed Jeremy Billingsley’s examination of the past century of American Horror. He...

Review: Anthropocene or Capitalocene?

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I’m going a different route with this review, since this is a heady volume of academic scholarship, but one that is extremely relevant to our times of economic and environmental upheaval. This book was one of the most refreshing pieces of academic literature I have read in months. Moore and co. cut to chase and immediatly deconstruct the damage capitalism has wrought.

Just by title alone, ANTHROPOCENE OR CAPITALOCENE seems to be heavy piece of scholarship and it is, but editor Jason W. Moore...

Review: All Hail The House Gods

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I used to pride myself on not being shocked, but then I read this book by Andrew Stone and oh boy does this shock you out of complacency while reading.

ALL HAIL THE HOUSE GODS is a bizarro-horror novel that takes a hard look at what people do in the face of oppression. We find our fool of a hero, Kurt, as he witnesses his eldest son being gobbled up by a House God, which are literal sentient houses. This changes everything for his wife, who organizes a rebellion intent on destroying their op...