Posts by: angelablackwell

The Exploding Spaceship reviews An Accident of Stars, Blood of the Earth, and Spiderlight

Posted on 2016-08-02 at 21:41 by angelablackwell

Review of An Accident of Stars: Book 1 of the Manifold Worlds by Foz Meadows (Angry Robot, August 2, 2016)

So an Australian teenage girl who feels like no adults care about her problems gets anti-bullying advice from a woman she doesn’t know outside her high school. Saffron feels a connection with the woman to the extent that she follows her, and when a portal to another world opens and the woman goes through it, Saffron steps through after her. Gwen is extremely surprised and annoyed to discover she was

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The Exploding Spaceship Reviews City of Wolves by Willow Palecek and Sparrow Falling by Gaie Sebold

Posted on 2016-07-26 at 18:54 by angelablackwell

Review of City of Wolves by Willow Palecek (Tor.com, July 26, 2016)

Alexander Drake is an investigator for hire in a dark city called Lupenwald, which has a Victorian technology level and resembles England in some ways. It has commoners and nobility, a strong pub culture, and different factions fight over who is the rightful king. Most of the adult men at the time of the story have served a few years before in the army of one side of the other in the most recent battle over the throne.

Drake is a

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The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Nightshades by Melissa F. Olson

Posted on 2016-07-20 at 3:43 by angelablackwell

Review of Nightshades by Melissa F. Olson (Tor.com, July 19, 2016)

So … what if humans were sharing the planet with vampires and those creatures kept their presence a secret until now? How would the FBI deal with the situation if some of those newly-discovered vampires were kidnapping and killing teenagers outside of Chicago?

These are the questions that Olson’s novella answers, and it answers them in a very engaging and entertaining manner. Young Alex McKenna is the lead character. He has an

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship | Tagged melissa f olsen, tor.com

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Time Siege by Wesley Chu and The Ghoul King by Guy Haley

Posted on 2016-07-13 at 5:17 by angelablackwell

Review of Time Siege by Wesley Chu (Angry Robot, July 12, 2016)

When we last left James Griffin-Mars, he had rescued his sister Sasha and made it back to the Elfreth and his friend Elise. Now he has to find someone who can treat Sasha’s illness and convince them to come back to Earth with him. All his time-jumps without the medicine provided by ChronoCom have left him feeling very ill and cranky, so in order to deal with his life he self-medicates with alcohol.

This volume explores James' fall into

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship | Tagged guy haley, wesley chu

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews The Dragon Hammer by Tony Daniel and The Conclave of Shadows by Alyc Helms

Posted on 2016-07-06 at 2:26 by angelablackwell

Review of The Dragon Hammer: Wulf’s Saga 1 by Tony Daniel (Baen, July 5, 2016)

Tony Daniel writes YA alternate history in which the Vikings and Spaniards colonized America instead of the English. The story is set in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Wulf is a 16-year-old who is the third son of the Duke, so he is not even the spare heir. He is trying to figure out what he wants to do in life and he has a great love of history and reading but he has been trained as a warrior since he was small and so can

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The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Steeplejack, Return of Souls, Spells of Blood and Kin, and Pride's Spell

Posted on 2016-06-22 at 3:49 by angelablackwell

Review of Steeplejack by A.J. Hartley (Tor Teen, June 14, 2016)

Steeplejack is set in the ethnically diverse industrial capital of a land resembling Victorian South Africa. The viewpoint character is Anglet Sutonga, a young woman who repairs steeples. The death of a fellow steeplejack soon sends her on an investigation to discover what happened to him. His death is just a small part of a much larger scheme threading through the city across class and racial barriers.

Bar-Selehm is a city of towers and

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship | Tagged AJ Hartley, andy remic, claire humphrey, matt wallace

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Spear of Light, Infomocracy, and Like a Boss

Posted on 2016-06-07 at 19:6 by angelablackwell

Review of Spear of Light by Brenda Cooper (Pyr, June 7, 2016)

We return to the adventures of Nona and Charlie on the planet Lym after the treaty with the Next has at least temporarily put a war with them on hold. Tempers are very volatile on all sides, and Nona works as an ambassador trying to forge links between the groups. Others have different ideas and use violence and terrorist attacks to try and get their way, or at least prevent others from having theirs. How the different factions of humans sort

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship | Tagged adam rakunas, brenda cooper, malka older

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Runtime by S.B. Divya

Posted on 2016-05-17 at 22:18 by angelablackwell

Review of Runtime by S.B. Divya

Marmeg is a bouncer at a club and wants more than anything to race and place in the Minerva Sierra Challenge. The prize from placing would allow her to pay college tuition and buy her younger brother his postnatal license. No public education, health care or retirement without it. She wants better for him than she had. She earned her license herself by working for three years.

She has worked for a friend doing some coding for the black market in order to get chips

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The Exploding Spaceship Reviews A Whisper of Southern Lights by Tim Lebbon

Posted on 2016-05-11 at 2:49 by angelablackwell

Review of A Whisper of Southern Lights: The Assassin Series Book 2 by Tim Lebbon

This volume revisits Gabriel’s fight against Temple the demon which we saw in a previous novella (Pieces of Hate). Now time has passed so the two are enduring World War II and are in the Pacific theater.

A soldier who had encountered Temple leaves a message behind and tells his best mate where to find it. Gabriel searches for this soldier in the Japanese prison camps and eventually finds him. This leads to a harrowing race

Posted in The Exploding Spaceship | Tagged tim lebbon, tordotcom

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Their Favorite Anthologies and Short Story Collections from 2015

Posted on 2016-05-09 at 1:10 by angelablackwell

Review of Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction edited by Kathryn Allan and Djibril al-Ayad (Futurefire.net, 2015)

This anthology alternates between short fiction pieces and illustrations. The black and white illustrations all fit with the theme of the volume and show wonderfully imaginative futures with disabled participants. Our favorite image was the astronaut on the cover who appears to be having a great time in zero gravity moving their graceful body about.

Ev

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