Armageddon: Peculiar Style !! -- Review of Ransom Riggs' The Library of Souls: The Third Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children

NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REVIEWS

Reviews Of Recently Published Science Fiction And Fantasy Books

Reviewer: Forrest Schultz schultz_forrest@yahoo.com 770-583-3258

Blog Address: http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com/

 

August 30, 2016

 

Armageddon:  Peculiar  Style  !!

A Review of

 

Ransom Riggs Library of Souls:  The Third Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children (Quirk Books, 2015)

                        $18.99   458 pp   ISBN: 978-1-59474-758-8

 

Reviewer:  Forrest W. Schultz

 

     The final volume of this trilogy provides more insight into the origin of the evils among the peculiars; examines the hopes  "to make peculiardom great again" (p. 189); shows the good guys leaving their loopy safe havens and going on the offensive against the "hollows" and "wights", which results in an ultra-bizarre and super-ferocious Armageddon, in which crucial roles are played not only by Miss Peregrine but also by the contemporary American teenager Jacob Portman and his paramour Emma Bloom (the girl with fire), and a very peculiar dog Addison and lots of other bizarre beings and bizarre stuff too numerous to mention!  And, finally, following the climactic dramatic victory by the good peculiars is a non-Armageddonish, but no less dramatic and happy ending I shall not mention but allow you to discover for yourself -- 'tis one of the finest endings I have ever read!  Information on the author is available at www.ransomriggs.com and www.quirbooks.com.                        

 

    Postscript: I am pleased to announce that  Peculiardom has entered The Mythosphere where it received the Bizarro Maximus Award.  Mr. Riggs, of course, was too modest to mention this --  it is what I myself saw directly by means of the particular kind of peculiar vision I have!

Battles and Bizarreness Multiply in Second "Peculiar" Episode -- Review of Ransom Riggs' The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children

NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REVIEWS

Reviews Of Recently Published Science Fiction And Fantasy Books

Reviewer: Forrest Schultz schultz_forrest@yahoo.com 770-583-3258

Blog Address: http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com/

 

August 25, 2016

 

Battles  And  Bizarreness  Multiply  In  Second  Peculiar  Episode

 

A Review of

 

Ransom Riggs Hollow City:  The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children (Quill Books, 2014)

                        $17.99   400 pp   ISBN: 978-1-59474-612-3

 

Reviewer:  Forrest W. Schultz

 

     The bizzareness which permeated the first Peculiar novel and the horrific battles of its ending both continue (with greater magnitude and ferocity) in the second novel.  Perhaps we could designate it as "bizarreness squared"!  And, surprising as it may sound, the author is such a good writer that before you know it you have suspended your disbelief and you see the narrated events happening before your eyes!  I have read many fantasies, and I think this one takes the grand prize for believable bizarreness!!  There are also some hints as to the meaning of some of the bizarre terms, but you will need to wait for the third and final volume of the story to get the answers to these.    For information on the author you can visit these websites http://www.ransomriggs.com/   and http://www.quirkbooks.com/ .   

Feisty Pious Nun Astronauts Investigate A Crashed Alien Spaceship -- Review of Karina Fabian's "Discovery"

NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REVIEWS

Reviews Of Recently Published Science Fiction And Fantasy Books

Reviewer: Forrest Schultz schultz_forrest@yahoo.com 770-583-3258

Blog Address: http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com/

August 23, 2016

Feisty  Pious  Nun  Astronauts  Investigate  Crashed  Alien  Spaceship

A Review of

Karina Fabian Discovery (Full Quiver Press, 2016)                      

[Advance Reader Copy]  ISBN: 978-1-987970-01-2

Reviewer:  Forrest W. Schultz

     I have seen many changes take place in my 77 years of life on Planet Earth.  I remember a long time ago a Roman Catholic man saying that when he was a boy he thought that the nuns who were his parochial school teachers had been dropped down from Heaven!  Since that time nuns have become ever more human and feisty.  By the time in the future in which Karina Fabian's new SF novel Discovery is set, there are nuns who are astronauts, and three of them play a major role in the story, in which a team of scientists travels to the Kuiper Belt to study an alien space ship which has crashed there.  These nuns display an interesting exciting mix of feistiness and intelligence and piety in their interactions with the other astronauts, which you really have to read to understand what I mean.  However, you can have too much of a good thing:  in my humble opinion, Fabian prolongs this phase of the story to where it becomes a surfeit.  If you agree with me, do not put down the book, but just say "Enough, Already!!" and skip to the final section of the book where they investigate the alien ship -- and WOW lots of surprises there!!  This is an exciting thought-provoking read!

     The book is scheduled for publication on September 18.  Information on the author is available on her website www.fabianspace.com 

                       

A Loopy, Circus-Like, Steampunk-Flavored New Fantasy -- Review of Ransom Riggs's Debut Novel

NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REVIEWS

Reviews Of Recently Published Science Fiction And Fantasy Books

Reviewer: Forrest Schultz schultz_forrest@yahoo.com 770-583-3258

Blog Address: http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com/

 

August 22, 2016

 

A  Loopy, Circus-Like, Steampunk-Flavored New Fantasy

A Review of

Ransom Riggs Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk, 2011)

                           $17.99   352 pp   ISBN: 978-1-59474-476-1

Reviewer:  Forrest Schultz

     On a remote island (at age 16) Jacob succeeds in solving a mystery concerning his grandfather only to encounter a much deeper mystery – a war between two secret groups endowed with “peculiar” abilities which are mostly of a bizarre circus-like nature rather than the usual kind of supernatural phenomena found in most fantasy literature.  And Miss Peregrine is a Victorian lady, thus giving a “steampunk” kind of aroma to the portions of the story in which she appears.  And there is a very unusual romance in which Jacob falls in love with Emma (one of the “peculiars”) who is still the same age (due to the loopy kind of time travel they do) as she was when she was in love with Jacob’s grandfather when he was a youth!!

    This is the first book of a trilogy by a new novelist, whose writing has so intrigued me that I am now preparing to read and review the second and third books also (which were published in 2014 & 2015).  Information on the author is available at www.ransomriggs.com and www.quirkbooks.com.    

The "Human Side" of SF -- Review of "Soulmates" by Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn

NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REVIEWS

Reviews Of Recently Published Science Fiction And Fantasy Books

Reviewer: Forrest Schultz schultz_forrest@yahoo.com 770-583-3258

Blog Address: http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com/

August 10, 2016

 Companionship Examined Via SF Short Stories Or

The "Human Side" of SF

A Review of

Mike Resnick & Lezli Robyn Soulmates [A Collection of Short Stories] (Arc Manor, 2016)

                                              $14.99   210 pp   ISBN: 978-1-61242-314-2

                                              [Advance Reading Copy]

Reviewer:  Forrest W. Schultz

     I believe that Robert J. Sawyer (author of Rollback and many other award-winning SF gems) is probably right in stating that Soulmates "will be remembered as one of the major collections of this decade".  This is an interesting achievement because these short stories bear comparison with the "human interest", "human side of the news" kind of stories often found at the end of the evening TV and radio news programs, which are mostly filled with reports of wars and crimes and terrorism, just as so much of science fiction consists of distopias and violence, and one of the most popular SF film series, Star Wars, has the very word "wars" in its title!   Soulmate and the Arc Manor "Stellar Guild" series are good example of the "human side" of SF not only in their stories but in the help given by established SF authors to SF neophytes.  It should not be supposed, though, that this is unusual because during the fifteen years in which I attended Dragon Con and other Atlanta area SF conventions, I witnessed numerous examples of aspiring SF writers receiving help from some of our nation's best SF authors.  Info on this and other SF books by the publisher, you can visit these websites:  www.soulmates.space and www.arcmanor.com