Tag Archives: science fiction

Creator Q&A: “The Resurrectionist: The Lost Works of Dr. Spencer Black” Author and Illustrator E.B. Hudspeth

7 Jun

The Resurrectionist - E.B. HudspethThe Resurrectionist: The Lost Works of Dr. Spencer Black collects the various journals, letters and scientific writings of Dr. Spencer Black, who went missing under mysterious circumstances in an attempt to prove his theories about “The Perfect Human.” Allegedly.

Set in Philadelphia in the late 1870′s, the novel/illustrated guide is set-up to be the lost work of a mad scientist who believes that mutations in humanity are our body’s attempt to regrow pieces it once had. Wings, horns, a more fully functioning brain, etc.

There’s just one thing that sets this book apart, it’s written as if it were piecing together the real studies of Black by author E.B. Hudspeth despite him being a fictional person. Think The Princess Bride but with more animals being sewn together and less Rodents of Unusual Size.

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Thursday Next Goes All Timey Wimey: Cassie-la Attempts to Explain “The Woman Who Died a Lot” by Jasper Fforde

3 May

The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper FfordeThe Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde
Genre: Fiction, fantasy, alternate history, science fiction, humor, literary, time travel even confuses fictional characters
Rating: 4.67 out of 5 stars

Summary: Thursday Next’s adventure continues in the seventh book in the series set in an alternate history version of  the UK where literature is taken very seriously. Following her escapade in One of Our Thursdays is Missing, Thursday is injured and unable to travel into the fictional BookWorld and instead takes a job offer to run the Swindon Library where books are protected with lethal force. Featuring God, time travel and synthetic doppelgangers, this is the strangest Thursday Next yet.

If you have yet to read any books in the Thursday Next series, then I highly recommend you start. The franchise takes place in an alternate history version of the world (specifically England) where literature is so well-loved that there is a special police division to protect it, political groups centered around famous authors and if you were to enter the original manuscript of a novel you could change the events within them. Did I mention there’s time travel and extinct animals have been re-engineered as pets? Well there’s all that too.

For your perusing pleasure, the other books in the series include: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels and One of Our Thursdays is Missing. (Pssst, The Eyre Affair is all about Jane Eyre and Something Rotten stars the Hamlet.)

This newest incarnation of the series, which features an older Thursday with grown children (Tuesday, Friday and the imaginary Jenny who is really just a mind-worm implanted in Thursday by her nemesis Aornis Hades) is the most confusing and inventive book so far. Bear with me while I explain the plot, because it’s a whole lotta plot.

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Around the Interwebs: Volume XVIII

2 Mar

Rick Yancey’s Viral Campaign for the YA Sci-Fi Series The 5th Wave Has Begun (via Hypable)

The 5th Wave

The campaign for Rick Yancey- the author of The Monstrumologist trilogy’s- new series The 5th Wave is well underway. Which is a lot farther along than it was during NYCC when all we knew about it was that it was an alien series with an intriguing if confusing poster. Now we know that it’s about an alien invasion dubbed the Arrival, featuring a main character named Cassie (NICE NAME!) who despite trying to elude the alien scourge and locate her brother has time to maintain her own Tumblr. The first 54 pages of the novel have also been released. We’re already sold.

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Sometimes Sci-Fi Fairy Tales Are the Best Fairy Tales: Cassie-la Frolics Through “Scarlet” By Marissa Meyer

1 Mar

Scarlet - Marissa MeyerScarlet: The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer
Genre: Fiction, fantasy, science-fiction, fractured fairy tale, robots, young adult, yes you can frolic through a book because I said so
Rating: 4.53 out of 5 stars

Summary: Cyborg Cinder is on the run after escaping from her prison in New Beijing and one of her only supporters seem to be Scarlet Benoit over in France. But Scarlet is having some troubles of her own, specifically that her grandmother has gone missing and the police think no foul play is involved. With the help of the mysterious street fighter Wolf, Scarlet embarks on a journey to save her grandmother, not even knowing that her path with the wanted Cinder is about to collide thanks to some secrets in her own past.

Set directly after the first novel in the Lunar Chronicles: Cinder, Scarlet picks up right where its predecessor left off, with Cinder learning about her true Anastasia-style identity and being tasked with reclaiming what is rightfully hers: THE MOON! It’s that amazingly dramatic. Inter-twined with this story is the brand new tale of Scarlet, whose back story of woe was inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, complete with her preference for red hoodies and her new friend with a murky past: Wolf. In this case, a (sexy- I assume) fighter whose combatants nicknamed him after a wild canine.

Linking Cinder and Scarlet is the short story The Queen’s Army (The Lunar Chronicles 1.5) which follows Ze’ev, a young boy turned into a brand new breed of wolf to fight for the Lunar Queen, the evil Levana. He features heavily in Scarlet, and if you want absolutely no spoilers about Levana’s big bad wolf plans, you should probably steer clear of it. However, if you don’t care that Snape killed Dumbledore, then I highly recommend giving it a read.

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Around the Interwebs: Volume XIV

26 Jan

Even Middle-earth Has Important Public Service Announcements (via Dorkly)

The Hobbit PSA

Lord of the Rings fan art plus public service announcements equal hilarity. With posters discussing not putting rings on it, how to properly dispose of rings of power, the dangers of Ent draught and giving Balrogs the right to pass, no warning goes unsaid. Special shout out to the poster dedicated to Gandalf’s fireworks: “Don’t play with fireworks. Because maybe some dickhole wizard made one that literally creates a dangerous fire dragon.” See the remaining PSAs over on Dorkly.

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Around the Interwebs: Volume XII

13 Jan

Universal May Be Getting a Middle-earth Theme Park That We Will Live in Forever (via TheOneRing.net)

Middle-earth Theme Park

As if the Harry Potter theme park expansion wasn’t enough to make us happy (THERE’S GOING TO BE A ROLLER COASTER RIDE IN GRINGOTTS), now there’s a rumor going around that Universal is thinking about creating a Middle-earth theme park. Granted it already exists and is called New Zealand, but it would be amazing to have a Hobbit-filled location in North America. Of course that’s assuming that this isn’t merely a semi-substantiated rumor about Warner Bros. trying to broach a deal with the Tolkien estate. Here’s hoping it’s as real as second breakfast.

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Happy Apocalypse: Cassie-la Explodes Over “The Age of Miracles” by Karen Thompson Walker and “Everything Matters” by Ron Currie Jr.

21 Dec

The-Age-of-MiraclesThe Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker and Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr.
Genre: Fiction, apocalyptic, science-fiction, romance, OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary: The end is nigh- isn’t it always?- in these two novels that deal with the apocalypse. In The Age of Miracles, Julia is living in a world dealing with the slowing of the earth’s rotation which has disastrous consequences for the population and her family dynamic. Everything Matters follows Junior Thibodeaux, who has known since birth exactly when a meteor is going to strike the planet and kill all mankind. Womp womp. Talk about a messed up childhood.

Assuming no alien overloads have landed on earth to rule over us, no volcanoes have overflowed, no one was raptured and floods didn’t overtake the planet you are reading this review of two books from the apocalyptic genre post-apocalypse. Or rather, in a world still awaiting their eventual demise/angry that Jesus is such a flake. Stop rushing it society, just wait until the sun implodes. Regardless, we should probably thank the Scoobies, the Winchesters or the Doctor for our continued survival.

If however the apocalypse did occur, how are you still reading thing? Does this mean the afterlife has the internet!?!

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The Times They Are A-Changing: Cassie-la Talks About The Rise of eBook Novellas and Absolutely Nothing About Bob Dylan

8 Dec

Bob Dylan MemeThis post has everything to do with a rise in eBook only novellas and nothing to do with Bob Dylan. Kindly ignore Bob Dylan. Addendum: don’t ignore him forever, just in this post as he really has no place here. I just figured I’d stick with a Dylan theme because I am in charge of this blog and therefore you will listen to everything I have to say.

Or you know, click the back button. Or look at this adorable picture of a baby hippo which has been distracting me all day. But if you love young adult literature, dystopias, short story prequels, novellas and other such awesomeness, please stick around.

Right, eBooks. Perhaps because December is a slow month for book releases or perhaps to promote the various upcoming releases of books in their various series, I have been stumbling across quite a few eBook only versions of young adult novellas and short stories. This digital only concept may confuse a less technologically advanced generation – and by that I mean, my older relatives who think PDFs are called “PBS files… No wait, PFD files.” “Do you know what your eBooks can’t do that my book can? I can pull an Edgar Allan Poe anthology off my shelf and turn to any short story and read it. You can’t do that with a digital book.” “Do you know there’s a thing called internships now?”

This is a real thing that actually happened to me.

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Good Thing It Wasn’t a Quartet: Cassie-la Cries About “Reached” by Ally Condie

30 Nov

ReachedReached by Ally Condie
Genre: Young adult, dystopia, science fiction, romance, this is why not everything needs to be a trilogy (hint, hint)
Rating: 3.56 out of 5 stars

Summary: Cassia has finally joined the Rising in an attempt to topple the Society, a government which controls its citizens to the point of deciding who they marry, where they work and when they die. For their own good of course. Joined by her love interest Ky and her other love interest Xander, Cassia and her friends await the arrival of the Pilot, the mysterious leader of the rebellion who will lead them all to a new world in which they have the option to choose for themselves. Or so they hope. This conclusion to the Matched trilogy will answer all your questions but may not leave you satisfied.

Whelp, the Matched trilogy is finally over and I’m kind of apathetic about the whole thing. I loved the first book in the series: Matched, which was coincidentally the first book I ever reviewed on Bibliomantics (review HERE) and was pretty much disappointed by its sequel Crossed (review HERE) but still had high hopes for the finale. I don’t think all those hopes were satisfied. I didn’t hate the way it ended, but I certainly wasn’t gripped by it either. In the immortal words of Stephanie Perkins: sad face.

Where Matched focuses on the Society, which regulates the lives of its citizens down to their jobs and spouses and Crossed is about the outsiders who oppose the society, Reached centers on the rebellion itself. A rebellion which begins and ends in the first 80 pages. So don’t expect much excitement there. Rather than focus on how main characters Ky, Cassia and Xander got placed where they did and how, things merely jump extremely far forward between the books and we are given flashbacks to explain some of the gaps and jump in time. Yay. Flashbacks. Awesome.

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Around the Interwebs: Volume IX

24 Nov

We hope you all had an amazing Thanksgiving stuffing your faces, arguing with relatives and getting too drunk to function. We know we did! <3

Robert Pattinson Hates Twilight, Oh And Also His Life (via Jezebel)

Robert Pattinson Hates His Life might be the best Tumblr of all time. The premise is simple, collect all the most amazing .gifs and quotes of Robert Pattinson hating on Twilight (and occasionally himself) and share them with the world. Gems include, “Surely there’s another way to get the creepy baby out of her stomach,” “Why are they still going to high school? They’re a hundred years old!” “I like the idea of him turning into a mermaid,” and “It’s terrible!” Robert Pattinson has no shame, and we love it.

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