All posts filed under: Review

Death, memory and elephants: Lawrence M. Schoen’s Barsk

Published by Kyell Gold

Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen 384 pp., $25.99 hardcover (ebook, $12.99) Tor Books, December 2015 Furry books have popped up here and there in mainstream fantasy and science fiction.  Most often, the furries are aliens (C.J. Cherryh’s Chanur series) or denizens of a fantasy world (Steven Boyett’s The Architect of Sleep, Alan Dean Foster’s Spellsinger series). Occasionally we get uplifted animals (David Brin’s Startide Rising). Rarely do we get to see furries realizing their own society in a science fiction setting. Enter Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, a new novel by Lawrence M. Schoen, in which Fants—anthropomorphic elephants—inhabit the planet Barsk, the only source of a drug that allows certain gifted individuals, “Speakers,” to speak to the dead. The Fants are generally despised by the rest of the races of the galaxy, all anthropomorphic Earth-based animals with names mostly derived from their Linnean genus name: Nonyx for cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus), Cans for dogs (Canis lupus familiaris), and so on. But the drug, koph, is highly desirable for obvious reasons, and when one of …

Traveling to The Furry Future

Published by Jakebe Rabbit

The Furry Future Edited by Fred Patten Cover Art by Teagan Gavet 446 pp., $19.95 (ebook, $9.95) FurPlanet Productions, January 2015 The Furry Future collects nineteen short stories imagining how furries might come into being, whether created by humans, or discovered as aliens mankind must now learn to live with. Furries in science fiction settings offer a wide variety of ideas and approaches, and this anthology, edited by Fred Patten, does a good job mining different veins. Fiction within the fandom that features a mixed population of anthropomorphic and human characters often centers on the idea that furries are a servant/minority class without equal rights. The protagonists are making their way through this world, either struggling to make sense of it, fighting for better treatment, or just trying to survive the abuses of the ruling class. The problem with these “fursecution” stories is they’ve been told many times before, and worse, they’re fairly easy to get wrong. Many of us reading these are minorities moving through a world where we aren’t treated equally—I’m a politically …

Gods are people too, and so are people: God of Clay

Published by Alice Dryden

God of Clay By Ryan Campbell Cover Art by Zhivago 259 pp., $17.95 (Kindle, $5.99) Sofawolf Press, September 2013 With the release of Forest Gods, the second title in Ryan Campbell’s Fire Bearers trilogy, it seemed like a good time to catch up with the first book, God of Clay. I’m only sorry I left it so long, because I thoroughly enjoyed the read.

Slow popcorn: The Rise of the Red Shadow

Published by Watts Martin

The Rise of the Red Shadow By Joseph R. Lallo Cover Art by Nick Deligaris 439 pp., $2.99 (ebook), $16.00 (trade paperback) Amazon Publishing Services/CreateSpace From the 1950s up through the 1980s, the paperback original dominated genre fiction. Some became undeniable classics—the Ace Science Fiction Specials included the first publications of Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Wild Shore—but most aimed less at dazzling critics than at presenting rousing adventure tales. They might rarely be your Favorite Book Ever, yet if you got hooked on an author—or a series—you’d grab title after title. Unless you’ve got the next Dresden Files, though, major publishers aren’t interested in those kinds of titles anymore. This has opened a gap for self-published and small press ebooks to fill. Series like Annie Bellet’s The Twenty-Sided Sorceress and, closer to home, Phil Geusz’s David Birkenhead septology would fit beside 1980s stalwarts like Diane Duane and Alan Dean Foster. Amazon and Goodreads are full of well-loved series—far more than there were in the …

The Vimana Incident, or what really happened on the Moon in 1939

Published by Alice Dryden

The Vimana Incident By Rose LaCroix Cover Art by NightPhaser 208pp, $9.95 FurPlanet Productions, February 2015 The Vimana Incident features alternate history, time slip, and a deliberate homage to one of the most respected names in science fiction. By her own admission, author Rose LaCroix has set herself some ambitious goals with this novel. Has she bitten off more than she can chew?

Exploring Abandoned Places

Published by Watts Martin

Abandoned Places Edited by Tarl “Voice” Hoch Cover Art by Kappy Rayne Interior Art by Silent Ravyn 346 pp., $19.95 (ebook, $9.95) FurPlanet Productions, November 2014 Tarl Hoch’s Abandoned Places isn’t the first furry horror-themed anthology,1 but the genre includes relatively unmined territory for anthropomorphic fiction. More intriguingly, many of the voices presented here are relatively new to the scene, or at least to the anthology circuit. Hoch himself may be best known in the fandom as one of the co-hosts of the Fangs and Fonts podcast. Authors include novelists Ryan Campbell, James L. Steele and Ben Goodridge, as well as a few authors known more for explicit work, like Rechan and Kandrel.

Five Fortunes, an anthology of novellas

Published by Dronon

Five Fortunes Edited by Fred Patten Cover Art by Terrie Smith 415 pp., $19.95 FurPlanet Productions, January 2014 This anthology is a collection of five furry novellas, each about 80 pages long. The theme? All the main characters are taking steps forward to choose and shape their own futures. I’ve read work by all of the contributing authors before, but for most of them it’s been a while, so I was curious to see what their recent output would be like.

Is What Happens Next the right question?

Published by Watts Martin

What Happens Next: An anthology of sequels Edited by Fred Patten Cover Art by Sara Miles 424 pp., $19.95 FurPlanet Productions, July 2013 Other than annual awards collections, mainstream fantasy and science fiction anthologies have all but vanished. Furrydom, though, has an infatuation with them. We pump out several a year, nearly always of original fiction and nearly always themed: cyberpunk, Halloween, science fiction, gay erotica featuring farmboy foxes. Whether readers share this enthusiasm for anthologies with writers, though, seems murkier. In What Happens Next, an anthology from 2013, each story connects to a published story from furry’s past. At first blush there’s a logic to this. What sells most consistently in genre fiction has long been the serial, from E.E. Doc Smith’s Lensman series through Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. Kyell Gold‘s popularity is in no small part due to the Argaea and Dev & Lee series. Yet the chances are slim that a reader who isn’t deeply invested in stories produced by furrydom over the last quarter-century will know all or even most of …

Deconstructing his own creation: Nathan Cowan’s Technofox

Published by H. "Dark End" Townsend

Technofox Novel by Nathan Cowan Self-published on Fur Affinity Warning: Explicit (NSFW links) Nathan Cowan has written four novels and two short stories about the adventures of the Foxforce Four, an all-female, all-vulpine paramilitary team consisting of the leader, Firefox; the computer-whiz, Technofox; the soldier, Silverfox; and the spy, Shadowfox. On the surface, the Foxforce stories are classic pulp action tales—with liberal doses of erotica sprinkled in. But this first impression quickly gives way to a surprisingly deep saga, with ethical ponderings on the relation between creator and creation and an imaginative, biopunk setting created with a scientist’s attention to detail.