All posts tagged: novel

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 …

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?

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.