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A Devil Like You

To Reign In Hell

By Steven Brust 

11 Feb, 2025

Big Hair, Big Guns!

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Steven Brust’s 1984 To Reign in Hell is a stand-alone fantasy novel set in the Christian shared universe.

Existence is a sea of chaos, in which anything might appear… briefly, before dissolving. When the firstborn angels — Yaweh, Satan, Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Leviathan and Belial — manifested, they possessed a will to live and the power to fend off the chaos.

Heaven was their refuge, an artificial realm of stable laws safe from corrosive chaos. However, Heaven was flawed.


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Sweet Like Justice

Murder and Magic  (Lord Darcy, volume 2)

By Randall Garrett 

9 Feb, 2025

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

15 comments

1979’s Murder and Magic collects four of Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy alternate-universe fantasy mysteries.

As a surprising number of characters find cause to ponder, Richard the Lionhearted’s change of heart following his near-death on the battlefield led to eight centuries of success for the Plantagenets. Another consequence was the codification of magic, which led to a powerful Angevin Empire spanning France and England, a New World dominated by the Angevins, and a Europe torn between the noble Angevins and the expansionistic Poles.

Humans of our technological, scientific 1964, as well as humans in Garrett’s feudal, magical 1964, display all of the usual human vices. When these lead to murder, it is the task of investigators like Lord Darcy to uncover the villains. And perhaps to see justice done.


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In the Woodshed

Cold Comfort Farm

By John Schlesinger & Malcolm Bradbury 

6 Feb, 2025

Special Requests

5 comments

John Schlesinger and Malcolm Bradbury’s 1995 Cold Comfort Farm is a period-piece movie, a comedy based on the Stella Gibbons’ 1932 novel of the same title. Cold Comfort Farm features many actors now stars, Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Ian McKellen, and Rufus Sewell among them. I suspect that many weren’t as well known in 1995 as they are now.

Orphaned, having inherited only enough £ for a meager allowance, Flora Poste decides not to look for job and puts off marrying her eminently suitable suitor, Charles. Instead, she seeks out relatives off whom she can sponge. The least unpromising kin are the Starkadders, who live in Howling, in far-off Sussex. Off to Sussex Flora goes.


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No Butter In Hell

Cold Comfort Farm  (Cold Comfort Farm, volume 1)

By Stella Gibbons 

6 Feb, 2025

Special Requests

9 comments

Stella Gibbons’ 1932 Cold Comfort Farm is a comic science fiction (if only just) novel. It is the first of Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm works.

Orphaned shortly after the Anglo-Nicaraguan War of 1946, young Flora Poste discovers that her negligent parents have left her a meager inheritance of just one hundred pounds per year1. Having little taste for work, Flora has but one option: find a suitable relative off whom to sponge.

Alas, Flora’s selection of relatives is dismal. In the end, she settles for the Starkadders, who live on Cold Comfort Farm, in darkest Sussex, not far from Howling. Not the most promising of destinations. Flora can only hope there isn’t a Seth or a Reuben Starkadder.

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Running From The Demons

Daemons of the Shadow Realm, volume 4

By Hiromu Arakawa 

5 Feb, 2025

Translation

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2023’s Daemons of the Shadow Realm, Volume 4 is the fourth tankōbon in Hiromu Arakawa’s ongoing modern fantasy manga series, Yomi no Tsugai in the original Japanese, Daemons has been serialized in Monthly Shōnen Gangan magazine since December 2021. Volume 4 in English translation was released in 2024.

What should have been a magically shielded refuge where Yuru can contemplate recent revelations1 turns out to be anything but.

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Wide-Eyed Warrior

Kutath  (Faded Sun, volume 3)

By C J Cherryh 

4 Feb, 2025

Meetpoint

8 comments

1979’s Kutath is the third and final volume in C. J. Cherryh’s Faded Sun trilogy.

The mri are humanoid alien mercenaries who were, until recently, in the employ of the alien regul. Following the end of the war with humans, the regul decided to exterminate the mri to prevent them from working for the humans. This almost succeeded.

The last two mri on Kesrith (priest Melein and warrior Niun) fled in the company of human soldier Sten Duncan. Pursued by a regul and human fleet, the trio traced a chain of dead planets leading back to the true mri home world, Kutath.

Why did the mercenary mri leave a wake of dead worlds? And is Kutath about to join them?

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Tis No Small Thing To Serve A King

Lifeboat Earth  (Kyyra, volume 2)

By Stanley Schmidt 

2 Feb, 2025

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

5 comments

1978’s Lifeboat Earth is the second volume in Stanley Schmidt’s Kyyra series. Whereas the first volume was a novel, Lifeboat Earth is a fix-up, composed primarily of novelettes.

With the wavefront from the Milky Way’s exploding core only eighteen years from Earth, the only way out is to equip Earth with a propulsion system provided by the alien Kyyra and flee for the Andromeda Galaxy.

The plans exist! The technology exists! The only impediment is the inefficient governments running the Earth. By the time the dithering officials make a decision, the Earth will be dead.

Clearly the only reasonable solution is for Henry Clark, the World Science Foundation’s Lieutenant Commissioner of Grants, to appoint himself Earth’s supreme autocrat.

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Cause You’re a Criminal

Hammajang Luck

By Makana Yamamoto 

31 Jan, 2025

Doing the WFC's Homework

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Makana Yamamoto’s 2025 Hammajang Luck is a (thus far1) stand-alone science fiction heist novel2.

Former aspiring criminal Edie has spent eight long years in Kepler System Penitentiary contemplating what happens when you trust the wrong person. Unexpectedly paroled, Edie soon discovers that time invested considering misplaced trust was time well-spent… but perhaps not as useful as one might expect in charting Edie’s post-prison life.

Angel and Edie used to be as close as siblings, but when Angel had to choose between prison time or flipping on Edie, Angel chose to betray Edie. That makes Angel’s current offer of a job a bold choice on Angel’s part.

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Rewrite Your History

The Dawn of Everything

By David Graeber & David Wengrow 

30 Jan, 2025

Miscellaneous Reviews

6 comments

David Graeber and David Wengrow’s 2021’s The Dawn of Everything is, as its subtitle proclaims, a non-fiction book presenting A New History of Humanity. Although really, what they offer is a new interpretation of history. Which would not be as snappy a subtitle.

There is a standard version of the progression of technology and civilization that many of us learned in school: a long uncharted stone age of wandering tribes leading simple, boring, uniform lives, the domestication of plants and animals, the rise of towns and cities, the creation of centralized states, and finally after some fuss, Canada. Whether or not all that was good is open to debate, but there is a certain degree of inevitability about it all. A leads to B leads to C and so on, each stage bringing additional complexity and challenges.

It would be disturbing if the facts did not to line up nicely with the model. Graeber and Wengrow suggest that they don’t.

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