Sunny's bookshelf
Sunny's bookshelf photo by Judy Solomon

Online book reviews since 2011, the very best in reviewing – connecting good readers with equally good writers

Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Brandy Burgess

The God of  Endings

Jacqueline Hollands’s debut novel, The God of  Endings, reveals the loneliness of the life of an unwilling vampire. Jacqueline Holland’s debut novel, The God of Endings, follows

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Billy Blaster and the Robot Army from Outer Space
Children's graphic novels
Sunny Solomon

Billy Blaster

BILLY BLASTER AND THE ROBOT ARMY FROM OUTER SPACE – not necessarily a graphic novel only for the younger reader. No matter how old you

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The Midnight Library
Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Sunny Solomon

The Midnight Library

Matt Haig’s novel, The Midnight Library, describes the twenty-seven hours it takes Nora Seed to choose life or death. The Midnight Library, Chapter One begins, “Nineteen

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The Clockwork Crow
British Authors
Sunny Solomon

The Clockwork Crow

The Clockwork Crow, first in a new series by Catherine Fisher. I feel on pretty sure ground when reviewing children’s picture books, but lacking a

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The Underground Railroad
African American Writers
Sunny Solomon

The Underground Railroad

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD Is it true that Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad “traces the terrible wounds of slavery,” as Michael Schaub wrote

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Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Ann Ronald

Red Clocks

RED CLOCKS Leni Zumas designed Red Clocks as a classical romance, much like Miquel del Cervantes’ Don Quixote or Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queen. In

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Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Ann Ronald

Once Upon a River

ONCE UPON A RIVER When I turned the final page of Diane Setterfield’s novel, Once Upon a River, I closed the book and sat staring

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Books on books
Ann Ronald

The Bookseller

THE BOOKSELLER Ordinarily, I distrust a narrative strategy such as the one Cynthia Swanson employs for her novel, The Bookseller. The protagonist, co-owner of a

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Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Ann Ronald

Valley of the Moon

VALLEY OF THE MOON When I was a girl, perhaps ten years old, my parents treated me to a matinee staging of Brigadoon. I’ve never

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Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Sunny Solomon

Three by Meloy

THREE BY MELOY: THE APOTHECARY – THE APPRENTICES – THE AFTER-ROOM I’m going out on a limb with this review. The three novels, The Apothecary, The

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Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Brandy Burgess

Uprooted

Uprooted Naomi Novik’s novel Uprooted is what fantasy films are made of.  The story follows Agnieszka, who fears that the mysterious wizard known only as

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Books on books
Ann Ronald

Let Me Tell You

Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays and Other Writings Two of Shirley Jackson’s children have selected a miscellany of their mother’s writings that have

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The Imaginary
Children’s early and middle readers
Sunny Solomon

The Imaginary

THE IMAGINARY It’s summer, and summer, for a lot of us, is a time for family visits, especially those families outside our own city or

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Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Dan Erwine

The Best of Connie Willis

With publication of the massive two-volume novel Blackout and All Clear in 2010, Connie Willis was subsequently named Grandmaster of Science Fiction. In the wake of this

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Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Dan Erwine

Neuromancer

It’s been 30 years since the first publication of Neuromancer, the essential cyberpunk novel. A jaundiced response to the 1980’s “morning in America,” cyberpunk is a bastard

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