The Death I Gave Him has a great hook and, like a cyborg Agatha Christie, Em X Liu presents a sombre Sci Fi STEM mystery. Dare I say … STEMpunk?
Murder Mystery
The Diamond Device (Accidental Capers, 1) by M. H. Thaung
This is a review in conjunction with the 2023 Self Published Science Fiction Contest (SPSFC2 for short!) The Diamond Device is one of six semi-finalist that the judging team, Team Escapist, is reviewing as they seek a finalist to move forward in the competition. Synopsis After diamond power promises to replace steam, an unemployed labourer […]
Review: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older
Synopsis On a remote, gas-wreathed outpost of a human colony on Jupiter, a man goes missing. The enigmatic Investigator Mossa follows his trail to Valdegeld, home to the colony’s erudite university — and Mossa’s former girlfriend, a scholar of Earth’s pre-collapse ecosystems. Pleiti has dedicated her research and her career to aiding the larger effort […]
Review: Wormhole by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown
Synopsis An eighty-year-old cold case murder investigation stretches across light years, and could risk the future of humanity’s new home. Gordon Kemp is a detective working in the cold case department in London. Usually he works on cases closed ten, twenty-five years earlier. Now, however, he has been assigned a murder investigation closed, unsolved, over […]
Review: Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff
Summary: Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder. She tells police that she is a member of a secret organization devoted to fighting evil; her division is called the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons – “Bad Monkeys” for short. This confession earns Jane a trip to the jail’s psychiatric wing, where a […]
Review: Stormblood (Book #1 of The Common) by Jeremy Szal
Synopsis Vakov Fukusawa used to be a Reaper: an elite soldier fighting for Harmony against the brutal, invading Harvester empire. Harmony made him elite by injecting him, and thousands of other Reapers, with the DNA of an extinct alien race to make him stronger, faster, and more aggressive. And it worked. At a cost . […]
Book Tour and Review: Judge Anderson: Shamballa by Alan Grant and Arthur Ranson
Being part of Anderson’s journey through a series of related one-shots was enchanting. Space adventures, the Devil himself, and a mutant gorilla are just some of the things that Shamballa has to offer. And none of them disappoint.
Review: Station Eternity (The Midsolar Murders #1) by Mur Lafferty
Mur Lafferty’s latest novel is marketed as Agatha Christie meets Doctor Who so, as any good Whovian, I didn’t walk towards it, I ran. And I’m very pleased to say it most definitely paid off!