Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

Dear Ms. Aguirre:

To say I was eager to get my hands on a copy of Wanderlust would be a complete understatement. I loved Grimspace. In fact, my only real complaint was that I wanted more. I wanted more Jax, more March, and more about how the big revelation regarding the Corporation would affect them both. But of course, those were answers left for another book. Although not quite as good as the first, I found Wanderlust to be a satisfying sequel with the same intriguing characters, and a skillfully constructed world that continues to grow even richer.

Wanderlust begins not long after Grimspace left off. The Farwan Corporation and its vast power over the universe are no more. The Conglomerate- a once useless organization of planetary representatives- has rushed in to conduct investigations and to seize control. Unfortunately for Jax, she soon finds out that she is broke and in need of employment. She also discovers that the Corporation’s research and training program have been shared with all interested organizations, thus destroying their monopoly on inter-planetary travel, and leaving Jax at loose ends. With …

Dear Ms. Meyer,

While I didn’t think it was perfect, I did enjoy your first young adult novel, Twilight. So when my fellow blogger Jia was unable to get too far into The Host, a genre-bending speculative romantic thriller and your first book for adults, I agreed to give it a try. The premise of The Host, that of an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” type story but told from the viewpoint of a body snatching alien, sounded interesting and different to me.

I must admit at the outset of this review that I almost never read books this long (600+ pages), because they can seem more like monumental tasks than like invitations for enjoyment. It took me around 120 pages to get caught up in The Host, and for those 120 I feared that a monumental task was what the book would turn out to be. Happily, The Host eventually revved up, and I enjoyed it more than I expected I would in the beginning.

The Host opens with a scene in which an alien known as Wanderer is inserted into the body of her host, a human woman named Melanie. …

A number of industry insiders highlight young authors that might be tomorrow’s big stars in an article for SF Signal. While the article asks for the top 18 next big genre stars, it seems clear from the answers that the genre is the science fiction / fantasy one and not a broad overview of genre fiction. There are plenty of women named, but I didn’t recognize but a couple of the author’s.

It’s an interesting list and one that could be helpful in expanding the never ending TBR pile.

Via SF Signal

Dear Jane,

I would not describe myself as a science fiction fan-and not because I haven’t tried it. Thanks to my college habit of taking only classes that met Tuesday-Thursday, I’ve read the whole SF canon, everything from Left Hand of Darkness to Snow Crash. And while I didn’t hate it all (Because, really, who could hate Dune?) literature about dystopian feminist/fascist/droid-ruled/war-mongering societies just doesn’t get my blood pumping. And, though I have nothing against space operas in theory, many “composers” seem so besotted with the nifty little worlds they’ve created they forget details like characterization and lucid plots. But last January, in a post about genre labels, you mentioned Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan books as a series often embraced by romance readers. I needed something to read, so I gave them a shot.

Cordelia’s Honor is the first installment in the Vorkosigan series, but it reads like a stand-alone novel. It also reads like one of the best damn books I’ve ever owned. It’s primarily SF, but the relationship thread is very strong and the book ends with a HEA, so it more than …

Science Fiction Writer’s Association Dissolves Anti E Piracy Committee

If you aren’t a member of the SFWA or a regular reader of that community, you might have missed out on an important development that took place over the last week. The SFWA sent out take down notices under the auspices of the DMCA (the act used by the RIAA to target music downloaders) to various sites on the ‘net. Most of the take down notices were improperly executed because the SFWA had not had authorization from the copyright holders to send out the notices.

Cory Doctorow was one of the victims of the notices because he has been a long advocate of giving his work away for free. He had reader email calling him a hypocrite for encouraging the copying of his work on the one hand and ostensibly giving SFWA authority to order a take down of his work on the other. Doctorow called SFWA on this and many other writers and bloggers took up the clarion call against the SFWA’s unauthorized action.

In response (and a knee jerk one at that), the SFWA disbanded the anti epiracy committee. I think we’ll …

Dear Mr Silverberg,

The idea of time travel fascinates me. Imagine being able to go back and see not only the great events in history but the little, ordinary day to day lives of the Average Joe/Jayne. We could clear up some of the Great Historical Mysteries, find out things that had been forgotten in the mists of time, enjoy spending a day (or 30) living among our ancestors. And in the end, head back home to better medical care, air conditioning / central heating and the internet. What’s not to like?

Edward Davis of the Time Service is on a rescue mission. Eighteen months ago, two Service personnel going to Tiberius’s Rome were lost when their Jump Field missed and put them in Thebes around 1390 B.C. Now that the Service has finally calculated their location, Edward, with his background in Egyptology, is to go back 35 and a half C’s to bring them home … if they’re still alive.

I’ve mentioned in reviews of other novellas that I expect an author to make use every word when working in such a short format. You do and yet manage …