Tag: review

Review – Fritz Leiber Short Stories

N.T. Kova

I listened to three short stories by Fritz Leiber, a prolific speculative fiction writer in the mid to late 20th century. The stories themselves are alright. Perhaps, I didn’t like them as much because they are dated, perhaps because of the narrator that I found so annoying (he was actually doing a robot voice), I’m not really sure. This was another case that I’m sure I would have enjoyed the stories more if I had read them rather than listened. I did get the recordings for free from Librivox, who record public domain works. I do want to say something…

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Review – Vorkosigan Saga

N.T. Kova

I’ve read the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold over 12 years ago and have recommended it to all my friends, some of whom took me up on it and loved it as well. This series is actually what got me back into reading after a long dry spell, where I would maybe read a book a year for school, maybe. What’s even more remarkable is that I read them in Russian. My reading speed in Russian was abhorrent, in the start of the series I think I read about 15 pages an hour, but the books were interesting enough…

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Review – Play to Live

N.T. Kova

Play to Live is the first book in a series called AlterWorld and I’d recommend you read it! It is a fun adventure full of high stakes and riveting challenges. The series is seven books long and a page turner throughout. I listened to these books in audio format and was entertained for multiple weeks of commutes and household chores. Not going to lie, I’ve even started to do more chores in order to continue listening to this book.  The combination of the writing style, the humour, and the exciting world keeps you engaged and engrossed. Again, Read it! The…

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Review – Frankenstein

N.T. Kova

First thing I want to say about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is that the actual book is very different than what’s in the pop culture ethos. Yes, there are the little things like, Frankenstein isn’t the monster, he is the guy who created the monster and no, he wasn’t a doctor. But the differences are actually a lot more interesting and make the book a worthy read. Despite all of the adaptations in pop culture of this book, the original story is often lost. The story is written from the perspective of a character that is nowhere to be found in…

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Roadside Picnic – Review

N.T. Kova

Right away – Read it! This is a sci-fi classic. Sure, it is Russian sci-fi classic, but I’d say it’s on the level of Arthur C. Clarke and others. Disclaimer, I read this in Russian, but the tidbits of translations I’ve seen seem to be good. There might be a few cultural references that will be hard to understand, but the book is still fantastic without them. The title of the book, Roadside Picnic, is a fantastic analogue for an alien visit that is almost nonexistent in sci-fi: aliens either want to kill us or to make friends. I don’t…

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The Hound – Review

N.T. Kova

H.P. Lovecraft’s The Hound is a short story written as a last confession and suicide note, a common form for Lovecraft’s writings. I actually never read Lovecraft before this and was truly impressed with the language. I am someone who tends to remember the story or the characters and pay little attention to the style or word choice, but Lovecraft is a notable exception. The language is part of the story as much as the characters or the events. It sets the mood and tells us about the author of the confession. The word choice also underlines the other-worldliness of…

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Brother Book Review

N.T. Kova

So this one is a weird one. It is not sci-fi, it is good old, regular, normal fiction.  I read it for a writing course I took. Personally, I thought it was meh. The story is about an immigrant family in Toronto and their grief. I think part of the reason I didn’t like it is that it isn’t in my genre and I prefer to read about odd situations and imaging what I would do in them.  As an immigrant myself, I can imagine myself well in the situation described in Brother and there is nothing overly exciting about…

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Childhood’s End – Book Review

N.T. Kova

What can I say? This is a classic – read it! Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke is a fantastic tale of alien contact with earth. It explores the consequences of such contact with a mindful and engaging narrative. There are three sections to the book, each with its own mystery and its own characters. This approach allows the author to explore the impacts of an alien contact through a wide lens and keeps the reader engrossed in the world. One benefit of Clarke’s work is that it is 237 pages. It doesn’t waste the reader’s time with exposition or…

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The Big Book of Science Fiction Review

N.T. Kova

The Big Book of Science Fiction is an anthology of a century’s worth of sci-fi short stories. It is a large collection with 1216 pages! Before each short story, there is a short biography of the author, which sometimes helps frame the story you’re about to read. Considering that some of the stories were written in the early 1900’s, the framing helps explain why there are two moons on mars, for example. However, sometimes the biography is not very interesting. Too often there is a long list of the author’s publications, which doesn’t add much to the story ahead. So,…

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