Tag: science fiction

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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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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Priestess

N.T. Kova

She stepped into the temple’s inner circle, where a seven sided star laid in the marble floor. In her hands, she carried a great bowl filled with five large gems. Tonight was the night between the Sun’s day and the Moon’s day, and this was an offering to the goddess honouring her role and sacrifice in creating this world. First, the priestess placed a red gem into a bowl at one of the short sides of the seven sided star. As soon as she placed the gem, the moonlight, coming in through the glass roof, hit it and fantastical images…

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Fallen World Book Review

N.T. Kova

Ugh… This one is a little difficult to review. The author, Simon Emery, reached out to me through an Indie Database, which contains useful contacts for indie authors (self-published, or published by small indie publishers). He gave me his eBook for free for a review (to be fair the book is like US$2.5). When I started reading the book, Fallen World, I got frustrated. The book needs a line editor! Grammatical issues, word repetitions, pronoun confusion, all of those things made it hard to read and took me right out of the story. I’d often have to track back and…

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Revenger Book Recommendation

N.T. Kova

I’m not going to bury the lead – skip it! Right away, the book starts with lots of new words that have a different meaning in the Revenger’s world. And it would be ok, if it wasn’t ten new words per paragraph leaving me with the feeling that something happened, I’m just not sure what. To note, I consume a lot of science fiction, so the normal sci-fi concepts are not new to me.

The Steppe

N.T. Kova

The wind was in his face, flaying is long dark hair. He saw a speck on the horizon, shining brightly against the raising hot air, and gave a glottal grunt. The horse picked up the pace. As he approached the strange hut, he slowed down to a light trot. Its broken contours and unnatural glow in the Sun made it look like the ancient ruins. He’d seen them himself when he was a child. When he first found it, he followed a falling star so bright it lit the night sky.  He was so close to it when it first…

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