SFBook - 20+ Years of Reviews
Providing book reviews of speculative fiction since 1999. Read our story
As a child you read books and imagine that you may be that child who is whisked away on an adventure. Perhaps you will be the chosen one to be taken through a magical wardrobe or told you are a wizard. By the time you are studying for a PhD such flippancy is no longer part of your character, so...
A person brings a piece of themselves with them when they read a book. Your background, beliefs and current situation can all inform the story. There are books where it does not really matter who you are, but some books will hit home harder for those who feel a connection. A Better World by...
I have a soft spot for cyberpunk, the gritty noir feel mixed with high end science fiction. Like many subgenres it can be dismissed as a passing phase, in this case from the 80s, but fans know that there are still exceptional stories out there written today about crying androids or buildings...
Some of the best speculative fiction starts with an idea that is not far removed from the normal, a simple nudge to reality can lead to many places. In the case of J. Michael Straczynski’s The Glass Box, this place is a psychiatric hospital. The reason for being sent there? New government...
old age, like a moth in some fading arras, will gnaw at my memories oversoon, as it gnaws at the memories of all men.
Failed science writer Alex Dolan is just floating along, struggling to find work when multi-billionaire Stanislaw Clayton provides a surprising, well-paid offer out of the blue. He wants Alex to write a book about the world's first privately funded high-energy physics facility - the...
Like many science fiction fans, I have been swept away by the recent influx of Chinese writers that have been translated. Many of these writers are only new to us but have established careers back in China. The most prominent is the Hugo Award winning Cixin Liu. I have enjoyed the style...
As Star Wars fans we take the lore for granted. We know our Wookie from our Ewok, but to the casual person they are just two different types of furry alien. Take a step back and it is a complex universe, full of planets and species. It was tricky enough with just the three films, but six films...
When I finally get around to building that time machine, I made a note not to visit 14th century Europe. The continent was a hodgepodge of wars and battles. Even during times of peace you could still stumble across the wrong village, and they would kill you for your shoes. Not a century for...
When you enter midlife, you must watch out that you do not get lost in the past. Past glories that may have been, lovers that were or could have been. There is a reason that some people drift into a crisis, seeing the grass could have been greener had they picked a different path. When you are...
I find it amazing how easy it is to miss things that are right on your doorstep. I grabbed this book online (not by choice, this was before the shops had re-opened) because I was after some easy reading. I often find good urban fantasy easy and immersive. It was only after actually picking the...
The world will not die with a bang, but with a whimper. Similarly, it won’t be the robots that uprise and destroy humans, but our own incompetence when it comes to programming. Build and programme things correctly and everything should be fine, but this is modern life and doing things...
The horror genre has taught me how to deal with events that happened in my childhood. If you and a bunch of friends accidently run over a homeless person or set fire to a witch, the best thing is just to admit it without delay and take your lumps. You see, no matter how many years pass, they...
It cannot be easy to talk to the dead. Equally, foreshadowing the future or sending demons back into the abyss are not simple tasks. All are tricky and all are specialties that need experience, concentration, and skill. Even with the right environment and correct mindset it may not be enough,...
I am a massive fan of historic fiction; it is a fantastic way of bringing the past to life. It depends on the author how heavily they lean on the historic part or the fiction part. Some books are thinly disguised pseudo fantasy held together by a whisper of historic accuracy, while others read...
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
I imagine there is a dial that an author has when they are writing their book, it spans the gamut of subtle to outrageous. Where do you decide to place your story? Should you keep it lowkey, writing about a world like our own, but with a small tweak? Or do you embrace all that science fiction...
I love to read books; they transport me to unfamiliar places. I will go there even if these unfamiliar places are dangerous like the Hollyhock Asylum found in Chris Panatier’s The Redemption of Morgan Bright. A story can transport you, as can characters, but sometimes the structure of a...
Comparing a detective series to Sherlock Holmes is not always helpful as that is such an iconic character who has gone off to be in a thousand different spin offs, but on occasion it is apropos. If a series is about a super intelligent detective with a penchant for opium who works with a...
What makes a good noir story? Is it the setting, the characters, a murder? All these things, but also none of them. I have read many ‘classic’ noir stories about a grizzled PI investigating a femme fatale set some time in the 40/50s, but I have also read them set in alternative...
Coming-of-age stories are perennial favorites because most of us get the chance to come-of-age at some point. You may know a few immature adults, but when it comes down to it, they are not walking around in short trousers and attending school. The reason that we do not all write about our own...
I love fantasy, from the low to the high, but I love it even more when it is tackled in an interesting way. The Last Phi Hunter by Salinee Goldenberg has all the elements of High Fantasy, packed with more magic than a Paul Daniels Appreciation Society AGM, but this is not a book of wizards and...
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SFBook.com is one of the oldest book review sites on the internet, founded back in 1999 in an age before phones became smart and when the leading figure of the free world was respected and even occasionally admired. A non profit site primarily aimed at the Science fiction, fantasy and horror genres (although we do have a growing list of general fiction). We strive to feature only the very best in Science fiction, fantasy, horror and speculative novels. We like to think we write personal, unique and constructive reviews.
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Reviews are provided by a team of regular and guest reviewers from around the world, mostly based in the USA and the UK. These include Ant - the site editor, Allen Stroud - chair of the BSFA and Sam Tyler, reviewer extraordinaire. We try our very best to prevent giving away any spoilers so that the reading experience remains as fresh as possible. Where spoilers are mentioned, we do our best to let you know in advance. We firmly believe that life is too short to struggle through a book you are not enjoying so often the reviews you see will be the books we've made it through to the end. However if you want to know about a book not listed, please feel free to get in touch.
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