Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Allies by Christie Golden
reviewed by David Maddox
The uneasy alliance Luke Skywalker formed with the mysterious Lost Sith Tribe persists, albeit tenuously, as our heroes continue to track down the dark presence that is driving Jedi across the galaxy insane. But the evil entity that has now become known as Abeloth is ready for the confrontation, and Luke is finding it increasingly disturbing that he may recognize something about this monster.

For the Win by Cory Doctorow
reviewed by D. Douglas Fratz
Cory Doctorow's novel provides an interesting near future tale of a labor revolution that changes the world.  And who are the players in this revolution?  The surprising answer is: players of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, also known as MMOMPGs, that resemble World of Warcraft.  He assembles a worldwide cast of characters to participate in the world-changing events of his novel, from California to China, from India to Indonesia. 

WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
reviewed by Dan Shade
15-year-old Caitlin Decter was born blind. In spite of that, she is a math genius who can surf the net. Caitlin gets her sight back because of a computer chip implanted behind her left eye. At first, all she can see is the web in the form of circles and lines of various colors. Later on, she can see normally due to some reprogramming of the implant. But when she switches off the implant and looks at the World Wide Web, she discovers a consciousness out there.

The Divine Theory of Everything: Book 1, Wanderer by Robert D. Berger
reviewed by Sandra Scholes
Bringing together the theories of science and religion; two topics that have not always got on together, the author ponders on whether man was made as per Darwin's theory or by God. The novel reads like a history of evolution and the history of spirituality from other countries. Certain names like The Priestess and Seth are synonymous with Celtic and Egyptian myth also, and the story can be seen as a fantasy crossed with science fiction.

Play Dead by Ryan Brown
an audiobook review by Jason R. Godbout
There is a saying that "revenge is a dish best served cold" and here that saying is taken to a whole new level. Set in Killington, Texas, a rural town where the residents fear God and love their high school football team -- the Killington Jackrabbits. The story begins with Killington high school's star quarterback, Cole Logan, being brutally attacked in an effort to prevent Cole from playing in the big playoff game against local rivals.

Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth
an audiobook review by Jason R. Godbout
It is common knowledge that the President of the United States is in possession of highly classified information as part of his job. In Christopher Farnsworth's debut novel, one of the president's secrets is a vampire named Nathaniel Cade. Cade is charged with fighting evil and protecting the United States from all sorts of threats, foreign and domestic.

The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu
reviewed by Sarah Trowbridge
High on a hilltop in the city of Edinburgh in 1874, the kindly and eccentric Dr. Madeleine indulges her love for mending people. She serves as a midwife to prostitutes and other desperate women, and houses their babies until she can find adoptive homes for them. On the coldest day in the history of the world, a young woman shows up on Dr. Madeleine's doorstep, brokenhearted and on the brink of giving birth. But when Little Jack emerges, something is terribly wrong: Jack has been born with a frozen heart.

Mortalis, Part 2: The Demon Wars by R.A. Salvatore
an audiobook review by Gil T. Wilson
The Demon Wars Saga continues with Mortalis, the fourth book in the series, which bridges the two trilogies in the saga. In this edition of the series, Honce-the-bear, a country/state in the land of Corona, has just had their Abellican Church fall to the evil of the demon dactyl. The result is a ferocious war with giants, goblins and dwarves. During the reconstruction period the Church works to get their house back in order but the Rosy Plague has entered the land. This plague is untreatable, even by the magic gemstones of the church.

Carnival of Death by L. Ron Hubbard
an audiobook review by Gil T. Wilson
Galaxy Audio takes L. Ron Hubbard's short stories that were published in various aviation, sports and pulp magazines in the mid-1900's and creates a series of "audio pulps." These audiobooks are about two hours in length and contain one or more short stories within a given genre. The production mixes subtle sound effects, original music and an extremely talented cast of voice talent to create a cinematic audio experience that provides the perfect audio escape from reality. This title includes "The Carnival of Death" and "The Death Flyer."

Dog Blood by David Moody
an audiobook review by Gil T. Wilson
In this sequel to Hater, recently infected Danny McCoyne continues the bloody kills to destroy the Unchanged while also looking for his five year-old daughter, Ellis. After escaping from a camp where Haters are destined for slaughter, Danny makes his way back to the city where his wife and daughter could be hiding/surviving. While Haters act as vicious as any zombie from any zombie movie or story, they can think and they don't eat their victims -- well, not always.

The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross
a book review podcast by Ernest Lilley
Besides the obvious and delightful spy-geek-Chuthluian horror cocktail that Charles Stross shakes together in his Laundry series, there's a bit of Stargate to it, what with the openings of gates into otherwhere and heroic types stepping through them. It has been that way since the beginning, when our man from the Laundry, a geek turned applied demonologist and secret agent, stepped through a hole in space to rescue the damsel in distress.

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Seamus Sweeney
A coven of Soviet science-fiction writers are summoned by Stalin to a dacha sometime in 1945 for an act of dark enchantment. The war against Germany is won and, as the atomic bomb is yet to be dropped, Stalin predicts a brief, victorious struggle against the decadent USA. The Soviet Union, however, needs an enemy to keep the engines of permanent global revolution stoked. Thus the Soviet writers are given a task by the dictator -- to create the narrative of an alien invasion that will serve as a global unifying myth.

The Devil's Alphabet by Daryl Gregory
reviewed by Rich Horton
Paxton Martin returns to his East Tennessee hometown, Switchcreek, after over a decade in Chicago. He has been working at various restaurants, but it's clear his life is going nowhere. He's in suspension because of the events that made Switchcreek famous when he was fourteen. A mysterious disease called Transcription Divergence Syndrome struck most of the residents of the town. Many died, and most of the rest were altered.

Wolfsangel by M.D. Lachlan
reviewed by Nathan Brazil
Viking King Athun goes on a raid against an Anglo-Saxon village, but not for the usual rape and pillage that such chaps traditionally enjoy. On this occasion, Athun is acting on a prophecy which told him that the Saxons have stolen a child from the Norse gods. The deal is, if the childless Athun takes the boy and raises him as his heir, the child will lead his people to glory. However, what the King discovers is not one, but two boys.

This Crooked Way by James Enge
reviewed by Dominic Cilli
We begin the story, this second installment in the Ambrose books, with Morlock on the road exploring his new found pseudo-exile by the recently-crowned fledgling emperor. The novel unfolds like a series of vignettes or short stories rather than a straight-forward narration with each section of the novel written from a different character's perspective that Morlock meets along his journey.

News Spotlight -- Genre Books and Media
a column by Sandy Auden
It's sex, stories and rock and roll for author Kevin J. Anderson, ProgRock Records boss Shawn Gordon and all round talented musician, composer and producer Henning Pauly as they talk about the making of the Terra Incognita: The Line In The Sand rock CD and its intimate connections with Anderson's new novel The Map Of All Things.

The Year's Best Science Fiction: by Volume
compiled by Rodger Turner
In 1984, Gardner Dozois gathered together what he thought was the best short science fiction of the previous year. He scrutinized as many of the magazines, collections and anthologies published in 1983 that he could get his hands on and chose those which he felt best represented the science fiction field. Jim Frenkel published it as part of his Bluejay Books line (for three years) and it has been produced every year since then (by St. Martins's Press). Volume 27 has been added to the lists compiled by author, by title and by volume.

New Arrivals
compiled by Neil Walsh
It's a busy time for new books, and this time we're looking at the latest from Stephen Baxter, Holly Black, Dave Duncan, Ed Greenwood, Tom Lloyd, Naomi Novik, Brandon Sanderson, Robert Silverberg, and many others.

Babylon 5.1
TV reviews by Rick Norwood
From time to time Rick wonders what people born after Star Wars think of old science fiction movies. A case can be made for consigning to the dustheap every SF film made before Stanley Kubrick's three blockbusters, Dr. Strangelove in 1964, 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, and A Clockwork Orange in 1971.

Nexus Graphica
a column by Rick Klaw and Mark London Williams
Long a mainstay of comic book publishing, licensed properties comprise a significant portion of the contemporary marketplace. Series and graphic novels based on diverse properties litter store shelves. Rick Klaw recently spoke with three writers who work on licensed properties. Paul Benjamin (Muppet King Arthur), Alan J. Porter (Cars), and Bill Williams (Spike: The Devil You Know) offer some frank, behind-the-scenes commentary on working with licensed properties.

Feed by Mira Grant
reviewed by Michael M Jones
In an attempt to cure cancer and the common cold, scientists accidentally sparked something worse: a virus which turns its victims into mindless, ravening zombies. Twenty years later, the hungry dead are just a fact of life, one to be avoided when possible, dealt with when necessary. It's a world of paranoia and danger, constant blood tests and intense personal security, where human contact is minimalized.

Slan / Slan Hunter by A.E. Van Vogt and Kevin J. Anderson
reviewed by Trent Walters
Jommy Cross has returned! Maybe you didn't realize he'd been missing. A.E. Van Vogt wrote one of the quintessential Golden Age novels in Slan, originally published in 1940. Jommy Cross is the son of the legendary Slan, Peter Cross -- a great man of science and technology. Slans are the next stage of human evolution: telepathy achieved through a pair of golden tendrils.

Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin
reviewed by Dan Shade
The idea of being born with some kind of magical gift is intriguing. However it is never fully explained why only the people in the Uplands have the gifts. People in the Lowlands have not the gifts and consider those in the Uplands to be witches. Gifts can range from the ability to kill with a word, call animals for the hunt with the mind, cure with a touch, sickness to death with a whisper, etc.