The SF Site: Featured Reviews Archive

The reviews are sorted alphabetically by authors' last name -- one or more pages for each letter (plus one for Mc). All but some recent reviews are listed here. Links to those reviews appear on the Recent Feature Review Page.

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Bone Song by John Meaney
reviewed by Jakob Schmidt
When Lieutenant Donal Riordan is assigned to protect opera diva Maria da Livnova, he already knows that the plot to assassinate her is probably part of a conspiracy that involves the highest circles of the city of Tristopolis. What he doesn't know is that he is a pawn in the game. The conspirators seem to be after the corpses of artists because in Tristopolis, death is power. The city runs on necroflux, an energy derived from the ground bones of the dead, in which all the memories of their owners's life are inscribed...

To Hold Infinity by John Meaney
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
Set on Fulgar, a planet on the edge, both as a frontier and in its use of technology, the story begins with the disappearance of Tetsuo, a young man from Earth trying to build his own life on Fulgar. When his mother arrives for a visit, the story is set up as a tale of a mother looking for her estranged son. That changes when we meet Rafael, a Luculentus -- enhanced humans who have undergone surgery as children to augment their natural abilities, granting modes of thought and means of communication beyond that of humans -- and a serial killer.

To Hold Infinity by John Meaney
reviewed by Rich Horton
On a partly terraformed colony world, Fulgar, a very high tech society has developed. The key to the society is an elite group called Luculenti, people who have been technologically enhanced by the addition of plexcores, artificial brains, in a sense. One of the leading Luculenti is Rafael Garcia de la Vega, but he is a psychopath, who has exploited some new technology to become a sort of mind vampire, capable of sucking the memories and personality of other Luculenti into his own illegally expanded set of plexcores.

Paradox by John Meaney
reviewed by Victoria Strauss
The populace lives underground, in vast cavern complexes whose layers reflect (and effect) social position: the nobles in the Primum Stratum, the underclasses in the bottom strata, with many shades and nuances in between. This rigidly classist culture is dominated by the Oracles, men and women who are able to cast their consciousness up and down the time stream and thus unerringly predict the future. Despite its stagnant and archaic social structure, Nulapeiron's is an extremely advanced society, with technology that borders on the magical.

Paradox by John Meaney
reviewed by John Berlyne
Set on Nulapeiron, a world long-colonized by humanity, it is one where society is stratified, both physically and politically. In the lower levels, life is hard despite the vast organic technologies that shape this world. Young Tom Corcorigan is minding his own business when a stranger hands him an odd talisman. The next day, he sees the same stranger brutally killed by the local militia. With her distinctive obsidian eyes, he realizes she must be a pilot -- previously thought to exist only in folklore and legend.

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