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Science Fiction for January 2025

by Henry L Lazarus

I started this column of Science Fiction and Fantasy reviews three decades ago. They were printed in a local paper whose owner and editor died from Covid. Since then it’s been on my website http://www.henrylazarus.com/sf.htm. I designed it to preview books coming out the following month, all of which I had read from review copies. I only include books I like. There's enough description for the column reader to pre-order books they might find interesting
The Laundry is a british intelligence agency created to fight Lovecraftian monsters. They picked up Derek Reilly, A Conventional Boy (hard from Tordotcom)  in 1984 because of his notes about Dungeons and Dragons and kept him  at Camp Sunshine because he had unused magical ability. As a trusty with postal privileges he had created a small mail D&D game available only by mail. According to Charles Stross, in 2010 he escaped to go to a gaming convention. Unfortunately some gamers had gotten in contact with a very real goddess. They turn the hotel into a very real D&D game and only Derek can stop them.  There’s also two short stories  from the  Laundry Files series and I was really glad to get a new addition to the series.

Fred Van Lente pulls off a difficult feat of taking a comic character and creating an exciting tale in prose. Bloodshot(hard from Blackstone Publishing, Inc), who apparently had his own movie once, is a nanotech powered super soldier who can easily recover from wounds. This time he is sixteen and has amnesia when he wakes up after a battle. He is found by Kalea, a girl with powerful mental abilities in a world where many teens have x-men type abilities. He had been working for Project Rising Spirit capturing powered teens, and now they are hunting him. I loved the twists in this tale and the action is non-stop. I would love sequels. 

Every millennium a goddess is reborn, but her evil twin can also appear, wrecking the world. Suraya Saab doesn’t know she is The Starlight Heir (paper from Avon). She is a blacksmith specializing in magical weapons who is working on a knife that can cut through anything. Then she gets an invitation to a ball that she thinks is a joke. The new king is looking for a bride, and for a lark she decides to taste the decadence and luxury of the palace. At first everything is as she expected with dozens of girls in attendance. There’s even a cute Bastard prince to flirt with. At the first ball, girls who can’t answer a riddle are sent to a dungeon, and then they are all thrown into a gladiatorial pit to fight a monster, that’s when her powers appear. The king and his mother have been looking for her to marry her and cut out her heart so he can become the evil god.  Of course she has to escape and learn to use her powers. This easily could have been a paint-by-numbers tale, but Amalie Howard makes it exciting and interesting. Recommended.

Annabel Campbell starts a tale of a city of glass built by powerful mages. Crisis has come to Amoria as mages and non-mages are in conflict, Naila can see magic, but can’t connect to it, trapping her in the Academy where fellow mages think her as hollow as non-mages.  Haelius Akana, the most powerful mage, makes it his business to help her, but access to her huge powers requires a special stone Haelius stole from city archives. Naila becomes The Outcast Mage (paper from Orbit) as she flees from the city and across the desert surrounding the city. Unfortunately there are things like dragons the Academy never taught her and she has to master not only her powers, but also come to understand her purpose. I look forward to continuing the tale. 

Lyra Selene continues the tale based loosely on Swan Lake. A Feather So Black (paper) ended with Fia killing herself to save her new husband Irian, only to be reborn with a new version of one of the four magical treasures that sustain the fae lands. The only way to restore the other two treasures is to travel to the Silver Isle. Its King, Gavida had forged the original  treasures and Irian, an adopted son of the king, hoped his father would forge replacements. Unfortunately there’s a tournament filled with death that has to be won, another son of the king, Wayland, kept in chains to control his magic, and a deep secret hidden under the island. It doesn’t help that the newlyweds are fighting. Will they win A Crown So Silver (paper from Orbit) or will Fia’s ex-boyfriend Prince Rogan and his new wife, the princess Fia rescued in the first tale, Eala who wants control of the Fae gates. There’s a third part coming to this romantic fantasy and I’m curious how the full tale will end. 

Paige Andrews and Bryon Cahill continue their tale of bookstore owner Angie Daly who discovered the fae in her city of Portsmead and with a magic sword and a warrior form kills the evil warlock Mordeth. Now the search for a magical pen over the holiday season sends her into a A Forty Something Frenzy (paper from Sterling & Stone) as her mother comes out of hiding, and may have been the one who stole the pen. There’s her twin kids, one of whom keeps changing majors at college, and the other won’t look for a job. Her husband’s got involved with the town’s bicentennial and she may be possessed. This is a giggle, I couldn't stop grinning as I read it. 

Admiral Henry Wong and Ambassador Sylvia Todorovich and their United Planets Alliance Expeditionary Fleet have discovered that the enigma’s they are fighting are run by a mad AI and it will take the help of their new allies, the Terzan, and the Londu, and surprising allies to find the system holding the renegade AI and destroy it. It’s the crew of Raven's Hope (ebook fromFaolan's Pen Publishing Inc.)  that must command multiple fleets against impossible odds. Glynn Stewart is great at spacewar tales and this final to the Peacekeepers of Sol is a gripping fun read. 

I’ve been having fun rereading the ten year anniversary editions of Glynn Stewart’s Starship’s Mage series. Damien Montgomery as the Voice of Mars( ebook from Faolan's Pen Publishing) comes to his home planet because of reports of piracy by the ships it had built to attack pirates. Two systems are cooperating to build things  in a third system, and each is accusing the other of attacks. As a new Hand of Mars, Damien has the authority to stop the system governors from attacking each other, but that doesn’t mean they listen to him. It doesn’t help that the head of the anti-piracy fleet is an old girl-friend. The bad guys are, of course, trying to start a war, and make numerous attempts on his life. I always enjoy this series which is up to sixteen books. 

Lois McMaster Bujold has a new  warm and wonderful tale of Penric & Desdemona adopting a Demon Daughter (hard from Spectrum Literary Agency, Inc.).Otta, the six-year-old daughter of a ship’s captain picks up a demon spirit accidently and is thrown into the sea because of the fires she sets. Pendric is called to help when she washes ashore and has to train her enough to stop burning everything around her. Wonderful series. 

Lately Amazon has been selling ebook series for a buck.

Steve Higgs started his fun series about humans with magic and magical creatures exiled to The Realm of False Gods (ebook) by a death curse in 2020. It took him eleven books to finish the series in 2023. The curse is breaking down allowing human magic and for the demons and angels, who the curse had made immortal, to visit Earth. Otto Schneider is a private detective who uses his magical abilities to locate missing people. A kidnapped girl leads him to the realm and eventually, in fighting the demons, strengthens his abilities. Anastasia Aaronson, a veteran crippled by a landmine, soon gets into the fight by hunting for magical armor. Others, like three teenage sisters, join in until the curse breaks and the demons are thrown to Earth and use their magic to conquer Earth. This is a very exciting series, often very intense as Steve Higgs likes to put his characters into impossible situations and have them work out how to rescue themselves. I really enjoyed the series and am looking for other books from this author. 

Hank Davis and Jamie Ibson have collected a Depth Charge (trade from Baen) of  SF tales about the ocean. 

Larry Correia and  John Ringo’s Monster Hunter Memoirs: Saints is out in paper from Baen as is John Ringo and Lydia Sherrer’s virtual reality tale, Through the Storm. 

Henry Lazarus is a retired Dentist and the author of A Cycle of Gods and Unnaturally Female.