A desperate flight and dueling dragons for October

Reviewers' Reading Circle discusses Blood Songs in October

The Reviewers' Reading Circle live author-interview event returns as our main programming item this month! 

Author Julia Mandala will join us live (and in costume!) on our new projection screen via FaceTime, to discuss her book Blood Songs, the featured Reviewers' Reading Circle selection for the month, and also to tell us about the new Yard Dog Press imprint, The Fantasy Writers Asylum, of which she is the editor. 

What is Blood Songs about? Rival goddesses Leshan and the dark goddess, Selure, have sent their dragons to battle each other, and Jhett, a young healer with a deadly past, finds herself in the middle of it all. 

At first imprisoned in Leshan’s temple (a place that she’s promised, on pain of death, never to leave), Jhett embarks on a perilous journey across the southern desert to save her former lover, Tarik, when she learns that her actions have endangered him. 

But assassins and warrior-priests pursue her, and she discovers that the stakes are much higher than Tarik’s life alone. Jhett’s choices will determine the battle's outcome–and the fate of her people. 

Blood Songs is available from Yard Dog Press's new imprint, The Fantasy Writers Asylum and Amazon, with a fantastic Kevin Hopkins cover. 

All dues-paid KaCSFFS members are eligible to receive free reviewers' copies of Blood Songs. In return, we strongly encourage all of you to read and review the book. As we noted last month, reviews are an author's life-blood, these days. 

One of the very best ways you can support an author you admire is to write a short review and post it online. 
It helps with rankings, and also makes a book more visible--and it's a real lifeline for indie authors, especially. It's easy, costs you nothing but a little time, and will earn you the author's deep gratitude. For Amazon's guidelines, click here. For GoodReads' guidelines, click here. 

You can post a review of Blood Songs here on Amazon. Post one here for GoodReads, and email here to submit your review to the KaCSFFS Blog. When allowed to do so by the website, you might want to consider using these hashtags: #Fantasy; #TheFantasyWritersAsylum; #speculativefiction; #EpicFantasy; #dragons

Haven't written your reviews for last month's selection yet? 
It's not too late! Don't leave Keith Shaw hanging, after the great interview he gave us! 

Post reviews for either of his books on iPulpFiction's Facebook Page. 

Review The Neworld Papers: The Historian's Tale here on Amazon - here on GoodReads - here on Barnes & Noble - and here on the KaCSFFS Blog.

Review The Neworld Papers: The Warriors' Tale here on Amazon - here on GoodReads - here on Barnes & Noble - and here on the KaCSFFS Blog.

When allowed by the site, you might want to include these hashtags: #sciencefiction #SciFi #SyFy #Dystopia #Utopia #SpeculativeFiction #OtherWorkds #YoungAdult #NewAdult 

IMAGES: Many thanks to Julia Mandala's website for the photo of her, and for the image of the Blood Songs cover. Many thanks to the iPulpFiction website, for the cover images for the two Neworld Papers books, The Historian's Tale and The Warriors' Tale.

The Expanse--a Review by David Sooby

A Review by David Sooby

The Expanse is a new series on the Syfy Channel; Tuesday night at 9 PM (Central Time). Fortunately the channel is re-running the first two episodes frequently, almost daily, so you can easily catch up. Editor’s note: see recent episodes online at the official website’s “Episodes” page.

The Expanse is an adaptation of the popular hard-SF series by James S. A. Corey, the pen name of authors DanielAbraham and Ty Franck. The first novel, Leviathan Wakes, was a finalist for both the Hugo and the Locus awards for Best SF Novel.

The Expanse is based on the bestselling novels of James S. A. Corey.

Steven Strait as series hero Jim Holden

One of my friends said the production is comparable to the reboot of Battlestar Galactica (BG), which in my opinion was the best-written SF ever made for television. I don't agree it's up to that level of quality, altho it is quite good and certainly a cut above most TV offerings. 

The FX are high quality, perhaps comparable to BG or almost that good, but the actors look a lot more like the pretty, nondescript, competent but not exceptional actors which populate most series made for the Syfy channel. 

Thomas Jane as Det. Joe Miller

One thing that stood out about BG was the exceptional level of quality of acting, from actors such as MaryMcDonnell and Edward James Olmos. You won't find anything comparable here, or at least I haven't seen anything outstanding in the first two episodes. In particular, the actor who plays Detective Miller seems too young and too handsome to be playing an experienced, world-weary character. The directing also seems to be merely competent, and not up to the high bar set by BG.

The TV ads for this series compare it to Game of Thrones (GOT). Again... no, it's not that good. And since this is the Syfy channel, sadly we don't get all the soft porn scenes that we look forward to in GOT. The first episode did feature a scene of zero-G sex, but sadly it was at most PG-13.

Florence Faivre as the missing Julie Mao

I have read the first two books in The Expanse series, and so far as I recall, they do seem to be sticking fairly close to the plot. That's good, because it's a great story. I hope they continue that, and don't deviate far from it... as, for example, GOT has done.

On the subject of real science vs. science-made-stupid: So far they seem to be doing pretty well, again by sticking close to the story as written in the book. This is a hard-SF series, a story where the writer pays close attention to scientific accuracy; it's not space opera like Star Trek. I did note in one FX scene they had a sizable, maybe 10-20 ton ice boulder moving in zero G to dock at a space station, and it was moving at something like 20-30 feet per second... perhaps 10 times as fast as would have been safe when approaching a structure where people live, even using heavy equipment to grab it as it came in. Moving that fast made for an exciting visual, but isn't at all realistic. However, that is only a single minor flaw in an otherwise excellent job of showing realistic-appearing scenes of space and spaceships. Not bad at all for two episodes!

Ice-Mining in the Asteroids 

Overall, based on watching the first two episodes, I'll give this a B+. It's very gratifying to once again see, on TV, a well-done SF series that is actually set in space! It's been awhile.

IMAGES: Many thanks to Wheedonopolis for the title image, and to Engadget for the James S. A. Corey cover montage. The three images of cast members in their roles are from the official Syfy Expansewebsite, and the ice-mining image is courtesy of the AlwaysSometimesVillains blog.