Review – Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation edited by Ken Liu

Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation
By: edited by Ken Liu
Translator: Ken Liu; Carmen Yiling Yan
Release Date: February 19, 2019
Publisher: Tor Books
Series: Chinese Science Fiction in Translation #2
Rating:


Following 2016’s Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation Ken Liu has translated and compiled a second volume titled Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation. Short stories, novellas, and essays comprise the volume, all of them translated from the original Chinese into English. Author and translator of such books as Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem translates each story beautifully. Also translating this volume is Carmen Yiling Yan.

Review – My Hero Academia: Smash!!, Vol. 1 by Hirofumi Neda and Kohei Horikoshi

My Hero Academia: Smash!!, Vol. 1
By: Hirofumi Neda (story), Kohei Horikoshi (original concept)
Illustrator: Hiofumi Neda (art); Kohei Horikoshi (original concept); John Hunt (touch-up and lettering); Julian [JR] Robinson (designer)
Translator: Caleb Cook
Release Date: August 6, 2019
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
Series: My Hero Academia: Smash!! #1
Received From: Publisher
(All reviews are our own, honest opinions.)
Rating:


The lastest spinoff of hit manga and anime My Hero Academia to be translated into English by Caleb Cook has finally hit shelves. My Hero Academia: Smash!!, Vol. 1 is created by Hirofumi Neda and Kohei Horikoshi. Unlike the series proper or other spinoff, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes by Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court, this manga is a humorous four panel adaptation. Attention is divided between humorous takes on major story beats and some of the quieter moments in between.

Review – The Buying of Lot 37 and Who’s a Good Boy by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

The Buying of Lot 37 & Who's a Good Boy
By: Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor
Illustrator: Jessica Hayworth
Release Date: May 14, 2019
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Series: Welcome To Night Vale
Rating:


Long running podcast Welcome to Night Vale, is a fictional radio show in a small southwestern desert town where every conspiracy theory is true, time doesn’t work properly, and has recently released two more books. The Buying of Lot 37 and Who’s a Good Boy by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor encapsulate season three and season four of the podcast respectively.

Blog Tour – The Record Keeper by Agnes Gomillion

The Record Keeper
By: Agnes Gomillion
Release Date: June 18, 2019
Publisher: Titan Books
Received From: Publisher
(All reviews are our own, honest opinions.)
Rating:


Agnes Gomillion’s debut novel The Record Keeper is a book that examines race relations both past and present in a near-future dystopian North America. The third world war began with a computer virus that decimated technology and ended with the world cold and empty, the people heavily divided. Now, the Kongo people are tasked with cultivating crops for the rest of humanity, or what is left of it.

Review – The Emperor’s Railroad by Guy Haley

The Emperor's Railroad
By: Guy Haley
Release Date: April 19, 2016
Publisher: Tor.com
Series: Dreaming Cities #1
Rating:


A thousand years ago America as we know it was consumed by war and a plague that turned humans into zombie-like creatures decimated the population in The Emperor’s Railroad by Guy Haley, the first book in the Dreaming Cities series.

Review – The Magpie Lord by K. J. Charles

The Magpie Lord
By: K.J. Charles
Release Date: September 3, 2013
Publisher: Samhain
Series: A Charm of Magpies #1
Rating:


The Magpie Lord by K.J. Charles is the first book in the A Charm of Magpie series. This is a Victorian Gothic Horror novel filled with magic, mystery, and love. Lucien Vaudrey returns from his exile in China to his family estates in England as the new Lord after the deaths of his father and brother. Along with the title and land, Lucien gains the enemies of his father and brother. Someone is trying to kill him, and Stephen Day, local magician, is called in for assistance. Stephen soon finds himself falling for the fascinating earl, but there’s no time for that. Not with a foreboding sense of evil in the old mansion, a ghost, and unknown enemies trying to kill them – both of them.

#MangaMonday Review – My Hero Academia, Vol. 18 by Kohei Horikoshi

My Hero Academia, Vol. 18
By: Kohei Horikoshi
Illustrator: Kohei Horikoshi
Translator: Caleb Cook
Release Date: April 2, 2019
Publisher: VIZ Media, LLC
Series: My Hero Academia
Received From: Publisher
(All reviews are our own, honest opinions.)
Rating:


The seventeenth volume in this widely beloved shonen series draws this last arc to a close and is certain to hit an emotional note with readers. My Hero Academia, Vol. 18 by Kohei Horikoshi and translated from the Japanese by Caleb Cook is another fantastic installment in the series.

Review – The Chancellor and the Citadel by Maria Capelle Frantz

The Chancellor and the Citadel
By: Maria Capelle Frantz
Illustrator: Maria Capelle Frantz
Release Date: January 29, 2019
Publisher: Iron Circus Comics
Received From: Publisher
(All reviews are our own, honest opinions.)
Rating:


The Chancellor and the Citadel is the first graphic novel by cartoonist Maria Capelle Frantz. The story centers on the Chancellor, a mysterious person with magical powers. They protect the citadel from the forces that lay beyond. When an angry mob forms outside, what can she do? Some say that she was the one who led the world to destruction in the first place. What does that mean for the one place of safety and hope left.