Chaotic Ninja

Been playing catch up with reading and reviewing. I’m 33 books behind schedule. Goodreads said so.  Why should I care about what Goodreads say? You see, I joined the 2015 Reading Challenge and pledged to read 80 books, which translates to 6.66 books per month (I’m glad I’m not superstitious).   Easy peasy, right?  No.  It’s September and I’m still struggling to get halfway through the challenge. I’m still convinced I could do it, but I’m going to need a strategy of some sort.   I realised that I could probably pull this one off by reading all the short stories and novellas on my TBR list. It’s not cheating. Just slightly devious planning. The Memory Man by Helen Smith Two women, memory loss, a dead man, and a psychic. Everything else are fragments. This is a bizarre story that I quite frankly did not get the first time I read it. So I had to read it again. I like to believe I got it the second time around. Or probably not. It’s like the movie...

Reviewing a collection of short stories is always tricky; more so if they are written by different authors. The chance of liking all the stories is slim, though not impossible. There’s probably 2 to 3 remarkable stories and a few mediocre ones, and the rest, forgettable. I believe this one was done right. Nonlocal Science Fiction Issue #1 is a 10-story strong collection that’s perhaps the closest you’ll get to having that “dream” sci-fi short story anthology. It’s evident that it had gone through a stringent selection process. The stories are a wonderful mix of hardcore sci-fi, old-school, offbeat, edgy, and weirdly good speculative fiction. Though my personal favorite is Shoot The Devil by Nicholas Rossis, I enjoyed reading the other stories. It’s one of those collections where the good stories outnumber the not-so-good ones. It’s a fantastic start with a lot of  sci-fi promise.  ★★★ ★  4/5   # In January 2015, I had a conversation ov...

It's race against time as I attempt to read and review all the books I've purchased this year before 2014 ends! TBR pile is down to a very manageable level so book-purchase moratorium is lifted.  For October, the books are about accidental goddesses, warring gods and the mortals caught in between, comet-themed stories, Jazz in the roaring twenties, and a steampunk rat!  Click on thumbnails to read the full review. Available in Amazon The Necklace of Goddess Athena by Effosyni Moschoudi Jazz Baby by Beem Weeks American Goddesses by Gary Henry Steampunk Rat by Madeleine Holly-Rosing Celestial by Katie Hayoz, Jamie Campbell, Sarah Dalton, Zoe Cannon, Susan Fodor, Sutton Shields, Anya Allyn, Ariele Sieling, Marijon Braden, H.S. Stone