DISCLAIMER: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the publishers in return for an honest review. My thanks to Caezik SF & Fantasy for giving me this opportunity.
Robert A. Heinlein, often referred to as ‘the dean of science fiction writers’, died in 1988, so to get a new, previously unpublished novel from one of the pillars of the Golden Age of Sci-Fi is something of an event in its own right. Add to this a lifelong love of Heinlein’s work and as you can probably imagine I was incredibly excited to be able to get my hands on this companion novel to The Number of the Beast (1980). But was it worth it?
All Rob Sardon wants, more than anything else in the world, is to be a hero. He wants the world to know his name, to revere his name and for songs to be sung of his exploits even after he is long gone. So when he is sent to live with his uncle in far off Khamas he begins a journey that will see him go from being a naive, thirteen year old boy to something more. Just maybe not the hero he imagines himself to be.
After watching her best friend and lover, Beatriz, being hung for possessing unapproved materials Esther stows away in the wagon of a bunch of travelling Librarians, aiming to put as much distance between herself and the arranged marriage she wants no part of, and maybe becoming a Librarian herself. But the Librarians have other plans, and babysitting a runaway girl wasn’t on their itinerary.
The third Annual Science Fiction Achievement Awards were awarded in 1956 at NyCon II, the second World Con to be hosted in New York. By now the awards were beginning to gain respect amongst genre fans, and the list of categories was beginning to slowly resemble the list familiar to modern Hugo voters.
DISCLAIMER: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the author in return for an honest and unbiased review. My thanks to Rob J. Hayes for giving me the chance to read and review this book.
At fifteen years old Eskara Helsene has suffered more pain and torture than most people experience in a full life. Taken from her home at the age of six and trained in the arts of Sourcery by the Orran Empire, she is one of the last Orran Sourcerers alive. The only problem is that she, along with her best friend and fellow Sourcerer Josef, are prisoners of the Terrelan Empire, captured at the end of a war the Orran’s lost and thrown into an inescapable prison known as The Pit. And without the Sources they need to fuel their magical abilities there appears to be no way for them to escape their predicament.
Onion thinks she’s tough, but then she gets snatched from her foster home and finds out she’s not as tough as she thinks. Kidnapped by the de facto head of Kingston’s seedy underworld and promised to a trafficker known only as the Toymaker, she’s dragged around a city of non-citizens by Reah, the two of them chained together by circumstance and the explosive device implanted in Onion’s neck. Now Onion has three days to figure out an escape route, and all she has going for her is a smart mouth and never-say-die attitude.
