Mar 22, 2026 | book review, Book Reviews, fantasy, piranesi, speculative fiction, Spoiler-Free, susanna clarke
There is no way to prepare readers for walking into the dream that is the astounding, infinite labyrinthine halls of Piranesi’s house.
I will do my best, but any reminiscing about Susanna Clarke’s incredible book of fantasy can only prepare you for a deep mystery amidst a magical setting so innovative, realistic, and unnerving, that it will only touch on the surface of Piranesi.
There is a world built quickly around the young man, Piranesi, that seems to be lost in a flooded world, or a universe of worlds, that reside within one isolated coastal house or possibly…a gargantuan museum especially built to expand ever onward.
Piranesi reminds me of being blissfully lost in the suspenseful mystery and immersive world, an enigma, in China Mieville’s The City and the City.
The protagonist, Piranesi, is endearing, meticulous, intelligent, and is an adult with a tenacious thirst for exploration and learning and human conversation.
He is so very lonely and flawed.
There are so few left alive in the house’s seemingly endless maze for him to speak with, after all.
Through his handwritten recordings of discoveries and observations, and his mapping of rooms, corridors, star patterns, and statues – these, he worships like gods – there is a feeling that the more Piranesi grows and the more he finds out, the more his mind may be unraveling.
This is one of, if not, the best unreliable narrator I have ever read, because, you are never quite sure throughout the entirety of Clarke’s book if you can trust 99% of Piranesi’s account, or only 9% of it.
So in a memorable and powerful way, Clarke’s story becomes much more than a radically different fantasy novel, it becomes a thrilling page-turner.
The story is flawless – you could write classes to teach around the execution of this book’s brilliant arc, alone.
The prose in Piranesi is scintillating, visually resplendent, and moving enough to cast a spell on unsuspecting readers.
The characters are full of their own ticks and biases, some benign and some very much not, but all have their own goals and interests.
Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi could not be more original; and I could not give a higher compliment for this masterpiece.
“Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: New Mind-bending Magical Realism” Was Written By R.J. Huneke.
About the Author of Piranesi:
Susanna Clarke’s debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was first published in more than 34 countries and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award. It won British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year, the Hugo Award and the World Fantasy Award in 2005. The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a collection of short stories, some set in the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, was published by Bloomsbury in 2006. Piranesi was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award, the RSL Encore Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. [bookshop.org]
Dec 23, 2024 | Babel, Best Books, Best Of 2024, book review, Book Reviews, Brandy Schillace, Discworld, fantasy, Feet of Clay, fine press, Horror, Kurt Vonnegut, limited edition, Max Allan Collins, Michael Crichton, Mickey7, mystery, Phantasia Press, Quarry, R.F. Kuang, sci-fi, science fiction, Signed Limited, small press, speculative fiction, Spoiler-Free, Terry Pratchett, THE FRAMED WOMEN OF ARDEMORE HOUSE, walter mosley
Best Books of 2024 TFF To-Read Festivus Guide comes to you just in time to place some last-minute literature at the feet of your metal pole, recently taken from out of the crawl space.
Here at TFF, we are especially focused on the fiction that transforms us all, this Solstice.
So Happy Yule, Happy Holly King, Welcome Father Christmas, or whichever legends you may observe ere the New Year of 2025* comes!
*At TFF we review newly released books and also books that have been released any year, so our ‘best of list’ contains what we found and loved this year, not necessarily what was published in 2024.
Feast your eyes, Eager Readers, The Best of 2024:
The Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot’s Mustache Equals Best Mystery Award goes to the THE FRAMED WOMEN OF ARDEMORE HOUSE by Brandy Schillace.
Few can intertwine classic golden age mystery tropes with modern fiction themes, both with myriad intriguing facets, like Dr. Schillace writes in this classic.
An excerpt from our review: The witty, charming, and intelligent [protagonist] Jo is thirsty for answers . . . And despite her difficulty overcoming a not-too-distant divorce with a husband that continually reminded her of her autism and her behavioral faux pas . . . she collects herself time and again and proves to be insightful, well-read, and courageous as she presses on. [ReadTFF.com]
The Ray Bradbury Award Winner For Best Speculative Fiction Likely To Blow The Doors Off Your Mind Palace goes to…R.F. Kuang for the novel BABEL.
This book is the one that moved me the most in the entire year of 2024.
I knew as soon as I read BABEL, it would make an indelible dent in my brain.
An excerpt from our review: If you are a fan of language or translation or history or great characters being challenged beyond your wildest prescient thoughts, then you must read this . . . As with many great stories – especially in the SFF-speculative fiction realm – the character’s path needs to resonate deeply, and Kuang’s protagonist Robin Swift does this while being utterly captivating. [ReadTFF.com]
The 1984: You Made Me Cry…Twice Award goes to Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass – it hurt so damn much.
If you want to buy any of the award-winning books, check them out here in my Bookshop.org List – I get a commission if you buy from there and monies are donated to local bookstores with each purchase:
The Red Death Award For A Work Most Likely To Keep You Too Terrified To Sleep Award goes to…THE CLUB DUMAS by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Sonia Soto (Translator).
I love bibliomysteries, but this one combines a historic evil, played out in brutal fashion, against the backdrop of New York City, Spain, Portugal, and the many twists of a previously unknown The Three Musketeers manuscript pages.
THE CLUB DUMAS is utterly unique, but be careful you do not lose yourself as you strive to unravel the book’s many strands.
The Michael Crichton You Better Check Your Technology At The Door Sci-fi Award goes to…TOUCHED by Walter Mosley.
The language from one of the world’s best authors is as sharp as it comes!
The Da Vinci Ornithopter Award For Best Small Press Publication goes to…both Hard Case Crime for THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins and Phantasia Press for Mickey7 by Edward Ashton.
Quarry is the villain we love to root for, and, hell, make him an ‘antihero’ he does not give a damn as to your labels. In this book, there is an outstanding display of character growth for the would-be-retired assassin.
Mickey7 by Edward Ashton was the first in a historic Phantasia Press relaunch, as the first fine press dedicated entirely to Sci-Fi-Fantasy returns in the 21st Century with a resounding BOOM and a gorgeous limited edition.
The Kurt Vonnegut Satiric Stylin’ Society Needs Kilgore Trout To Give It An Enema Award goes to…TIMEQUAKE by Kurt Vonnegut.
You will never read anything remotely like this novel – TIMEQUAKE is genius, but I know of no sane way to describe it to you.
Last, but not least, is the Inklings Award For Best Fantasy In Fiction is…FEET OF CLAY by Terry Pratchett.
The Discworld Series continues to daunt my dreams and haunt my, well for lack of a better word, daydreams, and, well, the point is these books are so bloody good, you want to keep reading more and more about Commander Vimes of the Night’s Watch and all of the plethora of fantastically, wonderful characters that contribute to the sludge that clings to the edge of the Disc.
FEET OF CLAY is an impactful classic on multiple fronts in the fantasy genre.
Here dear readers is the list of TFF Best Books of 2024:
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The Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot’s Mustache Equals Best Mystery Award
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The Ray Bradbury Award Winner For Best Speculative Fiction Likely To Blow The Doors Off Your Mind Palace
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The 1984: You Made Me Cry…Twice Award
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The Red Death Award For A Work Most Likely To Keep You Too Terrified To Sleep Award
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The Michael Crichton You Better Check Your Technology At The Door Sci-fi Award
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The Da Vinci Ornithopter Award For Best Small Press Publication x2
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Hard Case Crime for THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
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Phantasia Press signed limited edition of Mickey7 by Edward Ashton
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The Kurt Vonnegut Satiric Stylin’ Society Needs Kilgore Trout To Give It An Enema Award
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Inklings Award For Best Fantasy In Fiction
Buy books here:
Happy New Year, Fictioneers!
Nov 27, 2024 | Alan Moore, book review, Book Reviews, fantasy, sci-fi, science fiction, SFF, Spoiler-Free, The Great When
THE GREAT WHEN: A Long London Novel by Alan Moore is 5-Stars, or more, if you are so inclined, as the first book in the The Long London Quintet series marks the liftoff of a brilliant new nest of allies in the city we know of as Fantasy Fiction.
The use of prose and language in this book are wholly fresh and draw upon a uniquely impactful identity.
The only book I can think of to compare THE GREAT WHEN to, because of that innovative sense of self and ever-intriguing and nuanced dialect, is A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess. But Moore’s work here is a totally different being.
The following is a Spoiler-free Book Review of THE GREAT WHEN by Alan Moore.
It is the voices in this story that give it so much life!
The voice of the narrator is as surefooted as the 18-year-old protagonist Dennis’s is not.
It is the sputtering youth’s tone, just as it is the magician artist’s, or the ever-coughing chain-smoking bookshop owner Coffin Ada’s, or the crime boss Jack Spot’s as he discusses the methodical weighing of life and pain in his steady tones (as he will stop at nothing to attempt to break in to the Great When itself) that permeate the pages with sound and further a world that is so, so real.
If this London is what they call the Smoke, then that place is the Fire… – THE GREAT WHEN.
Hidden so that no one but those brought in by the fantastical backbone universe of The Great When’s London itself can see it, the magic, the terror, the alternate takes on 1949 London that occupy the same space as the normal blokes like Dennis reside in are greasy jewels clinking around in a vast labyrinthine digestive tract that runs that part of the world, known or not.
And if that description is too abstract for you, know that this tale starts with a book and its mysterious danger.
The book that does not exist in London or anywhere in Dennis’s world, but he mistakenly buys it for the bookstore he works at and is instructed to – before dire things befall him (and his very skin) – return it to another place that does not exist: The Great When.
I love biblio-mysteries that involve rare volumes, tomes of frightening implications, as is the case here.
The names, Ironfoot is so much fun, the speech, you will feel this London in your bones, my son, the stretching shadows that cover an otherwise thriving shop’s tables and chairs in burlap sacks in The Great When’s overlayed version continue to taunt your mind’s sense of reality and reason.
I have read nothing like Alan Moore’s THE GREAT WHEN, and I cannot wait for the next part of the series.
“THE GREAT WHEN: A Long London Novel by Alan Moore is 5-Stars” Was Written By R.J. Huneke.
Nov 4, 2024 | book review, Book Reviews, Discworld, fantasy, Feet of Clay, Night Watch, Spoiler-Free, Terry Pratchett
Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett is a Discworld triumph, a gem among shiny, albeit prickly, pointed [*ouch] diamonds.
Being the third novel in the “Night Watch” line of Discworld books, the holy number th-ree conjures up quite a bit of Monty Python-like shenanigans and humor, while unabashedly containing the unique and unmatched twisted magic that only Sir Terry Pratchett wrought.
The plot at the heart of Feet of Clay is a murder – more specifically and scandalously – and a murder that is unsanctioned by the Assassin’s Guild.
This sends a whirlwind that rattles the very top of Ankh-Morpork’s ruling elite.
And we as readers are gifted with a true treasure: seeing Commander Sam Vimes and the Watch painfully unravel . . . a murder mystery!
And in case you were wondering, the heartfelt love of and simultaneous bloody critique and parody of Sherlock Holmes and his ‘methods’ ensue in the most riveting and hilarious fashion.
“Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,” and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen* and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!” [Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay via Goodreads]
There are myriad quotes, you could take one per page and digest it for a lifetime, but Vimes is the best anti-Holmes character to carry along an enamoration of ‘the Game’ such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have admired.
“It wasn’t by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. You worked away, patiently asking questions and looking hard at things. You walked and talked, and in your heart you just hoped like hell that some bugger’s nerve’d crack and he’d give himself up.” [Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay via Goodreads]
What makes a Discworld series story great – well, there are too many things to count, really – for me are the characters.
From the orangutan Librarian (largely absent in this book, but active in many others) to the wily autocrat in the Patrician, even minor characters are rich in personality, desires, bad habits and the like.
The more major players like Colonel Carrot, Knobby Knobs, and in this clay-littered caper, a golem with a shining sense of self-worth, are loud in the sense that you can hear them talking. Were you to side-step from Tolkien’s Middle-Earth into the fantastically spinning flat world – the Disc of Discworld – and you passed by the outside of any filthy, dank, troll-stench of a pub, you would recognize a number of the outspoken and meek, growling (there is a werewolf in the Watch, after all) and out-of-tune singing voices.
Read Feet of Clay and you will know them all by name, just by stalking away with the echoes of their conversation in your ear.
This book was particularly critical of the ruling class, the class system, autocracies, the slave class, the working class, and the abused factory class, and it also brought into focus an examination of what it means to be alive.
The golems are alive . . . wait, are they alive?
You can get metaphysical, philosophical, and skeptical of religion, of AI (artificial intelligence, even though it is not explicitly mentioned by Pratchett), of imposed (whether subliminally or declared outright) caste systems and apartheid, and of murder-mystery-fiction and procedurals too.
The large and vivacious cast of characters in the Night Watch novels know no bounds (unless they do, at which point there is a lot of fear and confusion, as befalls all of us, but you have to read it to see what I mean)!
Enjoy more quotes (they are so damn good) from Feet of Clay here:
“There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.” [Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay]
“Is It Frightening To Be Free?”
“You said it.”
“You Say To People ‘Throw Off Your Chains’ And They Make New Chains For Themselves?”
“Seems to be a major human activity, yes.”
[Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay]
“If you were going to be successful in the world of crime, you needed a reputation for honesty.” [Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay]
“Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett Is A Discworld Triumph” was written by R.J. Huneke
May 9, 2024 | Babel, book review, Book Reviews, fantasy, R.F. Kuang, SFF, speculative fiction, Spoiler-Free
Babel By R.F. Kuang: a revolutionary historical fantasy epic that examines the influence of cogent language and its romantic secrets, bitter deceptions, and intoxicating effects that mark the meek and the brash, the power-hungry and the marytrs.
Babel By R.F. Kuang may be the best book I read this year.
If you are a fan of language or translation or history or great characters being challenged beyond your wildest prescient thoughts, then you must read this must-read, this phenomenal tale by R.F. Kuang.
As with many great stories – especially in the SFF-speculative fiction realm – the character’s path needs to resonate deeply, and Kuang’s protagonist Robin Swift does this while being utterly captivating.
The name he chooses after being dragged from his home in Canton and near-forcibly adopted by an English professor is one stemming from a love of literature that he identifies with, Robin Swift.
The following book review of R.F. Kuang’s Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution is SPOILER-FREE.
Robin Swift’s journey is so real, it hurts.
His awe at his first foray into an English bookstore, or an Oxford library, is moving and relatable.
You swell with joy, with Robin, as he delights in the exotic tastes of desserts from bakeries for the first time, just as you will feel the shock of betrayal least looked for when it lashes out at him.
Betrayal is a theme in Babel.
“Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.”
Language and story metaphorically and literally make magic in Babel.
Words reside at the center of civilization but also at the panopticon, whether for use in aiding humanity, or in enslaving it.
Seeing the black, white, and gray areas in Babel proves difficult for those involved in the tower, the school of translation at Oxford, of Babel, for the spell of comfort, happiness, fulfillment, and friendship casts a certain amount of myopia that runs deeper than the magical silver bars the translators create and maintain.
The history in Babel is, itself, a mythology by which Kuang makes the reader climb and dive off a cliff and deeply submerge into the early 19th Century as the riotous age of colonialism is at a zenith, and at the same time depict Oxford University – and the college life that Robin embarks on – which is outwardly fun, but filled with racism, misogyny, and final exams that can cause the students to bleed out.
Make no mistake, Babel will tear at your heart, gouge deeply, and continue to stay with you, long after you finish reading.
Babel is a masterpiece of fantasy literature that reaches depths similar in scope and artistry to the most deeply moving and impactful symphonies, works of literature, epic poems, and fine art.
Babel is a masterpiece of fantasy literature.
“Babel By R.F. Kuang: A Revolutionary Historical Fantasy Epic” Was Written By R.J. Huneke.
Jun 2, 2023 | Amal El-Mohtar, book review, Book Reviews, fantasy, Max Gladstone, queer, sci-fi, science fiction, speculative fiction, Spoiler-Free, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR
THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone SOARS!
The Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards Winner for best novella, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR represents some of the very best in innovative speculative fiction.
I read this book in a few days and was enamored with it!
The following is a SPOILER-FREE book review of THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone.
The main characters Red and Blue are agents in a time war described best as traversing amongst myriad threats of history and tangled braids of the future.
Red and Blue are women, if not wholly humanoid, well that is for the reader to decide, and are from a distant future.
They are the best at what they do: marking threads, timelines, for destruction and/or control.
The fallout of their actions directly improves or harms entire cords of histories.
Upon becoming aware of one another’s opposition, Red and Blue begin a taunting, spiritual, revealing, and ultimately romantic correspondence through some extremely well-hidden and well-experienced letters (eating and reveling in Sumac seeds for one, savoring a scintillating pot of tea for another).
The prose from both authors is deeply poetic and philosophical, and is layered in quips, in new tech from the future, in new interpretations of past figures and events.
Red and Blue are deeply insightful people, and they challenge each other to grow even as they get to know one another via the letters.
To create this book, Max Gladstone wrote all of Red and Amal El-Mohtar wrote all of Blue’s chapters.
And so a brilliant use of unique personality naturally illuminates each character.
At first Red and Blue seem like they might snare one another.
Later, Red and Blue seem to have betrayed the time war itself.
The result is that each layer of the book unfolds and is more suspenseful, more delicate, more painful, and more invigorating than the last section.
El-Mohtar and Gladstone’s THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR is one of those pivotal works of sci-fi-fantasy, a classic that needs to be reread again and again to be fully realized.
“This is How You Lose the Time War By Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone SOARS!” Was Written By R.J. Huneke.
