Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is an ongoing manga series written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by Tsukasa Abe, and has recently won several prestigious awards in Japan. The Japanese title is “Sousou no Furiren,” which translates more directly as “Frieren … Continue reading →
Iron Widow, by a new Canadian-Chinese author, Xiran Jay Zhao, is one of the nominees for the 2022 Lodestar Award for the best young adult science fiction novel. But there is nothing childish about this book. It burns with the … Continue reading →
My favorite supernatural cop, Detective Constable Peter Grant, is back, in this ninth novel in Ben Aaronivitch’s “Rivers of London” series. He’s still working for the London Metropolitan Police Special Assessment Unit (the one that takes care of the “weird … Continue reading →
I’ve always been fond of Peter Pan stories, both the retellings of J.M. Barrie’s original story (the Mary Martin musical remains my favorite because . . . nostalgia) and the works that are essentially Peter Pan fanfic (like the book … Continue reading →
For those of you who don’t know, “kaiju” is the generic name for those giant monsters who appear in Japanese movies and usually devastate Tokyo. Preserving them is not something that is often considered. Our hero, Jamie Gray, is underemployed … Continue reading →
The Last Wish is an older book, written in 1993 and translated from Polish by Danusia Stok in 2007. It is the first book in the world-wide franchise surrounding The Witcher, Geralt of Rivia. Before the video games, animations, and … Continue reading →
Behind the over-the-top battles and “let’s do our best!” heroes in Japanese manga and anime, there is often a person quietly doing the simple things that keep ordinary chaos at bay. These are things that need to be done, like … Continue reading →
This lovely book is the fourth novel by award-winning Minnesota writer Kelly Barnhill. This is perhaps for a younger audience than Barnhill’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon, which won the Newbery Award and the World Fantasy Award in 2017 … Continue reading →
This book, the first book in the Noumena Series, was published last year. It has slowly been gaining recommendations from the SF community, helped by the recent arrival of the second book, called Truth of the Divine. The first book … Continue reading →
I have a particular fondness for stories that mess around with world religions, particularly if they do so with humor, respect, and insight. Two of my favorites are Saiyuki by Kazuya Minekura and Saint Young Men by Hikaru Nakamura. Saiyuki … Continue reading →
English-speaking fans of speculative fiction have been barely aware of the contributions to the genre from China. By the time The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu was translated into English, it had already been widely popular in Asia for … Continue reading →
Transgender manga artist Keito Gaku won the 77th Tetsuya Chiba Prize for a one-shot manga about a transgender teen. His four-volume series based on that story, Boys Run the Riot, was released in Japan in 2020. In an interview in … Continue reading →
Ferryman by Scottish writer Claire McFall and Along the Saltwise Sea by A. Deborah Baker (Seanan McGuire) are both beautifully written fantasies with protagonists who seem to me much younger than the teenagers they’re supposed to be. Both stories are … Continue reading →
Ropa Moyo is a fourteen-year-old high school dropout with green dreadlocks, black lipstick, and a massive attitude fueled by a ferocious intelligence. She has taken over her grandmother’s marginally profitable business as a ghost-talker, conversations which are made possible by … Continue reading →
Fans of the epic Chinese fantasy series ‘The Untamed’ will be happy to hear that the first volume of the official, uncensored English translation of the novel by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu is now available. The book has been given … Continue reading →
Fans of the 1984 film and book The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension will be thrilled to learn that, finally, the chronicles of the world-famous Buckaroo Banzai, MD, GBE (adventurer, scientist, rock star, race car driver, and … Continue reading →