June 23, 2020
The SpaceX launch had me hankering for some space travel science fiction and both The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky have been sitting on my shelf for a while. Also, my husband and I told each other we’d read more science fiction together during quarantine. That hasn’t happened yet, so I jumped in and dragged him along with me.…
June 16, 2020
The great thing about the metaphorical map of speculative fiction is the sheer variety of landscape. Some stories are great mountain ranges, enormous peaks of books that you ascend, book after book, hiking over hundreds of thousands of words. And then there’s the land of Anthologia, located in the realm of Short Fiction, where you can take a stroll, or…
May 27, 2020
I wholeheartedly admit that I am a sucker for anything described as “illustrious leader must unite a band of misfits to save the world/galaxy.” Probably a niche genre but yeah, I love stories like Firefly and Star Trek (2009) and Mass Effect. Ensemble pieces where not everyone works together perfectly at first but by the end you have a cohesive…
May 8, 2020
At Speculative Chic, we feature a lot of authors who share everything from their favorite things to the inspiration for their work. But why not also share their fiction? Welcome to Fiction Friday, where you’ll be able to sample the fiction of a variety of authors, including those who write at Speculative Chic! Today, we’re featuring Nick Trevano, whose name…
May 7, 2020
Welcome to another post involving Books Nicole Owns But Hasn’t Read Because She, Like Many, Is Actually A Book Dragon. So because of all this hoarding, I made my 2020 resolution to read most of the speculative books that I own. I’ve had Lock In for a few years because everything I’ve read by John Scalzi so far is a…
April 2, 2020
It’s taken me 2 years and a few re-reads to get to this point, but here I am, finally finished with Rhonda Mason’s excellent Empress Game trilogy. And as an official part of my 2020 Resolution Project, I can now mark another book off my list! Was it all worth it? You’ll have to read everything below to find out!…
February 18, 2020
Examining the weird/gothic landscape through eyes firmly embedded with set of rainbow lenses, Tanith Lee erected severely Weird Gothic Towers and Spires throughout the map, starting with her debut novel, The Dragon Hoard in 1971. Her edifices are constructed using the building blocks of fairy tales, myths, standard fantasy, vampires, and just plain strangeness, and are adorned in proper Gothic…
February 4, 2020
Fun fact: This will actually be my second time reading this book. Why? Because the final book, Exile’s Throne, is on my 2020 Reading List and I need a refresher course. A lot happens in this book, but I couldn’t remember all the details or the character’s names. So I started fresh with The Empress Game; now we are here,…
January 31, 2020
Welcome (or for some of you, welcome back!) to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Thank you so much for joining us on our relaunch in 2020. To say I’m excited about it is an understatement: I’m tickled that every month, a different blogger gets to select a book and lead us in a discussion, and I knew that to kick…
January 16, 2020
Like a lot of us here at Speculative Chic, I went to Seton Hill University for their Creative Writing program, as did Rhonda Mason. When I heard she’d gotten one of her books published, I picked it up since I like to support my fellow graduates — plus it sounded pretty awesome. And let me tell you, Ms. Mason does…