Bringing you stories, book and game reviews, writing tips, and updates from author S.G. Baker.
Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea winks at the contrast between the perception of agency within the main character of a video game and that of a novel. Bioshock, a 2007 first-person shooter, interrogates the same question of agency through the main character of a video game.
Introduction The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi follows the characters of Angel Velasquez, a "water knife" or enforcer of the will of a big water rights company; Lucy Monroe, a journalist living in Phoenix, AZ; and Maria, a teenage refugee from Texas. Struggling to alternately survive the dwindling water crisis, uncover the murders and espionage … Continue reading Book Review: The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
Introduction The narrative of The Tangled Lands, written by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell, follows the separate but intertwined stories of a handful of people living in or attempting to leave the Blue City, so named for the blue fires whose smoke detects those who have recently used magic. Choked with bramble and briar, … Continue reading Book Review: The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell
Introduction The Hatch by Michelle Saftich takes readers through a dystopian future in which humanity has begun colonizing other life-supporting planets, while the humans who remain on earth must survive the planet's harsh climate in tiny bunkers several levels below ground. EASA, a totalitarian government and spearhead of planetary exploration, utilizes all resources in the … Continue reading Book Review: The Hatch by Michelle Saftich
Introduction Throughout Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, Galaxy Stern fights to balance her background as a drug abuser and teen runaway, her lifelong gift (curse) of the ability to see ghosts, known as Grays, and her job working for a secret cultish organization entrenched within the high society of Yale University. Together with her distant … Continue reading Book Review: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Introduction Following the events of the first four Murderbot Diaries novellas, Network Effect by Martha Wells delivers a long-form adventure for our favorite anxious SecUnit. When its human clients get kidnapped by a familiar research transport and unfamiliar humanoids, Murderbot must fight to keep all the humans alive while trying to figure out a way … Continue reading Book Review: Network Effect by Martha Wells
In Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett, three years have passed since the events of Foundryside, the first installment in the Founders series. Long enough for Sancia Grado and the allies she made in Foundryside to plan and begin to execute a magical-industrial revolution, one that will make scriving, the sacred and secret art of bending reality to one's will, accessible to all.
In Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, orphaned, broadsword-wielding Gideon Nav makes a bid for freedom from a life of servitude on the claustrophobic planet of the Ninth House, but the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, necromancer and bone manipulation prodigy, thwarts Gideon's attempt at escape, demanding the swordswoman's help in exchange for her freedom. The … Continue reading Book Review: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Moon must learn to go from lost and alone to part of a community of his own people that he does not understand at all. At the same time, enemies of the Raksura come bearing down on his newfound colony in his wake.
Part nature documentary, part retelling of the human condition, Children of Time tells of the clash between a race just beginning and another on the verge of vanishing forever.
