This is a review I did for SF Site in 2008. So the opening sentence is much dated — Egan has been publishing regularly for the last couple of decades after a bit of an […]

I was a bit surprised to realize that I haven’t posted here in half a month — but I have a good reason: my new grandson, Sylvester Took Whitman, was born, and my wife and […]

Here’s another SF Site review I’m posting on this blog after the demise of that wonderful site. This review was written in 2000. The UK imprint Millennium is reprinting a number of classic SF novels […]

Retro Magazine Review: Astounding, July 1955 Astounding Science Fiction, under the editorship of John W. Campbell, Jr., was the central magazine of the so-called “Golden Age of Science Fiction”, which is typically considered to have […]

Howard Andrew Jones died a year ago, on January 16, 2024. He was only 56 (and could have passed for 36!) He was one of the undersung stars of the modern day sword and sorcery […]

Here’s another review I did for the late great science fiction site SF Site, which gave me a huge leg up in my book reviewing career. This was one of my earlier reviews for them, […]

Here is a quick and dirty look at the books I read in 2025, and how they fit into various categories. To some extent, these categories simply track some of my personal interest: how many […]

Here’s another review I’m reposting after the demise of the outstanding old SF/F review site, SF Site. Note that for the most part I’m leaving these reviews unchanged. This was first published in 2001, when […]

Review: A Christmas Carol and Other Holiday Treasures, by Charles Dickens by Rich Horton Charles Dickens wrote five novellas, of almost equal length (about 30,000 words) in the 1840s. The most famous of these by […]

I call some of my reviews “Resurrected Review”, typically when I grab something from my old blog or SFF Net newsgroup and republish it here. This one is even more truly resurrected — it’s one […]

Review: The Horse Without a Head, by Paul Berna by Rich Horton At an estate sale recently, whose deceased owner clearly had interesting taste, I saw a copy of The Horse Without a Head, for […]

Here is another review I first wrote for SF Site, back in 2010. With the demise of SF Site, I am slowly reprinting some of those reviews at this blog. Uncle Bones, by Damien Broderick […]

Here is another review I first wrote for SF Site, back in 2010. With the demise of SF Site, I am slowly reprinting some of those reviews at this blog. Uncle Bones, by Damien Broderick […]

Review: Lies and Weddings, by Kevin Kwan by Rich Horton Kevin Kwan is likely best known for his first novel, Crazy Rich Asians (2013), which became a successful film in 2018. I haven’t read that […]

Old Bestseller Review: The Love of Monsieur, by George Gibbs by Rich Horton My original focus on this blog was popular fiction of the first half of the 20th Century — at best, obscure popular […]

Two Classic Movies: My Man Godfrey and The River by Rich Horton Here’s an informal look at two movies I watched recently, both classics. These are My Man Godfrey, from 1936, and The River, from […]

In 2022 I had a Curiosities feature in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction on Ford Madox Ford’s time travel novel Ladies Whose Bright Eyes. Curiosities is a long running feature of the magazine […]

Here’s another review of John Brunner, who is really one of my favorite SF writers of his era, but oddly more due to his less well-known works. These books, typically fairly short, clearly written somewhat […]

Old Bestseller Review: The Feathered Serpent, by Edgar Wallace by Rich Horton Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born in 1875 in London. He was illegitimate, and grew up in poverty. He left school at age […]

A Royal Pain, by Rhys Bowen a review by Rich Horton I came across this book in an antique store near Rolla, MO, a few weeks ago. It looked like a book my daughter might […]

Another Resurrected Review, this one of Michael Swanwick’s 2002 novel Bones of the Earth, which, it seems to me, isn’t remembered as well as it ought to be. Resurrected Review: Bones of the Earth, by Michael […]

Resurrected Review: The Blood of a Dragon, by Lawrence Watt-Evans by Rich Horton Lawrence Watt-Evans’s Ethshar novels are uniformly enjoyable commonsensical light fantasy, somewhat in the mode of L. Sprague De Camp, set in a […]

Here’s something I wrote back in 2006 about the concluding novel in John Barnes’ Thousand Cultures series. Barnes’ work has never, it seems to me, got quite the attention it deserves — he’s a fascinating […]

Review: Victims of the Nova, by John Brunner (1962, 1963, 1965, revised 1969, 1974, 1981, omnibus edition 1989) by Rich Horton Early John Brunner novels, I have learned, are a wonderful source of thoroughly compentent […]

Review: The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas (with Auguste Maquet) by Rich Horton The Three Musketeers is Alexandre Dumas’s most famous novel, and for many readers it is their favorite. I read it over 50 […]

I wrote the review below back in 2004. I should add some detail — Matthew Hughes (born in England but in Canada from age 5) has continued to write a variety of stories in roughly […]

Thoughts on Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations by Rich Horton What to say about Great Expectations, one of the most famous English novels of all time? I don’t really have an awful lot to add to […]

Review: The Blighted Stars, by Megan O’Keefe by Rich Horton My latest read for the book club I’m a member of was Megan O’Keefe’s 2023 novel The Blighted Stars, the first in a trilogy (collectively […]

Review: Aiding and Abetting, by Muriel Spark by Rich Horton The recent publication of a biography of the great British novelist Muriel Spark, Electric Spark, by Frances Wilson, has led to some welcome attention to […]