Path of Fate by Diana Pharaoh Francis
reviewed by Victoria Strauss
In the land of Kodu Riik, Reisil is a tark, a healer. Her training newly completed, she has returned to the town where she grew up, hoping she'll be accepted as its official tark. Orphaned in babyhood, passed from foster family to foster family, she has never really known what it's like to have a true home. Being a tark offers her the thing for which she has always longed: a place in the world, a chance to belong.

Bad Memory by Duane Franklet
reviewed by Leon Olszewski
It reads like a network administrator's nightmare. Someone is on the network, seemingly unstoppable. All the control tactics are ineffective and each retaliation grows in severity. Leon found the author captured the sense of paranoia that someone, somewhere, is out to get you, your network, and your computers.

Daughter of Troy by Sarah B. Franklin
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
Lisa's view is that Franklin's version of this era is an entertaining one. The writing flows smoothly and maintains the reader's interest. Colourful, legendary figures, seen in the daily details of the lives, make for high adventure and down-to-earth survival fare.

The Magister's Mask by Deby Fredericks
reviewed by Donna McMahon
In the city of Chalsett, it is traditional that an apprentice who has finished her training shall be assigned the very next case that requires a magister. But Shenza Waik, humble daughter of an illiterate fisherman, feels far from ready when that case turns out to be the horrifying murder of the First Lord of Chalsett by magical fire.

Imposter by Valerie Freireich
reviewed by Mark Shainblum
This novel has many things going for it: sympathetic characters, a rich and credible future civilization, and a genuine sense of wonder absent from much current SF. More, the background and settings of this intriguing novel are almost as interesting as the foreground characters.

Bonds of Blood, Bonds of Steel by Rebecca L. Frencl
reviewed by Steven H Silver
As a first novel, the book is good, although it does suffer from the author's seeming inability to plot. The story is told as a series of vignettes, which are without an end goal. Although this is the way real life works, it tends to work less well within the confines of literature.

Frequency #2
reviewed by Rich Horton
This a CD audio anthology presenting "The Apple Golem" by Bruce Holland Rogers, read by William Foss; "Housecalls" by Jerry Oltion, read by Alistair Logan; "Christmas at the Cushingura Cafe" by Stephen Dedman, read by Tadao Tomomatsu; "Abbat01r" by Cory Doctorow, read by Alyxx Ian; "Chance in Hell" by John Rosenman, read by Martin Dunn; and "Rate of Change" by Bud Sparhawk, read by David LaFontaine.

Frequency #1
reviewed by Steven H Silver
This is a new short fiction-on-CD publication. Highlights include oral versions of Ray Vukcevich's humorous story, "Problem Solved," Kurt Roth's epistolary story, "Rift," John Serna's "User Error," Stan Schmidt's alien-on-conquest story, "Panic" and Stephen Dedman's "Honest Ghosts" which is set at a New Orleans science fiction convention.

This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman
reviewed by Charlene Brusso
Centuries ago, when Earth first sent humans to the stars, something about the Hausman stardrive caused bizarre mutations to those aboard the ships. Just as Earth's colonies were getting started, Earth panicked, abandoning their own people -- mutants known as "Hausman Variants" -- on foreign worlds. Today the only safe way to cross deep space is by outpilot, for only they have the peculiar mutation allowing them to navigate the dangerous folds in spacetime. But now a fierce brainware computer virus is wreaking havoc throughout known space, killing the starship outpilots.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Captain's Table: Dujonian's Horde by Michael Jan Friedman
reviewed by Alexander von Thorn
Rumours of an ancient treasure of powerful technology, a crew of brigands sailing the infinite dark, a missing Starfleet officer, a lost civilization in a pocket universe with a complex political conflict... There is only one man to call for this assignment: Jean-Luc Picard.

Star Trek: Federation Travel Guide by Michael Jan Friedman
reviewed by Lela Olszewski
Lela plays tourist with this trip planner featuring such exotic places as the Klingon homeworld, Cardassia Prime, and Vulcan, Shiralea VI and Bajor.

The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature by Brian J. Frost
reviewed by Georges T. Dodds
Werewolves garner much less attention than do vampires. Partly this may be because our image of werewolves is that they are bestial and violent, whereas vampires -- while perhaps evil -- can be suave and sensuous. Well, now, with the publication of this book, you can assuage your lycanthropophilic obsessions, and with its 73 page bibliography of werewolf-related materials, build quite a to-read list.

Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost
reviewed by Dustin Kenall
This is something different. It is not quite fantasy and not quite science fiction. Not quite a quest epic and not quite a character study. But it is, for the most part, a good read. There are pleasures to be found in its pages that comprise the story of Leodora, a shadow puppeteer, and Diverus, a god-touched musician, and their performances across the interlinking, innumerous bridge-cities that stretch across the fathomless oceans of Shadowbridge.

Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories by Gregory Frost
reviewed by Matthew Cheney
It is a rare writer who is well served by a large retrospective collection of their short fiction, and, unfortunately, Gregory Frost is not one of them. He is a good writer, a skilled writer, a writer responsible for a couple of stories that are, in fact, better than average. A collection of 150 pages or so would have shone his strengths well.

Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories by Gregory Frost
reviewed by David Hebblethwaite
If you've not heard of Gregory Frost before, the epigraph from Andrei Sinayavsky gives an idea of what to expect: "Realism is a literary technique no longer adequate for the purpose of representing reality." Quite so. This idea is most effectively embodied here in "Collecting Dust," the story of a family being literally ground down by modern life.

Good Faeries / Bad Faeries by Brian Froud
reviewed by Jonathan Fesmire
Filled with paintings and sketches, this book draws you into Faeryland as effectively as a well told tale. Each creature, long and graceful or squat and stocky, has a distinct personality. Froud's greatest talent is making his images seem vibrant and alive.

A Midsummer Night's Faery Tale by Wendy Froud and Terri Windling
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
Remember the delicate creatures of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth? Those almost human beings, somewhat like us, but infinitely more fragile and winsome? Well, after too long a wait, those faeries, pixies, trolls, sylphs, and all the other magical citizens of the magical world, are back in a new faery tale.

Talebones #28 and Full Unit Hookup #5
reviewed by Matthew Cheney
The greatest joy of reading small press magazines is discovering odd and/or beautiful and/or enchanting and/or marvelously uncategorizable writing, the kind of writing that makes you catch your breath, that sends shivers through your spine and timbres. In the twenty-eighth Talebones, this joy is at its height with Sandra McDonald's fine story "Bluebeard by the Sea"; the fifth issue of Full Unit Hookup brings shivering bits of "ah ha!" with the breadth of the poetry presented and, especially, with "Hurricane Sandrine", a thoughtful and enigmatic tale by Daniel Braum.

Full Unit Hookup, Spring 2003
reviewed by Rich Horton
The opening story, "Waiting for Jenny Rex", by Melissa Yuan-Innes, is very fine work. The story is told by a reporter who falls in love with the title character, a dead anorexic girl returned from the grave with a mission to inform about her disease. Yuan-Innes deftly negotiates the creepy aspects, the affecting aspects, and the funny aspects of her tale, as complications result when other dead return with other diseases to battle.

Full Unit Hookup, #1
reviewed by Rich Horton
Here is another in the recent near flood of small press slipstream 'zines. It offers six relatively short stories, and a number of poems, as well as two essays. It fits very readily in the same general category as Electric Velocipede, which Rich reviewed here recently, or the by now venerable Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, which he has called the "gold standard" of the SF/slipstream 'zines.

The Sci-Fi Channel Encyclopedia of TV Science Fiction by Roger Fulton and John Gregory Betancourt
reviewed by Steve Lazarowitz
As a long time fan of television SF, Steve couldn't wait to get his hands on this book. But when it finally arrived, it was somewhat different than he had envisioned. Steve had not realized just how many SF series had graced the screen throughout the years.