The SF Site: Featured Reviews Archive (original) (raw)

Angelica by Sharon Shinn reviewed by Regina Lynn Preciado When the first Samaria novel came out -- Archangel (Ace Books, 1996) -- Regina read the whole thing before she thought to glance at the back cover. To her surprise and chagrin, the back cover not only gave away the book's ending, it revealed something about the structure of the world that was hinted at but never unveiled in the story.

Jenna Starborn by Sharon Shinn reviewed by Victoria Strauss Jenna Starborn isn't born, but made, in the gen-tanks on the planet Baldus. But the woman who purchased her neglects and mistreats her, and at last she's removed from her abusive home and sent to a charity school, the Technical and Engineering Academy on the planet Lora. Here she follows her talent for science, and becomes a generator maintenance technician. For someone like Jenna, a half-citizen in a rigidly caste-conscious interplanetary society where a person's worth and prospects are defined by his or her grade of citizenship, a life of hard and honest work is the best she can hope for.

Heart Of Gold by Sharon Shinn reviewed by Donna McMahon Nolan Adelpho, an indigo man, is breaking his society's gender barriers by pursuing a career in the city as a medical researcher. Of course his family is simply indulging him for a few years -- everyone knows he will marry the blue-skinned girl he's been betrothed to since age 14, and go back to the countryside to pursue his true calling as a husband. But life in the city, rubbing shoulders with gulden men and women, has broadened Nolan's horizons and he is no longer certain that marriage is all he wants.

Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn reviewed by Victoria Strauss Coriel Halsing is the illegitimate child of a noble line. She lives a divided life: nine months of the year with her grandmother, a village wise woman and healer to whom she is apprenticed, and the three months of summer at Castle Auburn, where she lives the life of a highborn courtier.

Heart of Gold by Sharon Shinn reviewed by Victoria Strauss The author's world is divided by skin colour (there are 3 races, one blue, one gold, one albino) and by gender. In the indigos' busy, high-tech capital, the races work side by side but live in apartheid-like separation, and racial tension is never far from the surface. But their recent campaign of territorial expansion has given rise to a wave of gulden terrorism, and indigo fear and hatred of the gold-skinned people is once more rising to fever pitch.

The Alleluia Files by Sharon Shinn reviewed by Charlene Brusso Not everyone wants the truth, if indeed it does exist, to be uncovered. A faction, led by the Archangel Bael, who fears loss of power and influence, are hunting down and killing Jacobite agents. Fortunately not all the Angels have joined Bael's pogrom against the Jacobites.

Wrapt in Crystal by Sharon Shinn reviewed by James Seidman Some books simply defy easy categorization into a genre. That definitely includes Sharon Shinn's latest effort. Set in the future on a distant planet, it is, at heart, a murder mystery. As much as anything else, however, the book is a vehicle for her to explore various religious concepts.

The Alleluia Files by Sharon Shinn reviewed by Victoria Strauss Victoria felt that, like its predecessors, this novel is competently written and paced, with attractive central characters and an appealing romance element. However, the book suffers from sequelitis. There's a flatness to the story, a feeling of places too often revisited and ground trod too many times.