james_davis_nicoll | Old Tea Leaf Reviews 4: 1984 Locus Poll Best First Novel

Cut for length:

Best First Novel

1 Tea with the Black Dragon                  R. A. MacAvoy

        This was a charming first novel about a man who is really a
dragon and how he helps a woman look for her missing daughter in
then-modern day America.

        I think that MacAvoy had a novella published last year but
there was a long dry spell between that and the previously published
work, WINTER OF THE WOLF (1993).


2 The Blackcollar                            Timothy Zahn

        If I read this, I forgot it.

        Zahn is prolific and successful to this day.


3 A Rumor of Angels                          Marjorie B. Kellogg

        I did not read this.

        Kellogg doesn't seem to have been particularly prolific but
she is still being published.


4 King's Blood Four                          Sheri S. Tepper

        One of a vast number of Tepper books that I have not read.
My impression is that Tepper's core market is not male SF readers
like myself.

        There are many people who can be described as "not a male
SF reader like James Nicoll" and so Tepper has enjoyed at least
a quarter centuy of success to date.


5 Starrigger                                 John DeChancie

        When humans reach Pluto, they discover something like a Tipler
device [1] on its surface, left there by advanced aliens who knew how
to handle all of the technical issues that you will spot after you look
at the article I linked to. Our hero is an interstellar trucker who
learns that a lot of nasty people believe that he has a map to the
interstellar road system.

        This was good dumb fun (the trucker really is literally a
trucker) but the second book in the series ends on an infuriating
cliffhanger. His comic fantasy never did anything for me so while
he has lots of books out, I have only read a few of them.

        His most recent material appears to be Witchblade tie-ins.
Ah, well, better that than TAROT: WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE tie-ins
(Don't google that from work).

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipler_device


6 The Shadow of the Ship                     Robert Wilfred Franson

        This was an odd book about a human starfarer marooned
on an alien world whose inhabitants have a low tech method for
traversing interstellar distances. He joins a caravan travelling
from planet to planet.

        If he ever had a second SF novel, I did not see it.


7 Harpy's Flight                             Megan Lindholm

        I did not read this.

        My impression is that Lindholm's fiction did not sell all
that well and that she was forced to rebrand herself as Robin Hobb.
I prefer her Lindholm books.


8 Anvil of the Heart                         Bruce T. Holmes

        Is this the one where muscular but not necessarily
all that bright humans overcome their inhumanly intelligent
post-human offspring?

        As far as I know, Holmes is a successful musician but
this was his only SF novel.


9 The Forest of App                          Gloria Rand Dank

        I did not read this.

        Dank does not appear to have had any other books published


10 Ratha's Creature                          Clare Bell

        I also did not read this.

        Bell's career as an SF writer is on-going.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've never found a translation of Cherryh into English that I liked and I've never found copies in the original Knnn. I do own a shelf of her books, though. I think I bailed on her somewhere in Foreigner because the protagonist was an imbecile.

I like Bujold, find Kress' SF like fingernails down a chalk board and I wish someone would take Moon aside and assure her that it would be OK if her next book did not have a baby-eating, kitten-stomping villain in it.

Fair enough.

By the way, Elizabeth Moon has a livejournal, you could tell that to her yourself:

e_moon60

Old Tea Leaf Reviews 4: 1984 Locus Poll Best First Novel

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