SPSFC 2024 first look

Rebellious Nature by Rho Diehl

Ahh, the old “amnesia when woken from cryosleep!” I do like a good adventure-mystery, though. Tropes are tropes for a reason. Cover is okay, font choices should potentially be reworked. Cautiously interested.

Norylska Groans by Michael R. Fletcher and Clayton Snyder

I like this cover. They have a theme, they executed it well. The blurb doesn’t say too much, but it draws you in anyway. The book is described as grimdark. Will it be too grimdark for me? Hope not! But I won’t mark it down based on personal tastes.

New Eyes by Tobias Cabral

I think this cover could be MUCH better if the title/author name were redone. Both are very challenging to read. Speaking of challenging to read, apparently an android named BopLpops went on a murder spree about six months before the story of the book opens, and that event motivates a lot of the book’s events? There’s also an apparent typo in the blurb. We’ll give it a shot, though!

Navvy Dreams by H. M. H. Murray

The cover is alright, but it pushed me away because the focus on the main character’s body in her skin-tight outfit was very “eyecandy.” The word “dreams” in the title reinforces that impression. On the other hand, the blurb has no hint of that and is incredibly well written. I went from “Ugh” to “Ooo” in the course of a few paragraphs. Looking forward to it.

Molten Flux by Jonathan Weiss

Okay cover: I’m neither drawn in or pushed away. Seems to be set in a world where there’s an ongoing conflict between tech-necromancers and the people trying to take them down, with the MC caught between the factions. That’s kind of interesting.

KARA by Peter Beard

Oooh, we have a fresh one here – just published a few weeks ago. Cover is fine. Blurb has some intriguing aspects but seems a little all over the place: dead best friend, MC is trained as a… private investigator analogue? MC has a weird tattoo on her wrist she doesn’t know the origin of, secretive prison in the Kuiper belt? The random italics don’t help. Writing a good blurb is a different skillset than writing a good book, though, so I have some hope.

GENEFIRE by James Flanagan

Cover is okay. Supposedly this book has won some other awards? The twin stakes mentioned in the blurb don’t seem to go together… Flanagan is going to have to work hard to sell me on “finish a Ph.D.” as a serious concern when the other worry is “saving the world.”

Fieres by Jendra Berri

Cover and blurb look good, but they also look very… fantasy. Hopefully there are sci-fi elements that aren’t immediately apparent. Science fantasy would be fine!

I love fantasy, but there’s a different contest for self-published fantasy books. 🙂

Deceit by Sean Allen

I can’t help but feel this cover would be much stronger without the green glow around the banner. I may be betraying my 90s kid origins, but that particular color says “Nickelodeon gak” to me. The cover feels a little silly and lighthearted, which I doubt is the intended feel. The blurb is interesting, but confusing. I think it’s a dual-perspective book, told partly from the perspective of someone falsely believed to be an assassin and partly from the people hunting them down.

Dierock 88 by S. A. Ernster

Huh, interesting cover… clearly evocative of a retro feel, without going full retro. Asteroid belt resident accused of terrorist ties is imprisoned (?) as a worker for a crazy dangerous mining operation and tries to survive. Has potential.

Dawn of the Seekers by Alex O’Connor

Nice cover… between it and the blurb, it looks like a large-cast military sci-fi. Maybe something like March Upcountry? Could be fun.

CY-LNK by Kai Surr

Simple but solid cover here. The name of the author should be brightened up, but it’s very elegant for what was likely a budget effort. The premise seems intriguing: most people on humanity’s first colony ship have an artificial augment to their mind that a few members think is being used as thought-control. Partway through their journey, things start going wrong.

Company Assassin by Claudia Blood

The cover is okay, except that the text is really hard to read. The blurb is great! Teen who just aged out of an orphanage struggles to survive – and help the orphanage survive – in jungle filled with (I assume?) technological relics.

Cage of Bone by David Dvorkin

Please pay a cover designer, my friend. The art isn’t too bad at the thumbnail size most people will view it at in this digital age, but it’s not great. The overbeveled stock font isn’t good at any size. I’m not one of those people who can be like “Oh, that’s Helvetica” by sight, but I know that this is a freely-available serif font, and that’s a bad look for a title.

The blurb is much better – a quiet man gets sudden psychic powers connecting him to the brains of criminals and has to figure out how to navigate that. Interesting premise.

ASH by Grace Walker

The title is generic, but here’s someone whose cover IS doing them favors. A figure stares out against a possibly-abandoned cityscape of towering buildings, good fonts that are clearly legible even at small sizes. The blurb says it’s a story about a desperate man trying to survive in the crime-ridden underworld of a planet with a toxic atmosphere, which seems a bit bleak for my tastes… but we’ll see! If it’s too dark but otherwise good, I’ll probably recuse myself from judging it.

Above the Sun by Dennis Black

Oof, this cover. My friend, this cover is not your friend.  Only one font, clumsy graphics, far too much text, strange italics that are continued in the blurb.

I approach with an open mind, but some trepidation.

Above Dark Waters by Eric Kay

The cover is a little simple and doesn’t seem to say much about the book, but I’m guessing that was a budgetary choice on the part of a newer author, and it’s not bad. The blurb doesn’t make it totally clear what I’m in for either. It looks maybe like a “struggle of unpleasant reality versus alluring artificiality” story. Common topic in sci-fi, and I’m mildly curious if the author has new insights on the topic.

A Swift and Sudden Exit by Nico Vincenty

Looks like a sapphic time travel romance story, which immediately brings to mind “This is How You Lose the Time War,” which I read earlier this year. The faux-retro cover definitely gives different vibes so… we’ll see. I’m not drawn in or pushed away by this one at first glance, but the cover is cohesive.

Wilderness Five by C. R. Walton

This cover is not good. The text is hard to read when it overlaps the yellow, and it’s difficult to tell what the yellow stuff is.

“Jurassic Park as space opera” is kind of tempting, though. Might be a simple case of “needs a better cover.”

What Swims On Uncharted World 550 by R. B. Lovitt

Cover is okay. Title is a little hard to read. Spooky murders around an outpost on an alien world is not a unique premise, but can definitely be a fun one.

Umbra by Amber Toro

The cover has art noveau and steampunk vibes that I enjoy. It’s a little busy, but I like it. I also like the idea of starships being characters, although I’m not clear on whether or not they’re the three point-of-view characters mentioned.

Turn Left at the Mooncrow Skeleton by Linda Raedisch

This cover is very, very, black, and the text is thin and hard to read. It could be worse, but it could also be a lot better.

I like the setting: colonists confined for generations to a small crater of safety in dangerous planetwide ruins. Also… archeology students?  That could be fun.

Twilight Divide by Melanie Bokstad Horev

The cover is okay, I suppose, but the way the image intrudes into the top of the title irritates me. The blurb is compellingly written, if a little generic. I like the sound of personal relationships conflicting with destiny.

Time’s Ellipse by Frasier Armitage

Cover is okay. Serviceable. The reversal is cute but the wonky blend in the middle where the image is mirrored is not great. A full reversal (where the top figure was walking backwards as well as upside down) would also seem to make more sense with the title. Clever to the image editing artifacts behind the starkly contrasting title, though! It disguises a lot of the biggest issues.

More time travel. Generational story, supposedly? That’s unusual enough to excite me a bit.

Time of the Cat byTansy Rayner Roberts

The cover is okay, but a bit clunky in terms of photo manipulation and font choices/legibility. It’s much easier to read the author name than the title of the book, and the shadows aren’t quite right.

Time travel can be hit or miss for me, but the prominence of cats is encouraging.

Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen

Cover is fine… But the line at the bottom got me excited: “Prometheus didn’t finish the job.”

Also very excited by this line from the blurb: “They’re about to find out that a plan is a list of things that won’t happen.”

Expectations are high.

The Thief by G.S. Jennsen

A solid, professional cover and a solid, professional blurb. If the author does an excellent job with the alien cultures being explored, that would be a major selling point for me.

The Faithless and the Damned by Sev Romero

Real David Weber vibe from this cover. I assume that’s what the author was going for. If so, they hit it! The bullet-point style of the blurb was sort of hard for me to read and process, though. The actual content of the blurb was good, but the presentation was lacking.

The Correct Order by Trish Taylor

The cover isn’t terrible, but I don’t like it. Unhelpfully, I can’t quite put a finger on why. Sorry! Maybe it’s the sharp divide in style between the top and bottom halves? I do love the blurb, though. Women have taken charge of society and installed a new regime that’s safer and better for everyone. Or… is it?

The Arachne Portal by Joan Marie Verba

This one was in the contest last year and I read it then. The cover is okay. Like so many on this list, it could probably be improved by having a professional re-do the lettering.

The Anubis War by David R. Packer

Decent cover. I’m a little intrigued by the fact that the blurb seems to be selling the main character as an unrepentant soldier for imperialist forces. That takes moxie to write.

Spark and Tether by Lilian Zenzi

Cover is okay. Blurb suggests mysteries and forbidden love. I have no idea what a synchronist with supraliminal perception is, but that’s the MC’s… job? And brain mushrooms make it all possible? That’s how I’m reading “myconeural networks,” anyway. I’d advise this author to keep the jargon to the story and simplify the blurb, because these aspects seem important but also opaque.