I don’t know if two reviews qualify as a roundup, but I was pleased with the reviews for Falling Sky from both Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal.

From Publisher’s Weekly:

This solid and memorable debut is set in a world where a disease has turned most people into quasi-zombies called Ferals…Khanna’s vision of a ruined world, populated by human monsters on the surface and desperate survivors in the air, is bleak but compelling. Ben is a flawed, selfish hero in the spirit of Han Solo, always on the lookout for number one until a greater cause catches his conscience.

And Library Journal gave it a starred review and named it the Science Fiction/Fantasy Debut of the Month!:

Postapocalyptic sf is a heavily traveled genre, as is steampunk, but debut novelist Khanna combines both quite well here, as the airships help to keep humanity safe from the infected ferals on the ground in a world where the action never stops, leaving room for more adventures.

I’m very happy that people seem to be enjoying the novel. Only two more weeks to go…

In the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed some positive reviews coming in for Dead Man’s Hand and for my story, “Second Hand,” specifically.

Over here M. J. Starling says “I love Rajan Khanna’s card sharp stories” among other wonderful things and let me tell you I will be flying high on those comments for weeks.

Also, at The Book Plank, they single out my story along with those by Tad Williams, Joe Lansdale, Christie Yant and Seanan McGuire. The “Second Hand” review ends with “Rajan Khanna has started to build a great premise in Second Hand that will hopefully be featured in more stories or a full length book!” which is encouraging (and I am definitely writing more). 

Feedback, positive or negative, is sometimes so hard to come by with short fiction that it’s nice to get some. Especially when it’s so positive. Knowing that people are enjoying my fiction makes the writing all the more worthwhile. It also helps to keep going when things get tough.

Now, to work on the next story…

So I have a lot to talk about since it’s been a while. Expect an explosion of posts in the coming days.

First, though, I have to share that my middle-grade novel, which I’ve been working on for the past few years, was sent out on submission recently. In a rare moment of pride, I actually feel really good about this book. Fly confidently, little bird. I hope you find a home.

Next up, I’m doing a reread of The Dresden Files for Tor.com. So far the first five books in the series have been covered and new posts will go up every Monday until we get through the series. If you’re fans of the books or thinking about reading them, I hope you’ll give them a look.

Also Dresden-related, I wrote a review of the latest book in the series, Cold Days, also for Tor.com.

Finally, Diverse Energies is finally out. It contains my story, “What Arms to Hold Us,” but more importantly it has stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon, Paolo Bacigalupi, K. Tempest Bradford, Rahul Kanakia, and more. As mentioned here before, it’s dystopian YA stories highlighting diversity. I hope you’ll give it a read.

That’s all for now. More to come later…

Sean Wills reviews Diverse Energies over at the Intergalactic Academy.

Sean had this to say about my story, “What Arms to Hold Us”:

This one is similar in plot to Pattern Recognition, but feels a lot more fleshed-out. The main character is a boy ‘recruited’ by a mining company to control mining robots through a neural link; predictably, he discovers that all is not what it seems.

This is probably my third favourite story in the anthology after Next Door and Good Girl. It’s well-written, the characters are consistently likable, and it manages to pack a decent amount of (coherent) plot into its limited page count. It looks like Khanna has published quite a few other short stories already, so here’s hoping he puts out a novel at some point. I’d definitely read it.

After a minor disaster yesterday afternoon, this was a welcome change of pace. I can’t wait for the anthology to come out.

In addition to my writing for Tor.com and LitReactor.com, I’m happy to announce that I’m doing comics reviews (and maybe the occasional article for Talking Comics. They’re a great site devoted to comics, and they’re starting to grow. If you are interested in comics, please give them a look. I’ll be contributing many more reviews in the coming weeks.