For GREEN MAN REVIEW, Warner Holme praises Carrie Vaughn’s THE IMMORTAL CONQUISTADOR.

Overall this volume works quite well as a standalone. Although part of the Kitty Norville series, this volume can be recommended to anyone who enjoys vampire fiction, and can also be enjoyed by a reader who is not familiar with the series. Indeed for one who does not want to track down the first volume this could be an excellent book for determining if Carrie Vaughn’s supernatural fiction would be of interest. 

At SPECULATIVE CHIC, Carrie Vaughn contributes a “Blast From the Past” guest column on Robin Hood.

My obsession has led somewhere. This summer, I make my own contribution to the Robin Hood genre with two novellas, The Ghosts of Sherwood and The Heirs of Locksley. Rather than try to retell a story that has been told so well already, I’m trying something a little different: moving the story forward, and telling about Robin and Marian’s children. On the one hand, writing a Robin Hood story feels very daring and dangerous. How much hubris does it take to think I can add to this mythos! On the other, Robin Hood is clearly a giant playground that has room for just about everyone. How could I not want to go there?

TOR.COM offers Vaughn’s original short story, “Sinew and Steel and What They Told“.

I am cut nearly in half by the accident. The surviving fibers of my suit hold me together. I am not dead.

And this is a problem. I expected to die in this job, in my little scout runner, blasted apart, incinerated, torn to pieces with nothing to recover. All that would follow would be a sad memorial service with a picture and an old set of boots on a table. That is how scout pilots usually die. But I am just cut almost in half. And the doctor on my ship, Visigoth, is very good.

My biologics are mostly shut down with shock, though I’m dutifully trying to monitor the pain. It’s all-enveloping, a fist squeezing my brain. My mechanics are in full self-repair mode, overheating because there’s so much to knit back together. Because of them, I have survived long enough that I will probably not die. This is going to be awkward.

From my own internal processor I send out an emergency signal to piggyback on ship comms, so that maybe someone can come and explain.

On autorecovery, my half-exploded runner manages to slam into its berth on the Visigoth and rescue crews are standing by. Once they seal all the locks, I try to help them peel me out of the cockpit but it’s not really working. There are many pairs of hands and shouting voices.