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Writing Book Reviews — How and Why

Writing Book Reviews — How and Why

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pile-of-books3I’ve been in reviewer overload lately, reading, taking notes, and penning reviews for the next issue of Black Gate. But, more than that, I’ve also been coordinating our crop of reviewers this time out, and thinking in terms of what exactly it is that ought to be in the review section of the magazine, not just in the reviews I put up on my own website. Having done over 50 reviews in the last year and a half or so, I think I’ve learned a few things, and I’d like to share my thoughts on what a good review should consist of. And at the end of this essay I’ll also offer some practical advice to anyone that wants to become a web reviewer themselves and share the reasons behind just why someone would want to take the time to review a book in the first place.

The first distinction we need to make is between a book review and a book report. Reviews are critiques that take a lot of factors into consideration and demand a certain level of knowledge and discernment from the reviewer. Book reports are those bland plot summaries you used to have to write in school to prove to the teacher you actually did your assigned reading. I’ve seen so-called reviewers whose work falls squarely into the later category but, aside from generating web content for google, such work holds little real value.

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Who Gods There?: “The Elder Gods” by Don A. Stuart

Who Gods There?: “The Elder Gods” by Don A. Stuart

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Unknown October 1939I’m guest-blogging this week at Babel Clash, along with fellow Pyr author Matt Sturges, and for the past couple days we’ve been kicking around the topic of our influences and anti-influences. It’s not always the biggest books or the best that are influences, though. For instance…

Don A. Stuart‘s “The Elder Gods” is a fantasy novella from the late 1930s that reads a lot like the science fiction being written around the same time. That’s no accident: the author behind the pseudonym is John W. Campbell, once a leading light in the “super science” stories of the 1930s, later a pioneer of a more sophisticated form of speculative fiction, and (by the time the work under review appeared) he was well into his third and longest career as the influential editor of Astounding Science Fiction–and the new fantasy magazine Unknown, in which “The Elder Gods” first appeared. (I reread it in a rather battered copy of the 1970s Ace reprint of The Moon is Hell; but there’s a NESFA edition of Campbell’s Stuart stories, including “The Elder Gods”. That’s what I’d recommend seeking out, if you’re interested, as there are some typographical glitches in the Ace edition; plus, it may be harder to find; plus, I’ve always thought “The Moon Is Hell” was a stupid title.)

In Unknown, Campbell didn’t want to create yet another knockoff of Weird Tales; the tagline for the paper-covered anthology From Unknown Worlds was “Fantasy Stories for Grown Ups”–by which he seems to have meant the serious grownups who were reading Astounding. Lots of his Astounding writers crossed over to write for Unknown, and “The Elder Gods” was apparently his how-to-do-it example, applying the Astounding method of speculative fiction to fantasy.

[ Spectacular Stories of Scientific Theology beyond the jump.]

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On Getting Current in Heroic Fantasy, Part I

On Getting Current in Heroic Fantasy, Part I

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return1I read an interesting post the other day by a thoughtful blogster whose name I cannot now remember and whose post I cannot locate again, who professed his surprise at all the fans of Conan (and Sword & Sorcery in general) who were returning to the fold now, after falling away in the 1980s, after the last Big S&S Boom.

I confess myself one of those folk. I don’t know what happened. Life, I guess. There weren’t any more new books – or if there were, I didn’t see them – and so I drifted on to other things. (I should add that I got my degree in English Lit after that time, and those bastards had no use for genre fiction of any kind, much less the kind of stuff I’d been cutting my teeth on since I learned how to read – e.g. Zelazny, Howard, Fritz Leiber, et. al. Plus I tumbled onto so many other writers — e.g. the Beats, Bukowski, Henry Miller, and *then* Poetry, in which I immersed myself for several years. But I digress…)

I’ve been delighted though in the past month or so to see all the new material being produced along sword & sorcery lines (new to me at least). A whole slew of beautiful anthologies: LORDS OF SWORDS, SAGES & SWORDS, RETURN OF THE SWORD, RAGE OF THE BEHEMOTH. It is a wonderful thing. I am reading them all simultaneously and will discuss them here, and at my blog.

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The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction

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My copy of The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction arrived from Amazon today, and I dropped everything to read it.  Probably not a good idea, since I had several conference calls and a sales meeting in a skyscraper somewhere in downtown Chicago.  But that’s why I bought a fast car.

very-best-of-fsfI’m a sucker for retrospective anthologies.  And F&SF is one of my favorite magazines — and has been since I first discovered tattered copies in the tiny library of Rockcliffe Air Force base in Ottawa, Canada, in the late 70s.  Editor Gordon van Gelder has assembled an imposing, 470-page collection spanning more than five decades, starting with Alfred Bester’s “Of Time and Third Avenue” (1951) and ending with Ted Chiang’s “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” (2007).

In between are stories famous (“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes, “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King) and not-so-famous (“This Moment of the Storm” by Roger Zelazny, “Journey Into the Kingdom,” M. Rickett).  Gordon introduces them all in an informative and entertaining manner, occasionally providing glimpses into his editorial selection magic in the process. You can see the complete Table of Contents here.

Just as important, this is a truly handsome book — splendidly designed by the folks at Tachyon Press, with a fabulous cover by David Hardy.  It fits beautifully in my hands, and it even smells nice. 

I haven’t dipped far into the book yet.  But I was very nearly late for my meeting, and I don’t regret it one bit.  Check it out.

Regarding Two Earlier Posts

Regarding Two Earlier Posts

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Regarding two earlier posts:

In reporting the demise of Jim Baen’s Universe, I started wondering about the habit in genre fiction to use a famous author as a brand or a subgenre. There’s a line of “Ray Bradbury Presents” paperbacks, and then, of course, there’s Asimov’s and Alfred Hitchcock magazines. This doesn’t happen in mainstream fiction. As far as I know, there’s no Hemingway’s or “Shakespeare Presents” or T. C. Boyle Digest.

And what’s with this “nines” thing? In addition to those nines I’ve already mentioned, along comes The Law of Nines from Terry Goodkind.

I guess the sequels will be called “18.”

Adventure Fantasy in the Children’s Section: Garth Nix

Adventure Fantasy in the Children’s Section: Garth Nix

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Recently, on a writer listserv I’m on, discussion veered to how to turn kids in general, but boys in particular, into avid readers. The general consensus from the parents on the list was: limit screen time, whether TV, games, videos; find books they are interested in; and read to them every day. On the topic of how to find books, one father of two boys in particular recommended the authors Patricia Wrede, Diana Wynne Jones, and Garth Nix, saying that he hadn’t considered the gender of the authors or the main characters, he just knew his kids would love their books, and they had. I would certainly second his recommendation. There is plenty for adults to enjoy, too.

Garth Nix, who is this year’s Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention, is my 9-year-old son’s favorite author, and the one who easily topped his “what books would you want with you on a desert isle” list. (Here in Dubai, we are on a desert peninsula, not isle, but given how expensive books are, the feeling is sometimes the same.) Having been given a size and weight limit by his parents, he filled it mostly with Nix’s Seventh Tower and Keys to the Kingdom series.

The former consists of six slim volumes that would add up to a decent-sized tome in the adult section. It’s set on a pair of worlds, one, Aenir, the source of magic and spirits, the other, where humans live, in perpetual darkness except for the magical Sunstones that come from Aenir. Residents of the seven-towered Castle on the human world must each acquire and enslave a spiritshadow (exchanging it for their own natural one) via a quest to Aenir in order to achieve any status. The story begins when one of the main characters, Tal, has to steal a Sunstone from the top of one of the towers in order to heal his sick mother. He falls off the tower, out of the Castle, and into the wider world where his people are considered evil sorcerers…. It’s fast-paced, very readable, with humor, plot complications, and interesting characters and world-building, if (to an adult) a rather familiar overall plot trajectory.

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A Review of Skin Hunger

A Review of Skin Hunger

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When an unabashed work of fantasy gets shortlisted for a National Book Award, Black Gate‘s Rich Horton sits up and takes notice. The volume in question is titled Skin Hunger, Book One of a series called A Resurrection of Magic. Penned by talented writer Kathleen Duey, it’s filled with witches, magic, ove and loss. Horton judges it an intriguing page-turner that acts as a promising introduction to Duey’s fictional world.

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A Review of Jade Tiger

A Review of Jade Tiger

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Since 1999 Jenn Reese has made a name for herself writing fantasy tales at times whimsical, contemplative, and moving for markets as diverse as Strange Horizons, Flypaper, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress book anthologies. Now we finally have a novel from her, one with plenty of romance and exotic, kung-fu crime fighting to keep you reading. Black Gate’s Rich Horton gives you the details.

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A Review of The Spriggan Mirror

A Review of The Spriggan Mirror

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Lawrence Watt-Evans utilized the Internet in novel fashion to bring the latest entry in his Ethshar series to readers. Black Gate‘s Rich Horton tells you all about how he did it, what it may hint about the future of publishing, and whether the book itself lives up to the previous volumes in Watt-Evans’ fantasy saga.

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