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Saga’s The Starlit Wood Sings!

Saga’s The Starlit Wood Sings!

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Hardcover: 400 pages (October 18, 2016)
Hardcover: 400 pages (October 18, 2016)

The Starlit Wood is an anthology of new fairy tales edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe, and published by Saga Press.

It is, first of all, beautiful.

Beautiful to look at (just LOOK!), yes, but also to touch. So much care was poured into the initial aesthetics here; it is a book to fall in love with on sight. It has the appearance of both a very ancient — possibly magical — tome in a wizard’s tower, and of a peculiar stained glass window.

Is the image in the glass a tree that is also a doorway? Or is it that, on the other side of the window, there is a tree that is a doorway? And through that doorway, gold and flame.

The people who will love this book will love it before opening it, for the cover keeps its promises.

It begins with the Introduction. They wanted, wrote editors Wolfe and Parisien, for their authors to “move beyond the woods” of a traditional fairy tale. Now, in some stories this means “removing a piece traditionally viewed as integral to the story,” and in others, “putting a character as geographically far as possible from his or her original setting, as Little Red Riding Hood in the desert.” Perhaps most exciting of all (to me, anyway), it still other stories it means “exploring lesser-known or even newly discovered fairy tales.”

What they invite you into — that doorway through the tree, into flame? — is “an adventure that’s strangely familiar, and startlingly different.” And like the cover’s promises, Wolfe and Parisien make good their welcome.

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The Grim Repercussions of Brotherly Love: Cornelia Funke’s The Petrified Flesh

The Grim Repercussions of Brotherly Love: Cornelia Funke’s The Petrified Flesh

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reckless-the-petrified-flesh-smallAs you plunge into the into the depths of The Petrified Flesh, Cornelia Funke’s newly revised and updated first volume of her Mirrorworld trilogy, you start noticing things. Like that the two protagonists are named Jacob and Will and that they’re brothers with an undying love for one another. Unfortunately, that love has been thwarted by Jacob, the older of the two. For much of the time, he journeys through a treacherous and magical world which he inhabits with the help of a mirror located in their father’s study.

A shapeshifting vixen named Fox accompanies him on his journeys. His mother dies during one of his long forays into the world their father began calling home. When Will and his girlfriend, Clara, decide to follow Jacob into the unknown, a notorious Dark Fairy captures Will and leads Jacob’s band of friends into a perilous landscape conjured from the bubbling cauldrons of fairy tales. All the while, Jacob wrestles with his guilt over making his brother go through the same agonizing separation that he and his friends experience.

Funke does a masterful job at embedding her characters’ dark inner conflicts into the story. We feel for Jacob as he ruminates over his abandonment of his mother and brother. We feel for Fox, his shapeshifting companion, as she suffers through the agony of realizing she loves Jacob, while knowing he has nothing tying him down to her world. And we feel for Clara, who has her boyfriend torn away from her by a fearfully beautiful fairy for reasons beyond her comprehension. The fairy transforms Will into a jade goyl, which petrifies his flesh. The stone creature comes from a fairy tale, many of which are nestled into the story.

Fairy tale lovers will relish the generous references to beloved stories and the appearance of their characters. That the plot moves in the manner of a gorgeously realized fairy tale will not go unnoticed, either. Issues bigger than thwarted romance and revenge, such as prejudice, appear as well. The goyl and their struggle against humans comes off the page with a refreshing intensity and authenticity.

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Two New Canadian SF Anthologies

Two New Canadian SF Anthologies

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lazarusI know I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of the original anthology, and I’d like to take the opportunity to draw your attention to two new ones that have crossed my table in the last month or so.

The first is Lazarus Risen, edited by Hayden Trenholm and Mike Rimar. Here’s how the editors describe the premise:

Lazarus Risen presents sixteen stories from around the world that explore the economic, political, social and psychological consequences of life extension, human cloning, the hard upload and other forms of The Biological Singularity.

It’s very rare that I find an anthology where I thought every single story was a winner, but this is one of them. Here are some of my favourites: Sean McMullen’s “The Life and Soul of the Party” tells us about the steampunk-style resurrection of Oscar Wilde. Matthew Shean’s “Sylvia and Larry,” where a woman needs a new body before her husband’s Alzeimers makes it impossible for him to recognize her new self, is vaguely reminiscent of Spider Robinson’s “Antimony” but hits harder, I think.

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Last Term: Honor’s Paradox by P.C. Hodgell

Last Term: Honor’s Paradox by P.C. Hodgell

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Another tawdry Caldwell cover

Can you tell I really like P.C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath series? Not once have I followed up a review of an author’s book with a review of her next one. And in three weeks I’ll review the next one as well. In between there’ll be a short story roundup and then, provided the Canadian mail runs well, Chris Carlsen’s Shadow of the Wolf.

Last week, I wrote that Bound in Blood (2010) was essentially a story where just a bunch of stuff happens to Hodgell’s cat-clawed heroine, Jame. That’s pretty much the feel in Honor’s Paradox (2011) as well, but this time there’s more apparent purpose. The story is told in Hodgell’s usual mix of the funny, the tragic, and the sublime. One final time, the setting is the Kencyrath military school, the randon academy.

Again, the setup:

Thirty thousand years ago, Perimal Darkling began to devour the series of parallel universes called the Chain of Creation. To fight against it, the Three-Faced God forged three separate races into one: feline-like Arrin-Ken to serve as judges; heavily-muscled Kendar to serve as soldiers and craftsmen; fine-featured humanoid Highborn to rule them. For 27,000 years, the Kencyrath fought a losing battle, one universe after another falling to the darkness. Three thousand years ago, the High Lord Gerridon, fearful of death, betrayed his people to Perimal Darkling in exchange for immortality. Fleeing yet again, the Kencyrath landed on the world of Rathilien. Since then, they haven’t heard from their god and Perimal Darkling has seemed satisfied to lurk at the edges of their new home. Monotheists trapped on an alien world with many gods, the Kencyrath have had to struggle to make a life on Rathilien.

Now, the power of the Three-Faced God seems to be reappearing. The Kencyrath believe that only the Tyr-ridan, three Highborn reflecting the three aspects of their god — destroyer, preserver, and creator — will be able to defeat Perimal Darkling. Jame, raised in the heart of Perimal Darkling, is fated to be the Regonereth, That-Which-Destroys.

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Self-published Book Review: Bookbound by Aonghus Fallon

Self-published Book Review: Bookbound by Aonghus Fallon

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see this post for instructions to submit. I’d love to get more submissions.

bookboundBookbound by Aonghus Fallon is actually two stories. One is a sword and sorcery epic, “The Emperor of the Red Planet”, about a tyrant who rules his people with an iron fist, and the five people who unite to defeat him. The other story is about six school boys, including Odran, the first person narrator.

Odran is disliked and bullied at the all-boys’ school he attends, and like many such boys, he daydreams about his antagonists getting their comeuppance. And in his dead grandmother’s house, instead of the elephant figurine he’d been promised, Odran finds a copybook, and in it reads the story of Nardo. Like himself, Nardo is lonely and unhappy, but Nardo is also an heir of the line of Starnovers, the family that rules the red planet. And with the Empress’s death, he claims her talisman, an elephant figurine that allows him to control the demonic creatures behind the Starnovers’ power.

The story in the copybook grows longer with the reading, each chapter seeming to reflect Odran’s life, fulfilling his dreams in Nardo. So that when Odran’s bullies steal and damage his lunchbox, he next reads about how the now aged Emperor Nardo gets revenge on his enemies by stealing those things that are most precious to them. But Odran can’t entirely control the story, and when the five enemies unite in order to defeat Nardo, he can conceive of the obstacles they face, but the characters themselves are too real to play along. Soon Odran realizes that the reason the characters are so real is that the book seems to be stealing pieces of the people he knows, giving life to the characters in the story while removing critical pieces from the personalities of the originals. And as the five enemies in the book are growing into the heroes of a dark Sword and Sorcery story, the real life counterparts are becoming worse and worse.

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A State of Suspension: Iain Banks’ The Bridge

A State of Suspension: Iain Banks’ The Bridge

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the-bridge-iain-banks-small the-bridge-iain-banks-abacus-small the-bridge-iain-banks-uk

Iain Banks, the Scottish science fiction writer, established himself as a major presence in the genre with his Culture series, the first of which, Consider Phelebas, appeared in 1987. Set in a far future, post-scarcity universe teeming with human and alien societies, the Culture books are wide screen space operas with a decidedly sociological-political perspective. Banks wrote a new Culture book every few years until there were ten volumes. The final one, The Hydrogen Sonata, appeared in 2012, shortly before Banks died of cancer in 2013, at the age of 59.

In 1986, right before beginning the series that would dominate the rest of his career, Banks published something rather different: The Bridge, a book that stands high in the ranks of a significant sub-genre of fantasy, those stories that deal with pre or after life states, or that take place in the nebulous regions between life and death.

The Bridge begins as a nameless man (we eventually learn that he is an affluent Glasgow professional named Alex) has a moment of inattention while driving back from a weekend of nostalgic dissipation; as he gazes at the Forth Railway Bridge that crosses the Firth of Forth just west of Edinburgh, he fails to notice the shifting traffic patterns in front of him and crashes his car. He is trapped in the wreckage of his vehicle, praying that it doesn’t burst into flames before he can be rescued. Crushed and bleeding, he lapses into unconsciousness… and awakens, whole and uninjured, on the bridge.

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In 500 Words or Less: Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie

In 500 Words or Less: Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie

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oie_40735xngboxezBest Served Cold
By Joe Abercrombie
Gollancz (544 pages, £9.99 in paperback, £6.99 digital, June 2010)

Remember a few weeks ago when I talked about Steven Erikson being in my top five fantasy authors? Joe Abercrombie is in there, too – in fact, he’s probably higher than Erikson. The First Law trilogy blew me away, which makes it painful to say that its immediate sequel, Best Served Cold, left me a little disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong: this fantasy-style homage to Kill Bill is just as fast-paced and exciting as the First Law books. Monza Murcatto is a brilliantly flawed protagonist, and between the return of drunken mercenary Nicomo Cosca and newcomers like poisoner Morveer and numbers-obsessed killer Friendly, there’s plenty of Abercrombie’s dark humor. The twists and turns are intriguing, particularly with master assassin Shenkt.

But I found myself missing the epic scope, since I would’ve been surprised if (Spoiler Alert) Monza didn’t succeed in her revenge quest (End Spoiler). And while seeing familiar faces like High King Jezal dan Luthar and Vitari is great and all, along with references to other characters and elements, it’s almost like cameos by John Stamos and Bob Saget on Fuller House: it just reminds you that the original was better.

My biggest criticism is another returning character: Shivers, who appeared in the First Law trilogy as a young Northman with a grudge against Logen Ninefingers. In the previous books, Shivers was his own character, one of many distinct Northern characters and specifically a reminder for Logen about his past bloody crimes. For some reason, Shivers in this novel is like a paper cut-out of Logen without the heart: he has the same mannerisms, wants to be better but can’t, falls for someone who is clearly going to be a problem, and goes berserk with violence just like the Bloody-Nine.

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The Future of Iraq, According to the Country’s Science Fiction Authors

The Future of Iraq, According to the Country’s Science Fiction Authors

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1907297246With all the grim news coming out of Iraq, it’s easy to think the country has no future. That’s wrong, of course, because being one of the oldest countries in the world, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

But what will that future look like? To answer that question, UK publisher Comma Press has released Iraq +100, an anthology of Iraqi writers imagining the future of their nation. As the blurb says:

Iraq + 100 poses a question to ten Iraqi writers: what might your country look like in the year 2103 – a century after the disastrous American- and British-led invasion, and 87 years down the line from its current, nightmarish battle for survival? How might the effects of that one intervention reach across a century of repercussions, and shape the lives of ordinary Iraqi citizens, or influence its economy, culture, or politics? Might Iraq have finally escaped the cycle of invasion and violence triggered by 2003 and, if so, what would a new, free Iraq look like?

Covering a range of approaches – from science fiction, to allegory, to magic realism – these stories use the blank canvas of the future to explore the nation’s hopes and fears in equal measure. Along the way a new aesthetic for the ‘Iraqi fantastical’ begins to emerge: thus we meet time-travelling angels, technophobic dictators, talking statues, macabre museum-worlds, even hovering tiger-droids, and all the time buoyed by a dark, inventive humour that, in itself, offers hope.

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An Open Letter To George R. R. Martin and the Producers of Game Of Thrones

An Open Letter To George R. R. Martin and the Producers of Game Of Thrones

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game-of-thrones-daenerys-stormbornDear George & Co.,

I was wrong.

Back in 2011, when the first season of Game Of Thrones aired, I watched up until the episode where Ned Stark gets speared in the leg during a street fight. (His opponent? That bastion of modesty and ethics, Jaime Lannister). And then I gave up. I stopped watching despite the fact that the storytelling was excellent, the acting superb, the locations first-rate, the camera and tech work all but faultless. I gave up because I was tired of seeing the female characters on the show abused, one after the next. I began to suspect the worst of both you and the show runners.

Call me a pig-headed liberal progressive if you must, but I’d like to see the arts, both commercial and fine, be aspirational, which I realize is a very millennial sort of term, but I like it. I’m with Gene Roddenberry: I want at least some of our creative output to showcase what we could be as a society, not merely depict what we are (i.e., barbarous and brutal). Of course the particular world of A Song Of Ice and Fire and Game Of Thrones demands its share of brutality, but it became my position, following those early episodes, that the show was reveling in the violence rather than merely depicting what was necessary to develop the story. It was my considered opinion that I was once more in the throes of a TV show where female agency was, at best, a limp afterthought.

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Another Term: Bound in Blood by P.C. Hodgell

Another Term: Bound in Blood by P.C. Hodgell

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oie_13432gaur4x7bWith Bound in Blood (2010), P.C. Hodgell continues to blow me away with her talent for telling tales. It’s the fifth book in the Kencyrath series, and the second one about our heroine Jame’s time at military school, the randon academy at Tentir. It’s not the most compelling novel so far. In fact, it’s more of a collection of stuff that happens to Jame or stuff she does. That the book manages to hold a reader from cover to cover proves just how good Hodgell is.

First, the mandatory recap:

Thirty thousand years ago, Perimal Darkling began to devour the series of parallel universes called the Chain of Creation. To fight against it, the Three-Faced God forged three separate races into one: feline-like Arrin-Ken to serve as judges; heavily-muscled Kendar to serve as soldiers and craftsmen; fine-featured humanoid Highborn to rule them. For 27,000 years, the Kencyrath fought a losing battle; one universe after another falling to the darkness. Three thousand years ago, the High Lord Gerridon, fearful of death, betrayed his people to Perimal Darkling in exchange for immortality. Fleeing yet again, the Kencyrath landed on the world of Rathilien. Since then, they haven’t heard from their god, and Perimal Darkling has seemed satisfied to lurk at the edges of their new home. Monotheists trapped on an alien world with many gods, the Kencyrath have had to struggle to make a life on Rathilien.

Now, the power of the Three-Faced God seems to be reappearing. The Kencyrath believe that only the Tyr-ridan, three Highborn reflecting the three aspects of their god — destroyer, preserver, and creator — will be able to defeat Perimal Darkling. Jame, raised in the heart of Perimal Darkling, is fated to be the Regonereth, That-Which-Destroys.

…

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