Caitlin Sweet‘s second novel takes an uncomfortable look at how legends develop.
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Category Archives: Books
The Return of Gor
I never read more than a few passages from any of the Gor novels. They’ve been praised and reviled, and have not been available much since the 1980s. However, John Norman‘s series has attracted a cult following, and some individuals quietly live a “Gorean” lifestyle.
In November, Dark Horse, for better or for worse, will be bringing Gor back.
Novel Review: Shaman’s Crossing by Robin Hobb
‘Oh, the birth order destiny is fixed, of course. But why cannot a man be more than one thing? Think on it. Your own father has been a soldier, and now he is a lord. Why cannot an heir also be a poet, or a musician? Soldier-sons of nobles keep journals and sketchbooks, do they not? So, are you not also a writer and a naturalist as well as a soldier?’
The first novel in Robin Hobb’s newest trilogy Soldier Son. Reviews of the other two books will follow after I have read them.
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Novel Review: No Humans Involved
Like miracle workers, we return the ghost—the soul—to the body, conscious and aware. So unless you raise a Hannibal Lector, the person’s not going to start eating brains. But the body is the dead one, the broken one, the rotting one, just like in a horror flick. So now the ghost is trapped, fully aware, in that broken, rotting, corpse.(242)
Kelley Armstrong has made the New York Times’ bestseller list with her seventh “otherworld” novel. This blend of urban fantasy, mystery, horror, and romance takes place in a contemporary world where the supernatural really exists, but remains hidden from public view. It’s rather like a literary, early-season Buffy.
Novel Review: The Jennifer Morgue
When Stross isn’t writing some of today’s best SF, he sometimes spins tales of Bob Howard, a Mary Sue of sorts—- technogeeky secret agent in a world where events from H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction really happened. The Jennifer Morgue parodies fiction’s most famous spy while pitting Howard and associates against an eldritch horror.
Novel Review: A Telling of Stars
Thrust up on the sand, tender and bloodied as a baby, or something newly dead (328).
Caitlin Sweet‘s first novel concerns an eighteen-year-old who seeks revenge after Raiders kill her family. A Telling of Stars has a familiar premise, but it diverges from the traditional fantasy in its style and development.
Novel Review: Pain Machine
Genre can sell a book to a built-in audience, but it can also create expectations in the reader (or even in the writer) that a particular story does not meet. Marcy Italiano‘s Pain Machine certainly could be classified as horror, but it doesn’t resemble the Stephen King School.
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Book Review: Un Lun Dun
China Miéville has produced an urban fantasy novel, three Bas-Lag books and a collection of short stories. Perhaps seeking a new direction, perhaps inspired by a certain other British author’s success with the YA market, his latest takes a twelve-year-old through a grimy looking-glass to a magic world facing peril.
The Children of Hurin
Children of Hurin, constructed by Tolkien’s son from his father’s notes and The Silmarillion, may become a
movie.
Time has an article on the book here.
Ray Bradbury wins special Pulitzer
Ray Bradbury has won a Pulitzer Special Citation for his “deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.”
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