‘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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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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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 has won a Pulitzer Special Citation for his “deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.”
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This is an unusual blend of genres, that’s worth taking a look at.
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If we pursue this plan, by late 2006 any two adjacent public CCTV terminals — or private camcorders equipped with a digital video link — will be reprogrammable by any authenticated MAGINOT BLUE STARS superuser to permit the operator to turn them into a SCORPION STARE basilisk weapon. We remain convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in order to minimize casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our brains (273).
This volume includes three pieces: Charles Stross’s eponymous Lovecraftian spy thriller, the Hugo-award winning Concrete Jungle, and “Inside the Fear Factory,” a reflection on spies, the Cold War, Lovecraft, horror, and hackers.