Mining the Genre Asteroid: A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
Snuff is a loyal and faithful watchdog* — preternaturally intelligent. He helps Saucy Jack, a good and kind master. In Victorian London in October 1887, there will be a full moon on Halloween. A full moon on Halloween is a special event (which occurs about every 15-20 years on average), for then the Door can be opened and the Elder Gods let back into the world. Jack is a group of one of the individuals, Openers and Closers, striving during this October to gather the tools to decide whether the Door will finally be opened this time and change the world for all. The Great Game is afoot! Snuff’s master, though, is not any friendly guy named Jack, but rather he is a certain famous Jack best known to history for killing prostitutes in Whitechapel. And he is a Closer.
Book Review: Radiant by Karina Sumner-Smith
Xhea has no magic. Born without the power that everyone else takes for granted, Xhea is an outcast—no way to earn a living, buy food, or change the life that fate has dealt her. Yet she has a unique talent: the ability to see ghosts and the tethers that bind them to the living world, which she uses to scratch out a bare existence in the ruins beneath the City’s floating Towers. When a rich City man comes to her with a young woman’s ghost tethered to his chest, Xhea has no idea that this ghost will change everything. The ghost, Shai, is a Radiant, a rare person who generates so much power that the Towers use it to fuel their magic, heedless of the pain such use causes. Shai’s home Tower is desperate to get the ghost back and force her into a body—any body—so that it can regain its position, while the Tower’s rivals seek the ghost to use her magic for their own ends. Caught between a multitude of enemies and desperate to save Shai, Xhea thinks herself powerless—until a strange magic wakes within her. Magic dark and slow, like rising smoke, like seeping oil. A magic whose very touch brings death. With two extremely strong female protagonists, Radiant is a story of fighting for what you believe in and finding strength that you never thought you had. Karina Sumner-Smith’s debut novel, “Radiant,” is fresh, enjoyable and interesting. The worldbuilding, characterization, plot, and language all work together in an involving and satisfying way. The pacing is pleasing, starting with small-scale negotiations and individual-scale risks; discoveries and choices bring greater danger, bigger decisions and sacrifices, and finally building to a City-changing conclusion. In fact, I read the last half of the book in one gulp.
