Book Review: When the Heavens Fall and The Dragon Hunters by Marc Turner
In the Empire of Fantasy, there are many duchies, kingdoms, republics, city states, freeports and shires. Even the field of epic fantasy, a large chunk of that aforementioned Empire, has a number of subdivisions one can make, based on the particular style of the epic fantasy. Readers who go deep into epic fantasy can tease out the essential differences between Robin Hobb’s style of fantasy to Kate Elliott, or George R R Martin, or Robert Jordan. As these authors have produced novels and created fans, they have in effect helped guide schools of thought within Epic Fantasy. Marc Turner’s Chronicle of the Exile series, starting with When the Heavens Fall and continuing through The Dragon Hunters, falls within a school of fantasy that I attribute and associate most with the works of Steven Erikson in his Malazan universe.
Angels, Demons and 1930s Spain: The Los Nefilim Trilogy by T. Frohock
The 1930s of Spain was a time and place marked by terrible oppression, a vicious civil war immortalized in works of the time such as Picasso’s Guernica and Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. It’s a setting relatively near at hand in time and space, but one which has only modestly been depicted and inspirational to the world of genre fiction. The film Pan’s Labyrinth, notably, captured the brutality of the period in the story of Ofelia and her connection to faerie, even as the unredeemable wickedness of her stepfather shines through the narrative of the film like a witchlight. Ian Tregillis’ novel Bitter Seeds takes the popular tack that the Spanish Civil War was a rehearsal for the Second World War in having his German supermen field test their developing powers during the conflict. T. Frohock’s trio of novellas, set in her dark fantastic Los Nefilim universe takes place in the years just before the full breakout of hostilities.
Book Review: The Race by Nina Allan
Ecological collapse, genetically modified dogs that bond with their human trainers and owners, the darker side of decaying worlds and the people trapped within them, and metatextual games. The Race by Nina Allan is a SF novel that is much more on the literary end of science fiction, much more Rachel Swirsky than Linda Nagata. The Race is composed of several interlinked and interlaced stories, and finding and discovering the connections, even below the immediately obvious, is part of the joy of the novel. In part one, Jenna’s story is of a hardscrabble existence in a town devoted to genetically uplifted dogs, and the desperate life people on the margins sometimes live. It encapsulates the domino problem and the fragility of people on the edge: just one domino falling can bring down an entire chain of lives. In terms of more straightforward science fictional elements and their use, this was by far the strongest section of the novels.
Book Review: The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde
Fran Wilde’s debut novel Updraft was a New Weird Secondary World story about growing up, finding one’s place in the world, and soaring on the winds around towers of bone. Her newest effort, The Jewel and Her Lapidary, shows how broad her talents are with a story about the end of empire, and how the last member of a dynasty comes to terms with her world’s destruction and transformation, and what she can find deep inside to survive. The world of The Jewel and Her Lapidary is of a remote valley kingdom where members of the royal family, together with their lapidary courtiers who complete the design needed to be able to make use of the magical jewels, have long stood in safe isolation. When greed and betrayal shatter that protection, and the valley is overrun, the jewels that hid the valley, and the palace, and could move mountain and river are no longer defenders and tools, but prizes to be won.
Book Review: Owl and the City of Angels by Kristi Charish
When last we left Alix Hiboux, The Owl, her defrocked archaeologist turned international antiquities thieving career had been transmogrified into working for a casino-owning Japanese dragon. For someone really reluctant to deal with the secret supernaturals that live in the modern world, the Owl has sure been immersed into that world, much to her chagrin. Vampires chasing her, part of a Dragon’s team that includes a variety of supernaturals, and then there’s the fact that her online gaming buddy isn’t human, either. And now with necromantic artifacts in the Syrian City of the Dead threatening a full-fledged zombie outbreak, she’s going to get her fill of arcane artifacts and the supernatural beings that love them. If she doesn’t get killed or cursed, or worse, first. And then there is the mess of her personal life…
Book Review: Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
Lagos. It’s one of the most populous cities in the world and yet it is a city that is relatively mysterious to most Western audiences. Its geography, its nature, and even the languages spoken there (did you know the first language for many in Lagos is a Pidgin language and not English?) do not readily come to mind. But why would aliens, if they would come, necessarily park their ship above London, or crash into New York Harbor outside the U.N., or send troops into Los Angeles? Why wouldn’t they pick, instead, say, Lagos? What would a first contact be like if shapeshifting aliens who decided to come to stay on Earth for a while decided to skip the usual suspects and land in the lagoon outside the city of Lagos? Lagoon, by Nnedi Okorafor explores that exact first contact scenario.
