Month of Joy: The Joys of Icelandic Literature
It’s hard to pinpoint when my love affair with the prose and poetry of that chilly little speck of a country, who only last year managed to send a squad to compete in the Men’s World Cup, that was founded by a legendarily unruly band of malcontents who didn’t want to bend the knee to Harold Fairhair, that famously still has a population so small and inbred that there’s a dating app to evaluate if you’re too closely related to that hottie to have the warm drawers you do: Iceland. But my infatuation with that volcanic island very possibly started in elementary school, when I came across a copy of Inri and Edgar D’aulaire’s Norse Gods and Giants in my school library.
Book Review: The Alehouse at the End of the World, by Stevan Allred
I’ll admit it, what initially drew me to this almost uncategorizably cool novel was this cover, evoking as it does a Renaissance playbill in Technicolor. It didn’t actually show me much of what the story was about, but it sure made me want to know. Plus, anything at the end of the world is probably pretty interesting. And what’s up with that bird?
Book review: The Blood of Four Gods and Other Stories, by Jamie Lackey
The adjectives that come to mind when I start describing the stories in Jamie Lackey’s latest collection — “graceful”, “elegant”, “accomplished”, “economical”, “beautiful” — all trouble me a bit, because they all come straight out of the 19th century’s idealization of Womanhood, but I just can’t help it. They all apply, and to every one of these tales.
Book Review: The Apex Book of World SF, Volume Five
“Imagination,” says Cristina Jurado, editor of this fifth edition of The Apex Book of World SF, “recognizes any language while walking on the paths of all nations.” In no genre is this more evident than in science fiction, and in no anthology series is it so vividly realized as in this ongoing project, originally developed by Lavie Tidhar, showcasing short fiction from authors around the world.
Book Review: Wolfman Confidential, by Justin Robinson
Reviewer’s note: the author of the below reviewed book is an internet friend of mine for whom I often serve as a beta reader and who has helped me to promote my own books in the past. So I’m not 100% objective here. But I wouldn’t go to the effort of writing this if I didn’t think this book was worth your attention, dear readers. We here at Skiffy and Fanty enjoy a good genre mash-up, and in Werewolf Confidential, Justin S. Robinson’s third volume in his City of Devils series*, we’ve got an absolutely smashing example of one.
Book Review: Applied Ballardianism: Memoir from a Parallel Universe, by Simon Sellars
“In another life, I might have joined a radical church, a star cult. In this one, I attempted a PhD.” To engage thoughtfully with the work and life of science fiction*-and-literary-and-postmodernist author J.G. Ballard is, perhaps, to risk transforming oneself into a J.G. Ballard protagonist who must struggle through a J.G. Ballard world without the benefit of J.G. Ballard constructing the plot of his or her trajectory. Such is the lesson of Applied Ballardism: Memoir from a Parallel Universe, Simon Sellars’ much-anticipated exploration of how a greatly admired author can colonize a person’s imagination to an extent that borders on the dangerous.
