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Book Review: Dirty Magic by Jaye Wells

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Alchemy-based magic gives a relatively mild supernatural flavor to what is otherwise a novel focused strongly on police procedural lines in Dirty Magic, a novel by Jaye Wells. Dirty Magic, the first in the “Prospero War” series, follows the story of Kate Prospero, police officer. The novel brings us to her story just as the scourge of dirty magic in her rust belt hometown takes a dangerous, and even deadly, turn. Genre mashups, or crossovers, are always a matter of balancing acts. Unless an author is truly ambitious, there usually is a dominant genre, and a secondary genre. Often for fantasy and science fiction readers, SFF is the dominant genre, with mystery, romance, or thriller elements as the secondary genre that is layered in. A relatively popular secondary genre as of late for layering into fantasy, especially urban fantasy, has the bones of the procedural. There are a lot of advantages for a writer to use elements of the procedural, especially in terms of structure and story beats, It provides authors a narrative framework to decorate with the genre elements, and everything else in the novel as well. Dirty Magic by Jaye Wells, then, runs with that last, as the secondary genre to her urban fantasy structure is most definitely police procedural. 

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Mining the Genre Asteroid: The Morgaine cycle of novels by C.J. Cherryh

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Imagine a universe where a set of Stargates connect distant worlds. Many of these worlds have a low level of technology, and often fear and distrust those who come through the Stargates. The secret of making the Stargates, and who and why they made them, is only distantly known. Now imagine an expedition of individuals going through the various Stargates, seeing the various worlds that they connect. Meeting the human and not quite so human races to be found on these worlds. So far, you should be thinking of Stargate, the movie and its sequel series Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate: Universe. Now imagine that it was determined that the Gates had destroyed a galactic civilization, and could still change and wipe out worlds and polities with a careless bit of travel. And so this expedition’s mission isn’t just to explore the Stargate network — but to destroy it, one gate at a time. The science fantasy Morgaine novels, by C.J. Cherryh, explore the quest of the last member of an expedition to do just that.

Blog Posts

Book Review: Between Worlds — The Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories by Martha Wells

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Six by Six: A New Kind of Spec-Fic Anthology was a kickstarter conceived by a sextet of science fiction authors: Bradley Beaulieu, Brenda Cooper, Stephen Gaskell, Tina Connolly, Will McIntosh, and Martha Wells. The idea was to make an anthology of anthologies. Six authors, each with a short anthology of selected stories, six in number. Thirty-Six stories in total. Now that the kickstarter has completed and the rewards been given, the individual authors are making their anthologies available to the general public. Between Worlds: The Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories is Martha Wells’ volume within Six by Six.

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Patreon Ahoy: Support Our Show; Help Us Grow!

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After a lot of discussion, planning, and private medieval jousting, The Skiffy and Fanty Show podcast has opened its very own Patreon page. So why are we there?  We want to do more — and we want to do it better.  More episodes.  More World SF Tour goodness.  Better quality.  Better features.  Better experiences for you, the listener. Patreon is the first step in making The Skiffy and Fanty Show (and its related podcasts) into something more.  We’re turning to you, the listener.  You can have a hand in helping us create new content, improve the overall quality of the show, and pave the way for a brighter podcasting future. So head on over to our Patreon page, check out our Reward Levels and our Milestone Goals.  We’ve got some big plans listed there, and even more plans for the future.  It feels like we keep saying this every year, but it needs repeating:  this is only the beginning.

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