Book Review: Phantasm Japan edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington
Occasionally, I read something and don’t particularly want to review it so much as say, just read this. Or produce a review consisting of nothing but quotations from the text: let the evidence speak. Phantasm Japan, a 2014 anthology edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington, is such a book. Pardon me while I spend the next several hundred words embarrassingly fangirl-gushing about it. There are a few different ways to measure an anthology’s success. The one that is used most often is determining how many of the stories the reader liked versus how many they didn’t. While there’s nothing wrong with this as a metric, it’s not the primary one I use. My favorite anthologies shift my perception in some fundamental way, whether by some of the stories taken individually or by the aggregate body. Phantasm Japan does both. Considerably. Of course, producing a collection that’s bold and smart is not without risk; two or three of the more cerebral stories in this anthology sailed right over my head. There were several more that blew my mind in the best possible way.
Book Review: SOFT APOCALYPSES by Lucy A. Snyder
Soft is a particularly ironic description for this collection of short fiction by Lucy A. Snyder. Brutal. Grisly. Unflinching. These are all words that are easier to associate with the dark nature of her stories. Indeed, a cover blurb by Seanan McGuire states that Snyder’s work “attacks the page with the raw, manic intensity of an early Sam Raimi.”
Logic of Empire: Robert Jackson Bennett’s City of Stairs and Beyond
With superior power, technology, and a will to conquer, an empire uses that technological advantage to reach out and dominate/subjugate much of the world. The wealth of the world is plundered and bent to the service and the coffers of that empire. No dominance lasts forever, however, and the subjugated peoples learn how to fight back, to drive the invaders out of their lands, to regain independence. More so, as the wheel turns and the empire falls into eclipse and collapse, the formerly subjugated find that they have the geopolitical upper hand over their former colonial masters. This sounds awfully like the history of our world from the 19th century heyday of European Colonialism to the ‘rise of the rest’ and the relative decline of Western power happening right now, doesn’t it? City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett’s first turn into secondary world fiction, tackles these concerns in a secondary world context.
Book Review: Last God Standing
Lando Calrissian Darnell Cooper is a standup comic in Chicago. He has a lovely girlfriend, Surabhi, and two feuding separated parents; he’s just trying to be like one of us. Lando, however, is also the decanted incarnation of the retired god Yahweh, the God of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Mormons. What is God trying to do being a stand-up comic in Chicago? Trying to make a living at being an ex-God, that is. Power abhors a vacuum, however, and Lando’s mostly deactivated status as a deity means that the rest of the retired and supplanted gods out there can smell blood in the water. A chance to get back on top, perhaps? Or just eliminate the God of the Hebrews and re-establish the old order. Worse, there are hints that a new power, a new God for the age, might be looking to eliminate the competition and the old regime — to wit, Lando. And all Lando wants to do is find the right time and moment to propose to his girlfriend. Oh, and to kill them on stage.
Book Review: The Silk Map, A Gaunt and Bone Novel, by Chris Willrich
Come, come, sit by the hearth here with me. This fine traveler’s compound doesn’t get much traffic this time of the year. The snows are threatening to close the passes to the west of us. You *are* going home to the West, of course. How did I know? No, no I am no sorcerer or magic user. I don’t need such things. The color of your skin, similar to mine. The cut of your clothes. The manner of your speech, when you bargained with the innkeeper for food, drink and a room. The load of porcelain and jade you are carrying, as evidenced by the small white jade ring you have kept for yourself and are wearing on your left hand. The manner of your shoes. I notice these things, I’m a storyteller. I notice details. And, as you see, the common room here is relatively empty. I find that my skills are best honed when I practice them, and I’ve not been able to ply my trade. I’d like to tell you a story. No, I wouldn’t say no to you buying me another cup of wine, you are very kind. Now, I heard this story from a storyteller named Chris, of the family of Willrich. A fine man, Chris. He tells tales of a poet and a deathless thief, Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone, a married couple, who adventure across the world. You’ve heard of them already, perhaps? Their adventure against the sorcerer Spawnsworth, maybe? The story I want to tell you on this cold night, though, is about their adventure on a Silk Road very much like this one. It begins in the western part of Qiangguo…
Book Review: Nice Dragons Finish Last by Rachel Aaron
Julius Heartstriker has a problem. Several, actually. He’s a dragon from a powerful and fecund dragon clan on a near-future Earth where the Magic Has Returned. Dragons are not trusted at all and are often actively hunted — for good reason — by anyone and anything else. But it gets worse. Julius is not the heartless and ambitiously machiavellian dragon his brothers and sisters are, much to the disappointment of Mother. He’d rather play World of Warcraft. So when Julius gets booted from the dragon’s lair to the center of magical activity on Earth — the ruins of Detroit — and trapped into his human form with a one month time limit to prove himself, Julius is under the gun to adapt or die. But a mage on the run from Las Vegas with secrets of her own might be as much the answer to his problems as he is to hers. Especially given given the rogue spirits, other dragons and the rest of the magical nastiness the former Motor City can throw at them. Oh, and some high powered mobsters following Marci from Sin City… Do Nice Dragons Finish Last? If Julius is not careful, he’ll just be finished.
