Urban Fantasy in World SF: Scale-Bright by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Demons stalking the streets, hidden from ordinary view and prying eyes, living their lives as ordinary people. A pair of goddesses in a long term, loving, and sometimes fraught relationship. A (relatively) ordinary mortal, swept up in events by a chance meeting with one of the aforementioned demons, drawing her deeper into a magical portion of the world. This sounds like the latest urban fantasy, doesn’t it? The city is probably New York City, maybe London, right? The Goddesses are probably Greco-Roman, maybe Norse? The demon is probably of Judeo-Christian origin? Bog standard Urban Fantasy, right? No, no, no, and no. The Goddesses are Chinese, and one of them is a gender-flipped version of a God from Chinese Mythology. And yes, they are married (and oh the scandal in Heaven!). Similarly, the demons are from that same tradition, and the city is Hong Kong. This is urban fantasy, if one will call it that, of a different sort. This is Scale-Bright, by Benjanun Sriduangkaew.
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: Reach for Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan
Jonathan Strahan’s third “Infinities” anthology, Reach for Infinity, changes focus yet again for the series. While Engineering Infinity and Edge of Infinity explored solid Solar System-set science fiction, Reach for Infinity’s stories and mission concern the attempts of man to get into the solar system, pulling back even further from the more grandiose hard science fiction in the first Infinities volume, Engineering Infinity. However, even given the more narrowed and tight focus, the stories are no less full of wonder, characters, science and excellent writing. The previous volume, Edge of Infinity, felt in some ways like a manifesto from the editor, as if it had been curated and created to advance an argument. Reach for Infinity eschews that sort of editorial point of view and instead presents a set of excellent stories.
Book Review: Heirs of Grace by Tim Pratt
Rebekah Lull, a Chicago art student, has gotten an offer she can’t refuse. Not without traveling to North Carolina and seeing what its all about anyway. A foundling at birth, Rebekah discovers she’s been named the heir to the estate of Archibald Grace, her biological father. This estate comprises a rambling mansion in the hills of Appalachia and some money that could make life easy for a couple of years. The money’s the easy part. The cute local lawyer? Rebekah’s got him figured. The House, even if it seems to be full of secrets, locked doors and bona fide magical objects, is a little harder to manage, but Rebekah’s game. The relatives, the other would-be Heirs of Grace? Now they are going to be the tricky part.
Book Review: The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher
Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland is a hero, but he certainly doesn’t feel like one. His gambit at Tau Retore to defeat an immense Spider ship was, charitably, a pyrrhic victory. Worse, he has a bum mechanical knee from the experience. Also, in keeping with tradition, instead of being immediately cashiered out of the Fleet, he has been given one final mission. There’s a space station around a mysterious star that radiates an almost evil, alien sort of light. It’s being decommissioned, and ‘Ida’ has been given the task, the privilege of overseeing that decommission. But why does no one on the station know that he is a hero? And why are people disappearing or just acting strangely? And most importantly, who and what is that signal Ida is getting in a forbidden radio band on his homemade radio set?
Mining the Genre Asteroid: The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany
A council of the people petition the King for a ‘magic lord’ to rule over them. Not a wise thing, what this parliament of craftsmen ask. No indeed! But rather than deny them their request, the lord of Erl is bound to grant it, following tradition immemorial. He sends his son Alveric to Faery to get himself a Faery bride. And so Alveric begins a grand quest to win and keep as his bride the King of Elfland’s Daughter. Getting his bride to be, as Alveric and the people of Erl will find out, is the simplest part of the whole venture. Dealing with the consequences of an unhappy bride, and the infusion of magic into Erl, are much bigger problems for them to face…
