Book review: The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf by Ambelin Kwaymullina
As I mentioned back in June, whenever I attend a convention I always like to review something by one of the Guests of Honour. Last week my home con, Conflux, played host to Ambelin Kwaymullina, author of The Tribe series. The Tribe begins with The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf. An environmental catastrophe called The Reckoning has visited our world. 300 years on, society has reconfigured itself, striving to preserve the Balance with the natural world. However, some people argue the Balance is upset by the presence of individuals possessing special powers—those with the ability to heal, control the elements or see potential futures. These individuals are assessed and either granted an Exemption or deemed an Illegal and kept in Detention Camps.
Book Review: To Guard Against the Dark by Julie Czerneda
To Guard Against the Dark, the final novel set in the Trade Pact ’verse by Julie Czerneda, winningly ties together characters, plot-lines and threads into a grand, unifying finale. Pulling off a capstone to a set of nine novels is no easy task. After the original Trade Pact Trilogy (A Thousand Words for Stranger, Ties of Power, To Trade the Stars ) and then the Stratification Trilogy (Reap the Wild Wind, Riders of the Storm, Rift in the Sky ), author Julie E. Czerneda has put together the two strands of her universe together in a capstone trilogy appropriately called Reunification.
Guest Post: Welcome to my Worlds: Cover Reveal and Q&A: Tales from Plexis Edited by Julie E. Czerneda
Today on Skiffy and Fanty, we have a guest post from Julie Czerneda about the forthcoming Tales From Plexis, an anthology set in her Clan Chronicles ’verse, including a cover reveal, art and photography done by her husband, Roger Czerneda. Welcome to my Worlds. And to the cover reveal for a special project, years in the making. The Clan Chronicles: Tales from Plexis. Yes, it’s my newest anthology, but this one? This one is yours too.
Book Review: The Harbors of the Sun by Martha Wells
I’ve made no bones of the fact that I am a fan of Martha Wells. I’ve read her work, in toto, since the nineties, starting in those days when I took a look at Nebula and Hugo nomination lists and took them as straight-up reading guides. Her Ile-Rien Nebula-nominated novel Death of the Necromancer introduced me to her work, then, and I moved forward from there. The Cloud Roads, in 2011, started a new universe for her. A world with many humanoid species living in a welter of civilizations and cultures, current and past. A world where two species above all were focused. The Fell, ravenous, destructive and dangerous shapeshifters, their Flights devastating to all, a threat to any and every community. And then there were the Raksura, a shapeshifting species far, far more benign to their neighbors. A species rich in culture and internal society, a matrilineal culture built around courts ruled by Queens, with their consorts and a couple of subvarieties of the species providing a rich social environment. One problem the Raksura have is that their more aggressive flying forms have more than a passing resemblance to the Fell, and so with few exceptions, the Raksura treat with other species in their humanoid form secretly, or not at all. Into this mix, enter Moon…
Retro Childhood Review: The Dark is Rising
There was an endless variety of faces — gay, sombre, old, young, paper-white, jet-black, and every shade and gradation of pink and brown between — vaguely recognizable, or totally strange… [Will] thought: these are my people. This is my family, in the same way as my real family. The Old Ones. Every one is linked, for the greatest purpose in the world. I was going to start my review of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence with the first in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, because it holds a certain place of nostalgia based on its similarity to other much loved childhood fiction like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, both being about a group of absurdly normal siblings doing something important. But as I considered what I wanted to read to finish out 2017, a year full of darkness for so many people, the only book that seemed appropriate was The Dark is Rising. Because what’s more relevant than a book about how one person can fight back the darkness by finding strength in the love and support of family, friends, and a world that is fighting with him? Especially when it’s full of winter holiday cheer.
