Book Review: Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? by Paul Cornell
From Football through Jack the Ripper, Paul Cornell’s first two Shadow Police novels, London Falling and The Severed Streets, have winningly married the police procedural with events in a secret supernatural world in London that impinge on the ordinary world, in tones of horror and urban fantasy. The Urban Fantasy trope of someone discovering the secret supernatural world is old hat, especially in a city like London. However, it took Paul Cornell to get the idea of not only having police officers make the accidental discovery, but to then have them launch full bore into that world with the tools that made and make them effective in our world — the tools of police investigation. The third Shadow Police novel, tells you all you need to know with the title: Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? Sherlock Holmes, or worse, his ghost has been murdered.
Book Review: Awakenings by Edward Lazellari
Two denizens of New York City, both with a mysterious amnesia, turn out to be connected to each other and to interdimensional intrigue with the fantasy realm of Aandor in Edward Lazellari’s debut novel Awakenings. Given that the other realms and the greater universe are offscreen and only referred to, what the novel comes out to be is an unusual take on urban fantasy, where the fantastic intrusion is from a fantasy realm rather than from, say, Faerie. The novel’s point of view primarily alternates between the two amnesiac characters. Cal MacDonell is a model NYPD cop with a wife and a young daughter. Straitlaced, straight-up family man who does his job and holds to his word. He’s the archetype of the stalwart, respectable police officer who takes “to protect and serve” seriously. This icon of order, and he does feel like an archetype, might even take that to extremes. As we learn more about him and his past, the revelations slot in perfectly with the character as he currently exists.
Book Review: Owl and the City of Angels by Kristi Charish
When last we left Alix Hiboux, The Owl, her defrocked archaeologist turned international antiquities thieving career had been transmogrified into working for a casino-owning Japanese dragon. For someone really reluctant to deal with the secret supernaturals that live in the modern world, the Owl has sure been immersed into that world, much to her chagrin. Vampires chasing her, part of a Dragon’s team that includes a variety of supernaturals, and then there’s the fact that her online gaming buddy isn’t human, either. And now with necromantic artifacts in the Syrian City of the Dead threatening a full-fledged zombie outbreak, she’s going to get her fill of arcane artifacts and the supernatural beings that love them. If she doesn’t get killed or cursed, or worse, first. And then there is the mess of her personal life…
Book Review: Borderline by Mishell Baker
Millie is broken, and perhaps not still good. But she is trying. Having lost her filmmaking career and her legs in a failed suicide attempt a year ago, her path back to a stable life has been a tough one. When Caryl Vallo from the Arcadia Project offers Millie a position, things are even more complicated. For the Arcadia Project, in the manner of the Men In Black, keeps track of the visitors to Earth not from space, but from the Fairyland next door. And Millie’s past problems and current nature are not a problem, but rather a selling point to the organization. Even as a simple sample assignment goes haywire, Millie learns that she is not the only person with issues in the Arcadia Project. But can Millie rise above these challenges before the fallout from that simple assignment causes problems that will extend far beyond her life, or even Tinseltown? Borderline is the debut novel from Mishell Baker.
Book Review: Revisionary by Jim C Hines
After the game-changing events of Unbound, where the existence of magic and magical creatures were revealed to the world at large, what does one do for an encore? Isaac Vainio’s announcement and the blowing open of centuries-old secrets are, as it turns out, the beginning. Even as Isaac works to try and keep paranoid government agencies and a disturbed public from freaking out, elements from within and without the magic community see the revelation of magic to the world as a chance to advance their own agendas. In this new world order where magic exists, it’s going to take fast feet and thinking, as well as book smarts, for Isaac and his companions to keep the world together. Revisionary is the fourth and capstone book in the Magic Ex Libris series.
Mining the Genre Asteroid: Tea with the Black Dragon, R.A. MacAvoy
Martha MacMamara has had a strained relationship with her computer programmer of a daughter, Elizabeth. When Elizabeth sends her a plane ticket and a reservation to a hotel in San Francisco, however, Martha is drawn west to find out what is going on in Elizabeth’s life. Martha’s arrival coincides, however, with Elizabeth’s outright disappearance. With Martha unable to find her daughter, the help and aid of a mysterious Chinese gentleman may prove to be a most fortunate and propitious meeting. For, you, see, Mayland Long is far more, and far older, than he appears, and the perspicacious Martha recognizes this right off. And so one of the most interesting and powerful relationships in the history of SFF novels is born. Tea with the Black Dragon is R.A. MacAvoy’s 1983 Nebula and Hugo nominated novel. On the strength of the novel, MacAvoy won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1983. The novel won the Locus Award for best first novel in 1984. It’s a short novel, most especially by modern standards, and aside from the richness of the writing to slow you down, it goes down as a very fast read (or re-read).
