Old-school swords & sorcery that deserves its reputation as a "foundational" work of sci-fi/fantasy.

The stories in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of wisdom and beauty - lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells. We meet the melancholy deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. Each being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are dangerous. All are at home in Vance’s lyrically described fantastic landscapes, like Embelyon, where, “The sky [was] a mesh of vast ripples and cross-ripples and these refracted a thousand shafts of colored light, rays which in mid-air wove wondrous laces, rainbow nets, in all the jewel hues....”

The dying Earth itself is otherworldly: “A dark blue sky, an ancient sun.... Nothing of Earth was raw or harsh—the ground, the trees, the rock ledge protruding from the meadow; all these had been worked upon, smoothed, aged, mellowed. The light from the sun, though dim, was rich and invested every object of the land ... with a sense of lore and ancient recollection.” Welcome.

( Dated and old-school, and most fantasy published since is not half so well written. )

Verdict: Vance's Dying Earth may not have quite the influence of Hyboria or Melniboné or even Amber, and it's not quite as literary as Gene Wolfe's Urth, but Vance is still a hugely influential writer without whom modern fantasy (and particularly fantasy gaming) would not be quite the same. The characters and stories in this book aren't extremely memorable, but the prose is lyrical (a term I don't use often) and it's an interesting, fantastic, slightly alien world that will nonetheless be familiar to anyone who's read a lot of genre fantasy. In other words, it's well-written and a lot of fun.

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Severian the journeyman torturer begins his quest across a grimdark landscape.

The Shadow of the Torturer is the first volume in the four-volume epic, the tale of a young Severian, an apprentice to the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession - showing mercy towards his victim.

( In the Eighties, fantasy book covers were grim, but this one is surprisingly accurate. )

Verdict: This is a book to show off to people who think pure speculative fiction can't be literary. It's got far more depth and elegance than the doorstoppers filling SF shelves today, and few modern spec fic writers have Gene Wolfe's writing chops. (Catherynne Valente is one of them. China Miéville, maybe. Neil Gaiman, no. Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Brent Weeks? Fuhgeddaboudit.) But, that's not to say The Shadow of the Torturer is a favorite. I liked it, I will read the rest of the series - eventually - but it's a thoughtful read, not a fun read. Pick something else if you want a story that moves at a fast pace or a fantastic adventure. This is a fantasy, and it is an adventure, but it will make you slow down to pay attention, and in the first book, you'll spend so much time appreciating the world that you'll only realize at the end that you haven't gotten very far.

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A touching zombie coming-of-age story.

In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm. Wrapped in the woman's arms is a baby - stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda, and he begins to move.The family hides the child - whom they name Stony - rather than turn him over to authorities who would destroy him.

Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow. For years, his adoptive mother and sisters manage to keep his existence a secret - until one terrifying night when Stony is forced to run, and he learns that he is not the only living dead boy left in the world.

( Symbolism, metaphor, heartwarming characterization, and BRAIIIINNZ! )

Verdict: Even if you are tired of zombies, give this book a chance. It's well written, it's poignant, it's the most unexpectedly touching book you will ever read that ends with a zombie apocalypse. (That's not a spoiler since it's mentioned in the prologue.) Stony Mayhall is a surprisingly effective living dead protagonist. While it's not quite perfect, Raising Stony Mayhall has got a lot more brains than your average zombie novel.

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Pierre Benoit (1886-1962) enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime and a considerable degree of literary acclaim as well. He was elected to the Académie française in 1931. Queen of Atlantis (L’Atlantide) was the second and probably the most famous of his forty-two novels.

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A cryptozoological romp and inventive reimagining of a medieval legend.



Night Shade Books, 2010, approx. 95,000 words.

The Habitation of the Blessed: A Dirge for Prester John Volume 1

This is the story of a place that never was: the kingdom of Prester John, the utopia described by an anonymous, twelfth-century document which captured the imagination of the medieval world and drove hundreds of lost souls to seek out its secrets, inspiring explorers, missionaries, and kings for centuries. But what if it were all true? What if there was such a place, and a poor, broken priest once stumbled past its borders, discovering, not a Christian paradise, but a country where everything is possible, immortality is easily had, and the Western world is nothing but a dim and distant dream?

Brother Hiob of Luzerne, on missionary work in the Himalayan wilderness on the eve of the eighteenth century, discovers a village guarding a miraculous tree whose branches sprout books instead of fruit. These strange books chronicle the history of the kingdom of Prester John, and Hiob becomes obsessed with the tales they tell. The Habitation of the Blessed recounts the fragmented narratives found within these living volumes, revealing the life of a priest named John, and his rise to power in this country of impossible richness. John's tale weaves together with the confessions of his wife Hagia, a blemmye--a headless creature who carried her face on her chest--as well as the tender, jeweled nursery stories of Imtithal, nanny to the royal family. Hugo and World Fantasy award nominee Catherynne M. Valente reimagines the legends of Prester John in this stunning tour de force.

( In the three Indies our Magnificence rules, and our land extends beyond India, where rests the body of the holy apostle Thomas; it reaches towards the sunrise over the wastes, and it trends toward deserted Babylon near the Tower of Babel. Seventy-two provinces, of which only a few are Christian, serve us. Each has its own king, but all are tributary to us. And they set not by battles, nor quarrels, nor know of deceit. (The Letter of Prester John, 1165 )

Verdict: Beautiful, imaginative, rich, dense, really more of a modern updating of a medieval travelogue, bestiary, and allegory than a novel. The story unfolds at a gradual pace and only arrives where we already knew it was going. It's hard for me to rate this one: Catherynne Valente is a genius and nobody can write like her, but this book was wordy exhibitionism and Medieval Studies porn, and I wish getting through it had been more a matter of eagerness than resolution. But I think my reaction is very much a YMMV thing, and if you are already a Catherynne Valente fan then I'm sure you'll like it.

Also by Catherynne M. Valente: My review of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Hastur sings the blues. H.P. Lovecraft by way of Manly Wade Wellman, and it totally works.



Night Shade Books, 2011, 300 pages

Publisher's description:

Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music--broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station--is said to make living men insane and dead men rise.

Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil.

But as Ingram closes in on Hastur and those who have crossed his path, he'll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell . . .

In a masterful debut of Lovecraftian horror and Southern gothic menace, John Hornor Jacobs reveals the fragility of free will, the dangerous power of sacrifice, and the insidious strength of blood.

( If Faulkner GMed a Call of Cthulhu game, it might look something like this. )

Verdict: Southern gothic horror, a blues man named Ramblin' John Hastur, and Unausprichlen Kulten. This is a tasty, bloody gothic snack of a debut novel, and for any fan of Cthulhu or the blues, a must-read.

You can read the prologue and the first six chapters here, and the Baen ebook is cheaper than on Amazon and DRM-free.

Despite being a major figure in the Romantic Movement in France Charles Nodier (1780-1844) has remained almost unknown in the English-speaking world, with just two brief tales for children having been translated into English in the 1920s. That was until Daedalus published two English translations of two exceptionally interesting novellas by this author in 1993, under the title “Smarra” and “Trilby”.

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The Map of Time, by Felix J. Palma. Atria books, 2011

To finish this 600 page book, I had to do something unusual: take a break in the middle and read something else before going back to finish it. I’ve never done that before, but I had to get away from the all seeing, all knowing, all talking narrator who goes on like a garrulous guest at a party who traps you in the corner with an unending story. The story seems interesting, so you don’t flee outright, but you do keep an eye on potential escape routes.

I grabbed this book because it was set in Victorian London and was supposed to be about time travel. It incorporates as characters some historical figures, mainly H.G. Wells. I assumed it would be a rather steampunk-ish novel. I was wrong.
The novel is divided into three sections, each dealing with a purported episode of time travel. The common thread is H.G. Wells, who keeps getting dragged into people’s time travel plots- because of his recently published novel The Time Machine – when all he really wants is to be left alone to write. Although it is not known until later, all three sections are also linked with huckster Gilliam Murray, owner of Murray’s Time Travel, his company that takes paying guests to visit the year 2000. And the underlying thread, the one of philosophy and science, constantly brings up the question of what happens when you change the past- is time immutable? Is it changeable? Is there more than one universe and more than one time? Do humans have free will?

I did somewhat enjoy the book- when I went back to it, I finished it rapidly. I would have enjoyed it more if it had been shorter, not because I don’t have the attention span for long books but because there’s a good deal of extraneous matter in this novel. The entire biography of H.G. Wells up to the point of the story really isn’t germane to the tale, and there are some truly eye-glazing sections where stories are repeated in full just because they are being told to a new character, and ones where people are just moving about. Don’t read it if you’re expecting action filled steampunk; it’s more along the lines of a book that was really written in the past.

Embassytown, by China Mieville. Del Ray, 2011

I’ve always thought of Mieville as more of a fantasy writer- not a fluffy unicorn type one, of course, grittier than that- than an SF one, so Embassytown was a surprise. Okay, every Mieville book is a surprise. But this one had a lot of the trappings of classic science fiction- space freighters that pass through a weird sort of dimension- the immer- to travel huge distances in relatively short time; an empire of sorts that colonizes worlds; non-humanoid aliens. The planet that the story takes place on has natives that speak a language with two mouths saying separate things at the same time and a biotech that does everything- everything is grown, from houses to transport. Even batteries are little animals.

But the first person protagonist is human. Avice Benner Cho, born on the planet, is an Immerser, a person with the talent of guiding a freighter through the immer. She couldn’t wait to leave the planet, but now she’s home and she’s brought her husband, a student of language, who has become fascinated with the Ariekei and their language.

While there is a plot that involves scheming ambassadors and the empire, the novel really revolves around the natives and their language. Most humans can learn to understand the Ariekei language, but one person can only ever speak half of it. And having two random people speak the two halves of the language doesn’t work. It turns out that only genetically engineered identical twins, who not only walk alike and talk alike but think alike and have special links implanted in their brains, can actually be heard by the Ariekei as speaking. And the Ariekei- usually known as the Hosts-, despite their advanced civilization, have restrictions in their language. They can’t lie. They have trouble with new concepts. There are things they really can’t talk about- almost, it seems, can’t think about. But there are some who push the envelope, who devise new figures of speech. These forward thinks create and work with similes (Avice herself was made into a simile by them), have lying contests. These folks are trouble. They reminded me very much of rebellious, avant garde students at a college.

When they, along with plotters of multiple factions all collide- with Avice finding herself at the center of them- it looks like Ariekei is doomed. Can the the Hosts, the planet, the humans and exoterres living on the planet, be saved?

While the story is a wonderful, multiply textured adventure, it goes deeper than that. It explores the colonial attitude of humans, and how language develops and shapes and is shaped by its speakers. But it doesn’t preach or go technical; the story just shows us how it works for these characters in their world.

The world building is marvelous. The story is slow at times- the beginning seems superfluous but it really isn’t – but those slow times are spent explaining the world to us. The characters are a bit lacking; none of them, even Avice, have much depth. We really never know what drives any of them. But in a way, this seems to fit with what I remember of old school science fiction- I don’t really remember much of it being character driven or spending a great deal of time explaining characters emotions. While not my favorite Mieville (Un Lun Dun holds that title), it’s a solid second.