Interzone, issue 218: October 2008

Issue #218 of Interzone is described as a “Chris Beckett special,” and contains an interview with Beckett and three of his stories. This led me to think over how much of Beckett’s work I’d read previously. Although his name was familiar from reading Interzone over the years, I could recall only one of his stories with any clarity. But the interview piqued my interest, and I looked forward to the following three tales...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Interzone
Hannu Rajaniemi

The Duke in His Castle by Vera Nazarian

After their failed rebellion against him, the Just King bound the Dukes and their heirs to remain within the walls of their homes - literally so, for invisible barriers prevent them from ever stepping outside. But there may be a way: rumour has it that all the Dukes have their own secret power and that, should a Duke or Duchess discover all the others' secrets, he or she would break the curse. So the Dukes (unable, of course, to travel themselves) have taken to sending out emissaries charged with unearthing these secrets...

The full review is available online at The Zone.

Further links:
Vera Nazarian
Norilana Books

Mockingbird by Walter Tevis

Walter Tevis's 1980 novel Mockingbird is a quiet, meditative piece; less of a story, really, than a portrait... In this future, machines run everything, and humans keep themselves to themselves - literally, because privacy and individuality laws demand it; and they spend much of their time in a drugged stupor anyway. Those who've had enough can always immolate themselves...

The full review is available online at The Zone.

Further links:
Walter Tevis
Gollancz

The Scent of Shadows by Vicki Pettersson

Every major city has its own Zodiac troop, a dozen people with extraordinary powers of strength, healing, and more besides; they are the Light, whose mission is to maintain peace and battle their Shadow counterparts. Joanna Archer learns that she is the First Sign of the Las Vegas Zodiac troop, and may be destined to lead them in the ultimate battle against the Shadows. There's one thing, though: the Tulpa, the supernatural entity who leads Vegas's Shadow troop, is Joanna's real father...

The full review is available online at SF Site.

Further links:
Vicki Pettersson
HarperVoyager

Lone Star Stories, issue 28: August 2008

...A marvellous trio of tales.

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Lone Star Stories
Hal Duncan
Jo Walton

Small Voices, Big Confessions, ed. Chris Lee Ramsden

Small Voices, Big Confessions is an anthology of fiction by members of the EditRed online writing community. The stories are diverse in subject and setting, though unfortunately with correspondingly variable quality.

The name most familiar to readers of this website will probably be Aliya Whiteley, who contributes one of the book's most enjoyable stories, Fate, Freddo and the Number Four. Sylvia is an actress who has just moved to London and is determined to get her big break. Today she's auditioning for an advert which features Freddo, a polar bear with a hatred of the number four – and the audition will change her life in more ways than she could possibly imagine. Typically of Whiteley, this story combines a humorous surface with a serious heart, and doesn't compromise on either.

Several of the pieces in the anthology are very short, but do their jobs well. For example, Eoin Beckett contributes The Truth, In Brief, Glimpsed Through the Rocks of a Half-Finished Bourbon, an intense character study of two people at a party that has greater impact than its two-and-a-bit pages might lead one to expect. In contrast, Matano Lipuka's Look Who Just Dropped In, about a mother's remains being returned to Kenya, is more amusing, with a satirical bite.

Not all the stories are entirely successful, however. Interfaces (a love story) by Bernadette Klubb is about a couple in love who, unknowingly, attract the attention of fairies when out walking. Whilst some of the prose is beautiful, I found the conclusion unsatisfying and the fairies themselves quite irritating. Tom Sykes' Super Fly Tipper deals with a firm which, as the title suggests, is involved with illegal waste-dumping. It rattles along quite nicely to begin with, but the ending introduces an element that hasn't previously been hinted at, and undermines the story as a whole by being too daft for its own good.

One thing that's quite common throughout Small Voices, Big Confessions is a strength in creating voice and viewpoint. Potting Soil by Teri Davis Rouvelas is about a woman who leaves sacks of soil outside her door for reasons that the narrator can't fathom – but we readers can guess. The tale is pleasingly humorous, and the distinctive narration feels more like the voice of a real person than a fictional character. And Aoife Mannix effectively portrays a child's-eye view of the adult world in The Costume, where the relationship between young Jimmy's parents has broken down – but the boy doesn't really understand, and is more concerned with his Hallowe'en costume.

Reading this review back, I suspect I've underplayed the proportion of less successful stories in Small Voices, Big Confessions a little. But then, it is an anthology that you'll have to cherry-pick from to find the best pieces. Rest assured, though, that they are there – and are worth seeking out.

Small Voices, Big Confessions edited by Chris Lee Ramsden. EditRed paperback, 216pp, £8.99 plus P&P.

This review first appeared in Whispers of Wickedness.

Further links:
EditRed
Matano Lipuka
Aoife Mannix
Tom Sykes
Aliya Whiteley

Banquet for the Damned by Adam L.G. Nevill

Struggling musician Dante Shaw has his hopes pinned on a planned concept album based around a book on the occult written by reclusive academic Eliot Coldwell. With his friend and bandmate Tom in tow, Dante travels up to Scotland,accepting an invitation to work as Coldwell's research assistant at the University of St. Andrews. Coldwell proves reluctant to discuss his work with Dante, but is keen for the young man to meet his wild and beautiful associate, Beth -- leading Dante to suspect he has been lured to the town under false pretences...

The full review is available online at SF Site.

Cone Zero: Nemonymous Eight

Cone Zero is the eighth instalment of Des Lewis's 'megazanthus' (magazine/anthology) Nemonymous—the idea of which, if you're unfamiliar with the series, is that full writer credits are not given until the following issue, leaving the current stories presented anonymously. And what stories they are: there are so many good ones, I'm not sure where to start...

The full review is available online at Serendipity.

It is also my hundredth published review!

Further links:
Nemonymous

ChiZine, Issue 37: July-September 2008

A sense of uncertainty floats through the stories of ChiZine #37: uncertainty over where we are, who (or what) we’re reading about, why certain things are happening—and the characters aren’t always much clearer about these matters than we are. The potential is there for some wonderful tales; unfortunately, that potential is not quite fulfilled overall...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
ChiZine
Nadia Bulkin
Richard Larson
Leslie Claire Walker

An Alternate History of the 21st Century by William Shunn

In his afterword, the author cautions against the natural human tendency to look for patterns in everything. And, indeed, anyone trying to fashion a single, coherent future history from the six stories in the book will be disappointed. Nevertheless, the tales do comprise an interesting set of snapshots of where we might be heading -- or (as Cory Doctorow's introduction reminds us) where we are now...

The full review is available on SF Site.

Further Links:
William Shunn
Spilt Milk Press

Interzone, Issue 217: August 2008

Advance publicity in several forum posts heralds issue #217 of Interzone as “not so Mundane this time,” following as it does from the Mundane SF special issue. And it’s quite right: only two of this issue’s stories are Earth-bound, and those two are outlandish enough that they’re far away from Mundane SF. Whether this contrast with issue #216 is deliberate, I don’t know; but I do know there is a lot of good stuff to be found here...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Interzone
Karen Fishler
M.K. Hobson
Paul McAuley
Suzanne Palmer
Jason Sanford
Paul G. Tremblay

The Fade by Chris Wooding

Orna, a member of the elite Cadre, is bonded for life to the Clan Caracassa. Orna's people, the Eskarans, are at war with the Gurta; as the novel begins, she is in battle. Tricked by the Gurta, Orna's husband is killed, and she is captured and taken to the prison-fortress Farzala. At first despairing and aloof (which gains her the nickname of "the fade," a kind of apparition), she gradually forms relationships with a small group of her fellow-prisoners and formulates a daring plan to escape...

The full review is available online at SF Site.

Chris Wooding
Gollancz

Diet Soap, Issue 2: Sex and Gender

Diet Soap’s website—and, indeed, the magazine itself—suggest that it’s meant as a provocative publication. Well, I have to admit that I didn’t find issue #2 to be quite that; but it does have some good stories that make telling points about the subject of sex and gender...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Diet Soap
Stephanie Burgis
Ginnetta Correli
Chelsea Martin
Katherine Sparrow

Abyss & Apex, Issue 26: Second Quarter 2008

This was my first encounter with Abyss & Apex, a generalist speculative fiction webzine that seeks to publish “powerful stories with emotion that resonates in our minds and hearts long after the first reading” and “stories that stand out from the norm even in a genre that pushes the envelope of normal.” With the five stories of issue 26, I would say they haven’t quite hit that mark...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Abyss & Apex
Andrew S. Fuller
Laura Anne Gilman
Larry Hodges
Vylar Kaftan
Lawrence M. Schoen

Light Reading by Aliya Whiteley

Prudence Green and Lena Patten are best friends, brought together by their marriages to officers in the Royal Air Force. Their husbands are currently away on duty, and the two women are dissatisfied with their lives back home on the base. Excitement of sorts arrives in December 2004, when Pru finds one of the other RAF wives hanging, because her husband is having an affair - with Lena's husband. At which point, it may appear that Light Reading is going to be a run-of-the-mill potboiler...but it's not so...

The full review is available online at The Zone.

Further links:
Aliya Whiteley
Macmillan New Writing

Postscripts, Issue 14: Spring 2008

PS Publishing must have one of the most diverse lists in the independent press; and their magazine, Postscripts, reflects that diversity: reading an issue is like reaching into the PS bran tub and pulling out a random selection...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

Further links:
Jetse de Vries
Rhys Hughes
Paul Jessup
Sarah Monette
Robert Reed
Jeff VanderMeer
Barry Wood
PS Publishing

Something Wicked, Issue 6

On my personal world map of fantastic fiction, South Africa is one of the areas marked “here be dragons,” because I don’t know what else to put there. If the same applies to you, here to amend that is Something Wicked, South Africa’s only quarterly magazine of science fiction and horror (so here there be no dragons after all)...

The full review is available online at The Fix.

The Grin of the Dark by Ramsey Campbell

Simon Lester's old university tutor commissions him to write a book expanding his thesis on forgotten film stars. The actor who particularly captures Simon's interest is Tubby Thackeray, a professor who became a music hall comedian and then a silent movie clown, but who has now been effectively written out of cinematic history. It becomes clear why when Simon eventually tracks down some footage of Thackeray's highly disturbing films...

The full review is online at SF Site.

The Unblemished by Conrad Williams

In a London pub, photographer Bo Mulvey is approached by a random stranger offering him a map to the secret "house of flies." Mulvey accepts, but all he receives for his trouble is a few lines of nonsense. He may think at first that he's been taken for a ride, but then the map invades his vision, and begins to change him...

The full review is online at SF Site.

Tales from the Secret City by Cryptopolis

Cryptopolis -- a writers' group based in Austin, Texas -- offers us an anthology of ten stories by its members, each introduced by another contributor. The book is elevated above the status of back-slapping exercise by actually being pretty good, yet at the same time, it's frustratingly not good enough to be much more than pretty good. It seems that three of the stories go the extra distance to become something quite special; the other seven are interesting, but stop a little short...

The full review is available online at SF Site.

Further links:
Patrice Sarath

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

Charlie Asher owns a second-hand goods shop in San Francisco. As the book begins, his wife Rachel has just given birth; she dies soon after of a blood clot in the brain. Later, Charlie begins to see certain objects glowing red; he discovers they are 'soul vessels' and he has become a 'Death Merchant', charged with collecting the soul vessels of people about to die...

The full review is available online at The Zone.

Further links:
Christopher Moore
Orbit

Another blog

I've started a personal blog elsewhere, called Reading by the Moon. I'll still be updating this blog with snippets of the reviews, though.

The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass by Vera Nazarian

Far in the future, when the distinctions between 'fantasy' and 'science fiction' are meaningless, the Pacific Ocean has dwindled to a (relatively) small body of polluted water, and the human population is concentrated in two cities on the edge and floor of the basin. Humankind has itself evolved beyond primitive old homo sapiens - but has also lost the ability to reproduce. So the species perpetuates itself by growing a female with the old DNA, who will become the Queen of the Hourglass, destined to mate with the Clock King. Liraei is the current Queen of the Hourglass, and this novella follows her life from 'birth' until...

The full review is available online at Serendipity.

Further links:
Vera Nazarian
PS Publishing

H2O by Mark Swartz

The year is 2020, and clean water has become a scarcity. Chicago has weathered the 'hydro crisis' reasonably well, though its society has still been reconfigured, with all the major utilities controlled by three giant public-private partnerships. Water is the responsibility of Drixa, and it's an employee of that corporation - an engineer named Hayden Shivers - who makes a discovery that could solve the world's water-supply problems: a Maltese moss whose properties defy conventional physics; if you filter water through it, a greater volume of water comes out. The new product, dubbed 'H2O', is, Drixa insists, just ordinary water; though the protest group ICE-9 (led by the daughter of Drixa's CEO) is not convinced. As the novel begins, Miyumi Park, Drixa's head of human resources, offers Hayden Shivers the post of chief engineer - and he becomes a pawn in an elaborate game of power played out by more parties than he could ever have anticipated...

The full review is available online at The Zone.