Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Terry Weyna

Magazine Monday: Hoorays for Valente as Editor, Kessel as Writer

Apex Magazine is an online journal published on the first Monday of every month, edited by Catherynne M. Valente. Valente’s submission guidelines give you a clear idea of what to expect to read within Apex’s pixels: “What we want is sheer, unvarnished awesomeness.… We want stories full of marrow and passion, stories that are twisted, strange, and beautiful.” The January issue definitely meets those requirements.

“The Itaewon Eschatology Show” by Douglas F. Warrick is a story that cries out to be labeled “New Weird.” It’s about an American in Korea – though why he is there is a complete mystery – who is a “night clown.” This means that every night he,

The Hotel Under the Sand: You’re not too grown up for this

The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker

Kage Baker left us on January 31, 2010, at the much-too-young age of 57. Those of us who read and loved her Company novels and short stories, beginning with In the Garden of Iden, will miss her more than we can collectively say — though many of us tried, in those last few weeks, to tell her what her work had meant to us.

Nominated for the 2009 Andre Norton Award for Young Science Fiction and Fantasy,

Magazine Monday: Weird Tales

Weird Tales celebrates “Uncanny Beauty” in the Summer 2010 issue (No. 356, and the most recent issue available as of this writing). The best story in the magazine, though, is one that is off-theme. “How Bria Died,” by Mike Aronovitz, is the tale of an unorthodox teacher who may well have taken his unusual teaching methods a step too far for the universe to abide. This horror story is fresh, original and written from a position of real authority: Aronovitz teaches English in a school much like the one in which his story is set.

Vanished: Best Greywalker novel so far

Vanished by Kat Richardson

The fourth book in Kat Richardson’s Greywalker series, Vanished, is the best in the series so far. Harper Blaine, Richardson’s private investigator protagonist, gets a telephone call from an old boyfriend — not necessarily an unusual event, except that, in this case, the boyfriend happens to be long dead. He hints that there is much that Harper does not know that she needs to find out, quickly, and encourages her to come to Los Angeles to look into her past.

January 29th, 2011. Terry Weyna and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Kat Richardson | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Underground: Incredible sense of place

Underground by Kat Richardson

Underground is the third in Kat Richardson’s Greywalker series, which features Harper Blaine as a Seattle private investigator who can see the “Grey” — the borderland between reality and magic, life and death, past and present. Harper gained this ability when she died for two minutes in an attack by the subject of an investigation.

Underground starts so slowly that I feared Kat Richardson had lost her way. It’s difficult to imagine that a hard-working private investigator with plenty of work would dive into a case with no client,

January 27th, 2011. Terry Weyna and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Kat Richardson | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Magazine Monday: Beautiful Steampunk

“The Melusine (1898)” by Caitlin R. Kiernan is this week’s offering by Subterranean Online. It is a wonderful story, written with an unearthly beauty. Kiernan imagines a steampunk circus that comes to town advertising its name in letters five-stories high, “shaped from out of nothing but the billowing clouds of red dust raised by those rolling broad steel and vulcanized rims.” The circus is made of automaton mastodonts and living elephants, and no one can tell if the acrobats are mechanical or real. It promises miracles.

Cala Monroe Weatherall is “a learned woman of industry and science” who comes to the circus in answer to a secret cry,

The Company: A dark story that lingers

The Company by K.J. Parker

The Company has been called “military fantasy,” but I question both terms of that characterization. First, while The Company is absolutely not set in this world, there is nothing magical or fantastical about it. But if we define fantasy to include “an historical novel not set on this world,” then we’ve got a fantasy here, and I guess we must be satisfied with that. I also don’t see this as a military novel. Certainly, all the characters served together in a very long war,

The Angel’s Game: Held me in thrall for a week

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I had intended to simply glance at the first page of The Angel’s Game and then set it aside to finish other books I was reading, but the first paragraph ensnared me:

A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood, and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent,

January 20th, 2011. Terry Weyna´s rating: 5 | Carlos Ruiz Zafón | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Magazine Monday: The Magazine That Would Not Die

In 2009, fans of Realms of Fantasy, a full-size slick magazine, were dismayed to learn that its publisher, Sovereign Media, was shutting it down. Just not enough subscribers, Sovereign said; we can’t afford to keep going. But a savior came along in the form of Publisher Warren Lapine of Tir Na Nog Press, who purchased the magazine and kept it going with the same wonderful staff (including long-time editor Shawna McCarthy). Readers were delighted. Magazines are hardly ever saved, and even if they’re revived years later, they’re normally only shadows of their former selves.

Salon Fantastique: More uneven than most of Datlow and Windling’s anthologies

Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling are the two greatest short fiction editors of fantasy and horror of our time. Their annual collections of the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror provided us, for 16 straight years, with the best short genre and slipstream fiction from all sources. Their anthologies have defined cutting edge fantasy.

Salon Fantastique is more uneven than most of Datlow and Windling’s collections.

January 15th, 2011. Terry Weyna´s rating: 3.5 | Catherynne M. Valente, Christopher Barzak, Delia Sherman, Ellen Datlow, Gregory Maguire, Jeffrey Ford, Peter S. Beagle, Terri Windling | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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