The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy by Francis Stevens Up until recently, Minneapolis-born author Francis Stevens had been a very solid 3 for 3 with this reader. Her first novel, 1918’s The Citadel of Fear, had proved to be a mindblower, dealing as it did with the lost city of Tlapallan, nightmarish creatures, […]
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Jigs & Reels by Joanne Harris It’s always fascinating to read short stories written by your favourite author. Without the luxury of a longer page-count, they’re forced to hone their craft and get out of their comfort zone, and often some of their best work can be found in the short story format. Besides which, […]
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In the Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales by Lord Dunsany In In the Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales (1986), literary critic and editor S.T. Joshi has compiled a large collection of Lord Dunsany’s short fiction that spans fifty years and is representative of his entire oeuvre. As someone who is not […]
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Dead Man’s Hand, Pieces of Hate, A Whisper of Southern Lights by Tim Lebbon The three novellas Dead Man’s Hand, Pieces of Hate, and A Whisper of Southern Lights make up Tim Lebbon’s ASSASSIN series. They were originally published in 2004, 2005, and 2008 by Necessary Evil Press but were reprinted by Tor.com in 2016. […]
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Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds Century Rain (2004) is the first novel Alastair Reynolds published outside of his REVELATION SPACE setting. It combines elements of noir, hard science fiction and time travel with a dash of romance. Reynolds also experimented with noir elements in Chasm City and The Prefect (which I think is one of his best novels). […]
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Camouflage by Joe Haldeman How did Joe Haldeman’s Camouflage beat Susanna Clarke’s monumental work Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell for the Nebula Award in 2005? Granted, I haven’t read that book, but I have read many glowing reviews from my fellow FanLit reviewers and Goodreads friends. It was also made into a major BBC miniseries […]
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Minority Report and Other Stories by Philip K. Dick Philip K. Dick is the classic case of a brilliant but struggling artist who only got full recognition after he passed away. Despite publishing an incredible 44 novels and 121 stories during his lifetime, it was not until the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner was released […]
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Codex by Lev Grossman There are disadvantages to finding a trilogy you really love, and they usually surface somewhere between the second and final book. I discovered this whilst waiting for The Magician’s Land to be released, after devouring the first two novels of Grossman’s Magicians series. It was at this point I turned my […]
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The Secret Sharer and Other Stories by Robert Silverberg The Secret Sharer and Other Stories by Robert Silverberg is available on Audible and offers a top-notch performance by Robertson Dean. The title is a little misleading, I think. There are only three selections included, and only one is a short story. The other two seem […]
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Marvel 1602: 10th Anniversary Edition by Neil Gaiman (story), Andy Kubert (illustrations), Richard Isanove (color) In 2001, Marvel gave Neil Gaiman the chance to write in the Marvel universe. Being Gaiman, he didn’t come up with a traditional superhero story at all. There are no tall buildings to be leaped at a single bound, no airplanes […]
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Astonishing X-Men, Volume One: Gifted (Issues 1-6) and Astonishing X-Men, Volume 2: Dangerous (Issues 7-12) by Joss Whedon (writer) and John Cassaday (artist) These two Astonishing X-Men trade collections by Joss Whedon — Gifted and Dangerous — make a great introduction either to superhero comics in general or to X-Men comics specifically. There are some goods […]
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Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James Ghost Stories of an Antiquary contains eight tasty little nuggets of supernatural horror that I found very satisfying. In each of them the story is told second or even third hand by a genial narrator whose acquaintances, who are themselves of a decidedly scholarly bent, have been the victims […]
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Identity Crisis by Brad Meltzer & Rags Morales Over the years, the DC universe has undergone a series of crises — Crisis on Infinite Earths, Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, and Final Crisis. Out of these four, arguably the best written and most significant, and certainly my personal favorite, is Identity Crisis by Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales. […]
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The Algebraist by Iain Banks Over the top villain. Check. Strange and funny alien races. Check. Quest for singular object that leads through space. Check. Multitudes of battlecruisers, space wings, and dreadnaughts converging at a single point. Check. Boxes ticked, Iain M. Banks makes no bones about it: The Algebraist is unabashed space opera, for better and […]
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Stamping Butterflies by Jon Courtenay Grimwood I picked up John Courtenay Grimwood’s Stamping Butterflies because Marion thinks so highly of his work and I thought a stand-alone novel which has just been released in audio format would be an ideal introduction to the author. While I found much to admire about Grimwood’s style, I didn’t enjoy […]
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The Scarecrow and his Servant by Philip Pullman We Might Sometimes Go Hungry, But We Will Never Want for Adventure… Philip Pullman is best known for his young-adult fantasy series His Dark Materials as well as the Victorian thrillers starring Sally Lockhart, but he also has quite a few children’s books under his belt, all […]
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Inventing Memory by Anne Harris Inventing Memory is a book I found impossible to put down. Anne Harris kept me spellbound from beginning to end, with one hiccup: an aspect of the science-fiction twist that didn’t quite make sense. The novel contains two parallel storylines. One is about Shula, a slave in ancient Sumer, who […]
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River of Gods by Ian McDonald Ian McDonald’s River of Gods is a complex, multi-threaded tale that takes place in near-future India which has been split into somewhat warring states. There is a water shortage as the monsoon hasn’t come in three years, a rigid caste system is in place, and political and economic strife […]
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Mira, Mirror by Mette Ivie Harrison Everyone knows the story of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” but Mettie Ivie Harrison has something more to say, not just about the Evil Queen, but also her magic mirror. In recent years it has been rather vogue to take a traditional fairytale and put a new spin […]
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Spirited by Nancy Holder During the height of the French-Indian War, Isabella and her father, who is a doctor with the British army, are making their way to a new fort through the New York wilderness. In the meantime, Wusamequin, a Native American brave who is looking to avenge the death of his wife and […]
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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell For some people, awards are guides as to which books to read, but for others they can serve as a warning that the novels are “too literary,” all art and artifice and no story. It’s easy to see how some might think that of Cloud Atlas. Nominated for several awards, […]
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Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand Elizabeth Hand, who famously dealt with the Mother Goddess myth in Waking the Moon and the cult of Dionysus in Black Light, here tackles the subject of the fatal muse: the White Goddess, the lhiannan-sidhe, the Belle Dame Sans Merci. Mortal Lovedrifts back and forth between several periods of history, […]
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The Three Sisters by Rebecca Locksley I’d been meaning to read The Three Sisters for a long time. The cover art intrigued me. I remember seeing it in the bookstore, thinking “But there are only two sisters in the picture!” and then finally noticing the third, ghostly woman in the pool. I wanted to know […]
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An Earthly Knight by Janet McNaughton I went through a phase a few years ago where I sought out every retelling of the Tam Lin story that I could get my hands on. So the title An Earthly Knight was instantly familiar to me, and I knew I needed to read this book. I was […]
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Heroics for Beginners by John Moore This is one of my favourite fantasy books ever. It might not have the epic scope of The Lord Of The Rings, nor the immersive quality of Feist’s Riftwar Saga, but what it does have going for it it has in spades: it’s very clever. This is The Hitch […]
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