Felix Gilman | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

SFF Author: Felix Gilman

(1974- )
Felix Gilman was born in London and grew up in the south London suburbs. He attended school in Sevenoaks, Kent, and read history at Oxford for three years, then got a master’s degree in “Elizabethan stuff,” graduating in 1996. After working briefly for a small London publisher, he moved to the U.S. to live with his wife, Sarah. They resided in Washington D.C. for a couple of years starting in 2000, where he worked as a writer for a telecommunications business publication. He then attended Harvard Law School. He has worked for the federal courts in New York and in private practice.

Bill Chats with Felix Gilman

Felix Gilman is the author of several well-received novels: Thunderer, Gears of the City, and The Half-Made World (which made my top ten list last year). His newest, The Rise of Ransom City, is a wonderfully unconventional follow-up to The Half-Made World (here’s my review). He recently took some time to answer a few questions, including why he opted against writing a more typical sequel and what projects he is currently working on. You can find out more by visiting Felix Gilman’s website.

Bill Capossere | Felix Gilman | Author Interviews, Giveaway! | 12 comments |

Thunderer: A lot to like

Thunderer by Felix Gilman

It seems lately that a lot of books have come out where setting plays as large a role as character. I’m thinking of Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris, China Miéville’s New Crobuzon, Gregory Frost’s Shadowbridge, and Jay Lake’s Mainspring. Books that haven’t simply created a new world, but whose world itself is an integral part of the story, rather than just the physical part the story moves across.

Felix Gilman’s Thunderer certainly falls into that category — more successfully than some and less so than others.

Bill Capossere and Terry Weyna´s rating: 4 | Felix Gilman | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Gears of the city: Outstanding prose and imagination

Gears of the City by Felix Gilman

Despite a somewhat slow and haphazard beginning, I thought Felix Gilman’s Thunderer was one of the best debuts I read in 2007 and couldn’t wait to get my hands on the sequel. Alas, Gears of the City was a bit disappointing in comparison, but still a very good book.

I think the biggest issue I had with the book were the characters. Simply put, I just didn’t care about any of them,

Robert Thompson´s rating: 3.5 | Felix Gilman | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Half-Made World: Strikingly original

The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman

The Half-Made World, by Felix Gilman, is a strikingly original book that, though it has its flaws, is a fascinating opening to a new world and characters. I look forward to rejoining when the sequel (and the title “The Half-Made World “pretty much mandates a sequel) arrives.

The Half-Made World is set in an alternate America, but Gilman has gone well past the add-a-few-inventions-that-weren’t-there-and-change-the-Civil-War kind of alternate world-building here.

Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Felix Gilman | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Rise of Ransom City: Climb aboard!

The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman

If Horatio Alger, rather than Mark Twain, wrote the sequel to Huck Finn (though keeping Twain’s wry humor) after he lights out for the territories, and if Huck were possessed by the spirit of Nikola Tesla, and if the Wild West were the Wild West except that the trains and guns were all hosts for demons battling for supremacy while haunting both sides is the possibility of a sort of doomsday device, well, then you just might be close to approximating Felix Gilman’s The Rise of Ransom City,

Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Felix Gilman | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |

Lightbringers and Rainmakers: An enjoyable novelette

Lightbringers and Rainmakers by Felix Gilman

Lightbringers and Rainmakers is a good novelette with some neat hooks tying it to the larger tale of The Half-Made World. We follow, as his business cards state, “Professor” Harry Ransom, Lightbringer &c, &c (who made a small walk-on cameo in The Half-Made World), one part charlatan and two parts idealistic scientist, as he is pulled into the midst of the inescapable war between the Line and the Gun. Not only has his “apparatus” once again been destroyed leaving him on the edge of poverty,

Terry Lago´s rating: 3 | Felix Gilman | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Revolutions: A hodgepodge that works

The Revolutions by Felix Gilman

At not quite the halfway point in Felix Gilman’s The Revolutions, the main character — Arthur Shaw — reacts to a particular text he is reading:

It was a hodge-podge of Masonry, Greek myth, Egyptian fantasy, debased Christianity, third-hand Hinduism, and modern and ancient astronomy, promiscuously and nonsensically mixed . . . The Book was riddled throughout with paradox and absurdity and contradiction . . . But after a week or two of study, Arthur began to enjoy it.

SFF Author: Felix Gilman

Bill Chats with Felix Gilman

Thunderer: A lot to like

Gears of the city: Outstanding prose and imagination

The Half-Made World: Strikingly original

The Rise of Ransom City: Climb aboard!

Lightbringers and Rainmakers: An enjoyable novelette

The Revolutions: A hodgepodge that works

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