Previous SFF Author: Kirsty Logan
Malinda Lo was born in China and moved to the United States as a child. She grew up in Colorado and has since lived in Boston, New York, London, Beijing, Los Angeles and San Francisco. She is the former managing editor of AfterEllen.com. Here’s Malinda Lo’s website.
Malinda Lo combines several highly creative ideas in her debut novel, Ash. We all know the tale of Cinderella, but it’s never been told quite like this. Cinderella (here called Aisling, Ash for short) falls for a young woman instead of the prince. And the fairy who helps Ash break free of her stepmother is no rosy-cheeked godmother, but a coldly beautiful fairy lord right out of the older, darker legends of the fey folk, and he demands a steep price for his aid.
Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Malinda Lo | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Huntress is a prequel to Malinda Lo’s debut novel, Ash, though the two books can stand independently. Huntress takes place several centuries earlier, in a time when the country’s culture was more analogous to that of feudal China.
In the past few years, a shift in the weather has resulted in famine. Then the Fairy Queen, who has long been out of contact with humans, issues a surprising invitation to her city, Taninli.
Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 5 | Malinda Lo | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Tremontaine Season One by Ellen Kushner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Patty Bryant, Racheline Maltese & Paul Witcover
Serial Box is another way to consume entertainment, pairing the pleasure of episodic television with the joy of a well-written book. Serial Box provides original works of written fiction in the form of a “season,” 10-16 chapters or episodes, released weekly. Like television, they use the metaphor of a “writers room,” and each work is produced by a team of writers, rather than an individual writer. It’s an interesting concept.
Marion Deeds´s rating: 2.5 | Ellen Kushner, Malinda Lo | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Subterranean Online’s summer issue is devoted to young adult fiction, but the authors seem to have taken that directive as license to be subversive. It’s been true for a while now that the only thing “young adult” about most “young adult” science fiction, fantasy and horror is that the protagonist is not an adult. The stories just as entertaining for 50-year-olds as for 15-year-olds, and the themes are by no means limited to the worries of teens. This issue makes it clear why so many genre readers pay no attention to the labels slapped on books these days,
I’m reporting about Day 2 today. Read about Day One here.
There were lots of interesting panels today, and it was frustrating to try to boil them down into the ones I wanted to see.
My first choice was “Retelling Old Stories: The New Fairy Tales.” I’ve got all the modern fairy tale collections edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow and many other rewritings, so I was eager to hear this discussion, and it didn’t disappoint. The first question addressed by the panel was the obvious one: why rewrite fairy tales?
Previous SFF Author: Kirsty Logan
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…
this sounds like a fun one