The Grass-Cutting Sword by Catherynne M. Valente The Grass-Cutting Sword is a metaphor, comprised almost entirely of exquisite imagery, and every single word has obviously been chosen with a poet’s eye for sound and sight. It is a creation myth and a Grendel for the nuclear age, a story of beginnings and endings, of beauty […]
Read More
THE ORPHAN’S TALES by Catherynne M. Valente I haven’t read any fantasy quite like Catherynne M. Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales duology. This is the story of a young orphan girl who is shunned because of the dark smudges that appeared on her eyelids when she was a baby. She lives alone in a sultan’s garden because […]
Read More
The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente In the Night Garden is the first in a two-book (maybe more?) series and if book one is any guide, this is as delicious and clever a tale-telling as one is likely to run into for some time. With an Arabian Nights feel and structure, […]
Read More
Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente The first thing that strikes you about Palimpsest is the gorgeous prose. Every sentence is crafted with the utmost care, resulting in a novel that almost reads like poetry. It simply begs to be read out loud. I’ve read many books that attempt this kind of lush prose, but Palimpsest is […]
Read More
Under in the Mere by Catherynne Valente Catherynne Valente’s novella Under in the Mere is about as inaccessible a book as I’ve read in some time. That doesn’t mean I’m not recommending it, but it’s fair warning to any who attempt it. Under in the Mere is a poetic, surrealistic “retelling” of several Arthurian tales […]
Read More
The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne M. Valente [Note: I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version of The Habitation of the Blessed read by Ralph Lister. It took me a while to adjust since I have recently listened to Lister read three installments of THE GOREAN SAGA and I at first had a hard time hearing […]
Read More
The Folded World by Catherynne M. Valente Prester John has been king in Pentexore for many years now, aided by his wife Hagia the blemmye. He loves the creatures he rules and has spent his time teaching them about Jesus Christ and trying to reconcile the creation story in Genesis with his new knowledge of […]
Read More
Reposting to include Rebecca’s new review. Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente CLASSIFICATION: Weaving together fairy tales and history, Deathless is kind of like Pan’s Labyrinth, if it was told by Hayao Miyazaki and Neil Gaiman. Highly recommended for fans of adult fairy tales, Russian folklore, and Catherynne M. Valente. FORMAT/INFO: Deathless is 352 pages long […]
Read More
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente September’s father has gone off to war and her mother works all day building airplane engines while September stays home and washes the china teacups. Life in Omaha is disappointingly dull for such an imaginative and adventurous (and heartless!) […]
Read More
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente September returns to Fairyland to find that her shadow, which she sacrificed to save a child in the previous book, has become the Queen of Fairyland-Below. Worse, the shadows in Fairyland are disappearing into Fairyland-Below, where they enjoy the freedom […]
Read More
The Boy Who Lost Fairyland by Catherynne M. Valente The Boy Who Lost Fairyland is the fourth in the FAIRYLAND series by Catherynne M. Valente, the second in a row that has been somewhat of a disappointment to me, and the first whose strengths I thought were not enough to fully overcome its flaws. Valente […]
Read More
Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne Valente I read the first few chapters of this novella as an act of faith, because Valente has earned my trust as a reader, and because Silently and Very Fast has an award and nomination list longer than most people’s entire short stories (it won the Locus Award for […]
Read More
Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente C.S. Lewis once wrote his goddaughter, “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” It seems an odd statement at first, that one is ever not the right age to read fairy tales, but I think there is something truthful about that assessment. […]
Read More
The Bread We Eat in Dreams by Catherynne Valente The Bread We Eat in Dreams contains thirty-five of Catherynne Valente’s short stories and novellas, caught out in the wild and arranged neatly for the paying public. Ranging from delicate, herbivorous poems to novella-sized megafauna, these creatures display the ecological diversity of the Phylum of the […]
Read More
The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two by Catherynne M. Valente I’ve been a big fan of Catherynne Valente’s first two FAIRYLAND books, each one full of more imagination than the entire oeuvre of some fantasy authors, to say nothing of the lushly vivid and starkly original language, the wry self-aware […]
Read More
Speak Easy by Catherynne M. Valente I held off on reading Speak Easy by Catherynne M. Valente for a few weeks after it arrived because I knew once I started reading it, I’d want to do nothing else. When you look at the novella, this doesn’t seem like such a big problem. The advanced reader’s […]
Read More
Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente, tells the story of documentary filmmaker Severin Unck and her ill-fated film project on Venus in the 1920’s. In this alternate history, humans conquered the solar system around the end of the 19th century, and human colonies have sprung up from Mercury to Pluto and everywhere […]
Read More
The Glass Town Game by Catherynne M. Valente Any book by Catherynne M. Valente contains both the unexpected and the unsurprising. You can always anticipate clever wordplay, a sense of whimsy, and prose that just stops short of purple, but in regards to content all bets are off. She can write anything, from a Wild-Western […]
Read More
Reposting to include Rebecca’s new review. The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente In her Afterword, Catherynne M. Valente lays out the inspiration for 2017’s collection of linked short stories The Refrigerator Monologues. Valente was inspired partly by the work of comics writer Gail Simone, who created and popularized the term “Women in Refrigerators” as […]
Read More
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente This is the kind of review I always dread writing — so many people loved Space Opera (2018), either becoming brand-new Catherynne M. Valente fans or cementing their appreciation of her talent. I can see why they would like it, I really can. The novel bears all the hallmarks […]
Read More
The Future is Blue by Catherynne M. Valente Fans of Catherynne M. Valente who especially love her line-by-line prose will be pleased with her 2018 story collection, The Future is Blue. Fifteen of Valente’s shorter works are showcased here. The title piece is a novelette. The similarity they share is the priority of narrative voice […]
Read More
Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente Sophia’s life is perfect. She adores her husband, her company is much sought-after in the luxurious gated community she and her various neighbors share, she has endless tasks and joys to fill the long days while she waits for her husband to return from his various freelancing […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
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, […]
Read More
I do not envy the awards panel for the Nebula Awards this year. There are two excellent novellas equally deserving of the award in that category. The first of the novellas I refer to is “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” by Ken Liu. This story concerns the Pingfang District in China and the […]
Read More
Editor’s note: We now know that K.J. Parker is author Tom Holt. The Summer 2013 issue of Subterranean Magazine has a special K.J. Parker section, which is a treat for anyone who has read any of Parker’s work. This author (gender unknown) writes from the perspective of a military historian, and appears to have a […]
Read More
There is so much free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet these days. Here are a few stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about. The Sea of Ash by Scott Thomas (2014) The Sea of Ash is a wonderful little novella. It’s creative, creepy and oh so very ‘Lovercraft.’ […]
Read More
Here are some of the stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about. This week we continue focusing on 2015 Nebula-nominated short fiction, along with some other stories that caught our attention. “Madeleine” by Amal El-Mohtar (2015, free on Lightspeed magazine, Kindle magazine issue), nominated for the 2015 Nebula award (short story) Madeleine is in […]
Read More
Our weekly exploration of free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about. “Report” by Donald Barthelme (1967, originally published in the New Yorker, free at Jessamyn.com (reprinted by permission), also collected in Sixty Stories) “Our group is against the […]
Read More
In this week’s SHORTS column we wrap up our reviews of most of the 2021 Locus and Hugo award finalists in the novelette and short story categories. “50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know” by Ken Liu (2020, free at Uncanny magazine) One eventually gets the list the titles implies, but first the story […]
Read More
Mythic edited by Mike Allen While a relatively short anthology, what Mythic lacks in quantity is more than made up for with the quality of its selections. Each poem and story stands out as well as fitting the “mythic” tone the book is attempting to capture. Right from the very start, I was already enamored […]
Read More
Mythic II edited by Mike Allen Much like its predecessor Mythic, Mythic 2 feels compact and precise. Both the prose and poetry (and everything else in between) are easy to read and have a lyrical tonality. The anthology is even and consistent, with no sudden drops or spikes in the quality. Editor Mike Allen also […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2007 In many ways, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2007 anthology is a difficult book to review. For one thing, to me and a lot of my reading/writing circle, this is easily the definitive bible when it comes to short stories of the genre. For another, many of […]
Read More
Paper Cities by Ekaterina Sedia Bring up urban fantasy nowadays and most readers will probably assume that you’re talking about such authors as Laurell K. Hamilton, Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, Kim Harrison, Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon and so on, but in this new anthology from Senses Five Press, which is edited by Ekaterina Sedia, […]
Read More
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008 For me, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008 has been a two-headed beast. On one hand, it’s an eagerly anticipated book by people involved in the industry, usually for the summation at the front of the book and the honorable mentions list at the back. The various […]
Read More
Troll’s Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling Fairy tales were my first love when I was a child. My mother introduced me to the joys of stories with The Golden Book of Fairy Tales long before I learned how to read. My early reading included the first […]
Read More
Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded is the second steampunk anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, following 2008’s first installment. It contains about twice as many stories as its predecessor, but unlike the first collection the quality is more uneven here, resulting in a less impressive […]
Read More
Twenty-First Century Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell Twenty-First Century Science Fiction is packed full of excellent science fiction stories. I’ve been reading anthologies lately, partly to improve my own short story writing, and this is the best I’ve found so far. It contains stories by authors such as Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow, Catherynne […]
Read More
Magic City: Recent Spells edited by Paula Guran Things you should know: 1. This is a reprint anthology. If you read a lot of anthologies in the field, you will probably have read some of these before. I had read three, though two of them were among the best ones, and I enjoyed reading them […]
Read More
Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 edited by Karen Joy Fowler & John Joseph Adams Karen Joy Fowler is the guest editor of the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016. This is the second book in the annual series, which John Joseph Adams conceived of, and he still plays a large role in the […]
Read More
A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers edited by Victor LaValle & John Joseph Adams In reaction to the Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States as well as to the rhetoric spewed by his far-right supporters such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, Victor […]
Read More
Last month Marion and I attended FOGCon 5 in Walnut Creek, California (in the San Francisco Bay area) where I served on a panel called “When the Setting is a Character.” FOGCon, which stands for Friends of the Genre Convention, has a literary bent. Marion and I are going to discuss our experience here, and we’ve got a book to give […]
Read More
The Labyrinth — (2004) Publisher: Here Monsters are hidden… A lyrical anti-quest through a conscious maze without center, borders, or escape — a dark pilgrim’s progress through a landscape of vicious Angels, plague houses, crocodile-prophets, tragic chess-sets, and the mind of an unraveling woman, driven on by the mocking guide who seeks to destroy as […]
Read More
We’re updating our theme, so things may be a little messy or slow until we’re finished. Thank you for being patient with us!
Recent Discussion