Previous SFF Author: C.M. Eddy_Jr
In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.
“… (Hasn’t it bothered you, this part of the story, my being there, I mean? What was I doing there? ‘Presume not the ways of God to scan,’ you’re been told in umpteen variations, ‘the proper study of Mankind is Man.’ Maybe so, but, what, excuse me, was the Devil doing in Eden?)”
In Glen Duncan’s bitter, darkly comic novel I, Lucifer, a gifted son struggles to win the attention of his emotionally absent father.
June 15th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Glen Duncan | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
While mid-20th century Russian propaganda wizards were twisting words to hide the truth, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a response that proved fantasy could be used to reveal wisdom rather than confuse it.
An absolute feast of a book, The Master and Margarita serves up a delicious variety of characters and scenarios — naked witches, talking cats, and a devil’s ball — as a less-than-subtle riposte to communist cant. In the process, Bulgakov simultaneously subverts the doctrine of his day, declaring the universal power of the written word to have a staying power government ideology can never achieve.
May 18th, 2012. Jesse Hudson and Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Mikhail Bulgakov | Audio, Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Thorn and The Blossom by Theodora Goss
In our Edge of the Universe column, we review books that may not be classified SFF but that incorporate elements of speculative fiction. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.
Evelyn and Brendan are both students at Oxford when they meet in the tiny Cornish town of Clews, where Evelyn is taking a much-needed break and Brendan is working in his father’s bookstore.
April 13th, 2012. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Theodora Goss | Edge | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]
The Snow Child (2012) had me from the first page, specifically these two sentences:
She had imagined that in the Alaska wilderness silence would be peaceful, like snow falling at night, air filled with promise but no sound,
March 2nd, 2012. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 5 | Eowyn Ivey | Edge | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Night Country by Stewart O’Nan
In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.
To call The Night Country a ghost story or horror story does a disservice to both the author and the work. It’s like calling The Odyssey a ghost story because Odysseus speaks to the shades.
February 10th, 2012. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Stewart O'Nan | Edge | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Mr. g: A Novel About the Creation by Alan Lightman
In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.
Alan Lightman is a physicist and a writer who often merges the scientific and the artistic in his work, both fiction and non-fiction. His newest novella, Mr. g: A Novel About the Creation,
January 20th, 2012. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Alan Lightman | Edge | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Reading The Glister by John Burnside was like opening a perfectly crafted wooden box and finding inside a set of components, nested into cognac-colored velvet. Some components were made of finely worked gold and brass; some were polished wood; some were ethereal blown glass; some were made of jewels and bone. Usually, components like these fit together to form a whole: a telescope, a kaleidoscope or a theodolite. Try as I would, though, I could not get the components of The Glister to merge into one coherent whole.
January 6th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | John Burnside | Edge, Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
In Tokyo, in 1984, a young woman in a taxi on her way to an important appointment is stuck in gridlock on an elevated highway. After getting some cryptic advice from her cab driver, she walks across several lanes of stopped traffic and makes a perilous climb down a safety access stairway to the surface streets, where she can catch a train to her destination. When she reaches those streets, she is in a different world.
Or is she?
Haruki Murakami’s 900-page IQ84 is the story of a woman,
December 30th, 2011. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Haruki Murakami | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin
In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.
I think I can safely say that I have never read a book quite like The Sacred Book of the Werewolf before. I found the book in the fantasy section, but it had literary novel packaging with a slightly risqué cover (the back and buttocks of a naked woman sporting a plumy fox’s tail).
December 16th, 2011. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Victor Pelevin | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
In our Edge of the Universe column we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.
In his introduction to Micro, Michael Crichton explains that children today are “cut off from the experience of nature, and from play in the natural world.” Crichton’s purpose, it would seem, is to take the seemingly mundane world and reveal the wonderful details that don’t make it onto Wikipedia and computer models.
December 2nd, 2011. Ryan Skardal´s rating: 3 | Michael Crichton | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Previous SFF Author: C.M. Eddy_Jr
I believe you are missing the point of this book here. I don't believe the purpose is to tell a…
I love it!
Almost as good as my friend: up-and-coming author Amber Merlini!
I don't know what kind of a writer he is, but Simon Raven got the best speculative-fiction-writing name ever!
[…] Its gotten great reviews from Publishers Weekly (starred review!), Kirkus, Locus, Booklist, Lithub, FantasyLiterature, and more. Some of whom…