Previous SFF Author: E.C. Myers
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
A Genie. A golem. Nineteenth-century New York City. Boy, did I want to love this book. Drawn by its come-hither characters, its promise of poetry, and by its dark side in the form of a truly nasty character, I really, really wanted to love it. And truth is, I liked The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker. But in the well-trod words of middle school, I didn’t “like like” it.
June 25th, 2021. Bill Capossere, Marion Deeds, Ray McKenzie and Jana Nyman | Helene Wecker | Edge, Mythopoeic Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
Our heroine, Maggie, is reeling from her divorce and drifting rather aimlessly through life — she considers herself a poet but hasn’t written a poem in years.
Then, her mentor dies mysteriously — drowned in a dry creekbed — and inexplicably leaves her his house in the Southwestern desert. She moves there, hoping to research a biography of him. At first, Maggie doesn’t like the desert; it seems sterile, forbidding, devoid of charm. Then one night a pooka cuddles up to her in bed,
February 19th, 2021. Kelly Lasiter and Jana Nyman´s rating: 4.5 | Terri Windling | Mythopoeic Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
In the 1980s, Terri Windling created the FAIRY TALE SERIES, a collection of stand-alone retellings for adults, featuring some of the best writers in the field. The series continued into the early 2000s and spans a wide variety of styles, tones, and interpretations of the tales. Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose (1992) was the sixth in the series and combines its fairy tale with an all-too-real historical horror. It won the Mythopoeic Award in 1992,
November 11th, 2019. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Jane Yolen | Mythopoeic Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Porcelain Dove by Delia Sherman
Years ago, I got into “fantasies of manners” at about the same time as I was going through a big Revolutionary France phase. When I heard about Delia Sherman’s The Porcelain Dove (1993) — a fantasy set in that time period, and which won the Mythopoeic Award for 1994 — it sounded like the perfect book for me. I could never find it in the used bookstores, though. (I did, before I successfully committed the title to memory,
August 30th, 2019. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Delia Sherman | Mythopoeic Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |
The Song of Rhiannon by Evangeline Walton
The Song of Rhiannon (1972), the third volume in Evangeline Walton’s MABINOGION TETRALOGY, begins with Manawyddan, son of the sea god, haunted by grief and feeling directionless after the events of The Children of Llyr. (I haven’t read The Children of Llyr, but I have read “Branwen Daughter of Llyr,” the medieval Welsh tale on which it is based. It features a Red Wedding’s worth of deaths.) His friend Pryderi,
August 16th, 2019. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Evangeline Walton | Mythopoeic Award | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
Welcome to a “story of ancient China that never was”. Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds (1985) is a real romp of frenetic pace and fairy-tale style mingled with the mythology and legends of ancient China. It’s as bonkers and as brilliant as they come.
The story centres on a simple but warm-hearted peasant boy, nicknamed Number 10 Ox for his great strength and the order of his birth. Upon learning that all of the children in his village have been struck down by a terrible disease he sets out to Peking seeking a wise man.
July 7th, 2016. Katie Burton and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 5 | Barry Hughart | Mythopoeic Award, World Fantasy Award | SFF Reviews | 11 comments |
Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
Redemption in Indigo (2010) by Karen Lord is a beautiful, sly, innovative book that is doing much more than it seems to be on the surface. The frame story is the folktale of Ansige the glutton. Lord’s retelling takes Paama, a skilled cook and Ansige’s estranged wife, as its protagonist. At the beginning of the book, she has left Ansige and returned to her own family to decide what she’ll do next. But after missing his wife’s constant attention to his endless appetite,
December 16th, 2015. Kate Lechler and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5 | Karen Lord | Audio, Mythopoeic Award | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Although it took a good two-thirds of the novel for me to decide, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really enjoyed this multiple award-winning book by Connie Willis. At its core, Doomsday Book is sci-fi time travel, but it’s got depth and intelligence, and leaves little wonder that it won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards for Best Novel (in 1992 and ’93, respectively), as well as the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1993,
November 4th, 2015. Jason Golomb´s rating: 4 | Connie Willis | Hugo Award, Locus Award, Mythopoeic Award, Nebula Award | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by A.S. Byatt
[At The Edge of the Universe, 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. Today we have two reviews of A.S. Byatt’s The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.]
The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye is a collection of five stories,
November 23rd, 2012. Kelly Lasiter and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | A.S. Byatt | Edge, Mythopoeic Award, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
I do not know what I have given you tonight…
My strange and frustrating relationship with the books of Robin McKinley continues. Pretend that there’s a picture hanging on your wall. Everyone who sees it raves about it: the colours, the texture, the composition, the style. People want copies of it so that they can pass it around. Everyone loves staring at it for hours on end. But as try as you might, and as much as you can recognize the skill that went into painting it,
August 24th, 2011. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3 | Robin McKinley | Mythopoeic Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Previous SFF Author: E.C. Myers
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
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…