Next SFF Author: Gena Showalter

Previous SFF Author: Martin L. Shoemaker

Series: Short Fiction

Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance

Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance

I adore Subterranean Press because they’re regularly publishing the kind of classic and new speculative fiction that you might have a hard time finding otherwise. They ignore teen trends and market demands and focus on producing high quality volumes of excellent fiction complete with beautiful covers and interior art.

Hard-Luck Diggings is a collection of 14 of Jack Vance’s unconnected short stories that were written early in his career, when he was perfecting his style and writing the kind of tales that were currently popular and likely to be purchased by publishers.

Fast Ships, Black Sails: Pirates and adventure!

Fast Ships, Black Sails edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer

I was never a big fan of pirates (ninjas, on the other hand…) but nonetheless, the very word evokes adventure and the high seas. Fast Ships, Black Sails doesn’t really stray far from that expectation and delivers eighteen stories marked with action, treachery, and a sense of wonder.

A good chunk of the stories revolve around traditional concepts of a pirate, with only a few exceptions, such as “Boojum” by Elizabeth Bear &

Wings of Fire: I thought I didn’t like dragons

Wings of Fire edited by Jonathan Strahan & Marianne S. Jablon

I don’t like dragons.

This is probably not the first sentence you’d expect to find in a review of Wings of Fire, an anthology devoted exclusively to dragon stories, but I thought it best to get it out of the way right from the start.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with dragons. They’re just terribly overused, one of those tired genre mainstays that people who typically don’t read a lot of fantasy will expect in a fantasy novel because they were practically unavoidable for a long time.

June 16th, 2010. Stefan Raets´s rating: 4 | Anne McCaffrey, C.J. Cherryh, Charles De_Lint, Elizabeth Bear, George R.R. Martin, Holly Black, James P. Blaylock, Jane Yolen, Jonathan Strahan, Lucius Shepard, Margo Lanagan, Michael Swanwick, Naomi Novik, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Patricia McKillip, Peter S. Beagle, Roger Zelazny, Tanith Lee, Ursula K. Le-Guin | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword & Sorcery

Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword & Sorcery edited by Jonathan Strahan & Lou Anders

Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword & Sorcery is a book I’ve been eagerly anticipating ever since it was first announced in 2009. I was particularly excited about the anthology’s impressive list of contributors which includes several authors I enjoy reading like Glen Cook, Greg Keyes, Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, Garth Nix, Tim Lebbon, Caitlin R.

June 15th, 2010. Robert Thompson, Stefan Raets and Greg Hersom´s rating: 4.5 | Bill Willingham, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Garth Nix, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, Greg Keyes, James Enge, Joe Abercrombie, Jonathan Strahan, K.J. Parker, Lou Anders, Michael Moorcock, Michael Shea, Robert Silverberg, Scott Lynch, Steven Erikson, Tanith Lee, Tim Lebbon | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 20 comments |

Mother Aegypt and Other Stories: Kage Baker had a true gift for storytelling

Mother Aegypt and Other Stories by Kage Baker

When Kage Baker died from cancer earlier this year, I was regretful that I had never gotten around to reading any of her work. I had always heard good things about her writing, both from friends and from other writers, and had seen she had been nominated for a number of writing awards I value. I always intended to get around to it, but we all know what our reading piles are like and I never did. Wanting to read her work,

Leviathan Wept: A collection of entertaining stories

Leviathan Wept: And Other Stories by Daniel Abraham

Leviathan Wept is a collection of short fiction by Daniel Abraham, author of The Long Price Quartet, one of my favorite fantasy epics of the past several years. I’ll admit up front that I’m not usually gung ho about story collections. I find they tend to be uneven just as part of their nature (i.e., it’s hard to get a collection of all excellent stories) and I just have a personal preference for the depth and richness of the novelistic form versus the short form.

Black Pearls: A Faerie Strand: Lovely as petal, sharp as thorn

Black Pearls by Louise Hawes

Once upon a time, there was a woman who was so caught up in a book that she did nothing all day but read it, from cover to cover.

Black Pearls: A Faerie Strand is a gem. Louise Hawes‘ dark, sensual fairy tale retellings and Rebecca Guay‘s evocative illustrations work perfectly together to form one of the best books of retold tales that I’ve ever read. I checked this out from the library, but I’ve resolved that I simply must have a copy of my own to treasure.

Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears: Excellent anthology despite my twisted gut

Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (eds.)

Ruby Slippers, Golden Tearsis the third in the series of fairy tale anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It’s a very good collection; in quality it’s probably equal to its immediate predecessor, Black Thorn, White Rose, though I didn’t personally like it as much for reasons I’ll elaborate below.

My favorite of the stories is Ellen Steiber’s stunning novella “The Fox Wife.” Set in nineteenth-century Japan, it concerns a domineering husband and his young wife who shows signs of becoming a kitsune,

Moonlight and Vines: What is real?

Moonlight and Vines by Charles de Lint

Moonlight and Vines is a well-written collection of stories, set in a modern city, intended to give the reader a sense of wonder, and make us believe that there is magic afoot, even in our most run-down urban slums.

Charles de Lint is wonderful at treading that line between fantasy and realism, where we wonder right along with the characters, “what is real?” That is his biggest talent; his biggest flaw is trying too hard to insert a moral into each of these stories.

Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance

Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance edited by George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois

Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance is the best anthology I’ve ever read. These stories will be enjoyed by any SFF reader, but they’ll be ten times more fun if you’ve read Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth, because they are all written in honor of that fantastic work. Each tale is written in the style of Vance,

May 7th, 2010. Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Dan Simmons, Elizabeth Hand, Elizabeth Moon, Gardner Dozois, George R.R. Martin, Glen Cook, Jack Vance, Jeff VanderMeer, John C. Wright, Kage Baker, Liz Williams, Matthew Hughes, Mike Resnick, Neil Gaiman, Paula Volsky, Phyllis Eisenstein, Tad Williams, Tanith Lee, Walter Jon Williams | Audio, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |

Next SFF Author: Gena Showalter

Previous SFF Author: Martin L. Shoemaker

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