Recent ReviewsThe Turing Test by Chris Beckett 10 October 2008 Like a British Philip K. Dick, with whom Beckett has been compared, the protagonists of these stories, whether they inhabit bucolic colonies, dark Edens, or world-spanning metropolises, must cut through the (often) literally shifting nature of reality to strive to understand their place in the universe. Paper Cities: an anthology of urban fantasy, edited by Ekaterina Sedia 08 October 2008 Every anthology has some sort of purpose, be it a survey of the year's best fiction, a collection of stories the editor particularly liked, or, as in this case, an exploration of a specific theme. Here the assumption is, presumably, that by the end of the anthology, the reader will have some idea about what urban fantasy actually is. Paper Cities, edited by Ekaterina Sedia 06 October 2008 The publisher reproduces Jess Nevins's signature at the end of his introduction, as though to impress upon the reader the credibility and authenticity of his final claim that "If Paper Cities is any indication of second-generation Urban Fantasy—and I believe it is—both the mode of storytelling and the subgenre have a bright future" (p. 5). I sincerely hope that, Nevins's signed attestation to the contrary, the anthology isn't an indication of what "second-generation Urban Fantasy" is or might be, for it's hard to believe anyone would rate it an improvement over, say, Emma Bull's War of the Oaks (1987), the quintessential work of Urban Fantasy. 03 October 2008 After spending the early and mid-oughts writing near-future technothrillers, Paul McAuley returns to his roots with The Quiet War, the first volume in a new space opera series. Unwelcome Bodies by Jennifer Pelland 01 October 2008 Jennifer Pelland is a relatively new writer—the first of these stories was published in 2003—but has already made a mark on the genre short story scene. The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan 29 September 2008 The Steel Remains, Richard Morgan's sixth novel and his first to be marketed as fantasy, is a very odd book. The Luminous Depths by David Herter 26 September 2008 Baxter calls it "a page-turning cracker of a horror story" and, whilst it certainly is that, the description really only goes part-way toward classifying a stubbornly unclassifiable story which contains elements of fantasy and magic realism. Superpowers by David J Schwartz 24 September 2008 I did not like Superpowers as much as I'd hoped. I found it easy to put down and harder than average to pick back up. I've been a bit hard-pressed to express just why this is; it's not a bad book by any means, but it lacks something, or perhaps lacks a little in several areas. The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod 22 September 2008 In Hollywood terms, it's high concept: in a world where religion is banned, what happens when robots find God? Year Million, edited by Damien Broderick 19 September 2008 These wondrous vistas challenge us to stretch our understanding of the real—and, beyond that, the possible, blurring all distinctions between the two. As it should be, in the Year Million. Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan 17 September 2008 Reading like a weird mix between Neil Gaiman and Philippa Gregory, the novel carves itself a niche somewhere between historical court intrigue and magical otherworldliness. And it's a niche that's exploited well. Sideways in Crime edited by Lou Anders 15 September 2008 There is, simply, a (similar) intellectual enjoyment to be found in mystery, alternate history, and science fiction proper that some readers find compellingly pleasant, and certainly some of the stories in Sideways in Crime are pleasing. Several are fun to read; the best are intriguing, amusing, even charming in the conceits they put forward, the speculations they arouse. But the devil is in the details, and none of these stories is flawless, a few of them fail, and a couple of them are shoddy. The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway 12 September 2008 The universality of The Gone Away World's media coverage would not bother me, however, except for the fact that it has been universally positive. Mercifully (for the sake of my misanthropy), while The Gone Away World is a book that has a lot going for it, it is by no means flawless. View older reviews in our Archive, thanks to the kindness of our authors who allow us to keep their material online. |