Tag archives for anthology

Carrie Cuinn and KV Taylor (eds) – FISH

cuinntaylor-fishWhat secrets belong only to a fish? Dive in and find out.

Mannetje, mannetje Timpe Te,
botje, botje in de zee,
mijn vrouwtje die heet Ilsebil,
ze wil niet zoals ik wil.
Van de Visser en Zijn Vrouw in De Sprookjes van Grimm,
Van Holkema & Warendorf, 1984

O man of the sea!
Come listen to me,
For Alice my wife,
The plague of my life,
Hath sent me to beg a boon of thee!
The Fisherman and His Wife in Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
Puffin Books, 1971

Before I started this blogging lark, if you’d come to me and said ‘Listen in three years you will read a short story anthology filled with nothing but stories inspired by the concept of fish AND you are going to really enjoy it,’ I would have thought you’d lost your mind. Indeed I hardly read anthologies and come on, an entire anthology pf fishy stories? Who would think of that and then publish it? Well, Carrie Cuinn would and did. And what’s more, I really did enjoy this anthology tremendously. Who knew, past me, who knew?

So, 33 stories inspired by fish, what do those look like? Perhaps not unexpectedly, there are several stories inspired by the fairy tale of the fisherman and his wife and several folk and mythological tales from around the world. But there are also fish in space, magical fish familiars, adventure fish and even a narcissistic eel. All of the stories are surprising, even if not all of them worked as well for me. To shake my anthology reviewing format up a little, I’m going to review my favourite stories individually.

Paul A. Dixon – One Let Go
A layered story about choices, crossroads, and wisdom that resonates down the years. I love the separate stories Dixon manages to fit into this gem of a story. At the heart of it is the history of a magical talking salmon, how he chose to stay out to sea instead of traveling upriver to the spawning grounds to procreate and die, how he’s seen the world’s oceans and has finally found his way back to his birth river. But it is also the story of the boy Ian, who catches the salmon together with his grandpa and the choices they make when the salmon offers them a deal: release him in exchange for wisdom. But it is also the story of the man Ian, who has to decide whether he’ll settle down to raise his son or get back out on the highway and freedom. All three stories end in choices, but only one of those choices is revealed to the reader, the others are implied only and how the reader interprets them is largely up to her. I loved the thoughtfulness of the story, its layering and its build-up to the end. I know what I hope Ian chooses to do in the end, but the fact is I’ll never know and my hopes are based on the person I am and how my life looks. I think others might wish him to make a different choice.

Andrea Zup – Maria and the Fish
A variation on the magical, boon-granting fish, I loved the prolonged interaction between Maria and the Fish. There is an absolute smugness to Maria, which instead of making her unsympathetic, is rather endearing and the Fish’s vindictive interpretation of her wish is fabulous. There is a sense of fun and whimsy to the story and a snarkiness to the dialogue that is highly entertaining. It ends on a perfect note and left me with a smile on my face.

Corinne Duyvis – The Applause of Others
I adored this story almost as much for its setting as its narrative. It’s set in Amsterdam and is written not with the eye of a stranger but someone familiar with the city and its character, who knows to look beyond its tourist trap façade to its everyday magic. I loved how Duyvis incorporated details about Dutch life and culture without signposting them, dropping in names and features. The connection between Floor and the narcissistic eel is fascinating and disturbing and its ways of seemingly taking revenge on those who ignore it, threaten it, or take attention away from it is very fitting both as its a fish and due to the eternal Dutch struggle against the encroaching sea. This is the first time I’ve read a Dutch speculative author and I can’t wait to read more from Duyvis.

April L’Orange – Quick Karma
Orange’s Quick Karma may just have been my favourite story out of the bunch. I adored the characters and the premise. Wizards and familiars, a reincarnated gold fish, a wizard-in-training, a roller-derby playing roommate, and that only covers half of it. The tone and pace of the dialogue was quite snappy and the pacing overall was very good. I really enjoyed the story and the resolution. Quick Karma also felt as a fantastic set-up for a series and I’d love to read more about Merritt, Davey, and Susan!

Andrew S. Fuller – A Salmon Tale, 2072
This is a gorgeous, post-apocalyptic tale, cast in the mould of a mythological origin tale. I absolutely adored it. From the glimpses of society’s collapse to the rebuilding of life in a new setting and the importance of traditions therein, it struck a perfect note. It’s also a tale of man helping nature reclaim her natural state, taking down man-made structures and setting her free. I loved the cadence of the writing. I actually read this one out loud to my daughter as she was fussing and despite stumbling on the pronunciation of the Native American words and names, the rhythm of the sentences carried beautifully. It’s a beautiful story with quite a hopeful ending.

Suzanne Palmer – Lanternfish in the Overworld
Sometimes the journey is as important as the destination and for the little lanternfish who needs to deliver a massage to the Overworld it’s a big journey indeed. I loved the richness of Palmer’s ocean setting and the way the different fish interacted. The eventual moral of the story was beautiful and the ending lovely. It felt like a fairy tale, a tale you could read to children too and I really loved it.

These six were my favourites, but all of the stories were interesting, even those I didn’t end up liking much. The idea behind FISH is an interesting concept and the stories found within show the versatility of the genres collected under the umbrella of speculative fiction. Cuinn and Taylor have gathered together an interesting and talented bunch of authors and created a memorable reading experience. As with their previous release, In Situ, Dagan Books have published another interesting and beautiful anthology; one that doesn’t just contain beautiful words, but beautiful art as well. If you like short fiction and are looking for a quirky and unique collection of stories, you can’t go far wrong with FISH.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 8 March, 2013 Posted in fantasy, horror, review, science fiction Tagged: , | 1 Comment

Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon (eds.) – Dark Faith: Invocations

frontcover_02Religion, science, magic, love, family–everyone believes in something, and that faith pulls us through the darkness and the light. The second coming of Dark Faith cries from the depths with 26 stories of sacrifice and redemption. Sublet an apartment inside God’s head. Hunt giant Buddhas in a post-apocalyptic future. Visit a city where an artist’s fantastic creations alter reality. Discover the deep cosmic purpose behind your office vending machine. Wield godlike powers and suffer the most heartbreaking of human limitations.

Join Max Allan Collins, Mike Resnick, Jay Lake, Jennifer Pelland, Laird Barron, Tom Piccirilli, Nisi Shawl, and a host of genre’s best writers for an exploration into the things we hold dear and the truths that shatter us.

Faith is a strange thing. It’s at once deeply personal, but in the form of religion, very much institutionalised. It can be a well spring of strength and hope, but is also one of the main reasons for conflict in the world. Every religion, every splinter sect within those religions, holds to its own truths, and every person of faith has their own version of what faith entails. As such, the idea of asking for stories exploring the notion of faith is intriguing and would have to result in 26 different visions. As someone who isn’t sure what to believe, let’s say an agnostic leaning to the atheist side of things, having a look at people’s interpretation of faith is fascinating. And even beyond the usual fact that not every story in an anthology is going to work for every reader, in Dark Faith: Invocations I found that I had about a one in three chance to truly connect with a story. This isn’t to say that those were inferior stories; but that they just didn’t resonate with me due to the direction they took the faith in their story.

What did become apparent is that there were some obvious themes, despite the fact that these were 26 unique stories, within in this collection. One is that faith equals love; that one of the strongest faiths people have is their faith in their parents (The Divinity Boutique by Brian Hatcher); that having one’s beliefs proved or disproved, having the truth revealed is the death of faith (The Revealed Truth by Mike Resnick, Thou Art God by Tim Waggoner); and that the God or gods people put their faith in aren’t always benign or infallible (The Cancer Catechism by Jay Lake, Kill the Buddha by Elizabeth Twist, God’s Dig by Kelly Eiro). There were also a surprising number of funny stories in the anthology, my favourites of which were Subletting God’s Head by Tom Piccirilli and The Revealed Truth by Mike Resnick.

Stories that touched me deeply, perhaps due to their inclusion of an important parent-child bond were Night Train by Alma Alexander, The Sandfather by Richard Wright, Starter Kit by R.J. Sullivan, The Divinity Boutique by Brian J. Hatcher, and Little Lies, Dear Leader by Kyle S. Johnson. I loved the fragility of Alexander’s story, the way that faith in oneself is so important and how much that can be bolstered by becoming a parent. It helps you plumb new depths of strength, because there is now this new life depending on you. A little person that believes you can do anything and it’s incumbent on you to keep that faith unbroken for as long as you can. I love how in this story that faith is reflected by the lost souls on the train and that the protagonist’s unborn child is that which saves her dying lost personal god. In both the Wright and the Johnson story unconditional love and faith is the power that drives both of these relationships. The imagery of the Wright story was beautiful and I kept wondering what would be behind the door. The Johnson story is perhaps not truly speculative fiction, as the idea that in totalitarian countries dissidents are made to disappear for not complying with the institutionalised groupthink is frighteningly real. But the willingness of the father to die for his ideals and the willingness of the mother to lie to keep her child safe touched me deeply.

Three stories that don’t truly fit any one category, but that I really liked are A Little Faith by Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens, Magdala Amygdala by Lucy A. Snyder, and I Inhale the City, the City Exhales Me by Douglas F. Warrick. A Little Faith was a story about trust poured into a crime/thriller story mould. I’m a sucker for crime stories be they in book format, on TV, or on the big screen, so no surprise that this story piqued my interest. But I really did like it beyond the setting and the style, as it showed how much strength can be derived from the belief that there is always someone at your back, someone who won’t give up on you. Snyder’s story, which was nominated for a Stoker award last week, is properly horrifying and best not read over lunch or dinner. It was horrid, but also fascinating and the SF-nal ideas behind it well-conceived. My last highlight, the Warrick, was a strange as it was wonderful. I loved the concept of interdependence, that whatever Megumi put out there to influence the world changed it and this changed world in turn influenced how her story progressed. It’s also man as the author of his own destiny, in control of his own actions as shown in the American journalist’s refusal to act according to her expectations when confronted with the victim-virgin-slut doll-girl she drew for him. I found it quite a visual story, which is fitting for a story about an animator, but the ending leaves the reading guessing and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

While I didn’t connect as strongly to all of the stories, most of them did make me think, about their concept or about my reaction to it. And I think that is the ultimate goal for this anthology, so job well done. If you aren’t easily offended in matters of religion – not that the stories are really offensive, but I can see how they might disturb some – and find philosophical musing about matters of faith interesting, Dark Faith: Invocations is a good, thought-provoking read, containing some really amazing stories by great writers.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 27 February, 2013 Posted in fantasy, horror, review, science fiction Tagged: , | Leave a comment

Alex Shvartsman (ed.) – Unidentified Funny Objects

alexshvartsman-unidentifiedfunnyobjectsUnidentified Funny Objects is a collection of humorous science fiction and fantasy. Packed with laughs, it has 29 stories ranging from lighthearted whimsy to the wild and zany.

Inside you’ll find a zombear, tweeting aliens, down-on-their-luck vampires, time twisting belly dancers, moon nazis, stoned computers, omnivorous sex-maniac pandas, and a spell-casting Albert Einstein.

Unidentified Funny Objects editor Alex Shvartsman got in touch with me after I reviewed IN SITU edited by Carrie Cuinn, in which his story The Field Trip was one of my favourites. He asked whether I’d be interested in reviewing his anthology of humorous SFF short stories. This gave me a bit of pause; humour is very much subjective and thus I find it hard to judge stories on whether they are funny when they are meant to be. This is different from a work that is published as SFF and as additional fact is funny, because that work doesn’t need to be funny. The only out-and-out humorous SFF I’d ever read was Terry Pratchett, so humorous SFF was a bit of an unexplored reading direction for me. I have to say, though, on the whole it was a good experience. Of course as with any collection of short fiction there are works that worked less well for me, but there were also definitely ones that tickled my funny bone.

To start off with the stories I didn’t really like: James Beamon’s Fight Finale from the Near Future and Michael Kurland’s Go Karts of the Gods. The former, a satire on superhero comics, just felt too over the top and in your face, even if I can appreciate the point it makes about gender and sexism. The latter spoofs these cult-like lifestyle cons that promise the moon and the stars but in reality are nothing but a money scam. It shows us the patter of someone trying to ‘convert’ people to the cause, but I just didn’t find it funny. It was chaotic and all over the place and it drew more annoyance than laughs. Stephen D. Rogers’ My Kingdom for a Horse has a far funnier take on the sales patter, having what in our world would have been a used-car salesman try and sell a horse to a king. I think what both of the stories had in common – and what put me off – is that they really go over the top in their commitment to their spoofing and overshot their mark, in my opinion.

Three stories that did hit the spot were: K.G. Jewell’s The Day They Repossessed My Zombies, Leah Cypress’ The Fifty-One Suitors of Princess Jamatpie, and Mike Resnick’s El and Al vs. Himmler’s Horrendous Horde from Hell. Jewell’s story is one of the few zombie stories I’ve actually enjoyed. It was terribly fun, with a great resolution and main character. Besides, zombie slaves kept occupied by watching Teletubbies. . . Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. Cypress’ story about a princess overwhelmed by her suitors’ attempts to gain her favour and how she tricks them to get out of it was very cool. It might have had extra resonance for me as Emma is going through her princess phase and I’ve been watching Disney Princess films far too often the past few weeks! Mike Resnick is always a solid bet and this story was no different. I’m mostly familiar with his work through Escape Pod and PodCastle, where his work often brings a tear, but here he went for the laughs and got them. I loved El, short for Eleanor Roosevelt, and Al, short for Albert Einstein. The writing is vivid and it read like a comic in prose form.

There were two stories that I liked so much, that I would love to see more work set in those universes. The first is Jamie Lackey’s First Date, which was very sweet and a little Buffy in its playful tone. Josh and Leanne were very likeable protagonists and I would love to see more of them. The second was Jody Lynn Nye’s Worm’s eye View. I found it very funny and in addition it was a police story, so I was bound to enjoy it. However, I really liked the idea Nye worked out in the host/guest link between the humans and the Salosians and the ways they communicated. I’d love to see a more-realised universe around this concept and see what kind of consequences and effects such a bond would have on both the individuals involved and their loved ones.

Overall, I had a good time with Unidentified Funny Objects, but then again with names such as Mike Resnick, Jody Lynn Nye, Ken Liu, Sergey Lukyanenko, and Stephanie Burgis among others I hadn’t expected less. Shvartsman delivers a wonderful anthology and if you want to broaden your humorous SFF reading, Unidentified Funny Objects is a great place to start.

This book was provided for review by the editor.

By Mieneke Published 8 February, 2013 Posted in fantasy, review, science fiction Tagged: , | 1 Comment

Edwina Harvey & Simon Petrie (eds) – Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear

When I was approached about reviewing Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear, I’d just reviewed (and loved) Joanne Anderton’s first two novels, so her name was the one that convinced me to accept the review request, together with that of Brenda Cooper, whose writing I’ve encountered previously in several Valdemar anthologies and which I’ve always enjoyed. It turns out however, that this anthology holds far more attractions than just those two stories. As the anthology isn’t based around a hard and fast concept – from the introduction it becomes clear that the editors strived to evoke the same sense of surprise and wonder you get from watching fireworks – I thought I’d try something different this time and look at each story individually.

Joanne Anderton – The Bone Chime Song
As I had expected after reading her novels, I loved this story, as I really enjoy Anderton’s writing. Dealing with a murder mystery, this story explores the cost of war to those who have to perform unspeakable acts in its fighting, the way it leaves them damaged and hurting. It’s also a story of quiet love, constant in the face of societal disapproval. I really enjoyed the narrator’s voice for this story, he’s interesting and seems a man given to deep emotion and devotion, both to his craft and to those he loves.

Sue Bursztynski – Five Ways to Start a War
This was another hit. I loved this alternate look at the start of the Trojan War, which takes Helen firmly out of the role of faithless seductress and makes both her and Paris pawns on several playing boards. The structure with the different narrators and points of view was well-done and quite interesting. It’s also very funny and irreverent, a playful look at one of the world’s original epics.

Dave Luckett – History: Theory and Practice
The Truman Show: fantasy edition. That’s actually a rather flippant and not quite accurate description, as this story goes a little beyond that and it rather straddles the line between fantasy and SF. I loved the fact that it starts out reading as straight up fantasy, with some hints as to something not exactly adding up, but the eventual twist and reveal is awesome. I really liked this one.

Adam Browne – The D____d
Dante’s Seven Circles of Hell are being colonised by the British Empire in this steampunk-flavoured story. In addition to its steampunk vibe there are some definite overtones of horror to the tale. I like the conceit of the tale that everything in Hell is formed out of bodily components, such as rivers of blood, mucus rain drops, and trees made of fleshy limbs. It also makes the story rather icky, though, and if you have a vivid imagination, you might want to steer clear.

Katherine Cummings – The Travelling Salesman and the Farmer’s Daughter
A full on SF story with a delicious twist at the end, what more can you ask for? After being out of contact for two centuries due to civil war Earth is trying to re-corral all their colony planets. In the story we follow one of their forward scouts cum ambassadors on his mission on a rather curiously run planet. I really loved the twist ending, even if I’d partially seen it coming. Still, it made me rethink the entire story and made me doubt everything about the setting.

Thoraiya Dyer – Faet’s Fire
Faet’s Fire is a lovely little story about regret, wishes and the desire to turn back time to take a different path. I liked this one, especially its rather melancholy and sad ending, because for all its sadness, the reader is left with hope for Faet’s future.

Anna Tambour – Murder at the Tip
The story starts with a fun excerpt from a journal article, which also touches on the story’s main theme, which asks the question where and when we draw the line at giving artificial beings rights. The protagonist’s frustration with his hardware will be quite recognisable for anyone who’s ever fought with their computers. Still, while well-written, the story didn’t completely click for me and was one of my least favourites.

Rob Porteous – The Subjunctive Case
Brilliant! The Subjunctive Case was easily my favourite of the bunch. The story is a noirish paranormal detective in which our protagonist can split himself in two and have different aspects of himself conduct investigations simultaneously. I really liked the voice of this story; it’s strong and confident. The actual case is interesting too, as it combines good, old-fashioned sleuthing and legwork with paranormal aspects in an environment – the story is set in Melbourne – not usually the backdrop for urban fantasy. I also liked the eventual resolution of the story, as it might not be what you’d expect. I really enjoyed this story and I hope to see more from Rob Porteous in this setting in the future.

Ripley Patton – Mary Had a Unicorn
Another very cool premise in this story about a drug-abusing teen who is given a drug-sniffing and destroying unicorn as a companion to get her back on the straight and narrow. I really liked the development of Mary, the protagonist, from someone who isn’t very sympathetic at all, to someone from whom all hope hasn’t been lost that she might turn into a decent human being after all. It’s a story of change and redemption. I really enjoyed the story and the writing.

Brenda Cooper – Between Lines
Cooper’s story is excellent. I really liked the story within a story and the way the build up to the apocalypse was done. I loved the conspiracy theories galore and the mind trick played on the protagonist.

Ian McHugh – The Godbreaker and Unggubudh the Mountain
A lovely secondary world story about loyalty, belief, religious diversity, and love. I really enjoyed it, though it took me a while to get into the writing style and the world.

Sean McMullen – Hard Cases
A political SF story set in an undated future, Hard Cases didn’t really work for me, as the politics seemed muddled and there wasn’t really a clear resolution.

Kathleen Jennings – Kindling
While the protagonist’s power is interesting and her desire to play a larger role in the world universal, I just couldn’t achieve a click with her and couldn’t get into the story as a result. In addition, Jennings uses an intertwining narrative structure, mixing a narrator telling Minke’s story with scenes of Minke’s day-to-day life, which worked rather confusing for me, as I couldn’t relate the overarching narration with the scenes at the bar. While the story premise was interesting, its execution just didn’t work for me.

With Light Touch Paper, Stand Clear, Harvey and Petrie achieve what they set out to do: compile an anthology that would make the reader sit up and pay attention, to delight and surprise them as much as a fireworks show might. This collection of stories is a delightful surprise, and even if there were two or three stories that didn’t work as well for me, I had a really good time reading these stories and have discovered some new names to look out for in my reading.

This book was provided for review by the editor.

By Mieneke Published 21 November, 2012 Posted in fantasy, horror, review, science fiction Tagged: , | 9 Comments

Carrie Cuinn (ed.) – In Situ

From independent publisher Dagan Books, IN SITU is a new anthology of science fiction stories featuring alien archeology, hidden mysteries, and things that are better off left buried.

A quiet man finds more than he bargained for when he sets out with his metal detector on a lonely hill … A soldier meets a new kind of enemy fighting an altogether different kind of war … On a distant swamp planet, a woman questions what kind of human she’s becoming … a pregnant archeologist finds a connection with a long-dead alien child … while deep space scavengers wonder what it ever meant to be human at all.

These fifteen evocative science fiction stories will take you from dusty archaeologists digging up our alien past into a distant future where we’ve become the relics. Thought-provoking and entertaining, IN SITU explores science, theology, preservation, and the art of alien finance, in a whole new way.

History is one of my favourite subjects and archaeology has always intrigued me. Especially the idea that we are fodder for the future, that a few centuries from now there will be people digging up artefacts we’ve left behind and wondering about how we lived. Archaeology is the art of interpretation, just as history is an interpretation of the facts as we have them; in some ways literary analysis is also a form of archaeology—you dig from any references and allusions the author has left in the text and interpret their meaning. Thus the blurb for In Situ intrigued me. I loved Carrie Cuinn’s concept for the book as it focused not just on what will xeno-archaeology look like, but how will we affect and respect the conservation of alien history. Those are interesting questions to pose and the authors gave Cuinn very interesting responses.

There is a nice structure to the collection with a clear break in settings. The first seven stories are all earthbound, while the other eight are either set off-world or are about off-world races visiting Earth. All the earth stories are solid, while the stories in the second set have a more hit or miss in flavour. My favourites were the Taylor, Liu, and the Shvartsman stories, but I was less impressed with the Dixon, Hendrix, and Burch stories. These three just didn’t click with me and I had issues with the narrative style of the Hendrix. They were also placed in a block, which probably didn’t help them either.

Paul A. Dixon’s Requiem had a cool concept. He took the somewhat traditional idea of grave robbers and moved it into space. At the same time he explores the idea that societies might choose to revert themselves to insentience to save their planet, instead of fleeing to a different one to save their society. Unfortunately the ending left me rather unimpressed, as it just peters off with the main character shrugging his shoulders at the situation he’s ended up in. Greg Burch’s The Assemblage of the Aeolian was a funny story and well-written, but I didn’t really get the connection between Parkinson discovering the link between humanity and aliens and how preventing this would save the future. This time travel as entertainment story rather went over my head. Sarah Hendrix’s Rachel’s Journal suffered from the form chosen to tell the story, in my opinion. The narrative is told through two characters talking to each other about things they already know, reminiscing for the benefit of an audience they don’t know is there, while walking through an exhibit they’ve put together. It felt forced and unnatural and left me altogether unmoved.

KV Taylor’s Chennai 5 is the first story in the collection that is set off-world. I thought it was interesting to see another author have space colonisation happen along cultural lines, much like Jonathan L. Howard in Katya’s World. I thought the concept of Space itch was very cool, though it made me wonder whether humanity would really have an in-built need to visit its cradle, even if it had lived away from it for generations. However, the idea of an Intergalactic Rosetta Stone and the way they discovered one in this story was awesome. Ken Liu is of course one of the most talented short fiction writers active at the moment. As expected, his You’ll Always Have the Burden With You was excellent. It is such a cool story and funny as well. Who knew you could write an interesting story on alien tax systems? There are several themes to the story Liu explores. For one, it starts with the question of why our protagonist has to put her career on hold to be with her partner and her actually ending up more successful which I enjoyed. But there is also a great exploration of the malleability of history and the dangers of over interpretation of the factual evidence. This is a theme that returns in Alex Shvartsman’s The Field Trip. This was a ‘slice of life’-story set in a xeno-archaeology class. I loved it and I loved the way archaeology was shown to be an art, needful not just of hard science but of thinking outside the box and interpreting the facts. Also the twist at the end was genius and made sure that you’ll close out this collection of stories on a smile. Once grouped together, it isn’t surprising that the three stories mentioned above were my favourites as they all deal with the delights and dangers of academic interpretation of evidence and facts, something which has always fascinated me.

In Situ is an interesting and thought-provoking anthology. It is a very enjoyable collection of stories and well put together with scientific illustrations by Cuinn and a very intriguing use of mathematical and scientific symbols in certain stories, which is explained in the back. In Situ is a good read, which given its slender page count is also a quick one. I very much recommend it, not just to well-read science fiction fans, but to relative newbies as well, as this collection shows not just the breadth of the field but is also easily accessible.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 20 November, 2012 Posted in review, science fiction Tagged: , | 2 Comments

Richard Salter (ed.) – World’s Collider

The Collision is the worst disaster in human history. So far…

In the near future, an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider causes an enormous explosion, known as the Collision. The blast flattens a huge chunk of central Europe and punches a massive hole in the Earth’s surface. Over the next decade, unspeakable horrors pour from the rift: vicious creatures with a taste for human flesh, a terrible scream that drives all who hear it insane, a phantom entity that feeds on fear and paranoia, and a nightmare train from the pits of hell, to name but a few. This onslaught of terror causes the collapse of civilization and threatens to wipe humanity from the planet.

World’s Collider is a unique concept in short fiction, where all eighteen original stories are part of a common narrative, recounting the disaster and its aftermath. A true novel by many voices, including Steven Savile, James Moran, Aaron Rosenberg, Trent Zelazny, Jonathan Green, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Kelly Hale, Richard Wright and a host of new talent.

Fifty million people died in the Collision. They were the lucky ones…

World’s Collider is an interesting experiment in which eighteen short stories tell one continuous story. It’s a largely successful experiment too. While the narrative is formed from a host of disparate voices, it creates an intricate whole and Salter’s made sure that the main characters’ personalities don’t shift too much between the stories and that there aren’t too many inconsistencies. The premise of the story – what if we discover what in essence are wormholes using the Hadron Collider in Geneva – is interesting and the vision of the slow apocalypse that follows is quite frightening, showing both the best and worst mankind has to offer.

The stories are told in different formats, via blog posts and comments, in journal format, as flashes of vision, in first person and third. This creates a dynamic feeling and also allows for the different writing styles to blend, so the narrative doesn’t feel too choppy. The characters are quite interesting too; the different authors capture the different ways humans cope with disaster quite well. There are several main returning characters, that of Scott Fletcher, Natalie Murphy and Joseph Tern. If Scott and Natalie are on the side of the angels – not literally, though some would have you believe differently – then Joseph Tern is the devil incarnate. He’s a full-blown psychopath, who kills people for pleasure and forms a conduit for something that is even less pleasant. Their development across the stories is not as completely as one might like, but it went further than I had expected. I would have liked to have seen more of how the years after the Collision had affected Scott and where Natalie came from before she became the hardened soldier we meet in The Coming Scream. Scattered about the narrative are several returning characters with larger or smaller parts and it’s fun to spot the connections.

Even if World’s Collider is one narrative, as with any anthology there are bound to be stories that click better with each individual reader than others. In my case, my favourite stories were Keep Calm and Carry On Parts I-IV, The Rise and Fall of the House of Ricky, What Little Boys Are Made Of, and Caught. The Keep Calm and Carry On sequence was a great look at how social media, in this case blogs, might function in an apocalypse, but also how tenuous a link it is to the outside world—once WiFi and electricity goes, you’re lost. I also liked how it gave us snap shots of the same people not at the heart of the narrative, at different points of the apocalypse. The Rise and Fall of the House of Ricky was just very fun, as I love Project Runway – yes, I watch horrible reality TV shows to turn my brain off – and I can so see this happening, a fashionista giving up their soul for fashion. It’s a creepy story, but despite that fun! What Little Boys Are Made Of broke my heart. Not just the fact that these two small children were left alone, but the way the eldest tried her best to care for her little brother knowing full well that it was almost beyond hope. One might say it was an easy play on sentimentality, but I found it well-written and I loved the voice of this little, six-year-old boy. Caught was a mixture of dread and paranoia shaken with a good bit of suicide mission and served on ice-cold cubes of creepy. I’m quite afraid of spiders and the fact that the ‘enemy’ here had taken the form of a spider gave me chills, but despite this I liked the way the relationships and interactions between the characters were drawn.

The ending is of the narrative is nebulous. While it might be the happy ending humanity hoped for, it never explicitly says so and there are some loose ends which make me wonder about a possible sequel. Because if they are not there to serve as plot hooks for a further novel, they are just very glaring loose ends. Still, as it stands World’s Collider is an engaging read, which is both scary and encouraging; humanity sinks deeply, but also shows its resilience and rises above itself. The book might not work for everyone, as it is not quite fish nor fowl due to its experimental nature, but I appreciated the concept and its execution, even if it wasn’t completely flawless. If you’re a fan of anthologies and would like to see what the form can stretch to, World’s Collider is well worth a read.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 9 November, 2012 Posted in horror, review, science fiction Tagged: , | 1 Comment

Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry (eds.) – Pandemonium: Lost Souls

Lost Souls is a collection of forlorn and forgotten stories, carefully selected by the editors of the Pandemonium series.

The anthology brings together tales of woe and angst, loneliness, redemption and humour, featuring starving artists, possessed Popes, damned kings and hopeful prisoners. Lost Souls is an exploration of what it is that makes us human – and what happens when that’s stripped away.

Earlier this year I was blown away by Jurassic London’s first two Pandemonium anthologies, Stories of the Apocalypse and Stories of the Smoke, making their two other anthologies shoe-ins for anticipated books of the second half of 2012. Lost Souls is the first of those and I can tell you the anticipation was well-deserved. As I received an e-copy of the print version, I can’t attest to the veracity of the claims about its gorgeous exterior, but I did get to see Vincent Sammy’s stunning artwork and that alone would be worth the price of entry!

It is important to note, however, that unlike their previous anthologies Lost Souls isn’t a speculative fiction anthology. Or rather it doesn’t exclusively contain speculative stories. In addition to ghost stories, a fairy tale and a myth-inspired story, there are stories without a hint of the fantastic, though they might still be horrific, especially those stories set in the First World War. The anthology is divided into five sections, each depicting a different form of lost souls. In Lost we meet the ones who lost their way in life, the homeless, the unfulfilled, and the obsolete. Power shows us how power and influence can lead one astray and to lose faith in our fellow man. Stories allows us to figuratively and literally get lost in fiction, while War details the loss of life, of innocence, and an entire generation of young men in the Great War and a wholly different fight inside a prison’s walls. But what was once lost can also be found and in the section of the same title we are shown stories of redemption, justice and love in the strangest of places.

Lost Souls contains too many stories to touch on all of them, so I’ll pick my favourite from each section and point out the ones that didn’t work for me. John Galsworthy’s Quality (Lost) is a haunting story of a cobbler specialising in boots, whose vocation is becoming slowly obsolete and who withers away piece by piece until one day he’s just gone. I loved how Galsworthy slowly severed all of the old man’s moorings until he just couldn’t hang on any more. From the second section, Power, my favourite was the first one included, Mary Coleridge’s The King is Dead, Long Live the King. This is a somewhat more traditional ghost story where the King in the title has entered into a deal with Death and learns about the true shape of his life. Coleridge, great-grandniece of the famous poet, writes of heart-breaking discoveries in a lyrical tone and while I wished the King to live to right the wrongs he’s left behind, I found the ending both fitting and bitter. George Gissing’s Christopherson, which can be found in the Stories section, is a story that any bibliophile can relate to, even if we might never put our books before our loved ones. I certainly can understand the reluctance to give away your books. But at the same time, I loved the narrator, his impatience and exasperation with Christopherson and his determination to help Mrs Christopherson escape her unhealthy situation. Marooned, Robert W. Chambers’ World War I story, was a straight-up horror story, from the claustrophobia, to the sense of isolation, to the final disastrous release of our protagonists’ desperation. And while showing many, if not most, of the emotions of those soldiers sentenced to the trenches, Chambers succeeds in showing us not just what forced inaction does to an honourable man’s psyche, but also gives us an entirely different setting in the Great War. My favourite from the final section, Found, was Amelia B. Edwards’ The Four-Fifteen Express, which is both a ghost story and a mystery. I loved the way Edwards set the mystery up and how in the end everyone gets what they deserve.

Two stories that didn’t really work for me were Calista Halsey Patchin’s The Professor and John Reynolds’ The Prisoners. Patchin’s story just didn’t grab me and the final twist just broke any suspense of disbelief for me, as I thought it would be unlikely for the widow to show up like that. Reynolds’ The Prisoners wasn’t uninteresting, but the fact that Osgood Vance had to edit it to make it readable was clear, as it still felt repetitious at times and for me the story just lost its impact after the third or fourth inmate.

With the exception of the introduction written by Shurin and Perry and the two stories adapted and written by Osgood Vance and David Bryher respectively, none of these stories was written before 1919, with the oldest of them, Benjamin Disraeli’s Ixion in Heaven first published 1853. In spite of their age, most of these stories remain eminently readable, even if at times their prose is a little dated. Taken together, this resurrection of these out-of-print stories makes for a rich reading experience as well as a reminder that love, loss, sorrow and all the other human emotions displayed herein are timeless. With Lost Souls Shurin and Perry have not only delivered another wonderful anthology, but have shown themselves to have a great eye for what makes a good story, be it speculative or not.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 2 November, 2012 Posted in fantasy, horror, mainstream, mystery, review Tagged: , | 3 Comments

Jonathan Oliver (ed.) – Magic: An Anthology Of The Esoteric And Arcane

They gather in darkness, sharing ancient and arcane knowledge as they manipulate the very matter of reality itself. Spells and conjuration; legerdemain and prestidigitation – these are the mistresses and masters of the esoteric arts.

As a hardcore fantasy reader magic is part and parcel of my reading and I consider a well-thought-out and realised magic system as a thing of beauty. So an anthology based around the concept of magic had to be something I enjoyed. So, you’ll probably be unsurprised to discover that I did enjoy Magic: An Anthology Of The Esoteric And Arcane quite a lot. What surprised me was that, while magic is the common denominator in all of these stories, no two forms of magic are the same and in some of them it’s more pervasive than in others. There is also a rather amazing diversity of settings and not all of these are fantasy, some are horror! Most, if not all, are set in the ‘real’ world, even if that world is pervaded by the magical or supernatural.

I first learned of this anthology when Solaris announced they had snagged Audrey Niffenegger to be one of its contributors. Her name drew my attention, not because I’d read any of her work before, but because she’s one of those rare genre beasts, an author who is embraced by the mainstream. So much so, that I hadn’t even realized that she was a genre writer. I do hope her inclusion here will prompt some non-genre readers to pick up this anthology and discover that speculative fiction isn’t as scary a ghetto as they might think. Niffenegger’s story The Wrong Fairy was inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s father and, while enjoyable and well-written, it isn’t my favourite out of the bunch. Another author with an outside-genre draw is Christopher Fowler. His story The Baby – about a teen girl that gets in over her head and her struggle with her unwanted pregnancy after being raped – was eerily timely given some of the utter bile that was spilled during the US Presidential campaign recently. Liz Williams’ Cad Coddeu was a lovely fantasy, with mythical overtones, which I enjoyed very much. All three of these were solid, enjoyable stories, but they kind of stuck around in the middle for me.

Every anthology has hits and misses. Often these differ from reader to reader. The misses in this one for me were Will Hill’s Shuffle, Thana Niveau’s First and Last and Always, Gemma Files’ Nanny Grey, and Robert Shearman’s Dumb Lucy. Hill’s Shuffle just confused me and while I liked the cards angle and the prose, I didn’t get drawn in enough to try and make sense of the story. Robert Shearman’s Dumb Lucy had a similar effect, though this time I liked the atmosphere and the characters, but was completely confused by the setting – was it Earth or second-world? Past or future? – and the ending. Thana Niveau’s story had an interesting concept with its idea of love charms gone wrong, but it just didn’t ring my bell; for some reason neither Tamsin nor Nicky made me care and thus the story’s ending lacked impact for me. The one story that just didn’t do it at all for me was Gemma Files’ Nanny Grey. It just left me cold, the characters were unsympathetic and the twist in the story just turned into a knot for me.

Then there were several stories I connected to but where the ending just let them down, either because I wanted more from that final scene, I didn’t want to leave the characters or the ending just confused me. Steve and Melanie Tem’s Domestic Magic rather broke my heart and Felix got under my skin immediately, with his quite crackpot mum and his handful of a little sister, who he feels is very much his responsibility. I really loved this story and I just didn’t want to leave Felix and Margaret. I wanted to follow along and find out that they were safe and they would have a happy ending. So Domestic Magic wasn’t a bad story at all. On the contrary it did its job too well and didn’t let me go. The ending to Alison Littlewood’s Art of Escapology similarly left me wanting. I really enjoyed the premise and the haunting, but the final scene ended rather on a fizzle than a bang for me and I kind of felt deflated by it. Dan Abnett’s Party Tricks played off its prestige too well. I thoroughly enjoyed the politicking and the rather old-fashioned feel of the writing, though that might be due more to the fact that our narrator is one of the upper class old-boys network and this is reflected in his manner of speech, than to the fact that Abnett meant it to feel old-fashioned. I was really drawn into the story and while I understood the twist end, it just left me going uh what? How did he do that? And this feeling of confusion stayed with me rather than the enjoyment I got from the rest of the story.

For me, the hits of Magic were the stories written by Sarah Lotz, Storm Constantine, Lou Morgan, Sophia McDougall and Gail Z. Martin. Lotz’ South African crime scene cleaners were awesome and the story was many-layered, from the straight-up mystery itself, to the underlying themes of rejecting one’s own heritage for another, to the wish to protect the innocent, in this case the cat. I think If I Die, Kill My Cat is a story that will lend itself to rereading beautifully, revealing more with repetition. Storm Constantine’s Do as Thou Wilt is a gorgeous story of traditional witchery, a lover’s revenge and a philanderer’s just deserts. I really enjoyed Leah’s cynical outlook on love and her way of making Carol’s wish come true. From what I’ve read from Lou Morgan, I loved her novel Blood and Feathers, but her short story in Stories of the Apocalypse lost me with its ending, so I was curious to see how I would enjoy Bottom Line. This story of addiction, redemption and self-sacrifice was amazing and this time I followed Morgan all the way to a hallelujah. From the same Pandemonium anthology previously mentioned, came my only previous encountering of Sophia McDougall’s writing. I fell in love with her story there and I loved her MailerDaemon here. McDougall reinforces her first impression of being a superb writer with a distinctive turn of phrase. Lastly I was taken by surprise by Gail Z. Martin’s Buttons. What an absolutely charming story, that I couldn’t help but love. I was pleased to read an interview with Martin on the Solaris’ blog where she reveals having written numerous short stories in her Deadly Curiosities universe, which means there’s more to discover with these characters and I can hold out hope for a Deadly Curiosities collection or even novel!

Overall the hits outnumbered the misses and I really enjoyed the time I spent with Magic: An Anthology Of The Esoteric And Arcane. Jonathan Oliver delivers a great collection of stories, that forms a great introduction to these writers and I know there are several whose other works I’ll seek out given half a chance! For a diverse take on the idea of magic in all its incarnations, Magic: An Anthology Of The Esoteric And Arcane is as far as you need to look. It ranges far and wide on the thaumaturgical scale, but it has magic in spades.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 30 October, 2012 Posted in fantasy, horror, review Tagged: , | 2 Comments

Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry eds. – Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse

Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse features eighteen original stories set at the end of the world, as imagined by science fiction and fantasy writers. The tales are inspired by the art of John Martin, and the book was released to coincide with a special exhibition of his work at Tate Britain.

Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse is the first anthology from Pandemonium Fiction edited by Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry, the fine folks who also bring us the wonderful Pornokitsch blog. This collection of stories is based on a clear inspiration, the apocalyptic works of the 19th century painter John Martin; the book appeared to coincide with a large exhibition of Martin’s work at the Tate Britain. The result is a collection of strong stories marked by their diversity of genre and the different slants the authors chose to take.

Some of the authors were well known to me, others were new, but all of them managed to write stories which captivated me. Unexpectedly, even though they are all inspired by the end of the world as we know it – and I feel fine, thank you – most of the stories are surprisingly hopeful. Not because, in the end, the world or humanity gets saved, but because there is a lot less fire and brimstone than you’d imagine. Whether set in our world or different ones, each of the stories is about an ending; the end of the world (Magnus Anderson’s Another Abyss), the end of sanity (Scott K. Andrews’ A Private Viewing), the end of humanity (Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s The Last Man) or the end of society (Lauren Beukes’ Chislehurst Messiah). Several stories have the religious angle you’d expect, with angels and demons and raptures, others taking a completely unexpected setting, such as outer space, a secondary world or Germany during WWII. The possibilities are endlessly fascinating.

With any anthology there are stories that work better or worse, often which these stories are, is different for each reader. For me personally, there weren’t really any bum notes in this anthology. However, there were two stories that lost me with their ending. The first of these is Lou Morgan’s At the Sign of the Black Dove. While the writing style drew me in immediately and I loved the progression of the story, the ending left me feeling a little lost. Similarly, Sam Wilson’s Postapocalypse had a very smart and interesting scientific premise, but once the protagonist’s reality starts unravelling, it became hard for me to follow along and by the end the story had lost me completely.

There were six stories that really stood out for me. S.L. Grey’s OMG GTFO was a perfect blend of different formats which showed how our modern-day 24-hour news cycle society would react when suddenly hell is revealed to be real and even those you’d swear would get in to heaven turn out to be there. I loved the mix of Twitter messages, transcripts of interviews and extracts from papers and magazines. Tom Pollock’s Evacuation was completely different; in it we follow the archangel Michael on Earth’s last day while he and his fellow angels evacuate humanity to safety. This story is about love and duty and how the two can tear a person – or angel, as the case may be – apart. I really loved this story and its ultimate resolution. A Private Viewing by Scott K. Andrews looks at an apocalypse of an entirely different nature and takes its link to Martin’s paintings quite literally, as they are some of the stars of the story. The author uses the 2011 London riots as his background and driving force to the story and does so with aplomb. I loved this story, not just for its use of current affairs, but also for its creepiness. Because make no mistake, this is a very creepy story, portraying two kinds of insanity in a very intriguing way. Kim Lakin-Smith’s Deluge is a secondary world story which faces a flood of biblical proportions. I loved the setting of the city of Wakatire and the construction of its society; in fact I loved it so much, that I’d love to read more stories set in this world! Den Patrick’s The End of the World is both funny and touching. It loved the tone of this story and the fact that it showed that even in matters apocalyptic, love conquers all. My absolute favourite story was also the last one in the book, it was Sophia McDougall’s Not the End of the World. Set in what seems to be Second World War Germany, it’s a look at life in a police state, where one needs to confirm to rigid rules or fear being denounced. It is also a love story between two unlikely characters. For me, Not the End of the World was almost picture perfect, from the setting, to its protagonist and the wonderful twist and denouement, McDougall swept me up and took me along, without me even noticing I was turning pages.

Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse is a great first outing for this special press. Their second anthology, Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke, was as good, if not better, so the third one out this August, Pandemonium: Lost Souls, is highly anticipated. Stories of the Apocalypseis a fantastic group of stories from very talented authors. Get it quickly before it goes out of print forever on October 31st.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.
By Mieneke Published 28 May, 2012 Posted in fantasy, horror, review, science fiction Tagged: , | 2 Comments

Jared Shurin & Anne C. Perry eds. – Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke

Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke brings you London as you’ve never seen it before – science fiction and fantasy in the great tradition of Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens lived and breathed London in a way few authors ever have, before or since. In his fiction, his non-fiction, and even his own life, Dickens cast an extraordinary shadow over the city he so loved – so much so, indeed, that his name has become synonymous with a certain image of London. A London of terrible social inequality and matchless belief in the human potential; a London filled with the comic and the repulsive, the industrious and the feckless, the faithful and the faithless, the selfish and the selfless.

This London is at once an historical artifact and a living, breathing creature: the steaming, heaving, weeping, stinking, everlasting Smoke.

Anyone who has followed my blog for any amount of time knows I love London. It’s my favourite city in the world and in my opinion I get to visit it way too seldom. So an anthology of SFF short stories inspired by London was sure to get my attention. Stories of the Smoke, however, is not based on any old London; the inspiration for these stories was the London as seen by way of Charles Dickens. The grimy, sooty, Victorian London, peopled by cold-hearted industrialists and the deserving poor; the London of Oliver, Fagin, Scrooge, Pip, David Copperfield, Martin Chuzzlewit, Little Dorrit and Tiny Tim. All of the tales in this anthology contain the flavour of the Smoke, of pea-soup fog and horse manure, some more literally than others. And all of them contain the spirit of Dickens, whether it is his social activism, his humour, his sense of the darker side of human nature, his keen eye for the details of everyday life or some of the themes of his best-known novels.

As with any theme-based anthology, one of the main questions after finishing the book is whether the anthology achieved what it set out to do, in this case bring together short stories with a fantasy and science fiction slant, inspired by Dickensian London. So how is this question answered for Stories of the Smoke? In my opinion, very favourably; Stories of the Smoke clearly touches upon its theme in all of its stories. This isn’t to say that all of the connections are obvious, some of them are more so than others, but with a little thought the links can be identified in all the stories. I’m a rather indifferent student of Dickens: I’ve read Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations and I took in snippets of Our Mutual Friend and The Old Curiosity Shop while at university, but that’s about as far as my Dickensian knowledge goes. So I was surprised at how much I recognised in these stories as riffs on Dickens stories and it made me curious to read some more of Dickens work and see whether I can identify more. If only there were more hours in the day or I could dispense with the need for sleep! These riffs might be nothing more than a character name or a place important to Dickens, or a plot device – the three spirits past, present and future being a popular one – but it can also be just a quote from a Dickens work or a more thematic link, such as the dreadful living conditions of the poor and their disenfranchisement in Victorian London.

In any story collection, be it an anthology or a collection by a single author, there will be stories that work and stories that don’t work so well. In Stories of the Smoke the stories are all good, though there are some that worked better for me than others. What ties the ones I liked best together is the fact that they either were set in an obviously Dickensian London, such as Glen Mehn’s The Unkindness of Ravens, David Thomas Moore’s An Unburdening of the Soul or Kaaron Warren’s The Pickwick Syndrome, or they contained a clear plot element taken from Dickens, such as Adam Roberts’ Martin Citywit or Jenni van der Merwe’s Londoner. Three stories that I really liked that don’t fit as easily in either category are Sarah Lotz’s Inspector Bucket Investigates, Michelle Goldsmith’s The Hound of Henry Hortinger and James Wallis’ Aye, There’s the Twist. The conceit in Lotz’s story – a Disney-run Dickensian theme park populated by cloned Victorians called Drones, who live in a Truman Show-like reserve, where the affluent come to gawk at Dickens’ stories brought to life – was fantastic and I found the murder mystery for which it formed the setting fun and very cleverly done. Both Goldsmith’s and Wallis’ stories mixed Dickens with another literary great. In Wallis’ case this is quite clear in both plot elements and what the characters themselves put forth. He mixes his Dickens with Shakespeare, specifically Oliver Twist with Macbeth, and the combination is amazing. Using this mix Wallis addresses social injustice and questions if Shakespeare couldn’t speak truth to power and Dickens did exactly that, what should we do and what do we do today? I loved this story and its ending, for me it was one of the best stories in the anthology. Goldsmith’s The Hound of Henry Hortinger gave me not just a Dickensian vibe, but also reminded me of Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles. I adored the distinctly gothic feel of the story, from the creepiness of the dog to the heartlessness of the main character and the tragedy of his daughter’s demise, making it another favourite.

It’s hard to find something to really criticise in this anthology. True, some stories were harder to get into or to connect with, but if the reader (in this case me) put in the energy and thought, there was something worthwhile to find in all of the stories. Funnily enough I enjoyed the SFnal stories as much as I enjoyed the fantasy stories, which I hadn’t expected as fantasy is far more my comfort zone than SF. Shurin and Perry deliver a strong anthology that offers something not just to SFF readers but to Dickens aficionados and London lovers as well. If you fall in any of these categories, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 18 April, 2012 Posted in fantasy, review, science fiction Tagged: , | 4 Comments

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