I’m fussy about fantasy. I need more than a D&D transcript and those epic series of epicness (looking at you, Jordan, Martin, Eddings etc) are work. But sometimes the freshest thing you can do to a genre doesn’t involve razing everything to the ground, but tweaking one aspect and taking that change very seriously. Enter …
I am living for this series of books [DC Icons series]. As a fan of comic books who is sick of the ossification and stagnation of the Big Two, these books are a welcome breath of fresh air in that they are fun tweaks to familiar characters. Wonder Woman is young, naive and conflicted on …
A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky is… …what Doctor Who (or Strange?) would have been like if he’d been portrayed by David Bowie at his louchest. Or maybe Harry Dresden played by Tom Waits. Neverwhere written by Lou Reed. …Vonnegut and Tolkien had an illegitimate love child raised by Douglas Adams. …a balm for any …
Six-Gun Snow White is a quiet delight that demands to be read aloud, preferably by Sam Elliott. Valente has taken the Snow White story and reforged it into a Wild West with a pinch of magic and while there are nods to what you know and have read before (her horse is named Charming… because …
And just when I say I’m sick of memoirs by white people, I get to enjoy The Liminal People, which is decidedly not. The book is a variation on Wild Cards or Heroes: people with phenomenal powers who are simply people: good, bad, psychotic, noble… and everything that happens next without invoking aliases or Lycra. …
I have to admit that I really liked the Disney version of “The Three Musketeers.” It’s not the book (obviously) and misses a lot of the nuance (duh!) but it had wit and sparkle and was eminently quotable (“You, boy, are arrogant, hot tempered and entirely too bold. I like that. Reminds me of me.”) …
You know what I like? I like a book that I set down thinking “My God, that was a GOOD book!” The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord is a science fiction novel about refugees and relationships that’s hard to explain without resorting to clichés or other SF media. Basically, the home world …
Shovel Ready is a driving noirish mystery set in the near future after two big events: the invention of high-end virtual reality and the explosion of a dirty bomb in Times Square. Our “hero” is a garbage man/hitman living in the aftermath and, as in any proper noir novel, he’s been hired to find a …
