Greta Kelly’s The Frozen Crown introduced Askia, the exiled Queen of Seravesh, as a confident leader struggling to survive amid the schemes and machinations of the Vishir court. But during what should have been her triumph, a political marriage to the Emperor of Vishir, she was kidnapped, and the emperor and his senior wife, Ozura, were murdered—but not before Ozura pledged her soul to Askia’s service. For Askia is not just royalty: She is also a death witch, a rare magical talent who can both commune with and command the dead. Emperor Radovan of Roven, Askia’s kidnapper, intends her to be his seventh queen, to kill her and take her power for his own, as he has done six times before. But Askia has no intention of going quietly.
In Kelly’s follow-up, The Seventh Queen, Askia has morphed into a ruthless manipulator, willing to use any hint of leverage to save her own life and to prevent her world from falling under the dominion of the power-hungry Radovan. While this characterization is something of a leap, it suits Askia’s nature as a doggedly competent survivor. Kelly’s incisive prose, along with a plot that continues to defy fantasy tropes by focusing almost entirely on court intrigue rather than displays of magical or martial prowess, renders such narrative discontinuities forgivable.
One of the highlights of The Seventh Queen may be Radovan himself. In the prior book, he was a sinister yet distant threat, easily dismissed as the inevitable emperor motivated only by a bottomless quest for power. Here, Radovan is revealed as an odd sort of failure, a capricious dictator who began by genuinely trying to right the world’s wrongs. Kelly’s world is one dominated by magical elites, and Radovan is one of the only characters who questions this status quo.
Radovan is much more compelling than when he was a remote evil, but the treatment of his character is also indicative of the loss of the moral complexity that made The Frozen Crown such an interesting take on fantasy. The Seventh Queen categorizes Radovan’s actions as those of a simple madman whose policies are only twisted parodies of true reform, refusing to admit that there was any merit in his initial crusade and uncomplicatedly championing its aristocratic, magically gifted protagonist. While there is plenty of dramatic tension, the most surprising part of how Kelly concludes her duology is how closely it hews to the standards of high fantasy and abandons the thematic ambition of The Frozen Crown.
While not truly groundbreaking, The Seventh Queen has a compelling villain and an unusual focus on courtly maneuvering for a fantasy novel. It is a wholly satisfying conclusion whose only real shortcoming is its inability to fully realize the ambition of Kelly’s debut.
The satisfying conclusion to the story launched in The Frozen Crown features incisive prose, along with a plot that continues to defy fantasy tropes by focusing almost entirely on court intrigue rather than displays of magical or martial prowess.
Terry Brooks revisits the world he created in Running with the Demon one exactly like ours except it’s tinged with magic and torn by the apocalyptic battle between the dark forces of the Void and the good forces of the Word. Demons haunt the night, bent on causing anarchy, enslaving humanity, and destroying civilization.
It has been five years since Nest Freemark faced her demon father in Hopewell, Illinois, and learned about her magic abilities abilities currently dormant. Now 19, Nest faces life alone. Gran and Old Bob are gone, and she learns that John Ross the Knight of the Word who saved her on that fateful Fourth of July has given up his responsibility to the Word and abandoned his knighthood. Ross failed to foil a demon-inspired hostage situation, and the guilt has driven him to renounce his own magic and sworn quest. He does not realize that the Void will now seek to subvert his powers and that the Word’s assassins will not allow it. Now residing in Seattle and working for Simon Lawrence (The Wizard of Oz), an enigmatic social reformer whose Fresh Start program for the homeless is winning ever-increasing support, Ross dreams that he will murder the saintly Lawrence on Halloween. But why? What could lead to this outcome? Nest arrives in Seattle to convince Ross of the danger he faces, but it’s too late. Events have been set into motion that will result in confrontation with a special kind of demon, a changeling who can become anyone. Who is the demon? Is it the Wiz himself? Andrew Wren, the investigative reporter eager to uncover the Wiz’s financial improprieties? Or Stefanie Winslow, Fresh Starts’s press secretary and Ross’s lover? Once aware of the danger, Ross and Nest hurtle through this fast-paced novel and face the evil agents of the Void with the help of several magical creatures. Each will realize his or her new role in the struggle to maintain balance between dark and light, and each will lose something of value. Brooks steps closer to the neighborhood of urban fantasy by setting his story in an urban neighborhood rife for demon infestation. Marred only by an occasional tendency to rely on shorthand narrative descriptions rather than active scenes, A Knight of the Word is a solid, exciting transition to a third novel in this magical series.
Bill Gagliani is a librarian and writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Terry Brooks revisits the world he created in Running with the Demon one exactly like ours except it's tinged with magic and torn by the apocalyptic battle between the dark forces of the Void and the good forces of the Word. Demons haunt the night,…
When Robin Blyth arrives at his new position in the Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints division, he’s expecting a slightly overwhelming, but typical first day at a new job. What he’s not expecting is to learn that magic is real, and that his predecessor might have been murdered. The deliverer of this news, magician Edwin Courcey, becomes Robin’s guide to the magical underworld of Edwardian England. Freya Marske uses this imaginative framework to spin a tale of conspiracy and unexpected love in A Marvellous Light, first of a planned trilogy.
Congrats on such a splendid debut. When you think back to the original inspiration for this book, did Robin and Edwin’s story turn out the way you expected? Thank you! A lot of the worldbuilding and plot events did change in the telling—more on that below!—but the emotional core of the story, Edwin and Robin and their romance, was the first part of the book to cohere for me. I knew who they were, and I knew why and how they would fall in love. That part barely changed at all between the initial inspiration and the final draft.
Edwardian England is rendered so vividly in A Marvellous Light. Did this story and its setting always go hand in hand when you were coming up with the concept? In a similar vein, what does this setting give to the story that other time periods might not? Somewhat hilariously, the reason I chose the Edwardian era is because of book two’s story and setting being extremely intertwined. I always knew the second book would be set on an ocean liner around the time of the Titanic. But once I started poking around and researching the time period, the manor house party-setting of book one fell perfectly into place. And the greatest contribution of this specific historical setting turned out to be the Arts & Crafts movement, which not only gave me a lot of wonderful visuals but also helped to bring out one of the most important character notes for Robin: his appreciation for art.
What choices did you make spontaneously while drafting that added the most to the book? I think of myself as a kitchen-sink kind of drafter. I’ll snatch at whatever offhand world building or character details drift across my mind, and shove them into the text, so that when I need a spanner to fix a plot problem later in the book I can turn around and say, “Well, I’m SURE there was a spanner back in Chapter Four.” Anything that gets used stays in; everything else gets painfully pruned in revisions.
I wrote myself a spanner-detail about how a magical family makes a contract with their house and land, then found myself at the very midpoint of the book realizing that in order to be consistent with my own world building, I would have to allow a certain unplanned thing to happen. And this thing was so fun and interesting that I immediately stopped and gleefully reworked the outline to see what sort of ripple effects it would have. (Good ones, it turns out!)
When thinking back to the writing process, what passage or section do you most vividly remember? I don’t want to spoil too much, but the hedge maze scene was definitely the one I had the most fun with. I got to experiment with some more horror-esque tension, which doesn’t appear to a great extent anywhere else in the book, so that stretched some writing muscles for me!
Talk to me about the magic system. Were you inspired by any systems from other works when coming up with your own? As someone with a methodical mind myself, I’ve always been drawn to magic systems that have an element of the academic to them: those that require study, and patient learning, and don’t come easily. (I’m a sucker for any book featuring a magical school, library or university.) Edwin as a character embodies that kind of magic. At the same time, I wanted this book to have a balance of logical magic and the wilder, more numinous, less explicable magic that lives in fairy tales. The kind of magic that upends an ordered life, just as Robin does for Edwin.
“For me, the romantic moments in fiction that feel the most authentic are those that are also the most specific. What are the small details that one character is noticing about another?”
Some say that comedy is the hardest dialogue to write, but I imagine romantic declarations can be just as difficult. Do you have any tips for creating romantic moments that feel real and truthful? A good love story is unique; It should feel like it could only arise between the two (or more) unique individuals within it. For me, the romantic moments in fiction that feel the most authentic are those that are also the most specific. What are the small details that one character is noticing about another, and how do those details become building blocks in the romance? What are the small things they can do for one another, or say to one another, that make the characters feel seen for who they are, and loved in their flawed entirety? Once you know those answers, you can write a line that shouts I love you! as loudly as if the words were spoken.
What work did you have to put in for this book so that the next installments would have a solid foundation to stand on? When I got to the end of the first draft, I looked back and thought, “Oh—THAT’S what the theme of this trilogy is! And THIS is how it will play itself out in the other books!” Then I hopped on video chat with an author friend who patiently asked me questions while I wailed and gnashed my teeth until I’d properly worked out the backstory of certain characters and the solid bones of the magic system. The first and largest revision included a lot of careful work to lay the foundations for books two and three.
I also made sure to introduce one of book two’s main characters; ditto for book three. The further you get into a trilogy plot, the less room you have for leisurely character introductions. I want my readers to be able to hit the ground running in the later books, and to have the protagonists feel like existing acquaintances they’re keen to know in more detail.
Horrible families are fun as heck to read. I’m definitely fishing here, but will we see more of that in book two? Horrible families provide a convenient way for a central couple to be drawn together in a you-and-me-against-the-world sort of way. Robin and Edwin are marooned in a book full of human monsters. However, I wrote book two during 2020, and for some reason I had the urge to escape into a fun romp of a book, full of basically decent people. It still has its nasty villains and its amusing assholes—and the two protagonists are definitely still products of less-than-ideal families—but the family setting itself is much less prominent.
Looking back on both the writing and the editing process, what parts of creating these characters and this story are you most proud of? I’ll be frank: This is only the second novel I ever wrote, so I’m pleased as hell that it even exists. I’m proud that it has a coherent shape, a coherent aesthetic, a heady combination of all my favorite things (magic! murder mystery! sex!), and characters who are vivid in my mind. I’ve spent countless hours of drafting and revision with them, and I’m not sick of their company yet. I hope I never will be. And I’m more than ready for the world to meet them too.
Author Freya Marske shares how she brought a resonant, magical romance to life within the buttoned-up world of Edwardian England.
Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light takes us to Edwardian England, where manners are surface-level, magic is real and mysteries abound around every cobbled street corner. Robin Blyth takes a mysterious job in the government’s Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints division. In his rather baffling first 15 minutes on the job, Robin meets the somewhat awkward and brisk Edwin Courcey, who informs Robin that magic is real and that his predecessor was murdered by magical means. Though Robin and Edwin would each prefer working with someone else, it’s up to the two of them to find out what happened to the man Robin replaced, revealing a conspiracy that threatens all magical people in England. Come for the incredibly rich setting, stay for the romance: Robin and Edwin’s relationship anchors the narrative, and the way that they challenge and then question and then accept each other is captivating. Marske deftly contrasts the couple’s affection with the stuffiness of the world that surrounds them, making their love all the more resonant.
Noor
If you haven’t yet had a chance to experience Nnedi Okorafor’s singular voice, take the plunge now. In her sci-fi thriller Noor, Okorafor’s unique perspective is on full display. Anwuli Okwudili is a Nigerian girl who was born with deformities in her legs and one of her arms, intestinal malrotation and only one lung. After a car accident further limits the use of her legs and gives her debilitating headaches and memory issues, Anwuli gets a whole raft of biomechanical body enhancements. Viewed as half human and half machine, she flees her village after killing several men who attacked her. While on the run, she meets a shepherd called DNA (short for Dangote Nuhu Adamu), who is also on the run from the law. In a world where cameras track your every move, Anwuli and DNA try to stay ahead of a reckoning they know is coming. A leading voice in the subgenre of African futurism, Okorafor’s power on the page is confident, vivid and uniquely her own. This story is tight, violent, uplifting, damning and thoughtful all at once. Okorafor’s examination of technology’s influence on health, nature, local communities and so many other parts of life is as precise as it is disturbing. Noor is a cautionary thriller, told with exuberance and conviction.
Sistersong
If British history (and the mythology that surrounds it) sets your heart ablaze, then Lucy Holland’s mystical Sistersong is the book for you. A story of family, magic, romance and betrayal, Sistersong lingers long after its final page. Britain in A.D. 535, recently relieved of Roman rule, is full of many independent kingdoms. One of these, Dumonia, is home to three sisters. Each sister yearns for something: Riva for a body healed from the fire that disfigured her, Keyne for a place at her father’s side in battle, and Sinne for her true love. But it’s a tumultuous time for Dumonia. A Christian priest seeks to rid the kingdom of the old gods, the Saxons begin their invasion of Britain and new, unfamiliar faces appear at court. The sisters have to choose whether to take matters (and magic) into their own hands or let their kingdom fade into the past as a new Britain rises. Holland nails an early Middle Ages aesthetic, using it as the backdrop for some intensely personal storytelling. Be prepared for triumph and tragedy, fantasy and folklore, might and magic.
Think “Downton Abbey” would have been better with magic? Then this month’s SFF column is for you!
With Into the Darkness, the first novel of a new series, Harry Turtledove introduces the world of Derlevai, which was ravaged by a major war one generation ago. When the duke of a minor province dies, the kingdom of Algarve decides to reassert its claim to his lands, which were taken as part of the earlier cease-fire agreement. Not having learned from past experience, the rulers plunge Derlevai into a massive war.
Into the Darkness is clearly based on a mixture of the two World Wars, but Turtledove introduces a subtle element of magic to his blend. The magic primarily serves to replace technology: aircraft are dragons, tanks become behemoths, and submarines turn into leviathans. Although magic affects everyone’s lives, it is as unnoticed as electricity or gasoline in our world, only noticeable in its absence.
The action is played out by a wide variety of characters representing the various kingdoms. In order to help differentiate his cast, Turtledove has helpfully provided them with names reminiscent of several terrestrial cultures. Forthwegian names tend to be Anglo-Saxon, Algarvians are Italian, and so on. These parallels, however, can only be carried so far, for the cultures and politics of these lands are not necessarily reflective of the names their citizens hold.
The military action in Into the Darkness is complex, which isn’t helped by Turtledove’s alternating viewpoints, but the general status of the war at any time is pretty easy to grasp.
Turtledove’s characters, ranging from backcountry farmers to highborn ladies to scholars, allow him to examine the culture which his war is destroying.
Into the Darkness is a thoughtful and entertaining look at a clash of cultures and political ideologies. Rather than portray heroes and villains, Turtledove depicts his characters in realistic terms, giving all of them redeeming qualities to balance their faults. Despite being the first of a series, the action comes to a sensible conclusion even as it leaves themes and plots open for further elaboration.
Stephen Silver is a freelance book reviewer in Northbrook, Illinois.
With Into the Darkness, the first novel of a new series, Harry Turtledove introduces the world of Derlevai, which was ravaged by a major war one generation ago. When the duke of a minor province dies, the kingdom of Algarve decides to reassert its claim…
In a century-long cryonic sleep, while waiting for research to develop a cure for eplasia, two clones were made of bounty hunter Jefferson Nighthawk, known as The Widowmaker. The purpose of these clones was to provide the capital needed to maintain Nighthawk’s slumber until he could be cured. Mike Resnick detailed the short life of the first clone in The Widowmaker and the more successful second clone in Widowmaker Reborn. Now, in Widowmaker Unleashed, he turns his attention to the recently cured Jefferson Nighthawk. All Nighthawk wants to do is settle on a quiet planet, plant flowers and live as a 62 year old retiree. He is followed to this Eden by Ito Kinoshita, the lawman who trained both Nighthawk’s clones and who views himself as the self-appointed sidekick to the Widowmaker. Although Nighthawk’s retirement starts well enough, it isn’t long before the enemies made by his two clones track him down and destroy the idyllic rest he had been looking forward to.
Even as he protests that he is no longer the Widowmaker, Nighthawk must use the skills he honed as a bounty hunter to protect his own life and those of the people he has grown close to. Throughout the earlier books, Resnick explored the issue of identity as both clones tried to figure out who they were in the face of an existing Widowmaker. Now, the original Widowmaker must come to terms with the fact that his own identity is as much a result of the way the universe views him, and his clones, as it is of his own appraisal.
As is often the case in Resnick’s novels, the science fictional elements in Widowmaker Unleashed are a minor part of the story. The planets Nighthawk travels to have more in common with the small towns of the American west than with globe-spanning civilizations of much science fiction. Resnick’s Galaxy is filled with bounty hunters, outlaws, lawmen and similar roles taken straight out of a Gary Cooper film. This highlights the universality of the themes Resnick tackles as the reader realizes they can be applied to any fictional genre, and, therefore, are easily applicable to life.
While Widowmaker Unleashed does not stand on its own as well as the previous novels, it can be read individually or as a coda to the earlier novels in the sequence. Both the characters and themes build on those Resnick has already established. Resnick has written a highly entertaining series which provides a thorough look at the meaning of self-identity.
In a century-long cryonic sleep, while waiting for research to develop a cure for eplasia, two clones were made of bounty hunter Jefferson Nighthawk, known as The Widowmaker. The purpose of these clones was to provide the capital needed to maintain Nighthawk's slumber until he…
Remember those wonderful books and stories of your youth? Whether you grew up reading Nancy Drew or Winnie-the-Pooh, you no doubt recall the power and passion of books that moved you when you were first starting to read. In his new book, Rainbow Mars, Larry Niven appeals to that nostalgia.
In the 24th-century world of Hanville Svetz, time travel is a reality. Most of his temporal dislocation projects have been influenced by the personal whims of the United Nations galactic leadership, who wanted Svetz to travel to the past in order to capture extinct animals and bring them to the future. So far, Svetz has blundered on every time trip, but ultimately succeeded because he brought back even more exotic animals than he was sent to capture. (Would you believe Moby Dick in place of a regular whale, Quetzalcoatl instead of a snake, and a unicorn instead of a horse?) Now U.
N. leadership has changed, and the new ruler wants space travel and an exploration of Professor Lowell’s discredited Canals of Mars. Svetz figures out a way to get to Mars almost a thousand years in the past when, amazingly, the Canals do exist and are populated by numerous exotic alien species. As you read Niven’s descriptions, allusions to legendary science fiction characters suddenly become apparent characters such as Tars Tarkas from the Edgar Rice Burroughs lexicon of Barsoomian adventures, and various other Martian depictions courtesy of Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Stanley Weinbaum, and C.
S. Lewis.
Larry Niven enthralls readers with his skillful integration of myth, legend, fantasy, and classic science fiction. This is his best novel since the Hugo Award-winning Ringworld. Rainbow Mars also includes Niven’s five original short stories about Svetz’s adventures that were written over 25 years ago.
Larry D. Woods, an attorney, is an avid reader of science fiction.
Remember those wonderful books and stories of your youth? Whether you grew up reading Nancy Drew or Winnie-the-Pooh, you no doubt recall the power and passion of books that moved you when you were first starting to read. In his new book, Rainbow Mars, Larry…
With his debut novel, The Jackal of Nar, John Marco has now joined the ranks of Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, Stephen Donaldson, and, of course, J.
R.
R. Tolkien.
As the novel opens, the title character, also known as Prince Richius Vantran of Aramoor, is battling the warlords of Lucel-Lor at the orders of his emperor, Arkus the Great. Fighting against impossible odds, he realizes that just because the religious zealots of Lucel-Lor are evil madmen doesn’t mean that Emperor Arkus is completely sane himself. As the story progresses, the reader’s idea of right and wrong, good and evil, is constantly challenged. All of the characters, from Richius to Arkus to the evil priest Tharn, are more complex than they first appear. Each has his own hopes and ambitions, and a variety of loyalties which are not always aligned with each other.
The plot of The Jackal of Nar could have been straightforward, but Marco manages to put in enough twists to confound the reader’s expectations. The politics and relationships within the novel do not always seem solid, but they lend themselves to the mechanizations required to build the complexity of the book.
Another of Marco’s strengths is his ability to paint vivid and graphic images of his characters’ world and bring the wonder of this land to the reader. He may, however, carry this imagery a little too far in his description of some scenes of carnage.
Marco promises that The Jackal of Nar is only the first of his Tyrants and Kings series. While it is obvious where he intends to begin the next book, he also manages to wrap up the action begun in The Jackal of Nar so the book stands very well on its own. The Jackal of Nar is an excellent introduction to a new author and promises more fantastic adventures set in this rich and complex world.
Steven H. Silver is a freelance book reviewer in Northbrook, Illinois.
With his debut novel, The Jackal of Nar, John Marco has now joined the ranks of Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, Stephen Donaldson, and, of course, J.
Stephen R. Donaldson began his acclaimed Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series in 1977. With his creation of Thomas, a flawed everyman who enters an alternate universe, the Land, to save it from the evil Lord Foul, Donaldson became one of the biggest names in fantasy. He ended the series with White Gold Wielder, much to the dismay of his millions of fans. This month, Donaldson launches a four-volume conclusion to the saga with The Runes of the Earth. Here, Donaldson explains why he decided to return to Thomas and the Land after more than 20 years.
The dedication to my novel, The Wounded Land (Book One of The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant), reads: "To Lester del Rey: Lester made me do it." I naturally wanted to dedicate a book to him. He was the editor who discovered me, the editor who found Lord Foul’s Bane in his slush pile and decided to publish it when it had already been rejected by every fiction publisher in the U.S. (including Ballantine Books, the company that later hired him to start a new fantasy line). I needed to express my gratitude somehow. And I chose to say that "Lester made me do it" an intentional reference to that old excuse, "The Devil made me do it" because he is both directly and indirectly responsible for every Covenant book that has followed, and will follow in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.
Of course, Lester is directly responsible because he published me when no one else would. In that sense, he is responsible for my entire writing career (19 books so far, not counting The Runes of the Earth). Nonetheless the line, "Lester made me do it," refers more to his indirect responsibility for the subsequent Covenant books.
Lester, bless him, had many admirable qualities as an editor. However, he was also one of publishing’s foremost advocates for "repeatable success." Having published my first trilogy successfully, he saw no earthly reason why I should not continue to write Covenant books, and only Covenant books, until the day I died (or until they stopped selling, whichever came first). I, on the other hand, disagreed. Strenuously. As far as I was concerned, my first trilogy told a complete story, and I saw no earthly reason why I should ever write another Covenant book. I had nothing more to say on the subject of Thomas Covenant’s struggles against Despite in the arena of the Land.
Well, Lester didn’t get where he was in life by taking "no" for an answer. But he had already discovered that I can be a bit pig-headed where writing is concerned. So he cleverly didn’t try to argue with me. Instead he began sending me "ideas" for my next Covenant book. Idea after idea, relentlessly, until I feared that he would never stop. And each new idea was worse than the one before. Soon he was sending me ideas so bad that Bulwar-Lytton wouldn’t have written them. And at last he succeeded in his devilish purpose: he sent me an idea SO bad that before I could stop myself I began thinking, "No, this one is truly terrible. What I really ought to do instead is . . ." Almost instantaneously, my brain seemed to fill with fire. Mere moments later, in a mad rush, almost helplessly, I had sketched in the main stories for both The Second Chronicles and The Last Chronicles: both of them perfectly logical extensions of "Covenant’s struggles against Despite in the arena of the Land"; both of them building seamlessly in sequence on the first Covenant trilogy; both of them playing their parts to make the entire Covenant saga into one vast, organic whole.
More than 20 years may have passed since I completed The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but The Last Chronicles has remained alive in my imagination the whole time, waiting more and more impatiently for me to get around to finishing what I started. In that sense, it is quite literally true that "Lester made me do it."
Stephen R. Donaldson began his acclaimed Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series in 1977. With his creation of Thomas, a flawed everyman who enters an alternate universe, the Land, to save it from the evil Lord Foul, Donaldson became one of the biggest names…
Science fiction and fantasy tales have long dealt with the search for identity. It is a common motif in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, Robert Heinlein’s Double Star, and John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Who Goes There?, as well as Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear, James Blish’s A Case of Conscience, and Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. Now, Mission Child (Avon, $20, 0380974568) by Maureen F. McHugh joins this pantheon of precedent-setting novels.
Mission Child bears some striking thematic resemblances to LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness and obviously owes some debt to historical accounts of women who went to war disguised as men, but this is an entirely different point of view.
Young Janna lives on an alien world where the Earthers’ technology threatens the local flora and fauna and has cost 14-year-old Janna her family. Despite the violence and conflict, this is a vibrant and warm coming-of-age story, where off-world artifacts and alien cultures figure prominently as Janna negotiates the dividing line between child and adult and between female and male. Disguising herself as a young boy, Janna journeys forward in both spirit and adventure as she grows through her love for a dangerous criminal and the discovery of her dead child’s spirit. She also overcomes both the advantage and disadvantage of her linguistic abilities. Truly this is a novel that will arouse strong emotional responses while enticing with its sense of adventure and wonder.
In a lighter and more entertaining vein, the female protagonist of Holly Lisle’s Diplomacy of Wolves (Aspect, $12.99, 0446673951), Kait Galweigh, discovers a Sabir plot to assassinate the entire House of Galweigh at her cousin’s royal wedding. Kait’s escape involves her in battle with both mortal and demonic attackers, and she ultimately must rely upon her secret family power whose disclosure may result in her death. The rebirth of the magical energy that she controls is the only salvation available to defeat the evil from the shadow world as the great Houses of Sabir and Galweigh battle for control of their world, Calimekka. This is the first in a projected trilogy of epic fantasy adventure of sorcery, conspiracies, wolves, and deception.
Starfarers (Tor, $25.95, 0312860374) by Poul Anderson marks the return of one of the grand masters as author Anderson plots an exciting hard science fiction story of a starfaring civilization and Earth’s attempt to send a human diplomatic mission over 60,000 light years to contact them.
Science fiction and fantasy tales have long dealt with the search for identity. It is a common motif in Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Robert Heinlein's Double Star, and John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Who Goes There?, as well as Ursula LeGuin's…
Science fiction and fantasy tales have long dealt with the search for identity. It is a common motif in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, Robert Heinlein’s Double Star, and John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Who Goes There?, as well as Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear, James Blish’s A Case of Conscience, and Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. Now, Mission Child (Avon, $20, 0380974568) by Maureen F. McHugh joins this pantheon of precedent-setting novels.
Mission Child bears some striking thematic resemblances to LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness and obviously owes some debt to historical accounts of women who went to war disguised as men, but this is an entirely different point of view.
Young Janna lives on an alien world where the Earthers’ technology threatens the local flora and fauna and has cost 14-year-old Janna her family. Despite the violence and conflict, this is a vibrant and warm coming-of-age story, where off-world artifacts and alien cultures figure prominently as Janna negotiates the dividing line between child and adult and between female and male. Disguising herself as a young boy, Janna journeys forward in both spirit and adventure as she grows through her love for a dangerous criminal and the discovery of her dead child’s spirit. She also overcomes both the advantage and disadvantage of her linguistic abilities. Truly this is a novel that will arouse strong emotional responses while enticing with its sense of adventure and wonder.
In a lighter and more entertaining vein, the female protagonist of Holly Lisle’s Diplomacy of Wolves, Kait Galweigh, discovers a Sabir plot to assassinate the entire House of Galweigh at her cousin’s royal wedding. Kait’s escape involves her in battle with both mortal and demonic attackers, and she ultimately must rely upon her secret family power whose disclosure may result in her death. The rebirth of the magical energy that she controls is the only salvation available to defeat the evil from the shadow world as the great Houses of Sabir and Galweigh battle for control of their world, Calimekka. This is the first in a projected trilogy of epic fantasy adventure of sorcery, conspiracies, wolves, and deception.
Starfarers (Tor, $25.95, 0312860374) by Poul Anderson marks the return of one of the grand masters as author Anderson plots an exciting hard science fiction story of a starfaring civilization and Earth’s attempt to send a human diplomatic mission over 60,000 light years to contact them.
Science fiction and fantasy tales have long dealt with the search for identity. It is a common motif in Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Robert Heinlein's Double Star, and John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Who Goes There?, as well as Ursula LeGuin's…
Science fiction and fantasy tales have long dealt with the search for identity. It is a common motif in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, Robert Heinlein’s Double Star, and John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Who Goes There?, as well as Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear, James Blish’s A Case of Conscience, and Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. Now, Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh joins this pantheon of precedent-setting novels.
Mission Child bears some striking thematic resemblances to LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness and obviously owes some debt to historical accounts of women who went to war disguised as men, but this is an entirely different point of view.
Young Janna lives on an alien world where the Earthers’ technology threatens the local flora and fauna and has cost 14-year-old Janna her family. Despite the violence and conflict, this is a vibrant and warm coming-of-age story, where off-world artifacts and alien cultures figure prominently as Janna negotiates the dividing line between child and adult and between female and male. Disguising herself as a young boy, Janna journeys forward in both spirit and adventure as she grows through her love for a dangerous criminal and the discovery of her dead child’s spirit. She also overcomes both the advantage and disadvantage of her linguistic abilities. Truly this is a novel that will arouse strong emotional responses while enticing with its sense of adventure and wonder.
In a lighter and more entertaining vein, the female protagonist of Holly Lisle’s Diplomacy of Wolves (Aspect, $12.99, 0446673951), Kait Galweigh, discovers a Sabir plot to assassinate the entire House of Galweigh at her cousin’s royal wedding. Kait’s escape involves her in battle with both mortal and demonic attackers, and she ultimately must rely upon her secret family power whose disclosure may result in her death. The rebirth of the magical energy that she controls is the only salvation available to defeat the evil from the shadow world as the great Houses of Sabir and Galweigh battle for control of their world, Calimekka. This is the first in a projected trilogy of epic fantasy adventure of sorcery, conspiracies, wolves, and deception.
Starfarers (Tor, $25.95, 0312860374) by Poul Anderson marks the return of one of the grand masters as author Anderson plots an exciting hard science fiction story of a starfaring civilization and Earth’s attempt to send a human diplomatic mission over 60,000 light years to contact them.
Science fiction and fantasy tales have long dealt with the search for identity. It is a common motif in Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Robert Heinlein's Double Star, and John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Who Goes There?, as well as Ursula LeGuin's…
Versatile novelists never stay content for long with a specific genre or style. Restless like a big cat in a small cage, they assume another fictional persona, don another narrative voice, and strike out for new pastures. Walter Mosley, creator of the popular Easy Rawlins series, has temporarily abandoned soulful Los Angeles, triple cross schemes, rubber checks, and raw fisticuffs in the night. His old fans will be startled by his wicked curveball of a new novel, Blue Light, a work of speculative fiction. A space-age mortality play, Blue Light does not burst from the starting gate, instead it falters momentarily through a fragmented prologue, where a vast array of characters meet a baffling fate with their first encounter with the all-transforming light. No one is the same after the strange contact. The narrator, Chance, recounts some of this other-dimensional tale from the comfort of a sanitarium. He tells the readers of his endless bad luck, his termination at his library job, his academic failures, and the bitter departure of his girlfriend. And things only get worse from there as the surreal fable soon begins to pick up pace.
Chance, one of the chosen by the light, joins a shadowy cult, led by Orde, a man afflicted with a rare blood disorder. Each of the people touched by the light morphs into a new form of human, complete with exaggerated strengths and flaws. This evolving super-race experiences a quickening of the genes, causing both spiritual and physical changes, bringing them into direct confrontation with the Old Order. The other key targets of the light band together into a group, The Blues, who seek to convert the non-believers into acceptance of their reconstituted existence.
Not always in complete control of this new genre’s thematic demands, Mosley does ask critical contemporary questions about race, loyalty, moral responsibility, and humanity. Occasionally, the writing borders on the farcical during the building of the novel’s curious premise, but there remains an abundance of imagination and literary bravado throughout. Mosley is not afraid to take chances, not shy about pushing into that improbable territory of science and myth carved out long ago by such master writers as Fritz Leiber, Clifford D. Simak, Roger Zelazny, and Arthur C. Clarke. Again, the war of the Opposites returns. Who would have thought that the hard-bitten writer of detective fiction could sing so ably in this key? And then there was the sun shining, Mosley writes in his new-found celestial voice. The pulsing story of creation humming again and again through her inner timbre. So beautiful that it called a song from her depths, a song that flowed out through the atmosphere and deep into the soil and stone of the earth. She was calling to awareness the very atoms that composed the world. If the reader can forget the author’s much celebrated tie to Rawlins and surrender to the lure of the imagined world of the Blues, Blue Light will provide a daring, provocative trek. The novel contains a few miscues, several under-utilized characters, surprises when it hits its stride. It’s a courageous experiment worthy of your time and patience.
Robert Fleming is a reviewer in New York.
Versatile novelists never stay content for long with a specific genre or style. Restless like a big cat in a small cage, they assume another fictional persona, don another narrative voice, and strike out for new pastures. Walter Mosley, creator of the popular Easy Rawlins…
In 2019, we’ve enjoyed a number of good comic tales—but they’re dark, a little wicked, and even when they’re a little fantastical, they’re deeply, utterly real. Here are five of our favorites.
