Science Fiction & Fantasy Archives | Page 53 of 66 | BookPage

It’s easy to underestimate the challenges of crafting contemporary fantasy, especially when one compares the task with that of writing its older cousin, the traditional swords-and-sorcery fantasy. But just because the author of a contemporary fantasy can skip some expository steps in character development and setting if the protagonist is an ex-Navy SEAL named Josh living in Boston instead of, say, a 12th-degree death-o-mancer named Magyar Trothan who lives in the land of Whimsicalia, that doesn’t mean taking the less fantastical road is easy. After all, anything that happens in the mostly real, present-day world is subject to the immediate scrutiny of countless experts—plenty of readers will be familiar with Boston or have a family member in the military, whereas no one other than the author will possess any firsthand knowledge on death-o-mancer training. (Granted, the Whimsicalian Wiki will be up a few days after the book is published.)

Nonetheless, most crafters of fantasy, traditional or contemporary, have one big hurdle in common: devising a system of “magic” that’s fresh, compelling and coherent.

With his latest book, Australian author Max Barry (Jennifer Government, Company) easily clears this often fatal hurdle with a premise (and system) guaranteed to appeal to readers: Words have power, and some words have a lot of power. In Lexicon, a global organization whose members refer to themselves as “the poets” employs psycho-linguistic tactics to control, well, pretty much anything or anyone. But like any other multinational concern, even super-secret groups have staffing needs. In the orphaned Emily Ruff, they find someone who may or may not be a powerful addition to their organization. Barry alternates the chapters covering her recruitment and training with tense action sequences involving a man named Wil and his mysterious captors (or protectors?). These are maddeningly opaque at first, though the blistering pace—more reminiscent of a Ludlum spy thriller than anything else—makes the difficulty in gaining one’s bearings tolerable.

By book’s end, Lexicon has revealed itself as a contemporary fantasy that’s three parts thriller and one part romance (somewhat diluted). In the process, Barry’s tale provides its reader with an intriguing, satisfying ride through a world where the phrase “has a way with words” refers to the author’s own world-building as much as to the characters who inhabit it.

Fantasy, Fiction

Fiction Fantasy

Again the magic

Review by Matthew Jackson

by Matthew Jackson

We readers expect magic when we pick up a Neil Gaiman novel. By now he’s built a reputation for his own unique brand of spellbinding fiction, but even among works like American Gods, Stardust and Coraline, The Ocean at the End of the Lane stands as a landmark. Never before has Gaiman’s fiction felt this personal, this vibrant or this deeply intimate.

Gaiman’s hero is an unnamed narrator who returns to his childhood home as an adult and is flooded with memories of a farm at the end of the English country lane where he grew up. We relive those boyhood memories as he does, beginning with an odd tragedy that brought him to the doorstep of the Hempstock family. There he met 11-year-old Lettie, her mother and her ancient grandmother, who claims she was around when the moon was first made. There he finds a pond that Lettie insists is an ocean. And there he embarked on a strange, mesmerizing and often terrifying adventure that probes the often unreachable corners of human memory, nostalgia and wonder.

Never before has Gaiman’s fiction felt this personal.

At fewer than 200 pages, this is one of Gaiman’s shortest books, and yet The Ocean at the End of the Lane is overflowing with ambition. As it meanders through ever-thickening layers of magical intrigue—which wrap this book like bright green English moss—the novel becomes something more than a boyhood adventure story. It is a fable about the practicalities and inconsistencies of magic, about the often unreliable powers of memory and about how fear can often make us stronger. All this is imparted through a lightning-quick narrative filled with typically spellbinding Gaiman imagery, and told in unpretentious but endlessly evocative prose. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a character study trapped in a fairy tale, a coming-of-age story wrapped in the trappings of myth. It’s Gaiman at his bittersweet, hypnotic best, and it’s a can’t-miss book for this summer.

Matthew Jackson reviews from Texas.

Mystery & Suspense, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Suspense

Science Fiction & Fantasy Mystery & Suspense Suspense

Time is on a killer’s side

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

Get your running gear on—in The Shining Girls, you’ll be taken on a breathtaking, loopy trip through time.

South African novelist Lauren Beukes, who penned the award-winning sci-fi/fantasy Zoo City, returns with The Shining Girls, a creepy, supernatural thriller set in Chicago, where a dilapidated House (yes, capital “H”) containing a mysterious portal sends the book’s villain back and forth through time. Throughout the 20th century, he dispatches a series of women in brutal fashion, removing a small item from one victim here, depositing it with another there, then materializing back at the House to review his exploits.

A former victim seeks justice against a time-traveling serial killer in Lauren Beukes' new novel.

Kirby Mazrachi has survived horrific wounds as the only victim to escape—barely—one of Harper’s attacks, and she’s obsessed with tracking him down. She knows there’s something wacky about how he operates; impossibly, she remembers that he first visited her when she was 6 years old. An intern at the Chicago Sun-Times, Kirby has lots of archived news records at her disposal, and for help there’s Dan, the sports editor who’s falling in love with her. Otherwise, there doesn’t seem much to recommend this hunt, as Harper appears to hold all the cards.

Beukes, a talented writer, is blessed with a graceful yet spot-on prose style, often bordering on the sublime, and she knows how to tap into the tics and crooked depths of her main characters, especially a plenty-screwed-up Kirby and her druggy mom, Rachel, who are described with startling insight. And of course there’s the character of the House, which, depending on the year you enter it, runs from seductively inviting to a mangled wreck. For any who hold a key, however, it yields a doorway that conquers time.

Harper is another matter. Even though we have his evil grins and private murderous satisfactions at our disposal, it’s hard to get much of a look at what drives him. He’s drawn to a select group of women who “shine” for him in some way—with potential or just plain life—and he’s driven to dispose of them violently. Beyond that, we mainly witness his cruel, frenetic journeys.

Whipping back and forth in time gets a trifle confusing and is sometimes a letdown. Chapters skip jarringly among the years and characters, giving us little opportunity to absorb where we are. How much better this author’s talent would shine if she were to send us a more lasting, intelligent thrill.

Get your running gear on—in The Shining Girls, you’ll be taken on a breathtaking, loopy trip through time.

Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fantasy

A fateful fantasy mashup

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

Peter Clines’ 2010 debut novel, Ex-Heroes, had a simple, pitch-friendly premise: superheroes meet zombies! Too often, such catchy marketing angles are reductive, but in the case of Ex-Heroes, it was pretty much a dead-on summary of Clines’ double-decker “What if . . . ?” contemporary fantasy sandwich. (What if people with superpowers started to appear in our world? And what if that was almost immediately followed by the zombie apocalypse?)

Given the waxing popularity of superheroes in film, and zombie fever pretty much everywhere, there hasn’t been a more inevitable combo since Jim Butcher dipped detective noir into “wizard!” for his The Dresden Files series (the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup of genre mashup success stories).

Still, a simple premise with built-in popular appeal doesn’t mean easy to write. For his part, Clines had to create his own version of not one but two fantasy staples so well-worn the ruts in them are basically trenches. Wisely, the author kept it simple: Clines’ undead are pretty much “zombie classic”—slow-moving, cognitively challenged, “swarm ya” machines that are deadly thanks to sheer numbers and a bite-to-infection success ratio that can’t be beat. His heroes are also pretty standard fare—a “Batman” type (Stealth), a “Superman” (Mighty Dragon/St. George), a giant/robot (Cerberus), an energy manipulator (Zzzap), etc.

More importantly, with Ex-Heroes Clines faced the overarching challenge of his genre mashup—telling a compelling story that kept readers, many of whom are “experts” in the genres, interested and guessing. For the most part, Clines succeeded, providing what amounted to a gritty comic book series in novelized form.

With Ex-Patriots, Clines returns to the world of his superhero-flavored zombie apocalypse. The heroes of the Mount—the film studio turned undead-thwarting fortress—have weathered the brutal assault of a truly horrifying supervillain and his zombie hordes. But a return to “normal” in a zombie-ravaged world is still a danger-fraught existence, and as the community of the Mount returns to the daily routine of scavenging and surviving, contact is made with a top-secret branch of the U.S. military. Will this contact turn out to be a good development for the human population of the Mount and its superhuman protectors?

As any reader familiar with Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comics knows, few “promising developments”—be they surviving humans or prospective safer locales—come without hidden peril, and Clines’ sequel is no different. For fans of either genre (be it heroic or zombie), determining the nature of the threat represented by these new players is half the fun of Ex-Patriots. (The continuing character arcs of Stealth, St. George and crew, the other.) Overall, Ex-Patriots continues the novelized comic series feel, minus the original comic series, of its predecessor. If the superheroes and zombies mix of Ex-Heroes was your cup of tea, sit down, crack open Ex-Patriots, and let Peter Clines pour you another cup.

Debut Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction

Fiction Fantasy Debut Fiction

A supernatural love story

Review by Michael Alec Rose

by Michael Alec Rose

Turn off the cell phone, shut down the computer and settle down in your comfiest chair. You’re in for the most exciting fantasy debut since Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell a decade ago. Helene Wecker must be a born writer; there is no other way to account for the quality of her prose, as phenomenal as any of the supernatural wonders she delivers in the glorious The Golem and the Jinni.

Through turnings of fate typical of the history of our immigrant nation, two uncanny beings from overseas wind up in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. One is a creature from Jewish folklore made out of clay—no, not a dreidel, but a golem, a monster animated by mystical secrets of rabbinic lore. The other is a jinni, belonging to that volatile race of spirits who ride the winds of the Arabian desert, until he was captured by human wizardry and confined to a copper flask for a thousand years.

The ensuing narrative is so intricately wrought that it resists the reviewer’s effort to bind it in anything like a copper flask . . . but I’ll try. An insane rabbi-sorcerer bestows upon his female golem Chava the demure and quick-witted nature of a Jane Austen heroine, and she comes to works in a kosher bakery on the Lower East Side. Meanwhile, the jinni Ahmad possesses all the wickedness and charm of a supercharged Don Juan whose irresistible power over human girls becomes fraught with terrible consequences.

At the heart of the novel burns the two creatures’ evolving friendship with each other, and the risks they take in order to grope towards an understanding and transcendence of their own dangerous natures. When released from human control, both the golem and the jinni tend inevitably towards the pitiless destruction of humanity. But the fateful encounter of Chava and Ahmad changes all that. Is it conceivable that two such beings could ever come to love each other?

Wecker’s imaginative coup of wedding Jewish to Arab mythology—and transporting all of it to lower Manhattan—is so brilliant that it ought to be considered at the next round of Middle East peace talks. The Golem and the Jinni is a surpassingly wonderful tale for our time.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read our interview with Helene Wecker for The Golem and the Jinni.

Fantasy, Fiction

Fiction Fantasy

A corrupted coexistence

Review by Ian Schwartz

by Ian Schwartz

When you talk of talented writers under 40, Benjamin Percy is a name that must come up. A list of his awards—mostly for visceral short stories that are as elegant and lilting as Irish ballads yet possess a raw violence beneath—would take up more space than this review allows.

His second novel is Red Moon, a fat, multilayered page-turner that has fans of Percy and lycanthropy alike gnashing their teeth in anticipation. Yes, it’s about werewolves, but it is also about coming of age, young love, racism, xenophobia, warfare’s moral complexities and the zeitgeist of 21st-century America. In other words, Percy went big.

In Red Moon’s alternative world, humans and werewolves—they prefer to be called Lycans, thank you—have coexisted forever. Living worldwide, but with a sovereign Lycan state—in the manner of Israel—Lycans are required by law to take Lupex to keep from changing with the full moon. The Lycan Republic is policed by American armed forces, which are increasingly looked upon as occupiers. American patrols are often targeted by insurgents, from full-on attacks to IEDs. Sound familiar?

In Percy’s alternative world, the decades-long peace between humans and werewolves has been broken.

When Lycan terrorists target American airliners, the innocent and guilty alike are rounded up, killed or disappear, and the lives of American teenagers Claire Forrester and Patrick Gamble change forever. Claire is a Lycan, while Patrick’s father serves with the Army in the Lycan Republic. Their complex existences eventually intersect, and both will play key roles in the violent dawning of a new world.

As a Percy character might say, when you let fly with a one-two punch combination, some blows may miss. Occasionally, the allegory is a bit heavy-handed, but parables aren’t known for their subtlety. The book’s white-knuckle excitement more than atones for a little emotional bias. At its spellbinding best, Red Moon is a cross between Stephen King and the Michael Chabon of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, two very different writers who both give plausible wings to absurdity. If you haven’t read Percy, get started.

Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Science Fiction

Life underground

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

Originally a self-published series of e-novellas, Hugh Howey’s Wool has generated almost as much press for what it is seen to represent as it has for its enthusiastic fan response. Some have proclaimed it yet another nail in the coffin of traditional publishing, while others have pointed to it as proof the post-apocalyptic genre still has some life in it. But the ultimate takeaway from any discussion of Howey’s dystopian novel, now published in print and audio versions as a full-length novel by Simon & Schuster, should be that Wool is a riveting read, thanks to memorable characters and a vividly rendered world, both of which linger with the reader long after the last page has been turned. Howey’s path to publication is proof that fascinating characters and evocative world-building can win over readers, no matter how hollowed out a genre has become or what format a book arrives to market in.

The world of Wool is first introduced to the reader through the eyes of Holston, the sheriff of a post-apocalyptic community that lives in an immense, self-sufficient silo. The rules of the community are strict, with most mentions of the outside taboo and any expressed desire to leave the silo resulting in the community’s version of capital punishment—a one-way trip out of the silo to clean the viewing lens of its external camera before succumbing to the toxic environment.

The second section focuses on the journey of the Silo’s mayor and deputy to recruit Holston’s replacement. The rest of Wool follows the adventures of Holston’s successor, a resourceful female engineer named Juliette (Jules) as she discovers that certain aspects of the community inside the silo that are as deadly as the outside is thought to be.

Saying more risks puncturing the tension that is a hallmark of the book. Suffice it to say, Wool reminds the reader how fulfilling a steady diet of small surprises, deftly delivered, can be. And even the most jaded post-apocalyptic enthusiast should enjoy how skillfully Howey confounds expectations and delays certainty.

Though the human interactions are well-wrought, the most consistently compelling relationship in Wool exists between the main characters and the silo itself. In some ways, it’s a mutualistic relationship between an inorganic behemoth and the humans that inhabit, maintain and are protected by it. Yet in its very premise, Wool suggests that even though it may be human nature to aspire to that which is greater than itself, the attempt to do so ravages as often as it preserves.

Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fiction Fantasy

A dark tale of faerie mythology

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

In Dreams and Shadows, a boy and his djinn try to save a doomed child from the faerie court that stole and raised him. In doing so, they receive a lesson in the nature of the world and of the supernatural that one of them, at least, couldn’t begin to anticipate.

The debut novel of film critic and screenwriter C. Robert Cargill, Dreams and Shadows is the most existential, world-weary of faerie tales. Cargill’s myth-making is unrelentingly dark in tone, more Mignola (Hellboy) than Gaiman (American Gods, Coraline, etc.). In his world, silver linings are fool’s gold, and happy endings are more the stuff of fantasy than nixies, boggarts and their kin ever could be.

This tone is established from the beginning with a prologue so dark that, by the time 8-year-old Colby Stephens extracts a wish from a stranger to “show [him] everything supernatural,” the reader knows that nothing heartwarming this way comes. As the destinies of two children—Ewan, a human child, and Knocks, the changeling who takes his place—become intertwined with that of Colby and his djinn companion, portents pile up as quickly as the supernatural cast of characters expands.

Fortunately, a dark read doesn’t mean a bad one. Cargill’s world-building is methodical and consistent. The pace is brisk, the plotting assured. Though his take on the nature of faerie is not really new or inspired, it is deliberate and codified in a way that yields a satisfyingly focused vision of a fantasy staple. Though remarkably diverse in form and comportment, the fae of Dreams and Shadows share one trait: Each is a walking (or crawling or flying or swimming) embodiment of the moral from the fable “The Frog and the Scorpion”—for good or ill, each fae behaves as its nature demands. As for the supposed mystery and inscrutability of the fae? In this world, it stems less from innate complexity than from the stubbornness of our attempts to ascribe human motivations to their behaviors. All in all, it’s a persuasive vision of what makes faerie tick that in turn provides a convincing, fascinating backdrop for Cargill’s foray into contemporary fantasy.

As a result, Dreams and Shadows is a potent introduction to a world where the wondrous is rarely wonderful, the best intentions are guaranteed to roam farthest astray, and the reader is destined to keep turning the pages until the (somewhat) bitter end.

Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fiction Fantasy

An otherworldly romance

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

Karen Lord’s new book, The Best of All Possible Worlds, is a strange creature. On one hand, it’s unmistakably a piece of science fiction. Lord has crafted a rich, coherent, consistent universe filled with off-world colonies, alien races and the bureaucracies that exist to serve them. There are fantastic abilities; mysterious, long-absent progenitors; and a crisis brought on by attempted genocide. Yet, if a genre work can be said to leave a specific taste in one’s mouth when finished, then The Best of All Possible Worlds also includes the flavor of romance.

Most of the book takes place on Cygnus Beta, a “galactic hinterland for pioneers and refugees” on which Grace Delarua, a self-professed language enthusiast, works as the second assistant to the chief biotechnician. Enter the Sadiri, the latest refugee population to come to Cygnus Beta. Facing the prospect of extinction—most of the remaining Sadiri are male—the stoic, mentally advanced race has sent a contingent, led by Dllenahkh, to gauge the genetic compatibility of groups of Sadiri-related settlers on the planet.

As Delarua, Dllenahkh and their team embark on an intra-planet tour of various outposts, Lord places the budding, subtle relationship between the two protagonists against the disparate backdrops of the places they visit—a story arc reminiscent of a condensed travel itinerary for the USS Enterprise and crew.

Usually, in a conflation of genres, one reigns supreme—this is especially true with science fiction and romance, two of the showier genres. Nonetheless, in The Best of All Possible Worlds, the two coexist in a harmony that’s unrelentingly understated. The result is a unique experience that’s equal parts Jane Austen and Ray Bradbury. Lord’s latest may not be the best of all possible works of sci-fi or romance to come out this year—but it’s more than satisfying.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read an interview with Karen Lord about The Best of All Possible Worlds.

Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fantasy

Sophomore fantasy maintains magic of debut

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

Howard Andrew Jones’ debut novel was an impressive achievement. An exquisite distillation made from only the finest pulp ingredients, The Desert of Souls introduced readers to Captain Asim and the scholar, Dabir, a potent Watson/Holmes pairing placed in a realm flavored by Arabian Nights rather than Victorian London. (Thank goodness . . . have you tasted Victorian London lately?!) With writing both crisp and evocative and characters both familiar in template yet fresh in execution, The Desert of Souls provided readers with the next best thing to reading the works of Howard, Doyle or Lovecraft for the first time.

But with every sensational freshman effort, there are nearly as many sophomore slumps—could Jones carry over the magic of his debut into the sequel?

Yes. (We’ll forego the suspense.)

The Bones of the Old Ones finds our heroes a little wealthier and a good deal more renowned, thanks to their adventures in The Desert of Souls. Asim and Dabir have mostly adjusted to their new higher-profile circumstances when, as is the case in so many other pieces of good pulp fiction, a mysterious, troubled woman arrives on their doorstep in need of help.

The young woman, Najya, claims to have escaped from a group whose name and description match the members of an ancient cabal of powerful sorcerers. Too ancient to be the same beings, surely, but perhaps of the same origin? Soon enough, Asim and Dabir find themselves facing new foes and relying on old friends (and enemies) in an attempt to stave off an apocalyptic, wintery doom.

Along with the strength of Jones’ storytelling, The Bones of the Old Ones also brings with it what any good sequel must—further exploration of the world at hand that both enriches and expands upon the material introduced in its predecessor. Jones interweaves somewhat obscure figures of myth and legend with arguably the most famous of such heroes, in the process managing to open up a heretofore undiscovered perspective on the latter. As a result, The Bones of the Old Ones is just as satisfying as The Desert of Souls—which leads to the one drawback to the thrill of early discovery: the frustration of having to wait for the next book.

Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fantasy

Legend meets history in this annotated fantasy novel

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

Author Caleb Carr ventures into the realm of fantasy and fable for the first time with The Legend of Broken. This dense, immense work is presented as a true story of a Germanic region whose existence has been obscured by the Dark Ages.

Broken is a society ruled by a religion that treats health and wealth as evidence of worthiness. The deformed, unfortunate and heretical are either banished to the hungry wilds of Davon Woods or, in a milder form of trickle-down-get-what-you-deserve, shunted aside to an impoverished Fifth District. The people who have survived the Woods have formed a society of sorts called the Bane. The Legend of Broken follows the efforts of a select few both within (a military leader of humble origins) and without (a trio of Bane foragers and a banished “sorcerer”) the walls of Broken to identify and thwart a heavily veiled yet deadly plot with elements that would have made Heinrich Himmler proud.

Still best known for his debut 1994 novel, The Alienist, Carr presents his latest work under the guise of a recently discovered historical manuscript. Coating a work of fiction in a veneer of “real” is by no means a unique approach to setting up a fantasy tale. “Discovered papers” have provided segues to tales by H.P. Lovecraft, and the fake memoir (both as conceit and as act of deception) is a genre in its own right. Even William Goldman’s The Princess Bride is presented as an abridgment of “S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure.” (Spoiler: There is no such author.)

That said, Carr, a historian by training, takes the approach to the extreme, treating the publishing of The Legend of Broken as if he were publishing a heavily annotated scholarly manuscript. (He also presents correspondence throughout between no less historical personages than Edward Gibbon and Edmund Burke.) The result buries his often compelling characters and intriguing storyline so deeply within a didactic framework, it’s a miracle they survive.

Readers with a tolerance for (or willingness to skim past) the overly pedantic trappings will be rewarded by a memorable cast of characters and occasionally thrilling plot. For those who don’t—well, perhaps an unannotated version?

Broken is a…

Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fiction Fantasy

The thin line between myth and truth

Review by Megan Fishmann

by Megan Fishmann

Fans of novels featuring dark, haunted woods, overgrown English moors and changelings hidden in the dense brush will be absolutely delighted by the hypnotizing mystery of Graham Joyce’s Some Kind of Fairy Tale. Joyce opens with the promising setup of a returned, thought-for-dead protagonist, blending reality with imagination as he explores what really happened to Tara Martin.

Tara lands on her parents’ doorstep on Christmas Day, emaciated, freezing, filthy and somehow not looking a day over 16—the age she was when she mysteriously disappeared 20 years ago. Her parents cannot contain their relief over their daughter’s return. However, Tara’s vague, apologetic excuses don’t fool her brother, Peter, or her distraught ex-boyfriend, Richie. Coaxed into admittance, Tara eventually reveals that she had been taken to a magical land and was unable to cross back and return to her home until six months had passed. Six months—that turned out to be 20 years on the other side. Peter, Peter’s family and Richie are overwhelmed by Tara’s insistent confession. Was Tara in fact taken by a magical being, or is something much darker going on in the inner recesses of her mind?

Told from multiple points of view—the concerned brother, the broken-hearted ex-lover, the potentially dangerous therapist and that of Tara herself—Some Kind of Fairy Tale addresses the many questions behind Tara’s vanishing. Did a mystical man really seduce the 16-year-old, carting her off via white horse to a strange land full of ritualistic orgies and honor killings? And if her story is made up, how to explain why a strange man is following Richie and attacking him in the dead of night? Or Tara’s remarkably youthful appearance?

Joyce bends the authorial suspension of disbelief as he explores the multiple layers behind Tara’s traumatic disappearance and return. As the sinister psychologist ponders her sanity and Richie begins to question his own mind, Tara’s ultimate fate will leave readers feeling as if they had been under a spell the entire duration of her journey.

Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fantasy

A whole new world

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

Novelist N.K. Jemisin believes in setting the hook when it comes to world building. Take The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the first book in Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy. Released in February 2010, her debut novel barely had time to land on reviewers’ desks (and garner a host of impressive award nominations) before the second book, The Broken Kingdoms, was released in November. (The third book, The Kingdom of Gods, came out a year later.)

Jemisin (or more to the point, her publisher) must have liked how that worked out—her next two books (aka The Dreamblood Duet) are being released in consecutive months. In the first, The Killing Moon, Jemisin again demonstrates why her fans have every reason to enjoy the Anti-George R.R. Martin pace of it all.

The Killing Moon introduces us to the desert city-state of Gujaareh, whose peace is presided over by the servants of the Dream-Goddess, Hananja. Foremost among these servants are the Gatherers, priests who practice a form of magic called narcomancy and “take final tithes” from the old, sick and maimed, as well as from those deemed corrupt. (Less enlightened cultures might just call the Gatherers “assassins,” though compassionate ones.)

The Killing Moon focuses on two members of this sect. The first, Ehiru, is an established Gatherer who, as the novel opens, has his faith in himself and his order disturbed when a routine “gathering” goes wrong. The second, Nijiri, is an acolyte and then apprentice of Ehiru. Together, the two try to at first unravel and then survive a plot that threatens their order, their city and their lives.

By Jemisin’s own admission, Gujaareh and its heal-and-kill order of monks are loosely modeled on Ancient Egyptian society, religion and medicine. But “loosely” is the key word here, since ancient cultures are just one of the building materials—along with Jungian psychotherapy—Jemisin uses to build the world of The Killing Moon. Just as not every tree trunk must be part of a log cabin nor every block of stone a castle, Jemisin quickly moves away from “inspired by” to establish a world where only the dedicated Egyptologists out there will still be seeing Gujaareh through pharaoh-colored glasses.

Above all, the pages turn, and they turn quickly. The dramatic reveals are suitably dramatic, and the characters believable, likable and worthy of respect, be they protagonist or antagonist, main player or extra. It can be tricky introducing a new system of magic—the average fantasy reader has seen most every flavor—let alone yet another iteration on monks and assassins. Yet, taken together, Jemisin’s Gatherers and their narcomancy feel fresh. The series is young, but the Gatherers seem a worthy addition to both monk lit (the Bloodguard of Stephen R. Donaldson) and assassin lit (the Dragaera books of Steven Brust).

Best of all, there’s only a month’s wait until the release of the second book, The Shadowed Sun. Hook, set and match.