A.M. Dellamonica’s INDIGO SPRINGS features a unique approach to how magic works in the contemporary world. There are enchanters, but very few of them, who are able to harness vitagua, a physically viscous blue goo that can be used to create little magical trinkets.
These trinkets can be frivolous, such as a purse that turns feathers into living geese, or extremely powerful, capable of causing tremendous devastation. Arrayed against these enchanters are a group of magic burners, who want to destroy this force and those who use it. These enchanters and burners go about their lives, never letting on to the rest of us about their battle.
[click to continue…]
IORICH is the 12th novel in Steven Brust’s fantasy series starring the ready-with-a-quip assassin Vlad Taltos. The author’s work is situated on the light and breezy side of fantasy, a sort of comic noir that features lots of killing, magic, ruthless politics and even some gods and demons, but does it in a heavily sarcastic and fun way.
In this installment, Taltos is disappointed to learn that one of his friends, a very powerful one, is being held in prison for the crime of practicing elder sorcery. What’s odd is that she’d been doing just that for years, and no one minded — not least of all the empress, who has now imprisoned her.
[click to continue…]
TAILS OF WONDER AND IMAGINATION is a selection of science-fiction, fantasy and horror stories relating to a somewhat unexpected theme: cats. Edited by Ellen Datlow, it is another collection in a wave recently published by Night Shade books, falling in among THE LIVING DEAD and BY BLOOD WE LIVE.
While I would never consider myself much of a “cat person,” at least not in so far as I would be keen to read an anthology on them, I was intrigued by this book in large part because of the participating writers: Datlow’s varied selection includes works by well-known authors such as George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Lewis Carroll, as well as dozens of other writers.
[click to continue…]
SOULLESS came into my life like many great books do: by referral. I knew from the cover it would be a quirky, fun read — kudos to the art director for that spot-on design. Author Gail Carriger said she knew she wanted to write urban fantasy and noticed that a lot of the genre is contemporary. But she figured these creatures — supernatural, werewolves, vampires — had to have been around for a long time, right?
So she set her story in the Victorian times in England, and gifts us with a wonderful protagonist in Alexia, who is a preternatural, meaning she has no soul. This doesn’t make her mean, but it does mean she can’t be harmed by vampires, and in fact, kills a vampire at the beginning of the book — all in self-defense, of course.
[click to continue…]
Charles Perrault doesn’t enjoy the household-name status of the Brothers Grimm, but he’s an important voice in folklore — important enough for Oxford University Press to compile THE COMPLETE FAIRY TALES, containing roughly a dozen works by the 17th-century Frenchman.
A few are in verse, most in prose, and nearly all familiar to the average reader … or even the non-reader, in the case of young children who’ve been exposed to the works — if not Perrault’s versions per se — through verbal stories or cartoon adaptations. But make no mistake: This book’s not exactly kid-friendly.
[click to continue…]
