I’ve had this one on my TBR pile for a while. It’s not that I didn’t want to read DEATHLESS or that I’m not a fan of Catherynne M. Valente …
I thoroughly enjoyed her THE HABITATION OF THE BLESSED, but her writing is dense and lyrical, a step away from verse. In other words, it’s not easy Sunday-afternoon reading. You don’t speed-read your way through it, because every line is another brush stroke on a very large canvas. Rush your way through her story and you’ll miss an important wash of color.
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Wow. THE INHERITANCE & OTHER STORIES is exactly the kind of old-school short-story collection one would withdraw from the public library as an adolescent, sit down and read cover to cover, and become spellbound by the possibilities of the literary genre. Megan Lindholm, also writing under that name of Robin Hobb (they are one and the same), has made a perfect collection of 10 short and long pieces, doing it all the right way.
There’s a straightforward preface where she explains the personae of her two authorial selves, and each story opens with an introduction providing greater insight into the writer’s mind. These elements, which I feel are essential to such collections, make the reader feel like the book is really a distillation of the writer’s best work, as opposed to a hastily assembled grab bag of some stuff to which the publisher just happened to have the rights.
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Devoted followers of Terry Pratchett’s wonderful Discworld series know that it contains several different narrative threads following various characters (human and otherwise) on this satirical fantasy world. These include novels devoted to witches, wizards and the foundation of various industries like banking, the postal service and the news media. One such thread follows the coppers who make up the City Watch, and it’s here that Pratchett gleefully skewers the numerous themes and techniques of crime fiction.
SNUFF, the latest Discworld novel (in a series now numbering more than 30 titles), is another in the City Watch thread. This time, the well-worn theme is the urban investigator who goes on vacation and becomes the proverbial fish out of water.
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When we left our heroes at the end of Richard K. Morgan’s fantasy debut, THE STEEL REMAINS, there was a sense that something big was coming, something far more sinister than the tentative invasion that was repelled at the end of that book.
The sequel, THE COLD COMMANDS, picks up some time after its precursor, and while it improves on many of the faults of Morgan’s initial foray into fantasy, readers once again are left holding the bag, with the promise of epic conflict still looming in the future.
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THE DARK AT THE END is F. Paul Wilson’s final entry in his Repairman Jack series, so a huge amount of loose ends is tied up. Fans of the character will be both pleased and frustrated by this novel.
Pleased in that Wilson has pulled out all the stops and just let Jack go to town — no regrets, just full-on attack mode when its needed. Frustrated in the sense that it needs to set up what’s to come in 1992′s NIGHTWORLD, which Wilson is revising to tie in Jack events), and the final 10 pages do that like a katana through butter.
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