Though I enjoyed reading this novel about a young history scholar who discovers a magical house just at the point of need, the story sometimes became a bit too twee for my taste. Alba Ashby has just dropped out of Cambridge, reeling from the betrayal of her mentor/advisor when she stumbles upon 11 Hope Street. An older woman named Peggy invites her in and makes her an offer—she can stay for ninety-nine days and try to get her life back on track but only ninety-nine […]
Please, Anne Bishop, please write more of these.
A few months ago, I was delighted to stumble upon Written in Red, the first in “the others” series from Anne Bishop. Written in Red was the story of a world where creatures like vampires and werewolves are real, living in cities with humans, but barely tolerating them. Their world is a world where humans are seen as little more than meat. That is, until Meg, a blood prophet on the run from her captors, finds herself suddenly wrapped up in their lives and under their protection. In […]
An unusual and gripping sequel featuring regrets, ghosts and a psychic showdown.
Writing a sequel to a novel is hard. The expectations are high, particularly if the original book was written about thirty-six years ago. You have obsessive fans, critics who would love you to fail and worst of all, nostalgia to deal with. Now imagine that novel is one of the finest examples of horror fiction from the last hundred years, and you start to understand the risks Stephen King has taken with Doctor Sleep. Before we head into this review, I must point out that I have devoured […]
Pretty but kinda thin
This is a very simple story told in very flowery language. There’s a vicious conquering people (the Myetrans), a simple village whose inhabitants don’t even have a word for ‘weapon’ (Ciron), and a group of creatures with wings (the, uh, Winged Ones) who mostly stay out of everybody’s way. Oh, and two of those groups don’t wear any clothes, just to add to the rusticness and innocence. When the Myetrans come to conquer the hell out of the next town down the road (it’s nothing […]
The Cluttered and the Dead
Target: David Edison’s The Waking Engine Profile: Weird Fantasy There is point during the creative process when too many ideas can be as bad as too few. I’m personally a very poor judge of where that limit is, but The Waking Engine is firmly on the wrong side of it. Some of the book’s core concepts are interesting and fresh, but they are buried under layers of borrowed imagery, and symbolism stolen from across the width and breadth of fantasy and science fiction. The only thing I took […]
Another Winner from Neil Gaiman
I will admit that I simply like Neil Gaiman. I’ve read a few of his books, and if I see one I haven’t read yet in my local used book store, I will almost always buy it, knowing that I will enjoy the reading. Most people I know either *!!!LOVE!!!* Gaiman or they don’t like him at all, so I guess I am one of the rare few that sits firmly in the middle. That being said, I quite enjoyed The Ocean at the End of […]