SFFWorld Weekly Round-Up: Harris, Bach, McAuley, D'Lacey

Lots of good content (reviews, author guest posts) were posted to SFFWorld this week, here's the rundown...

Mark reviewed Joanne Harris's The Gospel of Loki over the weekend.  Mark is one of many folks signing the praises of the author's first novel for adult readers: 

Joanne writes this story with panache and skill, infusing it with humour and a wry smile throughout. As I’ve said before in these reviews, humour’s very difficult to pitch right, but this one worked for me. It’s clever and literate, yet surprisingly still accessible. Through Joanne’s writing Loki becomes something tangible, at times liked, at others strangely melancholic.

This is not easy. The difficulty in telling the traditional tale (for me, anyway) is that there are aspects of the Norse pantheon that are usually a bit hard to swallow, never mind the fact that some of the names have always been a bit of a personal difficulty, frankly. Just trying to get your reading head around terms such as Yggdrasil has always seemed to be more effort than its worth. Here Joanne/Loki cleverly sidesteps this difficulty for me by mentioning some of the more imaginative (some would say outlandish) parts of the traditional tale, but then explains them away as mere exaggerations, the sort of tall tale often bragged about over beer.

On Tuesday, I posted my review of Rachel Bach's second Paradox novel, Honor's Knight. Rachel Aaron/Bach is becoming a go-to author for me, as I connect with her work very well. This particular book was a great cure for a reading lull I hit. Some thoughts:

Bach ratchets up the politics in Honor’s Knight and dials back the romantic element a bit. There’s also an ongoing discussion in the novel about the price of security and safety, in that can the fate of humanity be measured against the life of innocent girls who lose their identity and humanity? A difficult question to answer, and sometimes the easiest answers prove to be the incorrect answer in the long run. In other words, war breeds difficult moral choices, which leads to drastic consequences. The black ink-like substance afflicting Devi also happens to be like kryptonite to the phantoms, but Devi has little control over it and when it comes out on her skin.

There’s more action in the novel and Bach opens up the universe to a greater degree, bringing the phantoms more into the folds as the most alien creatures thus far encountered. At times described like bright firefly like creatures and other times, the larger creatures seem like something out of a Lovecraftian nightmare. In fact, what comes to mind are the Drej, the blue alien creatures from the animated film Titan A.E. (An animated film with the classic Don Bluth look and feel that deserved a much better fate at the box office than it received.)

Yesterday, we had a guest post from Paul McAuley on revisiting and touching up his popular Confluence trilogy in preparation for an omnibus publication of the series:

The three novels, published in 1996, 1997 and 1998, were caught up in corporate takeovers in the UK and the US; when Gollancz agreed to republish them in a fat omnibus, the original files used to set the books were long gone. So I resurrected my old WordPerfect 5.0 files and read through them, and then went over them again to remove a few niggling inconsistencies in the narrative and to give the prose a further polish. My younger self didn’t need my help move a story through its twists and turns. He’d learnt from Robert Louis Stevenson how landscape can shape and reveal the actions of the characters, and to keep action scenes short and sharp. He’d crammed plenty of eyekicks and estrangement into the narrative. And Yama’s story, his discovery of the costs and obligations of escaping from his mundane fate and becoming a hero, and the sacrifices he must make to find a way of saving his world, was fixed by the course of the river he follows.


So in its omnibus incarnation, the story and almost all of the narrative of the trilogy remains the same. Revision was mostly a question of tightening the focus of sentences and paragraphs, and sharpening certain passages

Lastly, we published a guest post from Joseph D'Lacey wherein he attempts to answer the question I threw at him:

“Do you see Post Apocalyptic fiction as a great way to explore Horror elements in a setting more associated with the Science Fiction branch of the Speculative Fiction tree?”

My ‘visible’ work categorises me as a Horror or, more specifically, Eco-Horror writer. But, like most authors, what I have ‘on display’ represents a fraction of the whole. There’s also the almost published, the limitedly published and, of course, the unpublishable – tons of that!

So, when a question comes up about exploring Horror elements in a Post Apocalyptic world, from my particular, and probably quite odd, writerly point of view, there’s no simple answer.

It’s partly because I write in such a naïve and uncalculated way. I’m instinctive (haphazard, an overwriter, rarely plan anything), lazy (avoid research, reality and work of any kind – especially writing), whimsical (whimsical, basically) and my work is organic (I write the bits I feel able to write first and the bits I feel unable to write just before the deadline).

Spirit's End by Rachel Aaron & Poison by Sarah Pinborough at the SFFWorld Review Blog

As I mentioned yesterday and last week Mark and I are now posting our new book reviews at the SFFWorld Review Blog.

With that, Mark posted one review over the weekend and mine just went live today.

I’ve enjoyed the previous four novels (two books one of which is an Awesome Omnibus) and put this one off for a bit because I didn’t want the series to come to end. Here’s the link to my review of Rachel Aaron’s Spirit’s End

For a novel that is set in a world that seems a bit sprawling and sizeable, Aaron manages to make Spirit’s End a very confining and claustrophobic novel. This is embodied by how Eli feels about his relationship with the Shepherdess. She loves him, adores him, but it is a suffocating love. Benehime sees Eli as a thing and barely a person. The closest approximation to a person she can see him as is a young child whose center of the universe is Benehime herself. This objectifying of the male is a neat switch on the all-too often idea of men objectifying women. Eli is revolted by Benehime and her cloying love, or rather, obsession about keeping him by her side. In a sense, I liken the relationship to some of the serial killers depicted on Criminal Minds (a popular American drama featuring an FBI unit who profiles and hunts serial killers, just don't go to the TVTropes page for it).

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While the novel (and series itself) focuses primarily on Eli, Rachel Aaron has not forgotten her lost king Josef and his demoness companion Nico or the feisty and strong-willed Miranda who at beginning of the novel is appointed the Rector (Head) of the Spirit Court. Josef continues to rule by the most threadbare minimum and his arch enemy, the Lord of Storms’s pursuit of Nico does not abate. The fate of the world, Eli’s relationship with Benehime, and the heart of who Nico is come together as the novel rolls along to its conclusion.

Mark reviews Poison by Sarah Pinborough, which is a modern twist/take on fairy tales:

Let’s make it clear, though. Poison is definitely adult in tone. As a result, It’s sexy, deliciously dark and, in places, rather bitter in taste. Sometimes reading about people’s darker feelings and thoughts highlights aspects of ourselves that might be better left untouched. What Sarah has done is take many of the parts of the old stories you may remember, but then given them more adult motivations and backgrounds to create a tale like the original adult Grimm’s Tales but rewritten for a contemporary audience. I enjoyed it a lot, reading it in just about one sitting.

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It’s dark, but fun. I enjoyed spotting all the links to other fairy tales. Disney, this definitely isn’t.

Dreamy and Grouchy, the two dwarves here, are stolid and loyal, and there is a fair amount of sympathy for their tough existence. Lilith is suitably scheming, not afraid to use sex as a weapon, but also given a sensible rationale for her actions. Snow White is not always the innocent young maiden of the traditional tales.

The Red Knight by Miles Cameron and Embedded by Dan Abnett

Mark takes a look at a hot new Epic/High Fantasy from an established non-genre author trying something new under a slightly changed name and I pull a review from the (not so old) archives. Let’s take a look, shall we?


A book that’s been generating a fair amount of buzz on both sides of the Atlantic is the subject of Mark’s review. While The Red Knight; the first installment of Miles Cameron’s The Traitor’s Son Cycle publishes in the US in early 2013, Mark reviewed the UK edition (logically since he lives there) which published this past October (2012):

In essence we have a siege tale that starts simply but becomes increasingly more epic, both in scale and complexity. The book begins with The Red Knight setting out with his company of men and women to help people in need. A convent has been attacked and the people inside killed by something monstrous.
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In terms of characters there is an impressive range, from the King and his knights to the lower class mercenaries, and from those in court to those living in the Wild. Fantasy readers usually enjoy such a complicated setup, as such a technique does give that impression of a broad canvas. However, some may find the stylistic conceit used here of moving from one character’s perspective to another, often after a mere paragraph, can be a challenge. I must admit that initially with each change it did take me a while sometimes to remember who each character was, what they were doing, and where a character had got to and why. It was a little annoying to find that sometimes once I had then remembered all of this, I was whisked off to another character to start the process again, although given time the characters become recognizable.

I pull a review from the archives today since I don’t yet have a review for the book I’m currently reading (The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis). Last year I read Dan Abnett’s original SF debut and the short review I wrote disappeared from its original place on teh intarwebs so rather than let it be relegated to The Nothing, I beefed up a bit for SFFWorld. Here's the standard linkage, cover, and review preview for Embedded:

In this milieu, the United Status (US) has settled worlds far beyond Earth, and it is on one of these planets in which the action in Embedded takes place. The planet designated Settlement 86, where conflict has existed between the US and the Central Bloc (Russian powers) for 300 years is where protagonist Les Falk has his consciousness literally embedded in the body of Nestor Bloom, a soldier on the front lines of the conflict. When Bloom’s body is shot, then Falk personality becomes the dominant mind in the body. This gives the first person narration familiar to many military SF novels a new twist and one that works very well over the course of the rather than just a change to the norm for change’s sake.
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Abnett’s greatest skills in this novel are two fold –his ability to keep the tension high through minimal details. Not that the novel isn’t layered and detailed, but Abnett manages to hold enough information from the reader to keep the curiosity level very high, which translates into rapid page turns. The other skill that is readily apparent was his pacing, although the mystery/tension did help to build great pace.

Abercrombie, Cobley & Aaronovitch Reviewed at SFFWorld

Nila joins the crew (Mark and me) again this week for three reviews. Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, I’ve no power and had to wait until I was able to get somewhere with power to post these reviews. Mark looks at one of the top fantasy releases of the year, I review a solid, exactly-what-Space-Opera-should-be Space Opera and Nila continues her back-and-forth jaunt with Peter Grant. …


Members of the SFFWorld Forums (as well as readers of fantasy in general) tend to rate Joe Abercrombie very highly, with each new book being one of the most anticipated in the fantasy genre in the year of its initial publication. Mark was the first of us to review Red Country is a great success:

If you’ve read Joe before, there’s a lot here you’ll like. Red Country is as dark, as cynical, as violent and as grimly-humorous as we have come to expect. The characters are as un-stereotypical as ever. The ‘heroes’ are not your clean-cut type, your ‘villains’ are at times worthy of your sympathy, even when they are quite horrendous elsewhere. For example, Shy is that Abercrombean archetype of ‘feisty female’, a damaged person with a troubled past, a murderer and a thief, but perhaps younger and without the total cynicism of Monzcarro Murcatto (of Best Served Cold). If nothing else, Red Country is the tale of her rite of passage.
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Interestingly, this is a shorter novel than most of the Abercrombie canon. (The Heroes is about 50 pages longer, at a quick glance.) This is to the book’s benefit. Red Country reads quickly and well, and, although it dips a little in the middle, is tighter and more focused than many of the previous novels. Here, rather like The Heroes, the events written are relatively small scale – important to those involved, but unlike The First Law books, not exactly world-changing. Which is perhaps Joe’s point, in the same way that The Heroes was one small battle in a bigger picture. Violence is violence, regardless of scale. Red Country should quell those complaints about ‘bloated fantasy novels’ often leveled at genre writers.

Sometimes you are hoping for a specific kind of story when you open a book, in this case, I was hoping for an exciting galaxy-spanning Space Opera. With Seeds of Earth the first installment of Michael Cobley’s Humanity’s Fire, I was very pleased:

What makes Seeds of Earth a novel full of that grand sense of wonder, in part, is the many non-human races who comprise the galaxy. Humans (and the Swarm) are far from the only sentient beings in the galaxy. On Darien, humanity has befriended the Uvovo, a race with mystical, symbiotic ties to their world. Our point characters with the Uvovo are Greg, the scientist who’s been studying the race and its history and Chel, his Uvovo Scholar friend and advisor. The two become friends and confidants before, during and after Chel undergoes a Uvovo ritualistic transformative ceremony called husking (which bears some similarities to the transformative race of the Piggies (aka Pequeninos) in Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead).
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Seeds of the Earth is a vast-canvas galactic space opera that exemplifies the qualities readers so enjoy in this space opera renaissance – multi-planetary society, dependence on artificial intelligence, alien horde as the enemy, mystical/mysterious alien allies, colonization of humanity, and more importantly he uses these familiar ingredients in a way that is fresh. Cobley packs a lot of ideas and elements into the novel which flows fairly organically. For example, the artificial intelligence utilized by Earth humans is considered the Dreamless by he spirit of the planet Darien.

Working backwards through the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch, Nila reviews Moon Over Soho:

Much like in Rivers of London, Peter Grant gets caught up in the magical underworld of London all over again in Moon Over Soho. We are introduced to a new nefarious wizard that I predict we’ll see more of in the third book, we encounter sexy (and almost sparkly) vampires, and the river gods make a token appearance, as does Peter’s old partner, Leslie – the one with a busted face. The fledgling wizard/constable also has to deal with chimera – the unholy mix of human and animals – sex slaves. Oh, yeah, and there’s something biting off men’s penises.

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With that said, Moon Over Soho delivers in magical punch what it doesn’t in the series’ recurring characters. We get to meet shadowy figures in a sinister plot, and a new adversary that will keep Peter on his toes. The relationship between he and Leslie is evolving, and I’m anxious to see where Leslie does with her time off to heal. All in all, a lot of new story questions that will keep you coming back for more..

Martin, Marmell, and Howey Reviewed at SFFWorld

Another classic re-issue review from Mark and I’ve got a review of an author attempting something slightly new and Nila White joins for a review of a self-published sensation who recently had a novel optioned for the screen.


George R.R. Martin was a popular and acclaimed author before A Song of Ice and Fire and this is one of those older novels reissued no doubt to cash in on his current success and popularity. It is his novel of Rock and Roll and journalism, The Armageddon Rag which publishes today:

The Armageddon Rag is one of George’s own personal favourites, though at the time of its original release in 1983 it rather disappeared without notice. George was so upset by its failure that he wrote less fiction for a number of years and went off to write for television, for the newly revamped Twilight Zone and the Beauty and the Beast television series.

Coincidentally, and nearly thirty years later, this novel reappears in the UK. At first, it seems fairly straight forward as a rock and roll murder mystery. Sander (‘Sandy’) Blair is an underground rock journalist investigating the death of Jamie Lynch, a millionaire rock producer apparently murdered in some sort of a satanic ritual. His heart was cut out and the body left in his office with a copy of his most famous band’s last concert poster under him and their last album left playing on repeat.

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If The Armageddon Rag tells us nothing else it is that George loves his music, and also the culture it created in the 1960’s – 80’s. That Rolling Stone Magazine vibe, a la Lester Bangs, is recreated here in all its bizarre and surreal glory. Drugs, sex and rock and roll, in all its aspects.

Ari Marmell is proving to be a versatile writer, who started in tie-in fiction, moved to heroic fantasy, then humorous military fantasy and now with Theif’s Covenant, he launches a new young adult series about a girl named Widdershins:

Presenting such character-driven story in a dual narrative can be a tricky task for an author who has to balance the right amount of dramatic tension in two storylines, keep event ‘spoilers’ from one timeline creeping into the other, and balance the action in two storylines, among all the other elements necessary for telling a good story. Marmell should be proud of what he’s done with the dual narrative in Thief’s Covenant because for me, it worked like a charm.

One of these storylines follows Adrienne’s past from the time she is orphaned through her time reentering high society, becoming part of a thief’s guild while the other narrative follows her after the worshippers of her god Olgun are destroyed. The portions of narrative/chapters dedicated to Adrienne jump a year or two from chapter to chapter so we get a pretty good snapshot of her evolution without being overburdened with too many details. In other words, it works well.

Nila takes a look at self-published sensation Hugh Howey’s First Shift



The sixth installment to continue Hugh Howey’s WOOL series is a great background, filler story.

I know, for those of you who have read the Wool stories and loved them, that may seem like a letdown – filler. Sounds like something you can skip, huh? But, though First Shift simply tells us about how the silo story begins, Mr. Howey manages to do so in a unique way.

The reader is introduced to two protagonists: Donald, a new Congressional Representative taken in by the seniority and power of a U.S. Senator (Senator Thurman), and Troy, a befuddled IT department head that struggles to forget when all he wants to do is remember.

By the end of First Shift all the reader is left with is the burning desire to know what Senator Thurman really has in store for the people of the silos. One thing we can be sure of, it ain’t gonna be pretty.Senator Thurman is a hard man, but he’s out to save the world. And, as any good megalomaniac knows, to save it, you must destroy it.

Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks Meme

We did this with the Science Fiction Masterworks and this Fantasy version was knacked specifically from the Mad Hatter. The standard instructions for memes like this is to bold books one has read, italicize books one owns but hasn't read yet, and strikethrough books one violently disagrees with.

1. The Book of the New Sun, Volume 1: Shadow and Claw - Gene Wolfe
2. Time and the Gods - Lord Dunsany
3. The Worm Ouroboros - E.R. Eddison
4. Tales of the Dying Earth - Jack Vance
5. Little, Big - John Crowley (I hated this book, but understand many, many people adore it)
6. The Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
7. Viriconium - M. John Harrison (It isn’t so much that I didn’t like the book, I just felt very meh towards it and don’t get why it is held in such reverence)
8. The Conan Chronicles, Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle - Robert E. Howard (Read in the Del Rey reprints of the Wandering Star volumes)
9. The Land of Laughs - Jonathan Carroll
10. The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea - L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
11. Lud-in-the-Mist - Hope Mirrlees
12. The Book of the New Sun, Volume 2: Sword and Citadel - Gene Wolfe
13. Fevre Dream - George R. R. Martin
14. Beauty - Sheri S. Tepper
15. The King of Elfland's Daughter - Lord Dunsany
16. The Conan Chronicles, Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon - Robert E. Howard (Read in the Del Rey reprints of the Wandering Star volumes)
17. Elric - Michael Moorcock (Read in both the SFBC omnibus and in the White Wolf Eternal Champion ominbus series)
18. The First Book of Lankhmar - Fritz Leiber (Read in the SFBC omnibus edition The Three of Swords)
19. Riddle-Master - Patricia A. McKillip (Read in the Ace omnibus edition)
20. Time and Again - Jack Finney
21. Mistress of Mistresses - E.R. Eddison
22. Gloriana or the Unfulfill'd Queen - Michael Moorcock
23. The Well of the Unicorn - Fletcher Pratt
24. The Second Book of Lankhmar - Fritz Leiber
25. Voice of Our Shadow - Jonathan Carroll
26. The Emperor of Dreams - Clark Ashton Smith
27. Lyonesse I: Suldrun's Garden - Jack Vance
28. Peace - Gene Wolfe
29. The Dragon Waiting - John M. Ford
30. Corum: The Prince in the Scarlet Robe - Michael Moorcock (Read in the White Wolf Eternal Champion ominbus series)
31. Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams - C.L. Moore I read this in an old copy entitled Jirel of Joiry
32. The Broken Sword - Poul Anderson
33. The House on the Borderland and Other Novels - William Hope Hodgson
34. The Drawing of the Dark - Tim Powers (What’s not to love when a major plot element is beer!?)
35. Lyonesse II and III: The Green Pearl and Madouc - Jack Vance
36. The History of Runestaff - Michael Moorcock (Perhaps one of, if not my favorite incarnations of Moorcock’s Eternal Champions-Read in the Eternal Champion ominbus series)
37. A Voyage to Arcturus - David Lindsay
38. Darker Than You Think - Jack Williamson
39. The Mabinogion - Evangeline Walton
40. Three Hearts & Three Lions - Poul Anderson
41. Grendel - John Gardner
42. The Iron Dragon's Daughter - Michael Swanwick
43. WAS - Geoff Ryman
44. Song of Kali - Dan Simmons
45. Replay - Ken Grimwood
46. Sea Kings of Mars and Other Worldly Stories - Leigh Brackett
47. The Anubis Gates - Tim Powers
48. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld - Patricia A. McKillip
49. Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
50. The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales - Rudyard Kipling

Joe Abercrombie on YouTube - Best Served Cold

Got these in the e-mail today, as if I wasn't looking forward to Best Served Cold enough.

Joe Abercrombie interview for Best Served Cold on YouTube



Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5