Delusionism by Anthony Marais, reviewed by kaolin

Delusionism by Anthony Marais

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


In "Delusionism", Anthony Marais presents roughly sixty-nine micro-essays, whose two sections (Culture vs. Nature and Art vs. Life) are divided by a hundred aphorisms. This is a forked-tongue-in-cheek exploration and oration, marketed as philosophy/self help--somewhat in the vein of Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary", but intending more to drive thought through humor than humor through thought.

The book is filled with thoughts--and thoughts about thoughts--and I was tempted to refer to its points heavily in this review. I was, in retrospect, surprised to not find an essay on Conversation or Discussion, though it's likely there was a fitting aphorism I'm not recalling. Regarding Genius, Marais says:

Has the reader ever noticed that thinking is easy? For most of us it's more difficult not to think than the contrary. It seems that with every turn of the head our brain showers us with thoughts, flashing across our mind's sky like fireworks. Indeed, the rush of ideas is a delightful feeling. Sometimes it seems to palpably flow through our body in a euphoric, almost tickling sensation. Interestingly, it's often ideas we perceive as untruths that tickles us most: absurd, ridiculous thoughts that produce outrageous images. People who, with a haphazard turn of the head, stumble upon these thoughts sometimes find themselves giggling aloud in public, or walking with a silly, conspicuous skip. This is genius: the ability to produce freely and easily new thoughts. And the sensation is pleasurable.

It is genius, this genius, that Marais seems to strive for with this book; and from how often I laughed along, I think he often hit his mark. With a wink and a nudge, he delivers essays on topics ranging from Originality and The Quest For Happiness to Pet Rocks and Books vs. Movies. Some play straight, some verso--and others strive for double duty, contradicting not only convention, but, subtly perhaps, themselves as well.

Of course, some insights are more clever than others--some are obvious, some simply plain, and some a bit muddled. But the overall attempt, I think, makes a very worthwhile platter of intellectual finger food that could well be grown into a banquet given the right crowd. I found myself half wanting to keep notes as I read, to argue back with the author and see where more thoughts led--so perhaps this is a book better read with a friend. But I suspect the author would be pleased even with my reaction to those essays I was not moved by, or felt were less than a hundred percent presented: I thought.

If this sounds interesting, you might also consider our review of The Cure, a novel by Anthony Marais.

View all my reviews.

Read by Dawn (Volume 3), edited by Adèle Hartley, reviewed by Debbie

Read by Dawn: Volume 3 by Adèle Hartley

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Read by Dawn" arrived in pristine condition, but will be leaving here in a less-than-perfect state (there was one of those ominous cracks when I bent the spine a little too far back). But if the book's been changed by being read, so have I by reading it.

It's easy to dismiss Horror as the poor relation of the speculative fiction family. Too often it relies on bad things happening for no discernible reason (credibility issues) or on as much blood and gore as can be squeezed into the pages (yawn factor). Reading this anthology of twenty-eight stories indicates there is light at the end of Horror's dark, creepy tunnel. And it's not just the headlight of any old oncoming train.

If the anthology has a theme--and I'm not sure it does--that theme is obsession. Two stories depict men so obsessed with a particular woman that they see and pursue her everywhere, and in a third story another lover finds a unique way of keeping the love-object close--forever. But there's lots of variety here, from a female serial killer to friendship that persists beyond both death and betrayal to a gruesome Halloween.

As with any anthology, there are hits and misses. Scott Stainton Miller's "The Last Ditch" manages a very creepy ending, but achieving it relies not so much on misdirecting the reader as on misleading them. True misdirection enables the reader to look back and go, "Oh, of course!" when they see the clues that were there all along. Miller doesn't enable that; instead, the reader feels cheated, as if a Very Large Elephant in the living room had been overlooked. A shame, as the premise is chilling, and the misdirection in the dialogue nicely done.

"In the Cinema Tree with Orbiting Heads" by Kek-W starts brilliantly. The narrator describes their experience of living in a tree. It's hardly big enough for them even to enter, but they manage. "Although the hollow was narrow and restrictive, there was also something womb-like and sensual about being confined within the tree, as if I was wearing the skin of some vast, alien creature." The tree contains a natural camera obscura through which the narrator observes his surrounding. The mood is nicely created and there's a true strangeness about this tale.

Rebecca Lloyd's "Shuck" introduces us to twin sisters Liz and Erica. Liz lives in the middle of nowhere, haunted by a strange, dog-like creature called Fin. When Erica dismisses the 'dog' as one of Liz's obsessions, Liz replies, "Possession, more like, I'm bound to him." A strangely apathetic struggle for Liz's safety ensues. A gloomy, not-quite-hopeless story.

Two stand-outs in this anthology are "Dawn" by Morag Edward and Jamie Killen's "Blind Spot". In "Dawn", the narrator is pursued by night-time visitations from a 'dark shadow' that creeps nearer and nearer, beginning at her feet and moving towards her head, leaving her mysteriously bruised. Only love can keep the shadow at bay--but love is fleeting, whereas shadows, it seems, are for life. "Blind Spot" evokes the misery of a ghost trapped on a particular section of street, unnoticed by the living. Her one friend has moved on, and it seems there's no hope of a new companion--or is there?

It's hard to imagine anyone with a love of Horror not finding a story (or two or three) in here that will appeal. A solid anthology with much to offer.

View all my reviews.

Mourning Meadow by Larion Wills, reviewed by xenith

Mourning Meadow by Larion Wills

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars


Kari is a woman with a secret and a mansion on a large estate. Steve is a man with a secret and a desire to develop mansions on large estates. Oops, that might be his secret.

This may be trying to be a paranormal romance. Ghosts get mentioned from time to time, but they don't add anything to the story.

The storyline: Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, someone tries to kill girl, they run around for a while trying to work out who and why, this is resolved, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back.

Steve persuades Caroleigh, Kari's sister, to invite him to Mourning Meadow. They're accompanied by Caroleigh's friends Evelyn and Edward (who's been watching too many bad British TV shows). Yes, there are a lot of names in that.

Here, Steve meets the Kari of the strange behaviour, they fall in love at almost first sight and there goes the opportunity for unresolved sexual tension. Now I haven't read many romances, but in those I have, and those where romance is a subplot, sexual tension adds to the overall tension and conflict, and we know this is what keeps the reader turning the pages. Now having them pair up early on might work sometimes. It might even have worked in this book, had there been some other source of tension or conflict.

All right, someone is apparently trying to kill Kari, but does this produce tension? You'd think so, but no. At one point when I returned to the book after putting it down, I accidentally skipped two pages. After I'd read a few more paragraphs, one of the characters made a reference to a car accident. What accident? I turned back a page and found they'd all been involved in an accident involving non-working brakes and running off the road. Surely people will act differently after they've just been in a car crash? Yet it is like this throughout the whole book--they just continue on like normal whatever happens.

Finally, we get to the explanation of who is trying to kill Kari, and why, and this involves pages of backstory describing the relationships between various people who never appear in the book, most of them being dead, and who, when they have been mentioned, are often referred to by different names, so the whole thing becomes difficult to follow. If all this family history is so important, it needed to be fed in smaller chunks throughout the books.

Then after this, is the resolution of the romance storyline, even though this was apparently resolved in the first few chapters, but that's not a problem. Just throw in a few issues for them at the end.

Did I mention the writing? From the second chapter:

"I thought you said your grandfather is dead," Evelyn said.
"He is," Caroleigh answered.
"Quite," Edward said with a cocked brow.
Puzzled enough to stop her scowl of annoyance Evelyn asked, "Then how did he lock it?"
"He didn't," Caroleigh answered. "Kari did for some obscure reason.

"Mourning Meadow" is easy to read, except for trying to keep all the names straight. It's a good book for if you happen to be working a stall at a living history event, because it's easy to return to the story if you get interrupted repeatedly. You can even skip a page or two, and not notice.

View all my reviews.

Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco, reviewed by Debbie

Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Normally I would start a review with a summary of the plot, but having only read "Ocean Sea" once, I don't feel competent to summarise it. Suffice it to say that some characters get together at a hotel by the sea, and there's a chap painting the sea with sea-water, a woman who's going to die unless the sea can cure her, another woman who's trying to choose between her husband and her lover, and a lot of strange children. Plus a professor who's writing love letters to a woman he hasn't met yet. And some other characters.

"Ocean Sea" is written in a lyrical, elliptical prose style that will enchant some readers and infuriate others. There's a lot of rhapsodizing. There's cuts between different stories that are connected but don't immediately appear to have anything to do with each other. There's a lot of work for the reader to do, and it's for the individual reader to decide if that work was worth it in the end.

One aspect that did puzzle me arises from what I thought easily the best-written part of the book--the narrative by Savigny of the events on a drifting raft crammed with survivors of a shipwreck. Although it is perhaps overlong, it's written in an urgent and engaging fashion that brings the horror of his situation to life. However, the raft and the shipwreck so obviously derive from the wreck of the Medusa that it's a puzzle why Baricco names the ship Alliance instead. Perhaps it's an attempt at irony, as anything less like an alliance on that horrendous raft is hard to imagine. But given the characters have the same names as those on the Medusa's raft, the effect on the reader is to have them thinking, "But this is the Medusa! I know it's the Medusa!". It's hard to believe this is the effect Baricco sought.

In contrast to the sombre events of the Medusa shipwreck, and the terrible revenge exacted by one of its survivors, we have the mordantly funny tale of Professor Bartleboom and his mahogany box of love letters. Having finally found the woman to whom he should deliver it, he encounters unexpected and often hilarious reverses, but in the end brings happiness to an entire village, and perhaps to himself.

This book is very much a pot-pourri, although perhaps all its parts do make sense once put together. I'd need to read it a second time to be sure.

View all my reviews.

The Lone Star Stories Reader, edited by Eric T. Marin, reviewed by kaolin

The Lone Star Stories Reader by Eric T. Marin

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars

// WARNING: gushing follows.

If you've read any issue of the long-established webzine Lone Star Stories, you've seen it's not tied to Texas in any particular way (the introduction to this collection helps explain how that came about). If you've not yet read an issue of LSS, you're missing out.

Having been familiar with LSS for a few years, now, and being an especial fan of the /printed/ word, I was thrilled to hear editor, slush-reader and fastest rejecter in the business Eric Marin was bringing out a collection. "The Lone Star Stories Reader" contains fifteen stories ranging considerably in length, for a grand total of two hundred sixty pages. These are all stories that originally appeared online at LSS between 2004 and 2008, all of which can still be read online at http://literary.erictmarin.com.... But for those of you who prefer your fiction in a tactile form, I heartily recommend this handsomely-presented book.

With most collections, you expect a few clunkers--pieces that don't resonate with you as much as they might with someone else. I felt this anthology had been prepared with me in mind. The stories are inventive; some toy with you, some slap you around, some curl up next to you and purr sweet demands. My only complaint might be that the occasional denouement was more ethereal than I would have liked.

Since they are all exquisitely written, here's some picks to give you a taste for the variety.

"The Frozen One" by Tim Pratt might just blow your mind: a visitor from "someplace else. Sort of a kingdom next door" steps into our reality to tell a parable. "It's like, if you teach a kid to play chess, he doesn't just learn how to play chess, he learns how to think a certain way." They're training us--"there's some bad stuff happening there, way more complicated [...:], but there might be some ... refugees." The parable's an engaging moral tale as well--I loved it, and I have a thing against moral tales.

"The Disembowler" by Ekaterina Sedia is a beautifully inventive piece about a being running around disemboweling cars and appliances. I was skeptical a few paragraphs in, but everything was explained far better than I could have asked for, and the logic was consistent as well as surprising.

"A Night in Electric Squidland" by Sarah Monette is a strange dystopian paranormal detective story set in the bowels of a BDSM nightclub, an otherworld that feels here-and-now except for the magic suffusing it.

"Seasonal Work" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman is an exceptionally brief piece of mystic realism (or perhaps there's no genre involved--that's almost up to the reader) set at a gift-wrapping station.

"Angels of a Desert Heaven" by Marguerite Reed sets up the question of the place of gods and culture in a land with cultures both melted together and oddly segregated; it's a poignant tale that spreads itself across several, including those of rock music stardom and fortune telling.

There is so much beauty here, densely packed yet woven like gossamer thread. Buy a copy for yourself and one for a friend who needs a touch more beauty in their lives.

Disclaimer: I've been shooting to get my own works in Eric Marin's table of contents for some time now.

View all my reviews.

Going Down South by Bonnie Glover, reviewed by Julia

Going Down South: A Novel by Bonnie Glover

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a reading-group book. You can tell because it's about mothers and daughters, because it has race- and gender-based complications, and because it has Reading Group Questions at the back. Unfortunately, I don't think I found it as edifying as I was supposed to. Going Down South has a solid sense of time and place and culture, even while jumping around between them, but is weaker in plot and characterization, which make that sense of the settings more difficult to appreciate and learn from.

The first two sections of the book constitute the Going Down South itself. They use a car trip from Brooklyn to small-town Alabama as a frame for a series of flashbacks setting up the story, first from the point of view of Olivia Jean, a teenager whose unplanned pregnancy is the cause of the trip (her parents want to hide her away until the baby is born), and then of Daisy, her mother, who hasn't been back to see her mother in Alabama since she was a teenager herself and left home under unpleasant circumstances. The third section is told from the point of view of Birdie, Daisy's mother and Olivia Jean's grandmother, reflecting back on Daisy's childhood and her own as she waits for her family to arrive. This car-trip flashback structure is an interesting idea, but in practice, I found that it seriously screws up the pacing of both the reference-time story and the backstory, and I got frustrated with it very quickly.

The second half of the book is structured rather differently, with a floating point of view but a much straighter narrative thread. There are still plenty of flashbacks -- the three central characters are all working through their issues with themselves and each other, which requires much delving into the past -- but they are spaced in a more conventional fashion. This improves the pacing, and various other aspects of the storytelling improve as well. The characters -- all of whom come off as rather stock toward the beginning -- seem more nuanced and original, and the humor rings truer. (There is also less of the repetition and narratorial summaryishness that further bog down the first sections.) The ending is satisfying, if predictable, and rounds off the plot arc nicely.

As well as the book-group discussion questions, this edition of Going Down South also includes an interview with the author. Mostly nothing unexpected, but I did find one thing about it interesting: When the interviewer asked Glover to describe her characters and how she wrote them, she immediately pegged Olivia Jean as a gutsy and intelligent girl who just needs guidance, and said she didn't have any difficulty writing her or imagining her life, whereas she found her mother Daisy -- passionate, bitter, and pretentious -- much harder to understand and to write (though in the end she empathized with her more). However, from the reading side, I found Olivia Jean something of a cipher, while Daisy's inner life and motivations come through much better (at least in the second half). There may be a lesson in that, more than in what can be found in the text of the book.

View all my reviews.

Sound + Noise by Curtis Smith, reviewed by Jess

Sound + Noise by Curtis Smith

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Curtis Smith’s "Sound and Noise" is a fascinating portrayal of two people trapped in lives of stagnant frustration. When she was younger, and felt she had everything ahead of her, Jackie used to sing backing vocals in a big rock band. Now she’s middle-aged, single, and running her own bar, with only a crazy selection of locals to hear her new songs – a far cry from where she saw herself headed all those years ago. Tom is an art teacher at the local university, a married man, but one whose wife lives in a residential home, knowing little to nothing of the world around her. Her tragic accident has left Tom unable to move forward with his life, and forced him to examine his relationship with religion.

Jackie and Tom meet in a supermarket and strike up a friendship – one Jackie thinks will turn into just another affair, until she finds out the truth about his wife. Throughout their relationship, they both begin to work out their problems and look at what the future may hold.

"Sound + Noise" is a will-they-won’t-they romance, with an undercurrent of philosophical introspection on the part of both major characters running throughout. This angle gives it one up on the average romance, and Curtis Smith hits on the doubts and regrets many people have in common, but can’t always share. Because of this, the story is very accessible.

The characters are drawn from backgrounds that aren’t privileged and much of the interest lies in what they choose to do with the natural talents they have. Despite their struggles, their story doesn’t come across as whiney and they don’t suffer from self-pity for too long.

The usual limitations of romance novels are predictable plots and unbelievable characters. The characterisation in "Sound + Noise" is realistic for the most part, with some occasional dreamy, but not sickly-sweet, observations. The plot is predictable and the ending exactly as expected, but this doesn’t diminish the quality of the story, as the anticipated ending is a satisfactory one. Smith's prose is full of quirky, occasionally beautiful, passages that I found absorbing and evocative – a good example is the pair’s first meeting:

"Jackie holds up an avocado between them, and sees another picture—the same one she used to stare at when Sunday school got boring: the unsuspecting Adam and the naked, foolish Eve, her apple replaced by that mysterious and suddenly erotic fruit, the avocado." (p.12)

This strange and awkward moment is turned into a grand event for Jackie, who has been single for far too long.

At times, I felt that Smith was grasping for something just out of reach. Tom and Jackie’s relationship could have been as touching, and even as harrowing, as the relationships portrayed in Ian McEwan’s work, which I find stylistically comparable. But although the characters have depth, Smith doesn’t push them as far as he could to let the reader see what they are really made of. It would be nice also to see more made of the supporting characters, as they are a bit too shallow for my taste.

Overall, though, "Sound + Noise" is thought-provoking and well written.


View all my reviews.

Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek, reviewed by Julia

Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

Tomato Girl is a fairly standard coming-of-age story, occasionally daring in some aspects, but, on the whole, rather mediocre. It covers territory that many such stories do -- parental sex and infidelity, insanity, viewpoint-character bad behavior -- but delves into them more deeply and disturbingly than a lot of adult novels about preteen girls would dare or care to, usually without losing its sense of realism.

But it's that 'usually' that makes all the difference; Tomato Girl is a thoroughly almost-good novel. On so many levels, it reaches for and almost achieves something special, but falls just short. The experience of reading this author's first published novel was, in fact, rather like watching someone play a sport they're just good enough at to have gotten onto the team; you can see so many ways they could fail, but they succeed just often enough that you still get the feeling of having your hopes dashed when they flub it. And unfortunately, being able to see the author's process so easily kept me from really getting absorbed in what might otherwise have been quite a captivating novel.

The novel begins with a prologue from the point of view of the narrator, Ellie, as an adult, then jumps in near the end of the main story arc for the first chapter, then begins at the beginning in the second chapter. I assume this time-layering and difficult, stuttery distance is supposed to give us a feeling of what it must be like to be an early-middle-aged woman trying to face the events of a traumatic childhood, but it is not skillfully enough done, and merely serves to make the book difficult to get into. Likewise, I can see why the author chose to tell the reader nearly everything that's going to happen in the story in that first chapter (Ellie's father will fall in love with a teenage tomato-grower, get sick of dealing with Ellie's crazy mother, run away with the tomato girl under unpleasant circumstances, and leave Ellie to deal with the increasingly out-of-control mother (who keeps a baby in a jar) on her own, with emotional support only from an elderly psychic with the wrong color skin) -- it gives us a sense of the narrator and her direct matter-of-factness, and a proper feeling of impending doom -- and, done right, I could see it working very well. But in this case, it merely serves to rob the book of suspense and make any foreshadowing that happens later seem irrelevant. All in all, there are just too many amateurish mistakes for the author to get away with the out-of-the-ordinary structural and dramatic choices that ought to have made this novel special and memorable.

However, there are enough good things about it to make it worth reading if you're into emotional twistiness. The narrative is reasonably evocative, if a bit repetitive, the setting is thorough, and the characters have some depth and grab. Tess, the tomato girl, is interestingly portrayed and recognizable -- even if you don't really want to recognize her -- and the narrator's unusually-but-humanly flawed parents and friend(s) make a good supporting cast. (In fact, I found Ellie to be the weakest character, though I assume she is meant to be the strongest.) Those supporting characters, along with some memorable, emotionally-charged images, are the novel's strongest points.


View all my reviews.

The Silk Palace by Colin Harvey, reviewed by kaolin

The Silk Palace by Colin Harvey

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ancient gods, cultish murders, royal intrigue, and sapphic love--The Silk Palace has it all. The two younger daughters of the king of Whiterock are to be married to neighboring kingdoms: one to Prince Casimiripian (Cas) of the Karnaki Empire, and one to an Emir of the Western Alliance. Cas has under his care the linguist Bluestocking, who has been invited to Whiterock to study and translate some ancient scrolls whose meanings have been lost through both intentional and temporal obfusaction.

Bluestocking has a dirty secret that's slipped to us early on, which adds a measure of fear to her day to day existence and gives others a few extra hooks to dig into her as she finds herself more and more wrapped in conflicting threads. We're shown, towards the beginning, what would happen to Bluestocking if she were caught out--public maiming and dismemberment; followed by a slow, lingering death. And by the end, the truth _is_ made known.

Sadly, I found The Silk Palace very hard to get into--it was as if a great expository chunk had been chopped from the beginning and flung back into the flow of things without proper adjustment for what a fresh reader would understand. The characters' familiarities with each other (and lack thereof) were difficult to understand from how they acted until we were given relevant flashbacks/memories.

The writing was competent, for the most part, though I felt it over-told some things, re-told some things too often, and fell into cliche occasionally. For all the wandering about, I never really felt an understanding of the city or the people in it--or the context of it all, including armies laying siege. And while it's traditional for everything to fall on the shoulders of one character, I found there to be too many threads that disappeared as soon as they weren't being looked at--for the scope of the piece, I felt the world was under-represented.

And while the "ancient evil" storyline is given a reasonably complex context, it still felt somewhat generic in execution; the characters tell us a fair bit about themselves, but emote no real depth. Any differentiation from stereotypes was largely due to plot, rather than the plot feeling driven by character.

Still, if "ancient gods, cultish murders, royal intrigue, and sapphic love" pull you in, you'll probably appreciate the book.


View all my reviews.

Unholy Domain by Dan Ronco, reviewed by Debbie

Unholy Domain by Dan Ronco

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dan Ronco's "Unholy Domain" is the sequel to "Peacemaker", although for some reason publishers Kunati Inc. didn't think this worth putting on the cover. I wasn't aware it was a sequel while reading, but it might have been useful to know, as it explains why so much of the book is taken up with references to obscure events. So I pass this on to anyone who's considering this book--consider reading "Peacemaker" first!

In this post-PeaceMaker world, humanity is divided between those who consider technology to be the tool of the devil, and those who still think it has a useful role to play in our lives. The battle between these two camps is fought with deadly force. Meanwhile, David Brown, son of the man blamed for unleashing the PeaceMaker computer virus on the world, is struggling to clear his dead father's name. But both sides in the conflict have their own reasons for keeping the truth from becoming known.

There are some great moments in the book--like when David has to buy back his own car, with the 'help' of an accomplice of the thief in bargaining down the price. There are some nice twists, and the book does a good job of keeping the reader guessing about who can be trusted and who can't. It's not as fast-paced as perhaps a techno-thriller ought to be, though. It throws the reader into the action immediately, but there's a lot of faddling around before it gets to the final conflict. At least there are some surprises when we get there.

Inevitably, perhaps, the technology takes precedence, knocking characterisation into second place. The narrative tries to differentiate the characters, but they have a bad habit of turning into representations of their side of the argument, rather than into people. More show and less tell overall, but particularly with regard to David, might have drawn the reader in and made for a more exciting read.

Each chapter starts with a quote--some from the past or present, and some from the future--and collectively they illustrate the thinking behind this book. It's a great way to get the reader thinking before plunging them into the next phase of the narrative. It's clear that a lot of thought and care has gone into crafting this novel, and the ruminations on what our technological future will be are the most interesting aspect.

Thought-provoking, even if it doesn't quite live up to the blurbs on the back cover.


View all my reviews.

The Suicide Shop by Jean Teulé, reviewed by kaolin

The Suicide Shop by Jean Teule

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Tuvaches, a sort of working class Addams Family, operate The Suicide Shop--a shop where anyone can purchase the equipment and/or training required to off themselves (though children can only purchase sweets that have a 50% chance of killing them).

The story is set some time after North America has been laid to waste by the Big One--but for the most part it could pass as contemporary, with the odd bit of future tech: holographic greeting cards; a solution that turn one's kiss poisonous to others; 3d semi-immersive full-sensory television.

Mishima and Lucrèce Tuvache have three children--two depressed and/or ailing, and the youngest, bright and cherubic. This latter child, Alan, is the force that changes everything.

The chapters are brief, often terse, and the story progresses swiftly--at times a little too swiftly, in that I felt the characters bounced a bit too much in mood and disposition. At the same time, the quick pace kept me turning pages.

I was somewhat disappointed by the direction of the narrative--it's described as a quirky black comedy, but I found it more comedy, verging on slapstick, and less black (until, perhaps, the end). Alan's cheer and undauntable optimism quickly infects the rest of the family (except for Mishima, the father); even suicide commandos are shown to not be able to withstand his barrage of cheerfulness (a favorite quote: "I'll only be demonstrating this to you once!").

Still, it has a definite charm, and if you are perhaps less jaded you might get a real kick out of it throughout. I could easily see it being a cult favorite in the right circles.

View all my reviews.

Stone Masters: A Vampire Reckoning by VMK Fewers, reviewed by Jess

Stone Masters: A Vampire Reckoning by V.M.K. Fewings

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars


'Stone Masters: A Vampire Reckoning' by V.M.K. Fewers is a vampire novel told from two perspectives, in the form of diary entries. Both of the main characters, Orpheus and Jadeon, start us off with an entry from June 2006 as the set up to tell the story of how they became what they are, several hundred years earlier.

Jadeon’s family history is somewhat… interesting. He and his brother, Alex, accidentally witness their father and a group of men performing a ritual over a woman they at first believe to be a witch. The brothers see the woman carried through the family castle screaming, and calling out the name “Orpheus”. Thus begins Jadeon's journey to discover the truth about his father's involvement with the group–The Stone Masters-whose duty it is to kill vampires.

I appreciate that Laurell K. Hamilton and Anne Rice can only produce so many novels a year, and that in-between times vampire fans need a fix. So, this little niche opens up for the rest of vampire fic to have its turn. Unfortuately, Stone Masters is like a skeleton of an Anne Rice novel, without the real flesh, and more importantly blood, which vampires need. Anita Blake without any of the wit, and a poor copy-cat.

Not long ago I read Gabrielle Faust’s 'Eternal Vigilance'. After reading Stone Masters I can appreciate what Faust was doing - she tried to recreate a genre that is wearing rather thin on new material by injecting as much of her own originality as she could. And as it should be. Stone Masters just doesn’t have that jolt of excitement, or even just enough good old gore-fun to keep the reader interested. There is nothing new here, however hard you look, and hope.

The movement from one narrator to the next is confusing, the diaries boring. There was one stand-out moment, which was the description of a nasty witches' ceremony. I felt excited at this point, and for just a moment relieved, because I thought I was finally going to get the dark and scary tale that was hinted at in the story up until this point. No such luck. One good chapter was not enough to save Stone Masters. Poetic prose can be a wonderful thing, but not when it is the veil used simply to cover a weak plot.

I struggled with the book, right from the uninspiring cover art, to the less than satisfactory ending. I know it is not supposed to be taken as one of the literary greats, but there has to be something–it wasn’t even so bad that it was hilarious.

View all my reviews.

Words From a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie, reviewed by Debbie

Words from a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars


"Words from a Glass Bubble" by Vanessa Gebbie is a collection of nineteen of her short stories, compiled in a handsome hardback from Salt Publishing. There's no overarching narrative, but although the stories are very different, some themes and images crop up more than once.

Gebbie's talent is to shine a light onto her characters, giving us brief insights into their lives, their hopes, their disappointments, and--most of all--their mistakes, before moving on, leaving us with the hope that the characters too will carry on, make better decisions, have better luck, once the spotlight is removed.

Each story has its own voice, from "Words in a Glass Bubble" itself, where a family tries to come to terms with the loss of their son, to "Smoking Down There", where a child naively recounts her friend's story of how she almost inadvertently saved her baby brother from being disposed of at birth. The fragmentary, butterfly narrative convinces as that of a child. 'But then, if you smoked down there why didn't the hairs catch fire? That's what I wanted to know. But the bucket. Why wash out of a bucket when there were perfectly nice china things?'

Gebbie doesn't shy away from the darker side of life. One story, "Irrigation", goes into great detail--too great detail for this reader--about an enema. In "Dodie's Gift", the central character is left lost and wondering, "...if someone takes something you were going to give them anyway, is that stealing?' Reading this story, it's hard to decide whether to give her a hug or a good shake. Either, you think, might damage her beyond repair.

This story contains an image that recurs--'But there, at the bottom of the hollow, a gull has had a meal, and the sand holds white bone, red bone, skin....' The predator devours, leaves what it doesn't want, and moves on. What's been devoured, abandoned, somehow has to move on, too. Its life now may not be what it envisaged, but it still holds significance.

None of the stories is too long, although it's easy to feel some are too short. The characters live on in our minds and we can't help wondering what will happen next. If they'll come out all right.

This collection is definitely one to savour. Read a story, put it down, think about it, come back--the whole can't be devoured in an afternoon.


View all my reviews.

The Fireborn Chronicles by Mary Andrews, reviewed by kaolin

The Fireborn Chronicles by Mary Andrews

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Fireborn Chronicles is a psionic/space-faring epic. The focus of the chronicles is Rael--an adoptee/refugee from The Hive with implants that allow him to access any data terminal with a thought. He's groomed by his foster-mother for Dark Ops government work, given his own ship and told to assemble a team of his choosing.

The first several sections of the book are essentially short stories jumping from place to place as we're introduced to the team that he assembles. The plot picks up when the team is together-at-last and has to track down what happened to a high-ranking ambassador. In the end, the fate of the known universe hangs in the balance.

Mary Andrews sets a grand stage with many inventive ideas--but as a whole this novel does not tell the story it sets out to as well as I would have liked. It was an easy read, slipping into cliche only now and then, though each section repeated details as if I'd not been privy to them before, jerking me out of the narrative repeatedly. And while a very complex universe is hinted at, its rendering was sparse and, I felt, the hinting overreached its presentation:

PSI of a certain sort are universally recognized, but are only allowed to live in one section of one planet; aliens of all sorts exist somewhere (accomodations have been made for them on a pleasure planet; and we meet one non-humanoid in the form of a station master), but for brief mention they have nothing to do with this story that "will change the universe".

I know the story is not meant to be taken too seriously, but still I wanted things to hang together a bit more. We jump from character introduction to character introduction as a team is gathered (losing one along the way, not to be mentioned again until half-way through the book, and then only off-handedly explained), with large gaps in character development.

And while the plot kept me increasingly curious, what wrapped it up was, for me, ultimately unsatisfying--a deus ex machina that is relatively unexplained and unexplored. The book largely read as a few snippets plus a larger novella whose main purpose was jumping off into another, as of yet untold, story.

All that said, I'm sure there's many a reader that will enjoy this book. It's a "psionic sci fi" romp with tinges of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat and tinges of Babylon 5, where everything works out in the end.


View all my reviews.

More Than A Cover

Here's the assembled Steam Bat!



(Photo used by kind permission of Zak Jarvis)

Issue 3 Pre-launch Buzz Contest

Issue 3 is an amazing creation, crammed full of stories and art, with poems, Flash fiction and an entertaining report to leaven the mix. Whether we're battling a mechanical daemon in "A Song, a Prayer, an Empty Space" or experiencing jealousy towards unusual rivals in "Soon You Will Be Gone and Possibly Eaten", we're following the theme of Mechanical Flight into strange and unexpected places (and at times flying further afield).

Here's the (self-referential) Pre-launch Buzz Contest: blog about the launch contest with a link back to this post--then leave a comment at this post with a link to your blog post.  You'll be entered to win A FULL SET OF GUD, HARDCOPY (Issues 0-3). If we don't receive at least 100 entries, we reserve the right not to award this prize, so BE SURE TO TELL YOUR FRIENDS!  You've got seven days to help spread the word (give or take -- through the end of Friday, Pacific Standard Time)

BONUS: First ten entries win a PDF of Issue 3!  And we'll spread a few more goodies around if response warrants it. :)

BONUS 2: Everyone creating an account gets a freebie from Issue 3 just for signing up (it'll be in your account, waiting).  Everyone who already had an account?  You've got a new freebie waiting for you, too.

What's in Issue 3?

 
SO SPREAD THE WORD! :D

Getting Social

GETTING SOCIAL - BLOG SUBSCRIPTIONS

As one small step towards enabling a bustling cultural center for literary and genre fiction, poetry, etc (one very small step), GUD has now entered the late 90's in terms of blog subscriptions.

You can now be notified when new comments have been left on the posts you like--thus helping you back to the site and fostering dialog!  To further enable this, we've removed the somewhat draconic requirement for every comment to be verified by staff--if you've had a comment verified, then you're good to go from there on out.  We love your feedback!

To help you manage all of this, we've created a "subscriptions" area (linked from your account), where you can see what posts you're subscribed to, unsubscribe from them individually (or en masse), or "reset" them if you've lost track of what threads might have gotten recent comments.

http://www.gudmagazine.com/user/subscriptions.php

There's been some discussion on our previous blog post, "A posting for your thoughts?", but we'd love more.  :)  Who knows, with more dialog, maybe the chatroom will get some real use.  It does take hanging out there a bit for someone to stop by, sometimes.

And maybe we'll cobble in those forums I've been dreaming of...

GETTING SOCIAL - GRAVATARS

"A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?"

We've now integrated gravatars throughout the site (staff blog, review blog, and on your account pages).  We're using the "identicon" plugin which gives folks who haven't registered with gravatar a probabalistically unique image as well, a pretty geometric pattern + color.

This hopefully adds a little bit of non-invasive personalization and simpatico.

GETTING SOCIAL - WHERE ELSE YOU CAN FIND US

If you're on a social network, chances are we're there, too. :)  Many of them are linked in our footer, but here's a larger partial listing:

• YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/gudmagazine
  
  
  
  
  • Public Service Announcement--go read a magazine
  
  
  • GUD teaser video
    
     
  
  
  
  


• MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/gudmagazine  
  
   


• Facebook -
  
  
  
  
  • Greatest U. Denominator
  
  
  • Greatest Uncommon Denominator Group
  
  
  • Greatest Uncommon Denominator Page
    
     
  
  
  
  


• GoodReads - http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/431377
  
   


• LiveJournal - http://community.livejournal.com/gudmagazine/
  
   


• Blogger - http://gudmagazine.blogspot.com/
  
   


• Yuwie - http://ww2.yuwie.com/profile/?id=92832

Are we missing something? :)

Last Dragon by J.M. McDermott, reviewed by Debbie

Last Dragon by J.M. McDermott

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


"Last Dragon", published as the first of the Wizard of the Coast Discoveries, is like no Fantasy novel I've ever read. It's non-linear, told as a series of letters? reminiscences? campfire tales? that flit about events and times yet slowly and inexorably bring the reader to the book's conclusion.

To sum up the principal narrative, primary narrator Zahn is on the verge of qualifying as a Rider, a warrior who fights on bison-back, when news comes that her putative grandfather has murdered her mother and all her illegitimate siblings, plus the village shaman. Now Zahn cannot be a Rider; she must follow the shaman's path, instead. But first, she and her uncle Seth must hunt down her grandfather, and exact retribution. She and Seth travel to distant Proliux, where they are separated. Only when Zahn falls in with heretic paladin Adel does she make progress towards her goal. But mercenary forces threaten Zahn's homeland, and perhaps only she and Adel can save it.

Yet when we first meet Zahn, she is an old woman, looking back on her life and grieving for her lost lover, Esumi, and her murdered child. History, it seems, has repeated itself.

It's a sad tale, littered with betrayals, and at the same time uncompromising. No convenient explanations are offered for what sometimes seems inexplicable--what was Adel's motive, after all? Perhaps Zahn and her quest take the place of the lost dragon to whom Adel previously gave her allegiance, but if that's so, the novel isn't going to give up the information easily. This is a book that demands to be read, pondered, and re-read, if it's to be understood by the reader.

One barrier, for me, to engaging with the narrative was that when it changes time and/or place, it makes no overt attempt to clue the reader in. Given the book's told in a lot of short snippets, some only a couple of pages long, some less than a page, this means the reader is constantly jarred by the need to work out where they are and what's going on. This choppiness leads to disengagement, and also means that important information at the beginnings of scenes is lost in the struggle. Further, when the book changes narrators, it doesn't change voice. Towards the middle, it's hard to know if it's Zahn talking to us, or Fest, a mercenary who joins her crew. The overall effect is a bit like trying to understand a radio play when someone--without any warning--keeps switching the channels.

This book will reward the reader who seeks not immersion in the fictive dream, but the challenge of putting together a disjointed narrative into a text that has meaning for them.


View all my reviews.

A Posting for Your Thoughts?

We sometimes pretend that we have a little time left over from creating GUD Magazine, and we'd be interested to know how you think we should use it:

EITHER

• A pay-to-submit (not huge sums--maybe $2 or $3 an entry) contest, where the top so-many winners split the pot with GUD?  Winning content would be published on the site.  Would you participate?

OR

• Small Flash games based on stuff we've published.  Stories, art, poems--the field is open!  Whaddya think?*

Let us know which you'd prefer!  Or suggest something else entirely. :)

In the meantime, let us tell you what we've got coming up:

• A "What type of creativity are you?" quiz hosted on GUD.  Maybe this will be the meme that takes off.  And if you need the distraction, something from a few years ago: "What type of Poem are you?"


• More blog content!  Ideas welcome :) .  Do you want interviews with our contribs?  Meanderings about the magazine creation process?  Tell us!


• Issue 3!  Issue 3 is coming up!  We're in the final round of proofing, so it should be going to the printer this week or next!  Julia's about to close Issue 4 so she can make her final picks, and I'm about to open Issue 5 up to submissions.  All current submissions not shortlisted will be considered for Issue 5.

*of course, we wouldn't dream of doing this without contributor consent.  But if you've got an idea, we'll see if we can make it happen.

Eternal Vigilance by Gabrielle Faust, reviewed by Jess Nash

Eternal Vigilance by Gabrielle Faust

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


When I know a book is going to be part of a series, it has to be pretty darn good for me to consider forking out for future instalments. Unfortunately, this book doesn’t work so well as a stand-alone novel, and that was disappointing.

Basically, Eternal Vigilance is a vampire Fantasy novel set in 2111. Tynan, a vampire who created and led his own religion, has been asleep for a hundred years. After letting down the vampires who followed him, when his belief in his own faith crumbled, he cast a spell that should have sent him to sleep forever. It didn’t. He wakes to find the world he once knew ravaged by a fierce war, and technology literally evolving on its own.

Tynan is different from other vampires–-every time he kills and feeds he absorbs the pasts of his victims into his own memory. It is this unusual characteristic, as well as the human traits he can’t shake off, which led to his hatred of the world and a battle in which he disgraced himself by killing another vampire.

The first half of Eternal Vigilance deals mainly with backstory, which is necessary but a little tedious. However, when you get through that part, things start to get more interesting. Some of the immortals are not exactly pleased by Tynan’s return, and he fears their reactions. It's obvious Tynan is special, as well as an outcast in the immortal council. The story builds up slowly and delicately, as we gradually learn more about the Phuree, a rebel uprising that believes in ancient magic rather than the new technology favoured by the all-powerful Tyst Empire.

I absolutely loved the cover art, with a moment of “Ooo, shiny!” when I first picked the book up. Very appealing to my goth side. It took me a while to get into the story, and I wasn’t really sure if I was going to like it at first. It’s a bit hit and miss in places, but it’s obvious the author has a lot of good ideas, which I’m really hoping will come through later on.

Tynan is quirky and likeable. The relationship he has with his pet cat Dune is a particularly nice touch. I would have liked all the main characters to be drawn with a little more depth, but as this is only the first part of a series I would expect their story arcs to be pursued later on. I found it a little hard to follow the story in places as some of the characters weren’t distinguished well enough from others. Although Eternal Vigilance can be tough going at times, I still think it’s a pretty good read.

Eternal Vigilance is interesting and poetically written, although the poetic language can get a bit purple in places. I am intrigued to see what will happen in the second instalment--hopefully after such a long build-up there will be a lot more violence and action, and also more explanation of the exciting technology and magic which has appeared only in brief glimpses so far.

Good fun, and slightly camp. A worthy addition to any collection of vampire fiction.


View all my reviews.

Bloodshot Monochrome by Patience Agbabi, reviewed by Debbie

Bloodshot Monochrome by Patience Agbabi

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's a thin book. However, if you're about to become the romper room for someone else's narratives, neuroses and hang-ups, it's cheery that the book is at least thin. They won't be here long. Maybe you can cope.

So Patience enters your romper room. 'Shots', the first of the five parts of this poetry collection, turns it around. She wants neither to invade, nor to assault. You've been invited into her sitting room, sat down with a glass of wine, and she gently soothes you with her lyrical voice. Don't be afraid, she says, I've serious things to say, but I'll say them gently, whilst the cat of my metre sits on your lap and purrs. It's okay to laugh, she says, when you get to 'On turning on the TV...' I'm glad you did, and was afraid you wouldn't.

So that by the end of 'Shots', you want to stay some more and listen. This is as well, because the next two parts, 'Monologues' and 'Problem Pages' are not quite as successful. 'Josephine Baker Finds Herself' is a genuinely clever, successful poem. 'Yore my type' is amusing, but you have to wonder how successfully Patience has entered this other world, or are we sharing a misconception of an alien lifestyle? 'Problem Pages', where Patience has famous writers set her questions which she then answers, may appeal to some, and be a useful resource for literature teachers, but it left me cold after the first couple.

In 'Blood Letters', Patience seems to return to letting us share her experiences. Not as comfortable as 'Shots', but we know each other by now, and it's okay to dare a bit and exchange more personal stuff. Exchange? Reading a book of poems? Yeah, you'll be surprised how you start talking back. Until, with 'Black and White and Red All Over', you're shamed into silence. Momentarily. Patience is not a vicious woman.

The last section, 'Vicious Circle', is a long work. Fourteen paired stanzas, highly structured, clearly thought out. I'm not sure I got the story first time around, but as I made my goodbyes and left this writer's room, buttoning an imaginary coat against an imaginary wind, I didn't feel I'd wasted time. I wanted to visit again, maybe ask some more questions. A good time out.

View all my reviews.

Dangerous Games, edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois, reviewed by kaolin

GUD doesn't normally review larger-press works, which is partially by choice (they tend to get enough press) and partially by convenience. I wound up with a copy of "Dangerous Games", however, via Jason Stoddard, who contributed "Moments of Brilliance" to Issue 0, and has been making waves both talking about the state of short fiction (he keeps stirring the pot over at his blog) and by appearing in a number of anthologies (latest is Ellen Datlow's "The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy").

The tagline for "Dangerous Games" is "In the reality shows of the future, people will literally be dying to win." And that's not too uncommon of a concept in science fiction, but it's funny how far back it goes. Eleven stories span from 1958 through 2005 (the majority of them being from the late 90's). Science fiction is most often looking forward, and if it's not blatantly obvious from the title of the book (I didn't think about it until reading the preface--slim, but thought-inspiring), the collection is focused on the future of games. A society can be pretty well defined by the games it plays, and at the heart of any game is conflict, so it's a great sandbox for speculative fiction of all sorts.

All of the stories are top-notch science fiction well within the bounds of the genre. Most of them deal with television or virtual reality. One of my favorites of the collection is Vernor Vinge's "Synthetic Serendipity", which only touches on VR tangentially--it's actually rather tough to classify, which is part of what makes it stand out for me. The world envisioned is today's pushed hyper--data mining a skill learned in school, future shock an undeniable social problem, and strange half-virtual theme parks where anyone can contribute content. Not all is what it seems, but that's not because the author is hiding something behind an "is it real or not" digital curtain.

Alistair Reynold's "Stroboscopic" reads as an instant classic--the heroic Everyman character up against impossible odds--and I was somewhat surprised that it was published as recently as 1998. Conversely, Robert Sheckley's "The Prize of Peril", and Kate Wilhelm's "Ladies and Gentlemen, This is Your Crisis! could very well be contemporary fiction as opposed to science fiction, their being written in 1958 and 1976 respectively. Cory Doctorow's "Anda's Game" is timely with the strange social and economic things going on with MMORPGs, and while the story is rather straight forward it's still a fun read; and if you're not familiar with the strange and social and economic things going on with MMORPGs it might be a good jumping off point for you.

Terri Dowling's "The Ichneumon and the Dormeuse" is another favorite--it's a medium- to far-future piece with the feel of a fable and some beautiful layering, touching on tomb-robbing, history/legacies, and identity; the characters are very real, as is the sense of time.

Jason's "Winning Mars" end-caps the collection; my introduction to his writing was this very story from its original publication in Interzone--but then I skimmed a few pages and wasn't very interested. Reading it without Interzone's high-gloss format, I dropped into the story quickly. It's a fun and clever take on one thing that could possibly get us to Mars: advertising. Jason knows his marketing, and the "meta" of the execs building the show and trying to manage the show while various teams compete for the prize adds depth to what is on the surface yet another game show story.

All told, it's a lot of story (and a lot of stories) for your buck, and none of them are duds. If you want some entertaining and occasionally informative or enlightening science fiction, this is a great collection.

GUD Issue Three (and other updates)

So, how're we doing with Issue Three of GUD?

We've read the first proof, and our layout editor (Sue Miller) has made corrections. Now we're reading the second proof, hoping to catch anything we didn't see the first time round--and making sure we didn't inadvertently add any new problems!

Meanwhile, we're asking our artists to upload the full-res versions of their artwork. Some of them are being a little slow, but they'll get there :). Cover artist Zak Jarvis has sent us the beautiful final version of the cover, and in-house artist Sue Miller has created a fancy new "GUD" logo to go with it. I can't wait to show it to you! (but kaolin says I have to)

It's still full steam ahead with our reviews of other people's books and magazines. We publish a new review every week, and there's usually a raffle to give our readers a chance to win the review copy. This week, it's Paul Elwork's "The Tea House" (UK/EU only; conditions apply).

Issue Four Instigator Julia Bernd is snowed under with slush, so we're asking for a little more patience from our contributors while she wades her way through it. We're not ignoring you; we're just a little snow-blinded :).

Kaolin is implementing a nifty update to the site--you'll be able to see at a glance which blog and review threads you've commented on :). A great way to check if you've entered our latest raffle!

And last but not least--GUD Issue 0 is now available on Amazon.com for the Kindle. So if you have one of these new-fangled devices, now you can get a great magazine to complement it :).

That's all for now--I've got to get back to that proof. The first one took me six hours to go through!

The Tea House by Paul Elwork, reviewed by Debbie

Paul Elwork's "The Tea House" is a bold first novel, entering the strange, secretive world of two children who discover a way to convince others they can contact the dead. The book's based loosely on the real-life Fox sisters, notorious mediums who seem to have begun the whole table-rapping craze. It sets out how siblings Emily and Michael get more and more involved in the private griefs of the adults around them. Rapidly, the two move far out of their depth, struggling with adults who depend on them for emotional support, desperately wanting to believe what they know isn't true. What starts as a fun game leads to despair and death.

Although Emily is the table-rapper, it's Michael who manipulates her and all those around them, cajoling then bullying her into co-operating. We see scenes from Michael's point of view, but his motivations remain obscure. He's almost fierce in not caring for other people. It's power over them he seeks, regardless of the emotional cost.

Unfortunately, this novel has been pruned within an inch of its life. In his author's note, Elwork remarks that he's boiled the novel down to its essence. What's essence to the author--who knows everything that's not in there as well as what is--may be only highlights for the reader. The book skips along, somewhat episodically, and the feeling persists that there's a lot left unsaid. This sense of jaggedness, of disconnection, isn't helped by the frequent changes of point of view. Reading The Tea House is a bit like dipping into a longer novel at infrequent intervals.

We can hope for even better things from this author once he hits his stride.