This week I’m recommending `Uprooted’ by Naomi Novik. She is the author of the popular `Temeraire’ books about the relationship between a Chinese dragon and an English naval captain at the time of the Napoleonic wars. I had some reservations about this Historical Fantasy series but I’ve been completely won over by Novik’s new novel,… Continue reading
Once in a blue moon I realize that I am reading a new book which is destined to become one of my all time favourite Fantasy novels. `City of Stairs’ by Robert Jackson Bennett is such a book, so I’m making it this week’s recommendation. This novel came out last year and is currently available… Continue reading
This week I’m recommending a book which has caused some consternation in literary circles – `The Buried Giant’ by Kazuo Ishiguro. It only came out a few months ago, so it’s available in hardback and as an ebook but not yet in paperback. Professional reviewers tend rigidly to divide writers into `literary authors’ and `genre… Continue reading
This time I’m recommending a modern Fantasy Classic which I feel that more readers should know about. Martha Wells’ `Wheel of the Infinite’ was first published by EOS in 2000, with a wonderful cover illustration by Donato Giancola. It is well worth seeking out a second-hand copy of this beautiful edition. In spite of the… Continue reading
This week I’m recommending a Fantasy novel about pirates. Who doesn’t love pirates? Except real life ones, of course. `On Stranger Tides’ by Tim Powers came out in 1988 and has been reprinted many times since. You can get it in paperback or as an ebook. `Hang on,’ I hear you saying, `isn’t `On Stranger… Continue reading
Have you noticed that there are still a lot of vampires around? In Fantasy fiction, TV series and films that is; not real life (I hope). So, it’s rather refreashing to read a novel which opens with an intelligent woman arguing very convincingly that vampires cannot exist. She’s wrong though… `The Rhesus Chart’ by Charles… Continue reading
This week’s recommendation is a `Sword and Sorcery’ classic from Fritz Leiber, the man who virtually invented this sub-genre. `Swords and Deviltry’, which was first published in 1970, is one of six volumes of stories about two of Fantasy fiction’s most enduring and endearing characters – Fafhrd (pronounced Faf-erd) and the Gray Mouser. Leiber and… Continue reading
When J.R.R.Tolkien wrote, `There are many heroes but very few good dragons’ he was referring to the dragon who appears in the Anglo-Saxon poem known as `Beowulf’, which is this week’s recommendation. We’re lucky to have this epic about one hero’s fights with three monsters, since it only survived into modern times in a single,… Continue reading
This week I’m recommending `The Golem and the Djinni’, a warm-hearted first novel by Helene Wecker. The title makes this sound like some awful mash-up Horror movie along the lines of `Godzilla versus Mothra’ or `Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man’. In fact, it’s a sensitive story about an impossible friendship between a creature of earth… Continue reading
This week I’m recommending a short novel that inhabits the shadowy region where Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction meet. `The House on the Borderland’ by William Hope Hodgson was first published in 1908. Hodgson was a visionary writer who deserves to be better known. After all, this is a man whose stories H.P.Lovecraft found scary.… Continue reading