needs more demons?

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Entries Tagged as 'fantasy'

Margo Lanagan: Red Spikes

22 Nov 2008 · No Comments

Several of Lanagan’s spooky short stories start with deceptively simple, even prosaic, sentences, like “I arrived in moonlight; it wasn’t hard to find the way,” and “‘Well, at least it’s a fine night,’ said Mum.”
But these innocuous openings give little away. In what era is the story set? Does it take place in world like […]

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Tags: young adult · r-title · fantasy · l-author

Doug Dorst: Alive in Necropolis

15 Nov 2008 · No Comments

The book jacket description and a handful of pull quotes (from writers with ties to the McSweeney’s camp, mostly) were enough to get me to read Alive in Necropolis, but the novel exceeded the expectations I had of it. It sounds perhaps a bit silly in capsule form: emotionally fragile rookie cop Michael Mercer rescues […]

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Tags: a-title · suspense · mystery · fantasy · d-author

Jonathan Barnes: The Somnambulist

15 Nov 2008 · No Comments

Barnes’ first novel is promising, if less than entirely satisfying, and certainly not lacking in ambition nor scope. It’s set in a fantastic London peopled by flamboyant, unlikely charactersat the close of the 19th century. Several folk are Not As They At First Seem, including the narrator, who does, it should be noted, remark in […]

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Tags: historical · s-title · mystery · fantasy · b-author

Charles Stross: Missile Gap

04 Aug 2008 · No Comments

Good golly, I love libraries. I was delighted to have a chance to read Stross’s Missile Gap, a novella published in a small print run without coughing up its hefty price tag. I enjoyed Missle Gap, but truth to tell, if I’d paid the asking price, I would have been kinda bummed.
Missile Gap shares […]

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Tags: m-title · historical · horror · science fiction · fantasy · s-author

J.F. Lewis: Staked

05 Jul 2008 · No Comments

I picked up Staked (or as my wonderful girlfriend prefers to call it, on account of the cover art, Stacked) because I thought it looked like a pleasantly trashy read for a business trip. Perhaps unfortunately for it, I didn’t actually read it unitl I got home.
It has a good first sentence:

Somewhere in the middle […]

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Tags: thriller · s-title · fantasy · l-author

Justine Larbalestier: Magic’s Child

05 Jul 2008 · No Comments

My expectations for Magic’s Child were very high, and they weren’t quite met. The first novel in the series, Magic or Madness, introduced a remarkably fresh conception of magic in the modern-day world, (as well as exploring the author’s own experiences with transcontinental transitions in a fantastic context). The sequel Magic Lessons deepened and extended […]

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Tags: young adult · m-title · fantasy · l-author

Robert Sheckley: Uncanny Tales

28 May 2008 · No Comments

Uncanny Tales comprises 16 short stories of uneven quality from the final two decades of Sheckley’s career. “Magic, Maples and Maryanne,” is a fine cautionary fable of magic and morality with an almost Jonathan Carroll-like vibe. “The New Horla” (the title is a reference to a classic Guy de Maupassant short) is grimly gripping in […]

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Tags: u-title · science fiction · fantasy · s-author

Charles Stross: The Jennifer Morgue

07 May 2008 · No Comments

I think The Jennifer Morgue is the most successful of Charles Stross’s novels that I’ve read so far. It’s a mutant melange of genres including xenophobic Lovecraftian horror/fantasy; Dilbert-esque, geek-celebrating cubicle rat satire; modern techno espionage thriller; and old-school shaken-not-stirred James Bondage — all served up with a hefty post-modern literary twist and dark […]

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Tags: thriller · j-title · horror · fantasy · s-author

Garth Nix: Shade’s Children

28 Apr 2008 · No Comments

Back in 1999, members of a mailing list I was on traded book recommendations. Several of the novels I read as a result (among them Hulme’s The Bone People, Allison’s Bastard out of Carolina, Dunn’s Geek Love, Ryman’s Was, Carroll’s Outside the Dog Museum, Powers’ The Goldbug Variations, and Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End […]

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Tags: young adult · s-title · science fiction · fantasy · n-author

Emma Bull: War for the Oaks

06 Mar 2008 · 2 Comments

Publishing cycles are strange things. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy burbled merrily along as a cult favorite for years, gradually picked up steam, and eventually became an unprecedented publishing phenomenon, and — as writers and publishers alike realized there was more money to be raked from the Tolkien-reading hordes — the template for a […]

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Tags: w-title · fantasy · b-author