Category Archives: Books

Rex Stout’s Fer-de-Lance

I suspect by now that you know I love a good mystery, particularly those that are set between the wars, as I’ve mentioned this liking several times before. On a winter afternoon, nothing beats reading a mystery in a quiet … Continue reading

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Walter Jon Williams’s This Is Not a Game

All of us in one manner or another are storytellers, so I was intrigued by the idea of a novel that told the story of Dagmar, a woman who runs ARGs (Augmented Reality Games) hence her being called the puppet … Continue reading

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Jeff Vandermeer’s Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy

Trust no one and trust nothing that you are told as everything may be a lie. That appears to be the theme of the three novels making up the Area X trilogy, Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance. According to the first … Continue reading

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Charles de Lint’s The Mystery of Grace

Charles de Lint is without doubt one of the best loved writers among our reviewers here. It was a typical winter afternoon as I sat down to read The Mystery of Grace — cold, wet, and a driving sleet falling hard, … Continue reading

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China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun

China Miéville (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, The Iron Council) is renowned for the world he has created around the great, multi-species, many-storied city of New Crobuzon. Those are adult works, beyond a doubt: ferocious and frightening, full of the … Continue reading

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Kage Baker’s The Hotel under the Sand

Matthew Scott Wilson penned this review. It is a little known fact that most people will believe little known facts before they will believe obvious facts. Thus if you say to a person who is standing in water, ‘You are … Continue reading

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James Hamilton’s Arthur Rackham: a life with illustrations

Published as a hardcover edition in 1990, Hamilton’s illustrated biography of English painter Arthur Rackham has been gorgeously reproduced here as an oversized softcover edition. Rackham is perhaps best known for his exquisitely detailed paintings of whimsical fairies, gnarled and … Continue reading

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Walter Moers’ The City of Dreaming Books

This is a very clever book. The full title page proclamation reads, “The City of Dreaming Books: A Novel from Zamonia by Optimus Yarnspinner, Translated from the Zamonian and Illustrated by Walter Moers, whose German Text was translated into English … Continue reading

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Charles de Lint’s Seven Wild Sisters

Seven Wild Sisters, a collaboration between Charles de Lint and Charles Vess, holds no surprises, and that’s a very good thing. The companion-cum-sequel to their earlier collaboration The Cats of Tanglewood Forest, the book delivers exactly what it promises: Gorgeous illustration … Continue reading

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Jennifer Stevenson’s ‘Solstice’

A small-time rocker named Dawn breaks up with her boyfriend in the car one winter night. Dumped off on the side of the road, she storms angrily across an icy field until she trips and falls. A jolly, round woman … Continue reading

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