Category Archives: Uncategorized

Christopher Priest’s The Islanders

First thing to note is that this is not a novel. It’s more like notes that travelers put together on exotic (to them, not people who live there) locales they visited. Think of it as akin to something the publishers … Continue reading

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Tad Williams: The Very Best of Tad Williams

Not every collection has to be earth-shattering. Not every story has to be a mind-blower. Sometimes it’s nice to have something that’s just amusing and easy to read and straightforward, without challenge or morally fraught situations. And that’s where The … Continue reading

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Seanan McGuire’s Fairy Tale Survival Guide, and notes on The Border at Kinrowan Estate

Seanan McGuire, author of one of my favorite novels of the year, Indexing, which has its premise that all fairy tale archetypes, be they Sleeping Beauty or the Wicked Witch, are tropes that manifest in certain people and there’s nothing … Continue reading

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Seanan McGuire’s Indexing

Upon upon a time, Robert Heinlein based most of his writing (some considerably long after he wrote it) on the idea that all realities were equally possible, so that Robin Hood truly existed in some realty and in another reality … Continue reading

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Charles Stross’ Saturn’s Children

Once upon a time, 1992 if you must know, the late Robert Heinlein published a spiffy novel called Friday about an Artificial Person, a clone to be precise, named Friday who was genetically engineered to be stronger, faster, smarter, and … Continue reading

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Glen Cook’s The Tyranny of the Night and Lord of the Silent Kingdom

I’ve been an admirer of Glen Cook’s writing for many years, ever since I read Shadowline, the first book of the Starfishers series, way back when. I had never run into anyone who had quite that mix of myth and … Continue reading

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Alma Alexander’s 2012: Midnight at Spanish Gardens

December 20th, 2012. The end of the world, some might say. Five friends meet up twenty years after college, at Spanish Gardens, an old and favorite gathering spot. Olivia. John. Quincey. Ellen. Simon. Over Irish Coffees, they’ll hash out old … Continue reading

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Kelley Armstrong, Brazen

Billed as a manhunt (for certain values of “man”), Brazen is really a character piece. Officially labeled volume 13.1 in author Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Underworld series, it focuses on the thus-far underwhelming Nick as its main protagonist. Handsome … Continue reading

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A Kinrowan Estate story: Yurts (A Letter to Anna)

G’Morning Anna, Sometime ago I remember you asking about how the yurts out towards the north meadow came to be. It’s an interesting story, as they were here a decade before I arrived here thirty years ago this year. It … Continue reading

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A Kinrowan Estate story: Carols and Other Matters (A Letter to Ekaterina)

G’Day My Dear, We don’t do Thanksgiving here except in those years when one of the Several Annies, Iain’s Library apprentices, is from America and that’s an interesting circumstance as we don’t raise turkeys here so we barter for one … Continue reading

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