Flying Talking Horses, Yay!: Robin McKinley’s Pegasus
I’ve been a fan of McKinley’s for some time, but I was disappointed by her last two novels so I didn’t rush for Pegasus (2010) when it came out. It was a talking flying pony book, after all, and early reviews pointed out that it was half a book a...
Nemi
Tor.com is celebrating National Poetry Month by featuring science fiction and fantasy poetry from a variety of SFF authors. You’ll find classic works, hidden gems, and new commissions featured on the site throughout the month. Bookmark the Poetry Mon...
Small Scale Fantasy: Mary Robinette Kowal’s Shades of Milk and Honey
Mary Robinette Kowal’s Shades of Milk and Honey is a Regency Romance novel set in a Regency that’s just a shade off from ours. It’s a deliberately Austen-esque fantasy on a deliberately small scale. It’s England in the early Nineteenth Century,...
Rothfuss Reread: The Wise Man’s Fear, Part 25: I Forgot Who I Was
Welcome to my ridiculously detailed reread of Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. This week’s post covers chapters 133-137 of The Wise Man’s Fear but also contains extensive spoilers for the whole book and the whole of The Name of the Wind ...
All Of Us Are In The Gutter: Review of Oscar!
I’ll admit that when I first heard about Oscar! I wasn’t impressed. “He’s a playwright famous for his bon mots, he’s a grouch who lives in a trash can: they fight crime.” Oscar Wilde (Geoffrey Rush) teaming up with Oscar the Grouch (Carroll...
Rothfuss Reread: The Wise Man’s Fear, Part 24: Hell Breaking Loose
Welcome to my extremely detailed reread of Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. This week’s post covers chapters 127-132 of The Wise Man’s Fear but also contains extensive spoilers for the whole book and the whole of The Name of the Wind —...
The Highest of Fantasy: Yves Meynard’s Chrysanthe
Fantasy has family trees and most books show their pedigrees visibly, but it’s hard to say where Yves Meynard’s wonderfully original new novel Chrysanthe belongs. It’s a little like Zelazny’s Amber books, with characters moving through ever-shi...
Spies and Fairy Tales: Anthony Price’s Tomorrow’s Ghost
Tomorrow’s Ghost is the closest Anthony Price came to writing a fantasy novel, and it’s not that close. I’ve talked before about how Price wrote spy stories with an underlying layer of history. In this book, the underlying layer is about fairy ta...
Rothfuss Reread: The Wise Man’s Fear, Part 23: A Real Person
Welcome to my ridiculously detailed reread of Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. This week’s post covers chapters 120-126 of The Wise Man’s Fear but also contains extensive spoilers for the whole book and the whole of The Name of the Wind ...
“It Won’t Do, You Know!” Georgette Heyer’s Cotillion
A cotillion is a Regency dance where you change partners, and Georgette Heyer’s Cotillion is a Regency Romance where everybody twirls and faces their partners and ends up in a happy set of not-entirely predictable couples. It’s an implausible confe...
M.A.R. Barker 1929-2012
Mohammed Al Rahman Barker died this week at the age of 83. He was a professor of South Asian languages and literature, his academic interests included the language of the Klamath people of the Pacific north-west and the languages and cultures of Meso-A...
M.A.R. Barker 1929-2012
Mohammed Al Rahman Barker died this week at the age of 83. He was a professor of South Asian languages and literature, his academic interests included the language of the Klamath people of the Pacific north-west and the languages and cultures of Meso-A...
