The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson
(The MIT Press, 2023)
Reviewed by Duncan Lawie
There are influential books which are now rarely read. Some have slipped out of print through luck or complexities of ownership. Some, despite their influence, are barely readable; The Night Land falls into this category. When I noticed this new edition was abridged, I wondered whether I should be seeking a complete edition, but within pages of starting to read, I was grateful for any word excised. The prose is clotted; the story wearing; the dull detail of the journey, of eating and drinking each six hours—or discussing exactly why our narrator has delayed—is exhausting:
Yet, in truth, as I do now have knowledge, it was the North that drew; and I do seem to make a great telling about this little matter; but how else shall I show to you mine inward mind, and the lack of knowledge and likewise the peculiar knowings that did go to the making of that time, and the Peoples thereof, which is but to say the same thing twice over.
Continue reading…
Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.
Babel by R.F. Kuang
(HarperVoyager, 2022)
Reviewed by Kevan Manwaring
Babel is a dark academia novel by R.F. Kuang, author of The Poppy War trilogy, and a dazzling academic herself. A Marshall Scholar and Chinese-English translator, with an MPhil from Cambridge and an MSc from Oxford, she is now engaged in doctoral study at Yale. This (possibly) standalone novel concerns a talented young Cantonese boy who adopts the name Robin Swift. He is plucked from the deathbed of his mother amongst the slums of his homeland by a strict Oxford professor, who cultivates his ward’s gift with languages to the point when Swift is able to become a student of the prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—the tallest building in the heart of an alternative Oxford. Here, the power of translation is used to activate silver bars which generate the qualities evoked by the ‘matching pairs’ of the translated languages: energy, wealth, control. These drive the dominance of the British Empire, growing fat and powerful via the exploitation of the resources, slave labour, and talent of their ‘subjects’ from the colonies and from other countries.
Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature (Second Edition) edited by Allen Stroud
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023)
Impressively ambitious in scope, Allen Stroud’s monumental work now appears in a second edition, but with the inclusion of very contemporary updates ‘Historical Dictionary’ seems even more of a redundant title. All dictionaries are historical records from the moment of publication, however up-to-date the entries: the most recent ‘buzzword’ becomes a cultural curio within a few years. That said, a desire to be topical can result in a lack of perspective and depth: some of the most recent additions are rather embryonic and seem little more than placeholders (e.g., World Fantasy Award-winner, R.J. Barker, gets a rather sparse three lines; the significant, complex, and contested category of the ‘Anthropocene’ barely eleven lines—perhaps these will be fleshed out in a third edition?).
Review from BSFA Review 22 - Download your copy here.
The Fantastic Editorials by Ted White
(Ansible Editions, 2023)
Reviewed by Graham Andrews
Roughly speaking, Fantastic was to Amazing what Unknown was to Astounding, what Beyond was to Galaxy, and Science Fantasy was to New Worlds. It should be said that I rather preferred the science-fantasy magazines to their more respectable companion magazines, although a certain amount of overlap did occur. Hence my predilection for F & SF… but I digress.
Abstracted from Ted White’s fortuitously quotable Foreword: “I became the editor of Fantastic and Amazing in October 1968 [publisher: Sol Cohen]. I left them in October 1978. But they were bottom feeders then, with little if any remaining reputations. I had to build them back up. I began by convincing Sol to push the reprints down to a single ‘classic’ story. Suddenly we were in business, with over 90% of our fiction brand new. Within a couple of years, the last reprint was gone.” And “build them back up” he slowly and surely did, both magazines being duly nominated for Hugo awards. Brian Aldiss’s Frankenstein Unbound (a two-part serial in Fantastic: March–May 1974) was deservedly short-listed for the Booker Prize, but undeservedly didn’t win. Ditto Will-O-the-Wisp (September 1974), by Thomas Burnett Swann—“a pleasure to read and a delight for me to publish.” The list of classic short and long fantasy fiction, by the likes of Michael Moorcock and Jack Vance, would reach from There to Back Again.
The Amazing Editorials by Ted White
Please bear with me for a few preliminary Down Memory Lane words, concerning Marshall’s newsagents in 1960s/1970s Belfast, Northern Ireland. It sold just about every American SF magazine then extant, including the otherwise unobtainable Amazing and Fantastic. Both these magazines had been in the doldrums for several years, and I generally gave them a miss. What attracted me back to reading them was the editorial policy of Ted White—and the editorials written by Ted White. BTW: I’m prone to reading the non-fiction contents of a magazine before getting round to reading the fiction.
Editorials in stf (White’s preferred contraction) magazines were nothing new by then, of course, with John W. Campbell of Astounding/Analog being the prime impersonally polemical example. In his Introduction (‘The Amazing Ted’), Mike Ashley avers that a magazine should have a distinctive personality: “That personality may in part be a product of the contributors but its chiefly created by the editor—of an editor who loves what they’re doing.” White followed the fan-friendly example of Raymond A. Palmer, who had also edited both Amazing and Fantastic, back in the mid-century day.
A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
(Titan Books, 2023)
Reviewed by Susan Peak
T. Kingfisher, the author, also writes as Ursula Vernon. As Ursula Vernon, she writes children’s graphic novels, notably the Dragonbreath series, while as T. Kingfisher she writes adult horror fiction. Her 2020 book, The Twisted Ones, won the Dragon award for Best Horror Novel. This book is described as US Southern Gothic; it is creepy but doesn’t tip over into full-on horror. I found it to be an engaging book, well written, with distinct characters and a strong storyline. At 259 pages it’s easily read in one sitting.
The story is set in North Carolina, in an ordinary subdivision (a village, from the context), with fairly new houses that are becoming somewhat dilapidated—this helps to set the atmosphere. Samantha Montgomery is the protagonist, coming back to the family home when there is a break in the archaeological dig she is involved with. The Gothic element starts promptly with a vulture on the mailbox of her mother’s home; the vulture theme continues throughout the book.
Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome by Garth Marenghi
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2022)
Garth Marenghi is the alter-ego of comedian and actor Matthew Holness, initially created for the titular showcase, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (first broadcast on Channel 4 in 2004). Holness introduced each episode in the guise of Marenghi, channelling the look (black leather jacket and mirror shades) and low voice of 80’s Horror novelists, and satirising the classic hosts of cult anthology series from Alfred Hitchcock to Rod Serling, Elvira to Doctor Terrible. Hilariously conceited and oblivious of his own lack of talent, Marenghi is now given full rein in this deliberately overblown metanarrative (‘the longest and most terrifying epic fictive of my career’), which places the author—or rather a thinly-veiled version of his comedic persona—at the centre of his own narrative: ‘Nick Steen’s the name. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? Yeah, that’s right. The horror guy. The insanely rich, multiple best-selling, dark and dangerous-to-know paperback visionary of the dark arts.’
A Dance for the Dead by Nuzo Onoh
(Stygian Sky Media, 2022)
Reviewed by Phil Nicholls
Nuzo Onoh’s A Dance for the Dead is a fascinating blend of horror and fantasy, with a strong set of engaging characters. The novel is set in an African village, home to the king of the nearby clans. Onoh makes great use of this setting, weaving together mythology and the rhythms of life in rural Africa. It is the intense rivalries of this close-knit community that fuel the dramatic plot.
Diké, eldest son of the King, is leader of the powerful Ogwummi warrior cult and the apple of the King’s eye. However, Diké’s younger brother, Ife Feather Feet, prefers dancing and palm wine to the responsibilities of adulthood. When the King asks Diké to kidnap Ife and push him into marriage, Ife arranges with the unpopular Emeka to kidnap Diké first and delay any threat of marriage.
Twice Cursed edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane
Reviewed by John Dodds
Ever wondered what happens to key characters in fairy tales after the main story has concluded or how they could be interpreted in other ways? Well, those stories form the main thrust (though not in every case) of the tales in this second volume of the Cursed series, Twice Cursed.
Given the available space, I won’t attempt to summarise and review all the stories herein, but I will try to capture some elements that I hope will engage your interest in reading what is an utterly compelling, disturbing, unusual, beautifully written anthology.
We kick off with short, sharp shock of a tale by Joanne Harris, “The Bell” about a woodcutter’s son with aspirations to change his life, but a rescue mission he undertakes has serious consequences: “Before you ring the bell…be sure to know what tune it plays”.
The Blackhart Blades by David Gullen
(Newcon Press, 2023)
Reviewed by Steven French
This is a whimsical slice of fantasy involving the usual suspects: a gang of good-hearted mercenaries, known as Blackhart’s Blades, are taking home the heart of their former leader, when, in need of money, they decide to take on one more job while crossing a remote mountain kingdom. The King of Zangomar having just died, the crown has passed to his daughter, Queen, formerly Princess, Zaphron. However, as the Steward Sieur Bon Banacort explains, in between reciting his own bad poetry, Zaphron rushed to her rooms at the top of one of the castle’s towers the day after her father’s death and hasn’t been seen since. That very same night, the kingdom’s Treasury was emptied and the General of its army, so-called ‘Black’ Talahan, retreated to Hardknot Keep, where he is currently holed up, refusing to come out. The Blades’ mission, should they choose to accept it, is to kill Talahan, return the gold to the Treasury and persuade Queen Zaphron to show herself, although Banacort doesn’t seem that bothered about that last bit. A further pinch of spice is added to the stew by the threat that Zangomar faces from Veng the Usurper whose army is massing on the border. And, it turns out, Hardknot Keep occupies the ‘pinch-point’ at the mouth of the valley which offers the only passable route for such an army to march into the kingdom.
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