The Warlock Effect by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2023)
Reviewed by Dave M. Roberts
The first page of this book is a ‘Reader’s Secrecy Covenant’, reminiscent of the announcement at the end of Dyson and Nyman’s play Ghost Stories in which the audience was asked not to reveal any details of the play. The reader starts by being implored not to reveal any revelations contained in the book. In this case, it’s actually a book within the book that the covenant strictly applies to. Even so, the reader is being set up with the expectation that there will be twists and revelations, and foreknowledge of these would spoil the experience. Whilst this is true of most good fiction, the reveals in this novel feel like the explanation for a stage illusion. Once understood most, if not all, of the magic has gone.
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Review from BSFA Review 21 - Download your copy here.
The Malevolent Seven by Sebastien De Castell
(Jo Fletcher Books, 2023)
Reviewed by John Dodd
Always liked the Magnificent Seven, and with that, always liked plays on the nature of that particular story, especially when they take a turn in a direction that wasn’t expected.
Enter Cade Ombra, stage right, as a mercenary mage, a wonderist, with powers far beyond those of mortal creatures, who has no interest in working for the greater good or saving those who cannot save themselves. If anything, he’s likely to be the one on the other side that the peasants need saving from.
Life Beyond Us edited by Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law and Susan Forest
(Laksa Media Groups, 2023)
Reviewed by Niall Harrison
Let's start with the verdict: Life Beyond Us is not a very good anthology.
I say this up-front because in concept and in some of the execution it is an attractive proposition. For one thing it is, thanks to a successful kickstarter campaign, a very big anthology—580 pages and, by my estimate, a decent chunk north of 200,000 words. For another, it is animated by a strong and evergreen theme—what it would mean to encounter non-human intelligence. It is also one of those occasional anthologies that pair science fiction stories with essays written by working scientists, in this case coordinated by the European Astrobiology Institute. These factors combined mean that there are certainly some notable and good things about Life Beyond Us and in it; but not enough, in my view, to justify the time spent with it.
Monsters Born and Made by Tanvi Berwah
(Sourcebook Fire, 2022)
Reviewed by Ksenia Shcherbino
As a researcher interested in hybridity and social constructs of monstrosity, I could not miss Tanvi Berwah’s new book, Monsters Born and Made. Monsters, angry teenage girls, and social inequality seem like a perfect hotpot mix to explore liminality and social exclusion, and the novel lives up to its recipe. It is fast-paced and engaging, it is full of violence and gore and teenage angst, but the questions it raises invite a slow read.
Hooked by A.C. Wise
(Titan Books, 2022)
Reviewed by Susan Peak
The Peter Pan story has fascinated many people since it was first written as a play in 1904 (it was published as a book in 1911). There have been several films of the book itself, and films which took the ideas further such as Hook (1991) which starred Robin Williams; there have been other books set in the story-world since 1987 (earlier work was always centred on the original story, probably for copyright reasons). Wikipedia has an interesting article on ‘works based on Peter Pan’, and a substantial amount of Peter Pan fanfic can be found on the main www.fanfiction.net site and on tvtropes.org. So, A.C. Wise is writing in a well-established tradition in her book, Hooked.
The Curator by Owen King
Reviewed by Phil Nicholls
In his second novel, King has created a fascinating fable that rewards close reading. The Curator has an urban setting that feels like second-world fantasy, but is presented as a fictional city on an island off Europe. King playfully nods at genre conventions by insisting that the city cannot be mapped.
The whimsically unnamed city is a mix of Dickensian London and the setting of Gormenghast, yet London is specifically mentioned, so cannot be this city. In a sense, this could be any European city of the 19th century, with grand museums, factories, rotting docks and a crowded slum district.
A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin
Have you ever watched a flowering tea, for example, a Lily Heart flowering tea bulb, unfurl in a glass teapot in front of your eyes? Fragrant rose and lily flowers, all perfectly tied up with premium green tea from Fujian’s famed spring harvest? This is the same feeling that you get reading Judy I. Lin’s A Magic Steeped in Poison, a finely crafted story of love, loss, palace intrigue and tea. Tea smells of all sorts infuse its pages—I swear I could taste the exotic blends that, according to the author, can make the master of the tea ceremony (or shennong-shi, masters of magic, as they are called in the book) connect to people’s hearts and read their minds. In this sense it reminded me of Becky Chambers’ A Psalm For the Wild-Built—another exploration of tea-brewing as a form of magic bringing people together. Yet while the letter is set against a post-industrial post-apocalyptic background, the Lin’s book is a spectacular mix of South-Asian mythology, wuxia and Imperial palace intrigue. And tea.
Night, Rain, and Neon edited by Michael Cobley
(NewCon Press, 2022)
Reviewed by Graham Andrews
Night, Rain, and Neon is an anthology of original cyberpunk stories, issued on 1st July 2022 to commemorate the first publication of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the novel that defined, if not created, a whole new sub-genre of science fiction. From Michael Cobley’s Introduction: “Cyberpunk’s core function is about how the root of Humanity’s being adapts when our perceptions are retooled by technology. What happens when the edge of tech gets under your skin? What happens when the hottest and edgiest of tech become the playthings of the rich and powerful? Some guru once said that the worst of all human depravities isn’t doing bad things but making good people do bad things. How do we deal with the dangers and consequences if unchained power uses tech to turn people into weapons?”
Song of the Mango and Other New Myths by Vida Cruz-Borja
(Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2022)
Reviewed by Zhui Ning Chang
Vida Cruz-Borja is a much-anthologised writer, editor, artist, tarot reader, and conrunner, and a key voice in contemporary Philippine speculative fiction. Her second illustrated fantasy collection, Song of the Mango and Other New Myths, offers the best of her fiction writing across a decade.
In fifteen stories, Cruz-Borja takes readers on a compelling journey through the precolonial past to a magical realist present to a fantastic array of alternate worlds. Each work is accompanied by a beautiful illustration, created by different artists of Filipino heritage. As indicated by the title, many works reimagine alternate endings to classic tales and devise visions towards a more just, equal future. Cruz-Borja addresses this explicitly in her introduction, stating her belief in a writer’s responsibility as a modern mythmaker towards readers in search of kinder worlds. The writing is inventive, formally playful, and reveals a clever, thoughtful mind carving out a fresh and nuanced perspective.
Hospital by Han Song
(Amazon Crossing, 2023)
A Primer to Han Song edited by Eric J. Guignard
(Dark Moon Books, 2020)
Based on what has appeared in English so far, Han Song’s best and most characteristic stories are defined by their involution. Take the novelette “Transformation Subway” (2003, trans. Nathaniel Isaacson). It opens straightforwardly: Zhou Xing is squashed between other passengers on his Monday rush-hour subway train. “Only the existence of a clearly defined endpoint”, we are told, “gave him the necessary patience and tenacity to tolerate the situation”. But on this Monday, the endpoint turns out to not be so clearly defined. Gradually, the passengers realise their train is not passing through the expected stations; there is only an “abyssal blackness” outside the windows.
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