tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49569250130106396052024-03-13T10:59:05.173-07:00Golden Apples Of The WestJonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.comBlogger127125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-65320967405921522262020-02-03T09:03:00.000-08:002020-02-03T09:03:40.575-08:00Priya Sharma - All The Fabulous Beasts (2018)<br />
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“My wife has brine instead of blood. She’s full of the sea.
I can taste it in her sweat, her tears, her sex. She’s crafty and quick. She’s
lunar. She’s tidal.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“When we wake again as human beings she says, “Of course I
love, you, monster.””<o:p></o:p></div>
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Priya Sharma’s debut short story collection <i>All The Fabulous
Beasts </i>(2018) heralds a powerful new voice in horror and dark fantasy
fiction. The stories collected here are luminously beautiful with dark depths.
Sharma uses folklore, mythology and monsters to help us confront truly modern
anxieties around sexuality, embodiment, inheritance and guilt. Over 16 stories,
Sharma demonstrates her skill at constructing powerful and disturbing visions
using beautiful yet concise language, as well as drawing her readers into the
minds of a varied cast of troubled and troubling characters. The end result is
essential reading for anyone who loves horror, or enjoys their myths and
folktales with a healthy helping of darkness.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Transformation is a key theme in Sharma’s tales, and images
of the human body merged or converted into the animal recur throughout the
collection. ‘Fabulous Beasts’ tells of two women who can transform into snakes;
they have shed their previous identities like snakeskin so they can move on
from their abusive upbringing. ‘The Nature of Bees’ sees its protagonist
brought into an insectile family and groomed to be their new queen. ‘Fish Skins’
explores the relationship between a human fisherman and a mermaid, and the debt
they owe each other to be able to live together. The protagonist of ‘A Son of
the Sea’ undergoes a painful transformation resulting in a male birthing scene.
These stories use the animal to symbolise our uncomfortable relationship with
our bodies, the characters falling prey to uncontrollable desires, exploring
hidden aspects of their sexuality, or finding themselves learning a new and
challenging social language as their animal natures disrupt how they interact
with the human and the natural. <o:p></o:p></div>
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If Sharma’s transformations straddle the line between
frightening and enticing, her characters gaining something new and invigorating
in exchange for their humanity, <i>All The Fabulous Beasts </i>contains other
stories in which the body is not transformed but mutilated. In ‘The Anatomist’s
Mnemonic’, the protagonist’s fetishization of hands is taken to such an extreme
that when the woman of his dreams has hands that aren’t up to scratch, impromptu
surgery is the only answer. <i>The Show </i>updates Clive Barker’s <i>Books of
Blood </i>for the TV age, with the hosts of a fraudulent ghost hunting show
wind up accidentally finding more than they bargained for. ‘Rag and Bone’ imagines
a Liverpool ruled over by a vampiric elite who maintain their immortality by feeding
off the bodies of the poor and disadvantaged. Other stories feature
transformations gone wrong, such as the returned lover in ‘The Sunflower Seed
Man’, the vengeful revenant in ‘The Rising Tide’ who the protagonist cannot stave
off, or the man who has his shadow removed by a wronged servant in ‘The Absent
Shade’. Others focus on extraordinary people down on their luck. The woman in ‘Small
Town Stories’ can see the dead, but the murder of her mother and her best friend
by her father has paralysed her in time. ‘Pearls’ shows us Medusa and Poseidon
passing as human in the modern world, washed up and alienated.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A couple of the stories focus particularly on female
embodiment and sexuality, and ideas around gendered assumption, pregnancy and
childbirth. The protagonist in ‘Egg’ so desperately wants a child she makes a
deal with a witch, while ‘The Crow Palace’ explores similar ideas but from the
point of view of a changeling. Both stories offer a frank and in-depth
examination of the pressure to have children and fears around infertility, as
well as exploring the complexities of the parent/child relationship, especially
when the child does not match the preconceived ideas about family life that the
parent has. The stories compliment each other well, with the opposing
viewpoints of parent and daughter allowing Sharma to subtly explore these ideas
with depth and sympathy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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An undercurrent running throughout the collection is the
damage wrought by Western patriarchal colonialist attitudes. We can see this in
the casual disregard the rich have for the lives they feed on in ‘Rag and Bone’.
This comes to the surface in several of the more powerful stories in the collection.
‘The Ballad of Boomtown’ explores how the selfishness and indulgence of investors
have cursed an abandoned development town in Ireland, both on a personal and an
institutional level. The au pair in ‘The Absent Shade’ is from a poor
background, forced to work for a rich family where she is casually seduced by
the father and loses her job because of the son’s jealousy. ‘The Englishman’
explores cross-cultural identity, and the feeling of being part of two cultures
but feeling welcome in neither. <o:p></o:p></div>
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For all the fantastic nature of much of the horror of these
stories, Sharma’s deft characterisation and vivid sense of place means that
they always contain an element of the real and the relatable. Sharma makes good
use of her settings, from Liverpool and its environs to Ireland and Wales, all
vividly drawn and with a lived-in feel. The depth of her characters makes the
reader engage with them, however unsympathetic, dark or disturbed they become. <i>All
The Fabulous Beasts </i>is a powerful and engaging collection, one whose
stories will haunt the reader long after they have turned the last page. I look
forward to reading whatever Priya Sharma writes next.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-16524782327247589072018-11-14T07:38:00.002-08:002018-11-14T07:38:49.355-08:00Blogging The MastersSo, long time no update. I have been writing in the meantime, continuing with the reviews for Fantasy Faction, Gingernuts Of Horror and The Fantasy Hive, as well as conducting interviews, which has been wonderful and has given me the chance to speak with many of my literary heroes about their work. Unfortunately time constraints and health issues have meant that it's quietened down at the blog.<br />
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However that's not the only way my life has changed in the past couple of years. This September I went part time at the day job, so that I could study part time for a Masters in Science Fiction Literature at the University of Liverpool. I was absolutely thrilled to be accepted, coming from a science rather than a literature background, and have found the course so far to be fascinating and engaging. At the encouragement of some friends, I'm resuscitating the blog as a platform to talk about things related to the Masters as they occur to me. I'm hoping that this will help me formulate my ideas as I think about and digest these texts, and will help me map how my thinking about genre and literature evolve over the two years of the course. I'm also hoping that making the blog less of a formal thing, where I can record my ideas and impressions as they come to me, will help me to get back into the habit of doing it more frequently. I guess we'll see how it goes.<br />
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I write this in November, already halfway through the first semester, so it's not a complete record from the start. So far this year I have studied the Bodies in Space module, and the texts we have covered so far are:<br />
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Kim Stanley Robinson -<i> Red Mars</i><br />
Alastair Reynolds -<i> House Of Suns</i><br />
Nnedi Okorafor -<i> The Book Of Phoenix</i><br />
Marge Piercy -<i> He, She And It</i><br />
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with the following texts to come:</div>
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Greg Egan -<i> Diaspora</i></div>
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Bruce Sterling -<i> Schismatrix</i></div>
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There are also additional reading texts, some of which I have found incredibly stimulating:</div>
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Naomi Mitchison -<i> Memoirs Of A Space Woman</i></div>
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Sheri S. Tepper -<i> Raising The Stones</i></div>
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Richard Morgan -<i> Black Man</i></div>
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I'm not sure I'm likely to get around to talking about every one of these, but some of them have certainly raised things I'd like to spend time getting my head around, so we'll see what I get to. Given that I'm teaching myself a crash course in literary theory to catch up with the other students at the same time, and continuing with reviews and interviews, and working at the day job, I guess just watch this space and let's see what happens.</div>
<i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-58328804024662365162017-03-09T15:00:00.000-08:002017-03-09T15:00:05.267-08:00Kameron Hurley - The Stars Are Legion (2017)My review of 'The Stars Are Legion' by Kameron Hurley is up now on Fantasy Faction. This is an incredibly exciting new space opera, full of action and adventure. It also has an entirely female cast, features living generation ships and serves as a feminine reimagining of the hypermasculine hero's journey and various space opera cliches. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2017/the-stars-are-legion-by-kameron-hurley">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-10043830571197115692017-03-09T14:56:00.002-08:002017-03-09T14:56:51.903-08:00Kij Johnson - The Dream-Quest of Vellit Boe (2016)My review of 'The Dream-Quest of Vellit Boe' by Kij Johnson is up next in the Tor novellas. It is an imaginative feminist reinterpretation of Lovecraft's Dreamworlds stories that works as a great piece of Weird fiction in its own right. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2017/the-dream-quest-of-vellitt-boe-by-kij-johnson">Read more at Fantasy Faction through at the link</a>.<br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-26182097924948513712017-03-09T14:48:00.000-08:002017-03-09T14:48:24.952-08:00Nina Allan - The Race (2014)<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
"If you look at a broken camcorder
for long enough, its original purpose begins to seem obscure. Run
your fingers over the mounded black plastic, the exposed lens,
clouded now with dust, like a wide, dead eye. There's a maker's name
on the handle but you've never heard of them, and it's hard to
believe that an object with so little life in it ever did anything.
It's an exhausted artefact, a proof of something maybe, but you don't
know what of. You wonder if what you're holding in your hand has
floated up from the past, or arrived here from the future or from
somewhere else.</div>
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"When you look at it lying on a
rubbish dump with other broken things you feel a deep sadness. Almost
as if the world that ever thought to produce such a thing - your own
world - has outlived its usefulness."</div>
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There are books that come along and
rearrange your mental furniture. They so comprehensively inhabit the
inside of your head that upon finishing them you worry that you are
no longer the same person. Nina Allan's debut novel 'The Race' is one
such book for me. It is a novel that challenges what science fiction
is and can be. Through a series of stories that echo, reflect and
interlock but never explicitly link, 'The Race' explores the themes
of communication, empathy and identity. The whole thing is tied
together by Allan's luminous prose. The end result is powerful,
moving and profound.</div>
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'The Race' is made up of four
consecutive narrative strands. In the near future in the town of
Sapphire, a British seaside town made toxic by fracking, Jenna finds
herself more invested in the genetically engineered smartdog races
than usual when her brother Del's daughter Lumey goes missing and the
only way he has of raising the money to find her is by betting his
dog will win. In modern day Hastings, Christy writes stories about
the town of Sapphire to process the trauma of her collapsing family.
When her brother's girlfriend Linda disappears, she contacts Linda's
ex Alex in the hope of discovering the truth. Alex has left Hastings
and his past behind him, but is brought back to confront the ghosts
of his old life by Christy. And Maree, a gifted child raised in the
Croft, a government programme involved in smartdog control, must
undergo a dangerous journey across the sea, where she must face the
terrifying Atlantic whales before beginning her new life.</div>
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At first it might appear like the novel
has two sections set in the real world, bookended by two sections set
in Christy's fictional world. Jenna's concerns - her aggressive,
domineering brother, her absent mother, her dying father, Lumey's
lost innocence - echo Christy's, her fears and traumas transmuted
into fiction so that she can process and deal with them. However 'The
Race' resists such simple interpretations. Allan plays off the
assumption that the section set in our real, recognisable world is
the default, because of course this is all fiction, and all of the
characters are built from Allan's experiences and imagination. This
is highlighted by having the more fantastical sections begin and end
the novel. The ontological games do not stop there, however. At first
it appears as if Jenna's story exists in the recognisable future of
Britain. However as more and more details are hinted at, the
geography and history becomes more and more unfamiliar. By the time
smartdogs are revisited in Maree's section, an entirely new geography
has been introduced, as have the Atlantic whales, mysterious
creatures said by some to be portals to different universes and
possessing a cold alien intelligence.
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This is all in aid of the novel's deft
exploration of perspective and identity. Christy and Alex's sections
appear to take place in our world, and overlap in a more
straightforward way. Christy suspects her brother Derek of murdering
Linda, and reaches out to Alex to find the truth. However Linda's
fate remains ambiguous. Christy and Alex both saw different parts of
Linda's story, and because of their different perspectives they come
to completely different conclusions. A simple twist of perspective -
Christy never seeing Linda again, but Alex bumping into her in the
street - is all it takes to change a story from being sinister and
frightening to an uplifting story of two people moving on with their
lives. Similarly, Alex's memories of growing up in Hastings are very
different from Christy's, due to his perspective as a black man
growing up between his London and Nigerian heritage. A perspective
shift is how Christy has created Jenna's unfamiliar world, by putting
a slight twist on her familiar surroundings and life events. At the
end of her story, Maree discovers she is Lumey, kidnapped from her
family for the smartdog programme. Whilst at first this appears to be
a resolution of the original storyline, the names and timings and
geography all subtly don't match up; this is another Lumey from
another Sapphire, turned kaleidoscopically through another ninety
degrees.
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Another main theme of the novel is
communication and empathy. This is represented by the smartdogs,
genetically engineered greyhounds communicated with through mental
implants from their human owners. The children in the Croft are able
to communicate with the dogs directly without implants. The real
purpose of the government's experiments with these children is to
translate alien transmissions. The natural empathic communication
between the children and the dogs is contrasted with the novel's
broken characters, all of whom have difficulty communicating with
their families and loved ones. Christy and Jenna wind up isolated
from their families, whilst Alex's relationship with Linda
disintegrates due to lack of communication. All of the characters
find release in their art, the one medium that allows them to
communicate the emotions they are unable to process directly. This
emotional overspill perhaps explains the communications across
strands, the weird moments where the characters appear to make
emotional contact across universes.
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It is worth paying attention to the
books that Allan mentions in the course of the novel. Christy becomes
obsessed with 'The Chrysalids' by John Wyndham, another novel about
the race of psychic posthuman children who will replace us. Similarly
she mentions the Narnia books, which involve travel between different
worlds. Alex and Christy bond over a love of John Cheever's short
story 'The Swimmer', which hinges on a perspective change, the mind
of the protagonist shaping the environment he travels through. These
references act as signposts, hints to the savvy reader which give us
insight into the themes and structural games Allan is playing.</div>
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I originally read 'The Race' in the
NewCon Press edition. The Titan edition from 2016 adds an extra
section at the end, an appendix entitled 'Brock Island'. This section
follows another Maree, turned through another kaleidoscope turn,
returning to Brock Island for the funeral of her friend Dodie who she
traveled with on her original journey, where she discovers the work
of Laura Christy, a disappeared artist who became convinced she had a
twin from another universe. Once again the narrative strands link up
thematically but not linearly. Maree's character arc here is the
opposite of her decision at the end of her original section. However
the themes of communication resurface again, with the implication
that the untranslated alien transmissions are actually attempts to
communicate from alternate universes. The key to the translation, and
perhaps to the novel's recurring images, are provided by the
sequences of an abacus in one of Christy's paintings, art achieving
here what the intellect cannot.
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'The Race' calls to mind some of the
more ambitious explorations of the spaces between fantasy and
reality, in particular 'The Affirmation' by Christopher Priest and M.
John Harrison's Viriconium stories. However what is most striking
about it is its originality. In its exploration of the power of art
to imagine alternate selves, to reveal the shifting and changing
narratives we use to give ourselves the illusion of continuous
selfhood, 'The Race' tells us something profound about reality and
our relationship to it. We are all inhabitants of our own individual
alternate universes which may touch but never truly link up. With any
luck, and with the help of great art, perhaps we can successfully
communicate across them.</div>
Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-84394874830202552462017-02-06T13:34:00.001-08:002017-02-06T13:34:32.786-08:00Nnedi Okorafor - Binti (2015)Bringing us up to date, my review of 'Binti' by Nnedi Okorafor is up now on Fantasy Faction. The most decorated of the Tor novellas, 'Binti' is a space opera coming of age tale about the importance of empathy and communication between peoples. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2017/binti-by-nnedi-okorafor">Read more at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-55633186026369051422017-02-06T13:31:00.003-08:002017-02-06T13:31:46.232-08:00Nisi Shawl - Everfair (2016)The start of this year has been slow for me, but in February I have reviewed 'Everfair', Nisi Shawl's steampunk alternate history in which the British socialist Fabian society and African American missionaries set up a Utopian society in the Belgian Congo for the victims of King Leopold II’s atrocities and escapees from the slave trade. It is a novel full of hope that nevertheless explores its characters' relationships with unflinching honesty. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2017/everfair-by-nisi-shawl">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-80399313137158916412017-02-06T13:03:00.000-08:002017-02-06T13:03:25.929-08:00Cassandra Khaw - Hammers On Bone (2016)In December I reviewed Cassandra Khaw's 'Hammers On Bone'. This excellent addition to the Tor novella series explores the common ground between noir detective fiction and Lovecraftian horror, whilst dissecting the very real horrors of domestic abuse. It's an incredibly imaginative piece of Weird fiction in its own right, wonderfully written and full of unsettling touches. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/hammers-on-bone-by-cassandra-khaw">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-53354823667269790912017-02-06T12:57:00.001-08:002017-02-06T12:57:50.719-08:00Ken Liu - The Wall Of Storms (2016)Next up was Ken Liu's 'The Wall Of Storms', book two in the wonderful Dandelion Dynasty series. 'The Wall Of Storms' is a worthy follow up to '<a href="http://goldenapplesofthewest.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/ken-liu-grace-of-kings-2015.html">The Grace Of Kings</a><br />
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', which expands on the themes of the former even as it adds new characters and a greater threat. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/the-wall-of-storms-by-ken-liu">Read more through at the link.</a>Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-81419674919923073642017-02-06T12:54:00.000-08:002017-02-06T12:58:08.179-08:00Guy Haley - The Emperor's Railroad (2016)Once again I have been remiss in updating the blog, I can only plead the rest of life getting in the way and apologise. So here are some posts that I have missed. First up in the Tor novella series was Guy Haley's 'The Emperor's Rairoad', an inventive mix of Dying Earth Fantasy, zombie post-apocalypse fiction and Western. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/the-emperors-railroad-by-guy-haley">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-60137791061233184472016-10-15T15:02:00.002-07:002016-10-15T15:02:56.443-07:00Foz Meadows - An Accident Of Stars (2016)My review of 'An Accident Of Stars', the wonderful new portal Fantasy by Foz Meadows and book one in her Manifold Worlds sequence, is up on Fantasy Faction. I absolutely adored this book, which manages to be both a fun, action-packed Fantasy adventure with well-written and likeable characters as well as a demonstration of the power of stories to imagine a world different from our own, to let us know that things don't have to be this way. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/an-accident-of-stars-by-foz-meadows">Read more through at the link.</a><div>
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Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-52317679811990575732016-10-15T14:55:00.003-07:002016-10-15T14:55:56.351-07:00Emily Foster - The Drowning Eyes (2016)Well, my ambitions to keep up with the blog have fallen by the wayside. September saw the next installment of my Tor novellas reviews up on Fantasy Faction. This time it's 'The Drowning Eyes', a compelling maritime adventure story with a diverse cast of pirates, mercenaries, and witches and wizards who control the weather. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/the-drowning-eyes-by-emily-foster">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-41730039778135973482016-08-25T13:29:00.002-07:002016-08-25T13:29:47.013-07:00Keith Yatsuhashi - Kojiki (2016)My review of 'Kojiki' by Keith Yatsuhashi is up on Fantasy Faction today. It's an enjoyable Fantasy epic that draws as much from Japanese mythology and pop culture as it does from Tolkien. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/kojiki-by-keith-yatsuhashi">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-26586326888586809182016-08-18T09:59:00.001-07:002016-08-18T09:59:18.089-07:00Tor Novellas: Mary Robinette Kowal - Forest Of Memory (2016)Today my review of Mary Robinette Kowal's 'Forest Of Memory', another Tor novella, is up at Fantasy Faction. The novella looks at how our relationship with technology is supplanting our relationship with nature, and has many pertinent things to say about the fetishisation of nostalgia and our dependence on digital technology. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/forest-of-memory-by-mary-robinette-kowal">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-14098138638739270482016-08-17T14:04:00.002-07:002016-08-17T14:04:38.923-07:00Indra Das - The Devourers (2016)My first ever solo review for Ginger Nuts Of Horror is up on the website today. I'm reviewing Indra Das' intense and striking werewolf novel, 'The Devourers'. Drawing heavily from Hindu mythology and flitting between modern day and seventeenth century India, 'The Devourers' is richly imagined and steeped in India's history. Its exploration of liminal states, transitions, and deaths and rebirths is striking and powerful, and it subverts expectations about gender and sexuality. However what really stays with the reader is Das' beautiful writing, lyrical and evocative, with an almost hallocenogenic intensity. Das is able to describe the most horrific scenes in excruciatingly graphic detail, all whilst couched in the most sumptuous prose. <a href="http://gingernutsofhorror.com/fiction-reviews/the-devourers-by-indra-das">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-87688511056710270322016-08-17T13:59:00.000-07:002016-08-17T13:59:03.778-07:00Ada Palmer - Too Like The Lightning (2016)July also saw my review of Ada Palmer's 'Too Like The Lightning' at Fantasy Faction. Palmer is a historian, and her eye for sociological detail and political intrigue runs through this fascinating and unique science fiction novel, which explores a new age of Enlightenment in the Twenty-Fifth Century. Her fascination with how people could build a better world, coupled with a realisation of how fragile a better world could be and how much could go wrong, makes this an ambigious utopia comparable to Samuel R. Delany's 'Triton' or Ursula Le Guin's 'The Left Hand Of Darkness'. However Palmer very much has her own distinctive voice. I find myself very much looking forward to the sequel. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/too-like-the-lightning-by-ada-palmer">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-76826837183319298642016-08-17T13:51:00.000-07:002016-08-17T13:51:17.203-07:00Tor Novellas: Victor LaValle - The Ballad Of Black Tom (2016)So, late with the updates again. Apologies all round. My review of Victor LaValle's excellent subversion of H. P. Lovecraft, 'The Ballad Of Black Tom', went up on Fantasy Faction in July. Set behind the scenes of' The Horror At Red Hook', Lovecraft's most offensively racist story, 'The Ballad Of Black Tom' brilliantly dissects Lovecraft's racism whilst paying tribute to the imagination displayed in his stories. It is a timely and powerful critique of Lovecraft, whilst being a work of imaginative Weird fiction in its own right .<a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/the-ballad-of-black-tom-by-victor-lavalle">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-6562281559086525982016-08-17T13:42:00.002-07:002016-08-17T13:42:57.870-07:00Urban Fantasy at Ginger Nuts of HorrorI am thrilled to announce that I will now be writing for Ginger Nuts of Horror, a fantasic website covering all manner of Horror fiction. My first article, written in collaboration with my talented co-workers at the site, is a piece on Urban Fantasy, in which we all talked about our favourite Urban Fantasy works. No surprises that my section is the one on M. John Harrison's Viriconium. <a href="http://gingernutsofhorror.com/features/the-urbane-guide-to-urban-fantasy">Read more at the link.</a>Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-87632800136344953542016-06-28T10:56:00.002-07:002016-06-28T10:56:53.265-07:00Kat Howard - Roses And Rot (2016)Today my review of Kat Howard's 'Roses And Rot' is up at Fantasy Faction. This is a glorious tribute to fairy tales, drawing heavily from the Child Ballads but touching on everything from Disney to Shakespeare to tell the story of two sisters who attend a prestigious arts school that has secret links to the world of Faerie. Kat Howard gets the Fae right, which is crucial in these kind of stories, and I will happily compare this book to favourites like Diana Wynne Jones' 'Fire & Hemlock' and Ellen Kushner's 'Thomas The Rhymer'. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/roses-and-rot-by-kat-howard">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-90253772113342774602016-06-28T10:52:00.002-07:002016-06-28T10:52:18.653-07:00Sarah Pinborough - The Language Of Dying (2013)This month I have also reviewed Sarah Pinborough's novella, 'The Language Of Dying'. This is a deeply personal work about an unnamed narrator who is looking after her dying father. Beautifully written and unflinchingly observed, it is a work that defies easy categorisation, but has much that is profound, troubling and refreshingly honest to say about our mortality, and the unexpected courses our lives take. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/the-language-of-dying-by-sarah-pinborough-2">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-80094006196835456212016-06-28T10:46:00.000-07:002016-06-28T10:48:17.603-07:00Seanan McGuire - Every Heart A Doorway (2016)Once again I must apologise for the lack of regular updates. Will try to keep on top of those. Anyway, earlier in the month I reviewed Seanan McGuire's heartwrenching tribute to portal Fantasy and the children who return from magical worlds, 'Every Heart A Doorway', over at Fantasy Faction. I absolutely loved this book, it mashes up genres with glee and interrogates what it is about portal fantasies that makes them so universally appealing, whilst exploring issues of mental health, gender and identity. The end result is beautifully written and exquisitely moving. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/every-heart-a-doorway-by-seanan-mcguire">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-65997556456286778372016-05-21T06:58:00.002-07:002016-05-21T06:58:28.720-07:00Thomas Olde Heuvelt - HEX (2016)My review of 'HEX' by Thomas Olde Heuvelt is up at Fantasy Faction. Olde Heuvelt is a bestselling author in the Netherlands, but this is his international debut. It's a chilling and unsettling Horror story about how quickly fear can spread through a community of normal, down to earth people and cause them to do all manner of terrible things. It's also an exploration of the tropes and ideas around witches, from history through to Horror through to the fairy-tale, as well as a modern Horror story that makes good use of modern technology and how it shapes our lives.<a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/hex-by-thomas-olde-heuvelt"> Read more at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-7388596893336555952016-05-21T06:54:00.001-07:002016-05-21T06:54:17.764-07:00Tor Novellas: Kai Ashante Wilson - The Sorcerer Of The Wildeeps (2015)I am thrilled to announce a new series of articles I shall be running at Fantasy Faction, in which I review the Tor novellas line. Tor have launched a line of novellas, aiming to promote this shorter medium, and focusing on bringing new authors from diverse backgrounds to attention as much as more established names. I really like this series because the shorter novella form frequently allows writers to experiment and take risks that they might not be so comfortable taking with longer works, resulting in a number of really interesting and exciting reads. First up is 'The Sorcerer Of The Wildeeps' by Kai Ashante Wilson, a writer whose short fiction I have admired for some time. Here he experiments with the forms and assumptions of the Sword and Sorcery genre to create a beautifully written tale of bisexual and gay love with a diverse cast. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/the-sorcerer-of-the-wildeeps-by-kai-ashante-wilson">Read more at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-70181323889997110252016-05-21T06:46:00.001-07:002016-05-21T06:46:30.691-07:00Ken Liu - The Paper Menagerie And Other Stories (2016)Apologies for the radio silence, I have been writing but a combination of poor internet and real life have prevented me from updating the blog as regularly as I should. In the meantime, my review of Ken Liu's short story collection 'The Paper Menagerie And Other Stories' has gone up at Fantasy Faction. I have been a fan of Liu's short fiction for a while, and was very impressed by his novel-length debut, 'The Grace Of Kings'. The stories collected in 'The Paper Menagerie' cover a staggering stylistic and emotional range, and confirm Liu as one of the masters of the form. <a href="http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/the-paper-menagerie-and-other-stories-by-ken-liu">Read more through at the link.</a><br />
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<br />Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4956925013010639605.post-34569468009285322962016-04-12T12:47:00.001-07:002016-04-12T12:47:22.219-07:00Peter Tieryas - United States Of Japan (2016)"Every great empire has a mountain of corpses underneath it as a foundation. The Romans, the Chinese - even the Americans wiped out millions of Indians and enslaved the African natives. No one remembers those who were sacrificed. Its like our earthquakes that wipe away the glories of the past. We've used the atomic torpedo on the Americans three times and they were all launched on the same day. There's still fierce debate about whether it was even necessary. The Americans were ready to surrender."<br />
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'United States Of Japan' is an alternate history that manages to bring something fresh to the well-mined 'Axis wins World War II and rules the USA' seam whilst asking probing and pertinent questions about Imperialism, censorship and torture. Directly in dialogue with 'The Man In The High Castle', Philip K. Dick's iconic novel with a similar premise, where Dick imagines a relatively benign Japanese occupied West Coast in comparison to the Nazi occupied East, author Peter Tieryas is more keenly aware of the downsides of the Hirohito Japanese Empire, from its rigid social hierarchy to its war crimes, as well as the horrors suffered by Japanese Americans during the war. He also has a keener understanding than Dick of Japanese pop culture. The end result is a book that is both an exciting, pulpy adventure full of action, violence and giant mecha fights and a thoughtful and disturbing dissection of the tactics by which world powers are forged and maintained.<br />
Captain Beniko Ishimura is a video game censor. Infamous for turning in his parents as traitors when he was still a child, now he is a layabout and womaniser, overlooked for promotion by his superiors because of his attitude. His life changes when Agent Akiko Tsukino of the Tokubetsu Koto Keisatsu, the Japanese secret police, enlists his help in tracking down General Mutsuraga, whom Beniko served under in San Diego. Mutsuraga is suspected of being behind 'United States Of America', the subversive but highly popular new video game that imagines a world in which the Americans won the war, which the George Washingtons, a desperate band of American rebels, are using as their latest propaganda tactic. Their journey to the heart of San Diego is an exploration of the seedy underbelly of the Empire, the limits of Akiko's conviction in her beliefs, and the ghosts of Beniko's past.<br />
'United States Of Japan' opens with the Japanese armed forces in America liberating the Japanese Americans from the internment camps. The spirit of victory and jubilation among the prisoners is soon shattered by the soldiers unceremoniously killing a woman for insulting the Emperor. This is Tieryas' approach in microcosm; in-depth knowledge of the horrors of World War II are used to show the sinister flipside to life in the United States of Japan. Each of these things in turn tells us something about our reality. The world in 'United States Of Japan', by the lat 80's, has advances in biotechnology far outstripping our own, with complex human-machine interfaces, cures for most cancers, and work being done on limb regeneration. But then Tieryas makes it clear where all these medical advances have come from by invoking <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731">Unit 731</a>, the Japanese army's biological and chemical warfare department that carried out lethal human experimentation, which in this alternate universe is still going strong. The impressive life-saving medical advances have been built on human suffering and death. This in turn reminds the reader that modern research on hypothermia and phosphene gas has referenced the <a href="http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedEx.html">Nazi deathcamp experiments</a>, and that the members of Unit 731 were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#American_grant_of_immunity">never brought to trial</a> in return for giving the Americans access to their research on bio-weapons. Similarly, the USJ is in possession of technology far more advanced than our own, with mobile personal computers and a rudimentary form of internet already in widespread use, not to mention the giant mechas. But again this technological advancement has been achieved and driven through years of war providing the funding and inclination, in much the same way that the American space programme was built on the rocket science of the Nazis. Thus the book, through the remove of its alternate history conceit, reminds us how many of our modern day creature comforts are tainted by the horrific legacy of the genocides of World War II.<br />
However 'United States Of Japan' isn't only concerned with the legacy of the past. Indeed any worthwhile alternate history doesn't only provide an engaging answer to the question, "What if?", it should also use that different perspective to shed new light on aspects of our own world. The book is also very much about the biggest anxieties facing the United States of America today: surveillance, torture, terrorism, and racism as a fallout of colonialism. The USJ is a surveillance state worthy of Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. Beniko's turning in of his parents even echoes a plot point from that book. The people live in fear of the secret police, and live in a world of censorship where history is rewritten. Echoing Winston's job rewriting old newspapers, Beniko works as a censor regulating video games. This demonstrates how Tieryas updates Orwell's paranoia for the digital age; part of Beniko's job as a games censor is monitoring people's choice of games and their choices within the game to root out subversive thought. Rather than betray themselves by seditious writing, the modern day potential revolutionary is more likely to be given away by their browser history. This ties into our current fears that the government could be tracking us via our internet profiles and IP addresses. Indeed, there is thematic significance in the George Washingtons spreading their revolutionary message via video game, the internet acting both as a tool for control but also as a space where subversive messages can be spread and insurrection can happen. It's also a powerful argument for video games being an artform in their own right, one where conversations about politics and how to build a better world can happen.<br />
One of the major themes of the book is the dehumanising nature of torture. Tieryas is correct in portraying torture not as a useful tool for garnering intelligence information, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/nov/04/2">which it isn't</a>, but as a tool used by brutal regimes for imposing fear, humiliation and control over victims. Part of Akiko's job in the Tokko is administering torture to suspects; the goal is rarely to get information but usually to frighten or punish those that the Tokko has already deemed guilty. Over the course of the book she finds herself subjected to her own methods when she is first captured by the George Washingtons and later framed by her own superiors. Despite the presence of SFnal forms of torture, like genetically engineered viruses designed to kill prisoners in the maximum amount of pain, many of the tortures portrayed in the book are more grounded, from 'excrement torture' to flesh eating ants to the interrogation techniques used by the agents. Tieryas excels in portraying torture deglamourised, in all its horror. It is the domain of the secret police not because of its value as an information gathering tool, but because it is part of the general architecture of fear and paranoia that powers a police state. As Akiko suffers through the pain and humiliation she inflicted on others, she comes to have a new found respect and empathy for her victims which makes her question her fanatical belief in the Emperor.<br />
'United States Of Japan' explores the West's fear of home-grown terrorism, and how this relates to the USA's and the United Kingdom's legacy of colonialism and imperialism. The George Washingtons are violent murderous insurgents, but Tieryas takes the time to show us where they are coming from. They are rebelling against an oppressive system of invading rulers who have overwritten their history and their culture and have imposed a racially segregated hierarchy upon them in which they are second class citizens. This is a direct reflection of the USA's and Britain's colonial past, the conflict engineered by the USJ in San Diego echoing these countries' abysmal record in the third world. Tieryas explores how the fallout from a racist and oppressive system can only be violence, the kicking back of people forced into impossible situations. It is this complexity that makes the book so compelling.<br />
All of which suggests that 'United States Of Japan' is heavy going; the impressive thing is that it manages to cover all this thematic ground in an enjoyable, pulpy action adventure. Tieryas takes us on a tour of the underbelly of USJ society, a trek through the grime and gunge of strip malls inhabited by sushi restaurants and hookers through to yakuza-run offshore video game tournaments. The books takes an infectious joy in showing the weird, wonderful and terrifying subcultures and characters that manage to thrive beneath the cracks of an oppressive dystopia. Like Dick's 'The Man In The High Castle', 'United States Of Japan' is interested in how people live in an intrinsically corrupt world. Nowhere is this more clear than in the struggles of its two main characters. Akiko's journey is one towards redemption; as she sees more of the hypocrisy of her own government and the secret police, and understands more of the pain and suffering she has been inflicting on people. she learns to question the things she has accepted all her life as the truth. Beniko's story is no less compelling; learning that he turned in his parents is the kind of thing that immediately distances a protagonist from the reader. However the more we get to learn about him and his history, the more we learn that much of what he shows the world is a front, and that underneath is someone who does actually have an admirable moral code. The final section of the book recontextualises his actions in a way that is both surprising and finally brings the character into clearer focus, ensuring that the characters as well as the world stay with the reader long after the book is finished.<br />
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Jonathan Thorntonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869566241814223777noreply@blogger.com0