Future Lovecraft by Nick Mamatas

Average

This collection of shorts and poems on the theme of “fear the future” is not always very Lovecraftian and there are few stand out stories (Richard Mathieson Jr’s is a great story but I’m failing to think of any other stand out stories). On the whole it is interesting and varied but does suffer, like many disparate collections on a theme, a fair amount of unevenness.

Overall – one for fans of SF/Horror crossover and Lovecraft

The brides of Rollrock island Margo Lanegan

Good

Misskaella is an ugly child, something of a throwback according to the people of the island, when she reaches puberty and discovers that she has power of the local seal colony and can make seal-wives she uses this power to have vengeance for a childhood of slights. This is a multi-narrator tale told with a very deft touch by the author so that even though it is a collection of narratives it comes together and builds a brilliant whole. Lanegan explores male-female relationships via the plot device of selkies, needless to say men don’t come across so well. This is not a love tale, it is sad and spiteful and full of magic.

Overall - This is a great fantasy book and Misskaella’s story is very engaging.

Mechanique: A tale of the circus Tresaulti Genevieve Valentine

Brilliant

THE MECHANICAL CIRCUS TRESAULTI
FINEST SPECTACTLE ANYWHERE
MECHANICAL MEN beyond IMAGINATION
Astounding feats of ACROBATICS
The Finest HUMAN CURIOSITIES
The World has ever SEEN
STRONGMEN, DANCING GIRLS
& LIVING ENGINES
FLYING GIRLS, LIGHTER than AIR
MUSIC from the HUMAN ORCHESTRA
BARGAIN ENTERTAINMENT for ONE and ALL

Our story opens with a second person introduction of you visiting the circus and continues with several changes of POV and tense which could be jarring but is very much at the service of the story and the beautifully drawn world building. This is an achingly good story, told with an expert voice. We follow several characters and grow with them to live and love the circus which is like a large dysfunctional family. This is a steampunkesque world, set post collapse, where the circus travels the country but tries never to revisit places, or at least not within living memory. As we progress with the circus we are embroiled in the petty politics of the performers and gradually learn more about the world, getting back stories of the performers. I read this is in one sitting, picking it up in the morning and not able to put it down until it was finished, and what a read it was! Highly recommended.

Some parts of the past cannot be reclaimed, he knows. Better not to raise ghosts.

Overall – Beautiful, painful, joyous, adventurous tapestry to be savoured and devoured and thrust into the hands of all those who share your reading tastes…

A room of one’s own Virginia Woolf

Good

A famous feminist polemic based on talks and essays that Woolf created in answer to doing something on women in fiction. Why is there no female equivalent of Shakespeare? She posits the belief that until women have their own money and a room that they can retreat to without having to look after little ones then women were not able to find the time to write. Aphra Behn, George Elliott, the Brontes, Jane Austin and many many more female authors are discussed, some in detail, althouhgh this is a fairly short piece. This is an intelligent and well-argued theory and well worth reading. It was first published in 1928 and it is both interesting and sobering to see how far we have come since women got the vote and were legally allowed to have their own money. It is also galling to see how little we’ve moved on some things, such as the depiction of women in books.

Overall – very important and an easy and enjoyable read

Updated Clarion wordcount - so far 1790 words but now complicated by the fact I have to rework the story that's been accepted for the anthology (details on that soon)

http://clarionwriteathon.org/members/profile.php

Didn't get editor's choice in the 1000 words but my story will be published this week on Thursday :-)

http://1000words.org.uk/

Finally finished Darkmans by Nicola Barker and have moved on to Among Others by Jo Walton

June SF&F Female writers is almost over, next month I'll be sticking with female writers but will open it out to the women on the TBR pile some of which is non-fiction.

Busy bookish week this week -

Tonight - meeting at the Watershed about the "Kraken Rises" event at BFL on 19/10/13
Wednesday - Eugene Byrne & George Ferguson talk about Unbuilt Bristol
Thursday - Jo Hall launches The art of forgetting https://www.facebook.com/events/calendar#!/events/379378108830718/

and there is a Vala meeting

Friday - Yardstick event https://www.facebook.com/events/calendar#!/events/547749258597031/

Been out in Finland this week in the run up to the longest day. No book related news. Tomorrow is NFFD http://nationalflashfictionday.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/nffd-bulletin-10.html which I'm going to miss all the festivities as I'll be in a field in Wales.

Excited that 2 more of my stories have been accepted, news as to where you can see them will follow once I'm allowed to publicise although have had a rain of rejections recently too. Ah well, so it goes, one of my rejections went on to be accepted elsewhere though.

I'll be starting the write-a-thon on Sunday but am already behind really as I was supposed to do my outline already. I'll probably go above and beyond my word count on Sunday as I'll also work on the outline. I'll be using a tried and tested technique (that Steinbeck, one of my literary heroes, used) which is to write a few words unrelated to my main writing task. I'm planning on doing that here.

http://www.clarionwest.org/writeathon

still time to drop by and sponsor me -anything you can give will help. If you sponsor me $10 I'll let you have a copy of the eventual book (that's like buying a book for about £6.50)

I was really happy to see that the books from both Wordsworth and Penguin have arrived so we now have our stock of prizes for the BFL event I'm running on October 19th. More details of that in the coming weeks, it's a really exciting event with all sorts of great people involved.

The ocean at the end of the lane by Neil Gaiman

 

Good

 The event

I went to see Neil Gaiman talk about his new book The ocean at the end of the lane so this is both a review of the evnt and a review of the book. Toppings, who organised the event, got a coup as the book isn’t officially on sale until the 18^th. 1000 people gathered together to greet the author with thunderous applause once we’d all queued to a) get into the venue and b) buy our copies of the book (queuing was a feature of the evening). Neil was interviewed, did two readings and fielded about 20 questions from the audience and then people queued, some more than 3 hours, to get the book signed, which Neil did graciously and with good humour. He managed to compliment me on my t-shirt, which was nice. Since we queued for around 2 hours I got a good head start on reading the book, surprisingly few people were reading it in the queue though. I was over half way through by the time I got to the head of the queue. What did I learn? That novel length is 40,000 words (thanks to an audience prompt), that lot of companies went bust when Neil started working with them, that things are moving up the chain of command with the adaption of American gods (still my favourite Gaiman) and that Neil Gaiman has a loyal, vocal, dedicated fan base. It’s a very different story to when I went to a signing of Anansi boys in Bath and there were perhaps 20 people in the bookshop!

 The Book

Nobody looks like they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody….. And as for grown-ups…..I’m going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one in the whole wide world….. Except for Granny of course

 

We are in familiar territory with the book, there are fates (maiden, mother, crone) type characters (although not outright called so), cats (that move the plot along), children struggling with adult themes and a bit of horror. Gaiman said that this started as a short story, that grew into a novellete, that grew into a novella, that grew into a novel at 56,000 words. It is peculiarly of the author, no-one quite like him although there are shades of Chesterton there. It has the usual Gaimanesque themes of the mythic in ordinary objects, the ocean of the title and the Hempstock's, yet this time it is a glimpse of Neil’s private mythology as the book has an autobiographical genesis. The story is suitably horrific, told as reminiscence and therefore through the eyes of a child, yet we adults can interpret things the child narrator doesn’t understand. The plot (no spoilers here – go get your own copy, you won’t regret it) romps along and before you know it you have reached the end of the book closing the last page with a satisfied sigh.

 

Overall – Great for fans new or old, one of his better novels, recommended.

Had great fun at the Neil Gaiman event last night. Spent so long in the signing queue that I'd half finished the book by the time he signed it. Finished it this morning. Review to follow soon.

Continuing the geekness am off to see Much Ado about nothing, the Joss Wheedon version, tonight. Will blog about that Monday.

Off to Finland next week so plenty of reading time in airports etc. so going to finally tackle Darkmans. Before that though, continuing the June female SF&F read on LT http://www.librarything.com/topic/154893 I'm going to read the highly acclaimed Mechanique, a tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine