What I Read in January 2017

January was a busy month for me, to put it mildly. I attended Arisia 2017 and sat on a terrific panel about short fiction. I received word of two story acceptances (one listed in a previous post and the other forthcoming). There were also all of the distractions of a world veering somewhere between the "Dead Zone" by Stephen King and a cyberpunk dystopia by William Gibson.

And, of course, I read a whole bunch of awesome short stories, including a few I can recommend below.

Wooden Boxes Lined With the Tongues of Doves by Claire Humphrey. (Beneath Ceaseless Skies). When considering stories that revolve around magic, I really respond to writers that can somehow conjure what that magic is and how it works within the tight confines of a short story. To me, magic should feel like magic. In other words, waving wands and intoning spells doesn't really cut it. When magic is done in fiction, the result should feel inevitable. Pull a trigger and a bullet flies. I prize magical inevitability. This story's treatment of magic definitely surpasses that mark. A magician takes an apprentice and makes him a servant to his will, clipping from him all of the things that would free him. This reader left the story with a sense of great loss and terrible awe.
"The Twelve Rules of Etiquette at Miss Firebird’s School for Girls" by Gwendolyn Kiste (Mithila Review) Kiste's stories are always a treat - crafted with care and intensity, taking playful swipes at their own concepts. This fun flash piece begins as a list of instructions for students at a very special school for the magically inclined. The story dissolves its own structure by the closing paragraph, ending on a creepy but hopeful note.
Loneliness is in the Blood by Cadwell Turnbull ( Nightmare) My favorite "Nightmare" stories use the trappings of horror and the macabre to tell their own unique tales. Here a vampiric spirit known in the Caribbean as a soucouyant shares moments of its life. The loneliness refers to its own tragic fate, a creature driven to siphon the warmth and life of its victims all the while drifting farther and farther from any connection with the world not purely transactional.
Redcap by Carrie Vaughn (Nightmare) I first read about Redcaps from a giant and grisly book of fairies. Part of the Unseelie Court, Redcaps are notorious for attacking lost travelers, killing them, and dying their eponymous hats with their victim's blood. So from the title and set up of a little shepherd girl wandering afield, I thought I knew where this story was heading. What makes the story worthwhile is how all of these familiar details add up to a very different story by the end.
The Whole Crew Hates Me by Adam-Troy Castro. (Lightspeed) A crewman aboard a ship on a deep space mission awakens to the reality that his responsibility is to be hated and abused by every other crew member. Somehow this simple set up unwinds perfectly over the next 3500 words, never slowing down or losing focus. The scenario is dark but somehow presented with the right note of fatalistic comedy.

Review of R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before

First, a word about how I came to pick up the first novel in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing historical fantasy series. In short, after finishing "A Dance with Dragons," by George R.R. I googled what should I read next. This series came up. I mention this because it might serve as a usual gauge for what to expect from "The Darkness That Came Before;" people liking Martin's mix of history, in-depth characterization, dark subject matter, and world-building will probably like Bakker's work. People not fond of entire chapters devoted to the Byzantine political maneuvers, a dozen pages of appendices on characters, maps, and language trees, or character names with umlauts should avoid this book. Basically, the story of 'The Darkness That Comes Before," follows a warrior monk by the name of Anasürimbur Kellhus, who during a quest to find his father, becomes entwined with a Holy War against a nation of fanatical monotheists. The story is...

Death's End by Liu Cixin

Having recently finished the last book in Liu Cixin's instant classic "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, Death's End, I can only report a feeling of total amazement and awe. There is so much about this novel that blew my mind, that offered different and better ways of viewing the universe. This novel did what I wish more novels would, serve up a new universe entire, evoking beauty and horror, nobility and disgust, in a timeless monument to unfettered speculation. Obviously, in discussing the events of the last of a trilogy books, spoilers are to be expected. I am, however, going to try to avoid discussing much beyond the first 100 pages of the third novel. I read the translation of this novel, as ushered into being by the amazing talent of Ken Liu. Ken has written of a certain prickliness when it comes to translating work. He makes an effort not to anglicize the source material, not smudging away the occasional difficulties in bringing Cixin...

A Reaction to Peter Watts' "Echopraxia"

Peter Watts’ Echopraxia is a side-sequel to his previous hard sf horror novel Blindsight . Daniel Bruks, a biologist in the Eastern Oregonian desert, gets stuck in the middle of a war between a fugitive vampire and a cult of rewired post-humans called Bicamerals, ultimately kidnapped by them as they head towards the sun. The goal of post-human and vampire alike is to investigate a possible alien intelligence gaining strength there, to determine if it poses a threat, or offers a weapon for the two sides as they struggle for advantage. Bruks' goal is simple survival. Reading Watts is a simultaneously bracing and discouraging experience. Bracing because his depiction of the future and the oddities who inhabit it continue to get better and better, his plots more complicated and more involving, his characters less like sock-puppets for his ideas and more like actual human beings (or whatevers). Discouraging because Watts uses his considerable gifts, artistic and academic, ...

Ancient Logic

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