What I Read in March

With all that happens around a person's 40th birthday, I somehow managed to find some time to read some excellent short fiction in March. The ones included below come from a variety of online magazines but I'm not going to pretend that this is an exhaustive list:

Things Crumble, Things Break by Nate Southard. Liked this one quite a bit. Chemical spill or accident leaves a town of crippled, their bones so fragile a gentle push could stave in a chest. A man and his girlfriend contemplate leaving their quarantine even as a heavy sadness fills in all of the weak parts of their determination. The horror here is in the ease of emotional investment in fragile, doomed beings.
In the Shade of the Pixie Tree by Rodello Santos (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) something about this reminds me of Lord Dunsany: a sweet but ultimately tragic tale of a young witch and the slow unwinding of a difficult spell. Fantasy that takes familiar tropes like pixies and witches and makes them new again will always win a place in my heart.
You will always have family by Kathleen Kayembe (NSF). Excellent long form story about a deteriorating family transplanted into America. Sort of a Faulkner Gothic as if told by Junot Diaz in a very macabre mood.

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Also, I got a nice surprise today in the mail - the physical copy of the anthology, "Book of Blasphemous Words," my story "Killing the First Gods," appeared in. If you're inclined to read a melancholy story of the dead gods of the Upper Paleolithic, this story and others included may be up your alley.

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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...

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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, ...

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