Among Others
Morwenna is an odd girl. At least that’s how she perceives herself. And it may very well be true since the other girls at the English boarding school have confirmed the points against her: she reads endless stacks of SF, she uses a cane as the result of a lame leg, she’s from Wales so doesn’t have a posh accent, and her mother is a witch.
This oddity means that the girls leave her alone, which is fine with Mor, but it also leaves her lonely. And she has many reasons to feel lonely. Her parents divorced when she was young, so she barely knows the father just recently come into her life. She ran away from home to get away from her evil mother, leaving behind a beloved grandfather. And her twin sister died mere months ago.
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Pariah
Bob Fingerman’s PARIAH (Amazon) has been sitting on our to-review list for a while now. We were just so thoroughly bummed out by it that after finishing it we were just too depressed to get any momentum going on a review.
Let’s get the introduction out of the way. PARIAH is a zombie book. Another one. Now that alone should tell you that there were conflicting opinions on the book. Steve loves zombies and Nick thinks they have been played out. However the book didn’t really satisfy either of us.
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The Buntline Special
The Wild West. Dusty towns. Empty streets. Tumbleweed rollin’ ‘cross the prairie. Tombstone, Arizona. Ain’t nothin that better describes it. But this ain’t no normal town. No. It’s got electric cars. Magic Indians. Undead and vicious monsters alike. Read em all and weep, people, cause Resnick’s come to town.
THE BUNTLINE SPECIAL (Amazon) is a weird Wild West tale stripped out of the historical annals of the region and twisted to decent effect by the master of science fiction, Mike Resnick. Think “electro-punk western” and you won’t be far off.
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True Grit
I grew up a John Wayne fan; I readily and unashamedly admit it. For whatever reason I absolutely loved his movies–The Longest Day, McLintock! and El Dorado being among my favorites. My grandparents owned a video rental store, so when I wasn’t watching Transformers, Voltron or G.I. Joe, I was watching John Wayne movies. It was with mixed emotions that I first saw the trailer for the Coen Bros. remake of John Wayne’s True Grit. Honestly I originally planned on sitting this movie out. You just don’t remake John Wayne. Right?
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Interview with Ian C. Esslemont
We were recently offered the opportunity to interview Ian Cameron Esslemont (Cam), author of NIGHT OF KNIVES, RETURN OF THE CRIMSON GUARD, and STONEWIELDER. We first met Cam at World Fantasy back in 2009, and we were immediately impressed by his openness and enthusiasm. It was one of those situations where you meet an author for whom your exceptions are unrealistically high… only to be easily met, and then just as easily surpassed.
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Stonewielder
We were worried that STONEWIELDER (Amazon) wouldn’t quite live up to (or build upon) the greatness of RETURN OF THE CRIMSON GUARD. Ian C. Esslemont had set his own bar pretty high, so we kept our level of optimism well in check. Turns out it was all needless. STONEWIELDER is awesome.
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Return of the Crimson Guard
It is now safe to say that Ian C. Esslemont brings some serious excellence to the Malazan world. Perhaps the general consensus of the masses after reading his first novel, NIGHT OF KNIVES, was that his work wasn’t of the quality expected or that was used to from reading Steven Erikson’s work.
We don’t doubt Esslemont at all. He belongs.
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Night of Knives
When you read Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen, often you get a prologue giving you the narrow piece of history needed to understand the story about to be read. History in the Malazan series is an interesting thing. It has supreme importance, but we typically only see what has been built on the foundation of that history (or what was built upon the ruins of a “newer” history that was built upon an even older past). Personally, we love the series that Erikson is writing. It isn’t perfect, but it is awe-inspiring nonetheless.
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Our 2011 Hugo Ballot
The Elitist Book Reviews 2011 Hugo Ballot
Before we let you in on our opinions of the Hugo Awards, we are going to give you our picks. You’ll notice that we didn’t nominate in a few categories. Usually that means we either didn’t read anything in that category, or just didn’t feel like nominating. The Hugo Award nomination deadline is the 26th of March. If you attended WorldCon last year, or bought your membership to this year’s convention in Reno before the 31st of January, you can nominate–and we strongly suggest you do so. If you have already electronically voted, and forgot to put us on your list (GASP!!!) you can just recast your entire ballot and add us in before the deadline. We aren’t begging… oh who are we kidding, we’re on hands and knees here groveling!
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A Discovery of Witches
Debut author Deborah Harkness has been on my ‘to read’ list since her appearance at New York’s ComicCon fantasy author panel with the likes of Peter V. Brett, Naomi Novik, Brandon Sanderson, Jim Butcher, and Joe Abercrombie. Yeah, a newb (to the genre anyway) sitting amongst some of the most popular fantasy authors today. I had to know if she deserved being there.
In A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES (Amazon), Harkness takes all the urban fantasy romantic tropes and… uses them.
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