Editor Hayden (Starlight 2, 1999, etc.) deserves a medal: there hasn’t been an original anthology series so consistently...
Superior collection of 16 quirky, highly imaginative speculative short fictions, ranging from comic fantasy to hard science. Angels fly, fall, wound, kill, and mate with humans in many of the stories here, the strongest being Ted Chiang’s brilliant “Hell is the Absence of God,” which shows the perverse redemption fantasies of fundamentalist Christian sects being realized in all their grotesque cruelty. A group of aging Norse gods tweak their own mythology so they can get it right the next time in Greg van Eekhout’s “Wolves Till The World Goes Down.” Maureen F. McHugh’s scathing “Interview: On Any Given Day” examines a teenaged girl who loses more than her innocence when she has sex with a medically rejuvenated 70-year-old baby boomer. “In Which Avu Giddy Tries to Stop Dancing” has septuagenarian grandmaster D.G. Compton arguing that society should let some people stop dancing: that is, die with dignity. Andy Duncan reimagines Tolkien’s Bilbo Baggins as a blustering “Senator Bilbo.” A convicted child-killer demands to be crucified, as Jesus was—with comic results—in Terry Bisson’s cheerfully crass “The Old Rugged Cross.” Only Stephen Baxter’s alien adventure, “Sun-Cloud,” might have played better in the pulp mags; when “a mass of corpora, sub-corpora and shoals of trained impeller-corpuscles rose from the Deep in a great ring,” you want to call a plumber.
Editor Hayden (Starlight 2, 1999, etc.) deserves a medal: there hasn’t been an original anthology series so consistently satisfying since Damon Knight’s Orbit.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-86780-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A cut above the same-old, but hardly a classic.
Debut author Sanderson serves up an epic fantasy novel that is (startlingly) not Volume One of a Neverending Sequence.
Ten years ago, the magical city of Elantris fell under a curse, and the land of Arelon it once ruled has hit hard times. The mysterious transformation known as the Shaod, which falls on Arelenes at random and used to turn them into spell-wielding Elantrians, now leaves its victims half-dead husks, exiled to live in the ruined city. Even Prince Raoden, transformed overnight, finds himself imprisoned with the others—but he’s soon rallying the downtrodden and seeking out the source of the curse. Meanwhile, his betrothed, Princess Sarene of Teod (Sanderson’s got a tin ear for names), sets about modernizing the backward Arelish court, and thwarting the schemes of the spy-priest Hrathen of Fjorden, who plots to convert Arelon to his harsh Derethi faith. Sanderson offers an unusually well-conceived system of magic, but he cuts his characters from very simple cloth: only the Derethi agent Hrathen develops any intriguing depth or complexity. Still, the pages turn agreeably, the story has some grip and it’s a tremendous relief to have fruition in a single volume. (Not that sequels won’t be coming.)
A cut above the same-old, but hardly a classic.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-765-31177-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
Fans will love the second installment of this dark fantasy about very human characters beset by inhuman dangers.
When the world changes, will you change with it?
A boy who takes pleasure in causing pain meets a monster who can teach him to do much more. A Soulkeeper puts his reputation on the line to stop the abuse of soulless humans—while concealing his relationship with an "awakened" formerly soulless woman. A religious woman given unimaginable power over human souls by a monster struggles to determine right from wrong, faith from blasphemy. In a world where mountains walk, prayers can change the physical world, and magical creatures like talking rabbit-soldiers have awoken from a centurieslong slumber, no choice is simple. The Soulkeeper Devin has chosen to befriend creatures like the faery Tesmarie while his spellcasting brother-in-law, Tommy, believes the newly awakened magical creatures have as much right to the land as humans do. In a time when most humans are reacting with fear and anger to their changing world, seeing the world in shades of gray can be dangerous. Meanwhile, Devin’s sister, Adria, finds that her new powers are testing her faith and bringing up questions she’d rather not confront. As new magical threats to the human population arise, all of these characters will be pushed to their limits, and the decisions they make may determine the fate of humanity. Picking up where Soulkeeper (2019) left off, this second book in a planned trilogy raises the stakes for every character, complicating the moral choices they face. The plot rockets along from one magical battle to the next, but Dalglish deftly weaves in rich character development alongside all this action.
Fans will love the second installment of this dark fantasy about very human characters beset by inhuman dangers.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-41669-6
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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