Make no mistake, this is a fine collection, but it’s an unfortunate fact: If you bought and enjoyed the Strahan and your...
A fourth annual anthology from this editor, and not to be confused with its rival, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, edited by Jonathan Strahan, which appeared in April 2012.
Of the 29 mostly top-quality offerings, no less than six of what are arguably among the best stories here—perhaps inevitably—also appeared in the rival volume: Karen Joy Fowler’s “Younger Women,” Kij Johnson’s “The Man Who Bridged the Mist,” Paul McAuley’s “The Choice,” K.J. Parker’s “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong,” Robert Reed’s “Woman Leaves Room” and E. Lily Yu’s “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees.” That disappointment aside, there’s plenty of great writing and dazzling ideas among the rest: “The Silver Wind” by Nina Allan, a wonderful yarn of a strange genius in an alternate-world London; a Martian odyssey from John Barnes; a stunning take on the essential tragedy of the vampire condition, “Late Bloomer” by Suzy McKee Charnas; the riveting and surpassingly strange “Walking Stick Fires” by Alan DeNiro; a tale of World War II, Indian magic and a blacklisted writer, Bradley Denton’s “The Adakian Eagle”; historical time travel from Theodora Goss; “Ghostweight” (Yoon Ha Lee), an ugly war on a distant planet; a weird life-after-death yarn from Rachel Swirsky; a typically elliptical and engrossing tale of fairyland from Catherynne M. Valente; a woman under an evil enchantment, forced to bear children for her enemies (C.S.E. Cooney’s excellent “The Last Sophia”); urban fantasy from Kelly Link and other eclectic offerings from Jonathan Carroll, Alexandra Duncan, Neil Gaiman, Gavin J. Grant, Kat Howard, Vylar Kaftan, Margo Lanagan, Chris Lawson, Marissa Lingen, George Saunders, Lavie Tidhar and Genevieve Valentine. The duplicates are worth re-reading too, of course.
Make no mistake, this is a fine collection, but it’s an unfortunate fact: If you bought and enjoyed the Strahan and your budget is limited, you’ll probably think twice about this one.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60701-344-0
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Prime Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
The narrator is researching for his book, The Day the World Ended, when he comes up against his karass, as he later understands it through Bokononism. It leads him to investigate Dr. Hoenniker, "Father of the A-Bomb," whom his son Little Newt says was playing cat's cradle when the bomb dropped (people weren't his specialty). The good doctor left his children an even greater weapon of devastation in ice-nine, an inheritance which won his ugly daughter a handsome husband; little Newt, a Russian midget just his size for an affair that ended when she absconded with a sliver of ice-nine; and made unlikely Franklin the right hand man of Papa Monzano of San Lorenzo, a make-believe Caribbean republic. On the trail of ice-nine, the narrator comes in for Papa's death and is tapped for the Presidency of San Lorenzo. Lured by sex symbol Mona, he accepts, but before he can take office, ice-nine breaks loose, freezing land and sea. Bokonon, the aged existentialist residing in the jungle as counter to the strong man, formulates a religion that makes up for life altogether: since the natives are miserable and there is little hope for changing their lot, he takes advantage of the release of ice-nine to bring them a happy death. The narrator's karass is at last made clear by Bokonon himself, leaving him to commit a final blasphemy against whoever is up there. A riddle on the meaning of meaninglessness or vice versa in a devastation-oriented era, with science-fiction figures on the prowl and political-ologies lanced. Spottily effective.
Pub Date: March 18, 1963
ISBN: 038533348X
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1963
The open-ended nature of the ending suggests that the clan war is not yet over; it’ll be interesting to see what course Lee...
Two clans fueled by the magical power of jade battle for control of an analog of mid-20th-century Hong Kong.
Clan soldiers have a specific genetic affinity for jade not shared by most outsiders, which grants them strength and shielding, among other magical powers. Kaul Sen, the former Pillar (head) of the No Peak clan, has retired, and the new Pillar, Kaul Lan, doesn’t quite inspire the fear and loyalty garnered by his legendary grandfather or his late war hero father. His younger brother, Kaul Hilo, is an effective Horn (chief enforcer), but he’s also rash and impulsive. Sensing weakness in her rival, Ayt Madashi, the ruthless Pillar of the Mountain clan, begins a campaign to destroy No Peak and take total control of the island nation of Kekon. The setting suggests that this crime-thriller/fantasy might find inspiration in history and fiction about the triads, and perhaps it does, but it also clearly leans heavily on elements drawn from The Godfather. Some examples (beyond the general plot of crime families battling for supremacy): an adoptive member of the Kaul family is kidnapped by the Mountain to serve as intermediary; the Mountain wants to sell drugs and initially seeks No Peak’s help with the business; the character of Hilo bears some similarity to Sonny Corleone, while the third Kaul grandchild, Shae, traces part of the path of Michael Corleone (she’s spent years outside the clan pursuing her own interests but her loyalties drag her back when tragedy strikes). Despite those beats, Lee's (Exo, 2017, etc.) novel has its own story to tell; an intriguing confluence of history, culture, and biology shapes both the characters and their fates.
The open-ended nature of the ending suggests that the clan war is not yet over; it’ll be interesting to see what course Lee charts next.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-44086-8
Page Count: 600
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
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