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Wednesday reviews round-up for 1st September
Posted by Paul Raven on September 1st, 2010 at 13:34
I know I promised to stop going on about how fast the time flies by, but September? How the hell did September get here so fast? Someone’s been overclocking the simulation that houses my consciousness, I’m sure of it…
Setting my temporal angst aside for now, it’s another one-review week. Science writer and anthologist Henry Gee tackles a trio of books, among which is Timeswitch by John Gribbin:
Timeswitch is a return to the genre. It’s good old-fashioned, straight-down-the-line, Hard SF in the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke or Gregory Benford. It concerns scientists and science, time travel and time paradoxes, and the hardcore physics is front and centre. The schtick is this – British boffinry in the twentieth century is involved in a secret time-travel experiment in which one of their number goes back in time in an effort the derail the Industrial Revolution. The idea is to slow or prevent greenhouse warming. It soon becomes clear that we’re not talking about any twentieth century we know – this is an alternate Universe in which Harold won the Battle of Hastings, the British Empire rules, and science is far in advance of ours.
Alternative History is a respectable subgenre in SF, and one of which I am rather fond. One of my favourites is The Alteration by Kingsley Amis, an adventure that takes place in 1976 in an England in which the Reformation never happened. As you might expect, Amis scores in literary allusion where Gribbin rules in solid physics – and although you can see the endings of both books a mile off, the plotting is excellent. Particularly so in Gribbin’s book, where it’s tighter than a Liverpudlian Z-lister on daytime TV. The plotting has to be tight – loose ends in time-travel heists are liable to come back and bite you like a bull-terrier named Möbius.
Not bad, eh? And while we’ve got your attention (I know, I’m so sneaky!), here’s a video trailer for Gary Fry’s new novel, The House Of Canted Steps:
Creepy stuff… and not just because it mentions estate agents. ;)
The House Of Canted Steps will be released – alongside a bunch of other PS titles – at FantasyCon later this month, and there’ll be a PDF sampler available to our newsletter subscribers featuring teaser snippets from all seven of ‘em… so get yourself signed up, yeah?.
(Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!)
Wednesday reviews, plus World Fantasy Award nominations
Posted by Paul Raven on August 25th, 2010 at 15:07
Things have been quiet on the reviews front these last few weeks; all that’s in the ol’ digital postbag is a review of Paul Di Filippo’s Roadside Bodhisattva at The Future Fire, which suggests it might be better seen as a YA title with fabulist undertones:
Roadside Bodhisattva has a simple direct narrative style of storytelling; it is an easy read, probably comfortable for a sixteen year-old readership, as suggested by the narrative voice. [...] It is a little slow in places and the plot is convenient in others, but as you’d expect from a fable it points to depth whilst focussing on daily life, apparent simplicity and surface appearances.
Part of the fun of reading (and writing) reviews, for me at least, is to see how different readers read the same text… but let’s skip a debate on the Barthesian death-of-the-author for now – that’s convention-bar discussion fodder, without a doubt! – in favour of looking at the nominations list for this year’s World Fantasy Awards, which features a very gratifying number of PS titles and creators:
Best Novella:
- Andy Duncan for The Night Cache
- Paul Witcover for “Everland”, in Everland and Other Stories
Best Short Story:
- Paul Park for “The Persistence of Memory; Or This Space for Sale”, in Postscripts 20/21: Edison’s Frankenstein
Best Collection:
- Paul Witcover for Everland and Other Stories
- Gene Wolfe for The Very Best Of Gene Wolfe
Special Award, Non-Professional:
- John Berlyne for Powers: Secret Histories
Special Award, Professional:
- Pete and Nicky Crowther
I think I can safely say on Pete and Nicky’s behalf that they’re very chuffed to be nominated; a more formal quote would have to wait for the good Mister Crowther to desist from turning cartwheels up and down the seafront of Hornsea!
But as always, congratulations to all the nominees, regardless of affiliation – the genre scene is still thriving, it seems, and we’re proud to be a part of it. :)
Wednesday reviews roundup for 11th August
Posted by Paul Raven on August 11th, 2010 at 13:33
Yup, it’s Wednesday again – time to root through the digital post-bag and check out the PS Publishing reviews from the week just gone.
First up is a review from Richard Palmer of Solar Bridge, who enjoyed Paul Di Filippo’s Roadside Bodhisattva despite what he felt to be a predictable ending. Its strengths lie in Di Filippo’s portrayal of the central character:
His misfiring mouth aside, the author does well to demonstrate Kid A’s underlying thought processes. Kid A is a young man, barely more than a child, though he’s trying to make his way in the world of adults. Sometimes he is successful – often because Sid treats him as another adult. However, his immaturity shows in his attempts to woo Sue (slightly older than he is). He is unsure how to relate to her, though he is attracted to her. Also, his reactions to what he considers being shut out of parts of her life he’d like to be involved in are really the mark of a child. Suggesting – and this is quite important to the outcome of the novel – that while he is starting to grow, he has a lot to do yet.
Next up, Bob Blough of Tangent Online heaps the plaudits on Lavie Tidhar’s Cloud Permutations:
“Cloud Permutations” is a wonderful novella from new writer Lavie Tidhar. If you have been following the online SF/F magazines lately you will have often seen his name. He truly is a “writer to watch,” but his writing is as powerful and lovingly handled as any old master. All he needs is a larger readership, and I hope this novella helps secure that for him.
[...]
I really enjoyed this novella, but it is in reviewing it that I have come to appreciate it even more. Lavie Tidhar is a writer who will dazzle us for many years, I hope. Read “Cloud Permutations” then go find his short stories. You won’t be disappointed.
And thirdly, James Lovegrove reviews a handful of sf titles by non-English authors at the Financial Times, one of which is the delightfully loopy Escher’s Loops by Zoran Zivkovic:
The stories themselves twist and turn around one another, shot through with an absurdist, deadpan humour (the delicate, unobtrusive translation deserves an honourable mention here). Characters, identified only by their occupations, recur and events seen from one viewpoint are often shown in a fresh light, from another viewpoint, later on. In an interview with the highbrow SF magazine Interzone, conducted in 2002, Zivkovic describes this storytelling structure as “larger than the mere sum of its parts – an amalgam, not a conglomerate”. The aim, he says, is “to force the reader to return to the beginning and re-evaluate everything from a new perspective”.
What emerges most strongly from Zivkovic’s work is the sense of western SF being absorbed, reconfigured, and served back up in an unusual and exciting new form. [...] Escher’s Loops has a truly outward-looking, international feel.
Voila!
(Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!)
Wednesday reviews round-up for 4th August
Posted by Paul Raven on August 4th, 2010 at 14:47
Three things make a post, as Ye Olde Lore of Webloggery would have it… and three reviews is exactly what we have in the electronic PS postbag this week. So, without further ado…
The first pair of reviews are for The Library Of Forgotten Books, our eighth PS Showcase collection, featuring stories by Rjurik Davidson… who appears to be making quite an impression. Here’s Liviu Suciu at Fantasy Book Critic:
I have not heard of Rjurik Davidson before but the title and cover of the book attracted my attention and when I checked its contents, the second part of the collection consisting of tales of Caeli-Amur jumped at me.
[Then there's some short examinations of each story in turn, followed by...]
Overall The Library of Forgotten Books (A++) is the best collection I have read in a long time – and that in a year in which I have previously read five very impressive collections [...] No story that missed for me and three awesome ones I plan to reread for a long time to come. I really want more from the author and any Caeli-Amur story is a must for me, while a novel set in that superb universe would be a big time asap.
And here’s another plaudit from the presumably pseudonymous Seregil of Rhiminee at RisingShadow.net:
All these stories are amazingly powerful and they contain different kind of themes, so there’s something for everybody. I loved the atmosphere of these stories – Davidson transports the reader to another world with his words. These original, thoughtful and atmospheric stories are great entertainment to readers who want quality and substance in their fantasy stories.
I enjoyed Rjurik Davidson’s stories very much. It’s a shame that this collection has only a bit over 150 pages, because when I reached the end I hoped they’d be more pages to read. [...] It’ll be interesting to see what Davidson writes next, because these stories show that he has lots of imagination. I hope he writes more stories about Caeli-Amur.
Lots of love for the Caeli-Amur material, eh?
And to close up for this week, Scott A Cupp steps up to the mic at sci-fi uber-blog SF Signal and waxes lyrical about Quartet & Triptych, the latest Archonate joint from Matthew Hughes:
Matt Hughes has certainly taken on his role as Vance’s successor and made the best of it. His stories of the Archonate, particularly those featuring Henghis Hapthorn have been wonderful tales of cultures and planets far from our own. The mind of a schemer like Henghis is always interesting to watch as plans are made, altered, scrapped, and re-made to achieve the results he desires.
[Brief plot summary here, followed by...]
I had a lot of fun with this book. I love stories of the Archonate and the writing of Matt Hughes. There are two editions of this novella – a regular one and a signed one. Go for the signed one. He’s the real deal and you will be looking for signed books at some point. Get it now while it is less expensive.
You heard the man – make with the clicky and buy some Matthew Hughes! Colleactable and highly readable… what more could you ask from a book, hmm?
(Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!)
Wednesday reviews round-up for 28th July 2010
Posted by Paul Raven on July 28th, 2010 at 14:52
What-ho, chaps and chappesses! Just been out for gallop over the old intenets, and managed to bag a brace of reviews; care to take a gander, eh?
First of all, here’s another foreign language review; this time, it’s for that fine fellow and knight-of-the-household Sir Robert Freeman Wexler and his novel The Painting & The City, here enjoyed in the French by Monsieur Philippe Sendek of Etat-Critique.com, and translated courtesy the aetheric machineries of The Google Intertube Company:
A worthy descendant of a Burroughs or Edgar Allan Poe, the author opens the sliding doors of a world where dream and reality merge. His writing combines metaphorical profusion quasi-baroque and surgical intrusion into the world of an artist.It is not easy to enter his universe because the player is neither assured nor pampered but if he persists in his reading, the author makes him a hundred times what he brought to attention. It is a novel that resembles a steep path along a stream. It is argued in awe of the slope but the fresh air purifies your lungs.
This novel is powerful and evocative. You sense it continues on a tightrope because he dares not make a ridiculous scenes and success. Writing is also often graze chasms just waiting to swallow you up.
Robert Freeman Wexler cleanses your eyes and makes you more alive than you did before opening his novel. Add Anne-Sylvie Homassel, the translator performs a remarkable job.
Sterling piece of valedictory writing, wot? And here’s another, as Mister Stephen Theaker (of the eponymous Theaker’s Quarterly) browses the shelves of Mister Rjurik Davidson‘s Library of Forgotten Books:
If the book has a theme, I think it’s doomed or impossible love. The first three stories concern lovers who are prisoners of their situations, the fourth a widow in love with the public image of her dead partner, the fifth an assassin in love with her target, and the sixth a librarian intrigued by the writers whose books she buries in the stacks. In but one of the stories is escape from the trap truly possible, and even then it’s thanks only to the protagonist’s newly discovered thaumaturgical powers. But though Rjurik Davidson’s world can be bleak, it’s full of beauty and imagination and ideas, where even the grossest distortions of the human body are described with careful eloquence – and in trapping its characters, or forcing them apart, it reminds us of our own freedom.
Spiffing stuff – utterly top-drawer, wouldn’t you say? Of course you would! So progress with all haste to our aetheric shop and purchase one of these fine tomes for yourself. Tally-ho!
(Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!)
Wednesday reviews roundup for 21st July
Posted by Paul Raven on July 21st, 2010 at 14:38
A healthy batch of reviews arrived in my inbox from the lovely folk at Locus Magazine. The latest issue includes two mentions for Seven Cities Of Gold by David Moles, one from Rich Horton:
I’ll end by mentioning a chapbook. David Moles’s Seven Cities of Gold is a powerful novella set in an alternate history dominated by Japan and Islam. A Japanese doctor is sent on a quasi-humanitarian mission to the dark interior of North America in search of a defector and the ‘‘Seven Cities of Gold’’… which in some sense are real in this alternate world. My description says nothing useful – the story needs to be read, to experience Dr. Nakada’s own dissolution, and the devastated heart of this America.
And the other from Gardner Dozois:
Every year there are also a number of novellas published as individual chapbooks, usually by small presses. Last year there were several significant novellas published that way [...] and the best one I’ve seen so far this year is Seven Cities of Gold by David Moles. This is a masterfully done work of alternate history, which succeeds in creating a world that seems lived-in and all-too-real, down to the smallest details. It’s a Heart of Darkness journey undertaken by a haunted and conflicted woman, down a river that runs right through the middle of a vividly described warzone, with physical details that feel real and yet surreal at the same time, and scenes so grotesquely horrible that they almost rise through it to a hallucinatory beauty. Seven Cities of Gold is one of the best novellas of the year so far, but be warned – there is stuff here that is almost painful to read, and this is definitely not for the squeamish or faint of heart. ‘‘Optimistic SF’’ it’s not.
One of the best novellas of the year, eh? Coming from Dozois, that’s high praise indeed – bravo, Mister Moles!
Elsewhere in the same issue, Paul Witcover seeks the buddha nature of Paul Di Filippo in Roadside Bodhisattva:
The first thing to note about Paul Di Filippo’s Roadside Bodhisattva is what it isn’t: science fiction. Readers expecting the wild flights of speculative fancy and exuberantly inventive prose that this prolific author is deservedly known for will not find them here. Instead, Di Filippo has produced what at first seems a gently satirical coming-of-age novel, solidly naturalistic, beautifully observed, set in the present day, about a 16-year-old runaway, Kid A, equally in thrall to ‘‘the two best books ever written,’’ Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and Gibran’s The Prophet, who seeks adventures (and sex) on the road and finds a lot more than he bargained for.
[...]
Di Filippo’s title alludes not only to the strain of Beat Buddhism popularized by Kerouac in The Dharma Bums and other road novels but to the famous Zen koan, ‘‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!’’ A bodhisattva is an enlightened being who purposefully holds back from nirvana to help his or her fellow beings achieve enlightenment themselves; the sacrifice unselfishly embraced by the bodhisattva for the benefit of others cannot help but resonate in the Western mind with the sacrifice – and betrayal – of Jesus Christ. Di Filippo is well aware of these layers of meaning, and weaves them provocatively into the plot of the novel.
And last but not least, we have what is surely our first review written in Italian, at least during my tenure here at PS Towers. The Splattergramma blog reviews R B Russell’s Literary Remains, and if Google’s translation services are accurate, they say:
When others around you insist on seeing the world differently, you can still talk with them, but when you realize that you can not even rely on your senses, the world becomes a terrifying place beyond measure.
This is the philosophy underlying the stories collected in Literary Remains RB Russell, real pockets of uncertainty where the distressing memories of the past prove false or misinterpreted, and even this does not provide safety or certainty of any kind.
Personally, I hope those “real pockets of uncertainty” are what the reviewer actually meant to describe; what a wonderful turn of phrase!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews roundup for 14th July
Posted by Paul Raven on July 14th, 2010 at 11:40
Granted, it’s not much of a “roundup” when there’s only one review contained within it… but we’re all about quality rather than quantity round these parts, so we’ll not complain. Especially not when the lone review in question is another plaudit for R B Russell‘s short story collection, Literary Remains, courtesy of Brian Showers from Rue Morgue Magazine. Take it away, Brian:
What Russell does—and he does it well—is exploit a unique brand of dread. As with his 2009 debut collection, Putting the Pieces in Place, each story in Literary Remains explores unreliable perception: the subversion of the senses and the convolution of subjective experience. The effect might be termed “subjective horror”, an exploration of what happens when we can no longer trust ourselves.
[...]
“Una Furtiva Lagrima” features a woman troubled by the ghosts of children she may or may not have murdered. The haunted woman asserts, “We’re all prisoners of our own mind. We all see the world differently, individually. What you see here, right now, is not necessarily what I see.” If she is right, the possibilities for horror are endless—and, like Literary Remains, terrifying.
Thanks no doubt in part to the absolute torrent of good reviews it’s received, Literary Remains has been selling strongly… and you’d be advised to snare a copy now, while there are still any of them left. So click here and place an order right away – don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates.
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews roundup for 7th July
Posted by Paul Raven on July 7th, 2010 at 13:14
We’ve a fulsome threesome (oo-er, missus) of reviews in the ol’ digital mailbag this week. Let’s start off with this heartfelt commendation for our special collector’s edition of Ray Bradbury‘s Machineries of Joy, courtesy of Tia Bowman at The Dragon Page:
I’ve enjoyed Bradbury since I first clutched a used copy of The Illustrated Man at age 13, but I think I just fell in love with his prose all over again.
Machineries has been around since 1964, but you’d never guess it if you didn’t know. The writing is timeless and so clever you may be, as I was, inclined to read the stories more than once.
[...]
In The Machineries of Joy, Bradbury offers up twenty-one smartly worded tales that slip in through your eyes to stimulate your mind, then reach down to tug at your heart. Most definitely one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a while, and a delightful reading experience!
Buy, Borrow, or Pass? If you’re a fan of short stories, science fiction, mystery, or just plain great writing: Buy!
Next, here’s another recommendation (albeit more from a collector’s perspective) for R B Russell‘s Literary Remains at Hyraxia, The Book Collecting Portal:
Russell’s writing belongs to a more specific canon. That’s not to downplay horror, rather wierd fiction is a somewhat separate entity taking more from the Victorian era than contemporary speculative fiction. I’m no expert here, but I would suggest that Russell’s writing is more of a progression of weird fiction, bringing the clock forward but still portraying an historical context wherein the fictional living and the fictional dead occupy a space much departed from the reader, connected only by somewhat distant and transposed memories. This separation in time couples the natural to the supernatural and abstracts the reader giving a cohesive authenticity much lacking from most contemporary horror.
All in all, it’s a good book, occupying a stylistic niche that is modern enough to not be just another homage to Poe and Lovecraft, but mature enough to not be mainstream horror.
And last but not least, the Baryon Review has a short mention for our landscape illustrated binding of Stephen King’s “One For The Road”:
This is one of the more unusual books in the varied career of Stephen King. This is a picture book of one of King’s short stories about the town of Jerusalem’s Lot and a stormy night in Maine.
Booth and Herb Tooklander are about to close down Tookey’s Bar, when Gerarld Lumley stumbles in after walking six miles in a blizzard to get help for his stalled car and his wife and daughter he left there.
Lumley was lost and took the road to Jerusalem’s Lot and got stuck in a snowdrift. He convinces the two men to go help him rescue his family, even though they know it is probably useless.
The story fills in their journey and the things they find when they arrive at the stalled car. It is typical King and makes for an interesting book. It’s a good story and an unusual book to add to your collection.
That’s all for this week!
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse. And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 30th June
Posted by Paul Raven on June 30th, 2010 at 10:54
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends – we’re so glad you could attend! Come inside, come inside… and gawp with wonder at this week’s selection of reviews from across the world! Well, from across the internet, anyway, which is nearly the same thing. Onwards!
Daniel Reilly of HorrorWorld is getting tired of zombies, but Scott Edelman‘s What Will Come After was strong enough to stand out from the shambling pack*:
I must confess that, after a few hundred pages of Zombie stories, I was feeling a little burned-out on the genre, and I probably won’t pick up another Zombie book for a good long time, but that’s no reflection on Edelman’s skill as a storyteller. His Zombie stories are both literate and satisfying, eschewing the quick gross-out for atmosphere and characterization. If you’re into Zombies, you could do a LOT worse than What Will Come After.
Next up, we’ve a couple of reviews of nigh-legendary literary outlander Uncle River‘s collection Counting Tadpoles from the latter half of last year; I’m pretty sure no one told me about them at the time, which is a shame, but if you did (and it’s quite possible) my apologies for passing them over! The first is from Publisher’s Weekly:
If science fiction is the literature of outsiders, no one is better suited to writing it than Uncle River, a hermit who uses the solitude and small towns of the American Southwest as the wellspring for these thoughtful, often optimistic stories of depopulated and low-tech futures. A scientist learning from silence to hear what is happening around and inside him (“Counting Tadpoles”), day laborers and subsistence farmers finding less horror from a giant lizard than from their local police (“The Lizard”), and a Hawaiian mariner dream questing to derelict radio telescopes in New Mexico (“Geronimo’s Buttons”) find hope in turning to “Nature’s rhythms and requirements” and away from the material world. River’s slow-paced perspective will challenge readers to stop and reflect on just what kinds of worlds are worth building.
And the second is from Booklist‘s genre enthusiast Carl Hays:
For a large portion of his life, Uncle River has lived as a hermit in the American Southwest, a milieu that recurs often in his unusual short fiction. As editor Stanley Schmidt observes in the volume’s introduction, River’s self-imposed isolation has undeniably nourished his fertile imagination to yield dreamlike tales that range widely across the speculative fiction universe. “The Dashing About Flying Box People” regards “flying box” human space explorers from the viewpoint of apparently primitive extraterrestrials whose planet they’ve landed on and exposes the humans’ arrogance and xenophobia. The title story follows an environmentalist doing a backwoods tadpole census into the remote cabin of an elderly, government-bashing recluse, who may or may not be a ghost. Other pieces recount a visit from telepathic aliens to rural New Mexico and the rambling adventures of a self-aware military saber. Although many of the stories are more mainstream than speculative fiction, all share River’s penchant for letting his quirky creativity guide each tale to its often surprising denouement, with mostly engaging results.
Next up, it’s more plaudits for R B Russell‘s Literary Remains, this time courtesy of Paul Charles Smith:
Literary Remains is a great collection of short stories that raise a lot of questions about the way in which we perceive the things that we experience and the reliability of those perceptions. The stories are at their most disturbing when the way in which we believe the world should work fails us. At times the work brings to mind the masters, the almost primal sexuality of Aickman, the sublime weirdness of Blackwood, the haunting atmosphere of Machen, and the absurdity of Ligotti, but with his own unique style, Russell’s stories are thought provoking, masterfully crafted, and deeply disturbing. Highly recommended for all fans of horror and weird tales.
Mark of the Walker Of Worlds blog has been digging in the back catallogue, and unearthed the gem that is Eric Brown‘s Starship Summer:
This is another work by Eric Brown that I’ve read this year, and I’ll make no excuse for it. I really enjoy his writing and find it difficult to believe that he isn’t a more popular author when the quality of his output is consistently high. Starship Summer is a short novella, running to only 120 pages, and is from the excellent PS Publishing, a small press publisher that churns out some great stuff from many genre authors. Those familiar with Brown’s work won’t find anything different here, but it’s a great story that is expertly told.
Discerning auto-didact and squirrel-fancier (really!) Larry Nolen comes late to Robert Wexler‘s The Painting & The City, and wishes he’d got there sooner:
There were very few faults I could find with The Painting and the City. Oh, perhaps I could note how I wish just a little bit more could have been said about this or that plot point or character, but that would only serve to underscore just how fascinating the city and the painting mystery truly were for me. Wexler’s novel felt as though it were a briskly-paced story that had been stripped of any extraneous fat, leaving the reader with a story that moves at a falsely languid pace until s/he realizes just how quickly things have developed and how engrossed s/he is with what has transpired. If I had read this book last year, The Painting and the City certainly would have made my year-end Best Novels list. Highly recommended.
And to close up, we’ve got two prestigious reviews of Stephen Palmer‘s Urbis Morpheos. The first is a Publisher’s Weekly joint:
Challenging sometimes to the point of impenetrability, Palmer’s first novel since 2004′s Hallucinating details a far-future battle between natural and manufactured ecosystems. Like his music (with the rock/electronica group Mooch) and art (including the cover art for this volume), Palmer’s writing can only be called psychedelic. The world is richly imagined, unusual, and creative, full of narcoleptic snow, plastic vultures, and living databases called “wrealities,” but dense prose, the choice of giving two main characters virtually the same name, seemingly random point of view shifts, and a wealth of unexplained details occasionally render the story incomprehensible. Only determined readers will make their way to the final page, but those who do will find the ending worth it.
But the reviewer for Library Journal seems to have had an easier (or at least less impenetrable) time of it:
In the far future, warring ecosystems threaten to destroy the manufactured ecosystem of Old Earth, now known as Urbis Morpheos, as the natural world fades into oblivion. Two women, Psolilai and psolilai, who dream of each other, may hold the keys that will save the world. Palmer’s surreal setting and distinctive style create an atmosphere that is at once dreamlike and starkly real. His characters serve as both archetype and individual, populating a world that is allegorical and believable.
VERDICT: The author of Memory Seed and Glass offers a challenging and thoughtful future world that should satisfy readers with a love for far-future sf and New Wave fiction.
And that’s all for this week, ladies and gentlemen. Come by and see us next week for more reviews of books old and new from the shelves of the mighty PS Publishing!
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse. And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
[ * HorrorWorld only keep a single reviews page which is changed each month, so the review in question may no longer be available at that link. ]
Wednesday reviews round-up for 23rd June
Posted by Paul Raven on June 23rd, 2010 at 15:46
It’s been a quiet week for reviews, which I fully expect has something to do with The Sport Tournament Which Shall Remain Unnamed.
But there’s a couple still nestled in the far reaches of the electronic postbag, so it’s time to paint up my face, unfurl the PS flag and make a droning insectoid noise with a plastic musical instrument…
Striking from out in the left-field, Paul DiFilippo boots it into the back of the net at Mass Movement with Roadside Bodhisattva:
Kid A is a runaway. His parents are whacked out on Buddhism to the point that they no longer take care of him. Out of frustration he packs a bag and sets out on the road. Accompanied only by his two favorite books he walks alone. That is, until he meets Sid underneath a tree one night. Sid has spent his life on the road and takes Kid A under his wing. Together they travel all the way to glamorous (not!) Deer Park where they set up temporary lives. But when Kid A gets itchy to see more of the world things start to unravel. And boy does it get ugly.
This was a fun book to read though it was more of a downer than I usually enjoy. Kid A is the typical know-it-all sixteen year old who blunders through life heedless of the consequences. Sid is a wise middle aged man with a font of philosophical ideas but imperfect follow through. The other characters are real people and wonderfully developed, especially considering how short the book is. This was a good book and I completely recommend it!
And then this season’s sleeper star R B Russell chalks up another classy goal with Literary Remains at Speculative Fiction Junkie:
Literary Remains feels in many respects like a work of transition for Mr. Russell. While he maintains his trademark subtlety, the stories in this collection feel on balance less atmospheric and more overtly weird than his earlier work. However he proceeds in the future, I have no doubt that Mr. Russell will continue to be one of the more unique voices in weird literature. Let’s hope he keeps writing at a relatively quick pace.
Rating: 8/10
Great stuff. Join us next week for more goal-by-goal commentaries and live action replays! And now, over to Tom for the weather and travel updates…
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse. And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 9th June
Posted by Paul Raven on June 9th, 2010 at 10:08
Right, Wednesday – you’re all busy people, and so am I, so how’s about I skip the usual (and stereotypically British) circumlocutory introductions about the weather and the rapid passage of time and get straight to the bit you actually want to read, namely the last week’s reviews of PS titles, eh?
(So much for brevity… I am what I am.)
Anyway, to business – just a few things to mention this week. First of all, the latest book from Serbian metafictional maestro Zoran Živković confirms his status as a writer who challenges the reader on many levels… even readers who are accustomed to his work! Živković’s novels seem to defy simple or definitive readings, and Escher’s Loops is no exception. Exhibit A is a review from Kit O’Connell at SF Site:
This is a hard review to write, both because I respect the author and did not enjoy his book, but also because I can’t help but wonder if my discomfort was the intention of the author and I’m not getting the joke. Many have said that art is most effective when it invokes feelings other than pleasure; pleasure is easy compared to horror, or discomfort. If Živković intended to make me dislike Escher’s Loops, all the while having difficulty putting it down, then I’d have to say he succeeded.
By contrast, Exhibit B from Paul Charles Snith:
Zivkovic is a master of his craft, and Escher’s Loops is a joy to read. Witty and full of wonder, often ironic, he rejects the Western tradition and modernism to bring us a collection of interlocking narratives that bring to mind the traditions of folklore, and resolve themselves like Ouroboros consuming his own tail. Like all of Zivkovic’s work, the wit and irony give his work a lightness that makes it enjoyable toread , but under the lightness is real sustenance in his skilful use of literary conceits. Escher’s Loops, like the events that it contains, cannot really be described, it has to be experienced. The comparison to Borges and his Eastern European contemporaries don’t stick, as he has a unique and singular voice. There is no one in literature quite like him, and this is truly a good thing.
Unique is the right word – it seems the one thing that Živković’s work never inspires is ambivalence. Perhaps you should try some yourself and find out why?
And to close up, we have not a review but a laudatory mention, as Jeff VanderMeer reports that his freaky-strange little novella The Situation has been picked as one of ten “great very short books” by Kevin Brockmeier of Oxford American magazine. Bravo, Jeff!
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all pre-orders go postage-free during February – so only four days left!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 2nd June
Posted by Paul Raven on June 2nd, 2010 at 10:44
Good grief, Wednesday again already? Where does the time go? It waits for no man, that’s for sure… so without further ado or waffling (well, maybe just a little waffling, and all of it from me), let’s see what we’ve got in the PS reviews inbox this week, shall we?
First up, one titan of horror fiction reviews another, as Lovecraftian scholar and anthologist S T Joshi tackles two of Ramsey Campbell‘s latest offerings in the latest issue of Dead Reckonings. Through Campbell, the good Mr Joshi gets an insight into two constants of British culture; in Creatures of the Pool, it’s our oft-remarked-upon emotional and psychological connection to our changeable weather:
… Ramsey Campbell, in his new novel, Creatures of the Pool, has accomplished something that I do not ever recall being achieved or even attempted in any other novel-length work of horror fiction—to induce a kind of nameless terror by persistent, even omnipresent, rainfall. The “pool” of the title refers generally to Liverpool—and, perhaps more specifically, to the pool of water, the Mersey, around which Liverpool grew. For this novel is nothing less than an attempt—and a highly successful one—to draw upon history as a source of terror.
[...]
Campbell’s prose has never been so scintillating and crisp, and that omnipresent rain—augmented by Gavin’s anomalous thirst, which compels him to consume enormous quantities of water whenever the occasion allows—is harrowing; and, although there is a compelling climactic episode in which Gavin seeks to track both parents (for his mother has also by now disappeared) through the (real) tunnels of Liverpool, in the end we are not given quite the climax we are expecting.
Meanwhile, Just Behind You lifts a lid on the perpetual schisms of the British class system:
What strikes me about Just Behind You is that two dominant themes run through it—the horrors, both real and supernatural (the latter, of course, being in many ways symbolic of the former), that children face, and the manner in which new technologies, far from undermining the supernatural (which, true enough, is largely oriented toward the past, rooted as it is in myth, legend, and superstition), can actually enhance it.
[...]
The childhood theme in these stories is frequently linked to another theme one can readily detect—the continuing reality of class conflict. In the United States we are ruthlessly programmed to disregard all distinctions save those based purely on wealth or income, but in Campbell’s England the cultural, educational, and behavioral cleavages between classes is starkly displayed. Indeed, this collection reveals (not that his previous works haven’t) that Campbell has become a noted satirist whose shuddering loathing of certain behavioral patterns of the lower classes—their deceitfulness, their quick tendency to violence, their resentment and envy of their social and economic betters—does not negate an awareness that these traits are often their only means of survival in a world where the cards seem stacked against them.
[...]
… ample evidence that Campbell continues at the top of his form in what has already been a remarkable four decades and more of writing. His drawing of character has never been sharper; his prose has never been more supple or resonant; and his ability to engineer a shuddering climax that is simultaneously surprising and inevitable has never been greater. And to say that Ramsey Campbell is at the top of his form is to say that he stands at the pinnacle of the entire realm of supernatural literature.
Moving on, we have another batch of reviews for R B Russell‘s Literary Remains, which has already garnered many such responses (much to our delight, as well as that of the good Mr Russell). Here’s one from Tales From the Black Abyss:
With Literary Remains, R.B. Russell has reinforced his status as a maturing writer. It is a stronger collection than Putting The Pieces In Place. The variety of styles and interesting plot ideas on display add up to an excellent addition to the weird fiction canon. His writing has also advanced with complexities worthy of the likes of Thomas Ligotti on show to tantalise the reader. I have no doubt that, like Ligotti, repeated readings would reward the reader with a much deeper voyage into the darker places which we may otherwise only glimpse on a first reading.
A fine collection at times reminiscent of Machen, Aickman, Ligotti and others but always with that unique R.B Russell style. Weird fiction fans are in for a treat.
Rating 4 out of 5.
And one from The Supernatural Tales Blog:
… the stories are not conventional horror or ghostly tales. Instead they fall into a vaguely-defined territory between the supernatural, the psychological and the downright baffling. Influences? Well, Robert Aickman is in the mix insofar as dream logic seems to be at work in stories such as ‘A Revelation’, in which a council housing inspector finds something strange in an attic, then concludes he must have imagined it. ‘Blue Glow’, which is vaguely science fictional, I found reminiscent of M. John Harrison’s work in The Ice Monkey. There are also hints of de la Mare, I think.
To those who value plot above all these stories will no doubt be frustrating. But they are perhaps best scene as sketches of a chaotic and dangerous world, offering unusual imagery and memorable scenes, but no simple conclusions. Well, not usually.
And another, a distinctly un-grim review from Grim Reviews:
This collection of ten new tales is an expression of haunting otherworldliness seeping into realities well known to Russell. At times, reading the book seems like a journey through a carnival funhouse, but one filled with pale whispers and wayward gentleman instead of gaudy ornaments. More than anything, Literary Remains presents the emergence of an unusual other reality so disorienting that it dazzles and terrifies in equal proportions.
[...]
The most important gift of Literary Remains is a small peek behind reality’s curtain into another realm, with landscapes and players which cannot be fully understand. This short story collection forces readers to become active investigators rather than passive observers. Fortunately, this follows the best tradition of weird literature, and unraveling the book’s many mysterious can be immensely rewarding, besides being the only way of really appreciating the high class strangeness Russell has cultivated here.
Literary Remains also gets a brief mention in a batch of brief reviews at RisingShadow.net:
R. B. Russell’s Literary Remains is a fine collection. It contains elegant and beautiful stories. These stories aren’t exactly horror, but some of them can be called horror. [...] To be honest, I was surprised with the quality of Russell’s strangely beautiful prose. [...] If you’re looking for something different to read, please read this collection. You’ll probably like it very much.
That collection of reviews also speaks highly of Ray Bradbury‘s Long After Midnight…
Long After Midnight is a well-known collection to Bradbury fans (and other readers), because it was first published in 1976. It was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. I think it’s great that PS Publishing has decided to publish it again, because this edition contains beautiful black and white drawings. I’m sure that they’ll please Bradbury fans.
[...]
In my opinion this collection contains many of [Bradbury's] best stories. I think it could be said that Long After Midnight is like a treasure trove of different kind of literary pearls.
… and of Horns, by the main man Joe Hill:
Joe Hill’s Horns is an interesting and entertaining horror/dark fantasy book. I think it’s a book which will either appeal to you or it’ll annoy you (I personally find it interesting and entertaining, although it isn’t exactly my kind of horror). Horns is a dark, funny and entertaining book, which entertains the reader for a couple of hours, which is nice. In other words, it’s good and harmless entertainment for speculative fiction readers.
Good? But of course! Harmless? Well… we can’t make promises of that sort, now can we? ;)
The BookVentures Book Club also seem highly taken with Horns:
Have you ever read a book that you have become so invested in, that by the time it ends you feel lost and empty? You try to find something to fill the void that has been created by this book but nothing seems to fill it; no matter what you read. Well this is how I felt about Horns.
[...]
Hill is definitely a talented author in his own right. He used a lot of back story and flash backs in Horns that became pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. None of the pieces were predictable and when they were matched together you really began to understand and appreciate the story. Also his characters are all bruised in some way and Iggy brings out the worst in them. I particularly liked Lee whose back story led up to a mentally disturbed and perhaps psychotic villain. The lure to the story is that it’s really well written. Horns is about love and loss, friendship and betrayal and ultimately humanity…
And finally, Larry of OF Blog of the Fallen dips into the back catalogue for one of last year’s gems – Sebastien Doubinsky‘s Babylonian Trilogy.
I recall reading all sorts of positive reviews at the time, but for some reason, I never got around to buying this book until a few weeks ago. Needless to say, I am regretting that I waited so long before purchasing this book, as this was a challenging, inventive set of interconnecting vignettes that form an engrossing serial murder mystery and a complex look at a modern-day Babylon.
[...]
Overall, The Babylonian Trilogy is a story (or rather, interlocking stories) that I enjoyed greatly. Due to the very short, fractured storytelling format, the pacing was very rapid for me, with a series of jolts and clashes that I believe Doubinsky purposely included in order to create this sense that the narrative was not as straightforward as one might expect. For some readers, this type of tale likely would be quite frustrating; for me, it was like manna from heaven. Great read.
Phew – I think that’s everything!
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all pre-orders go postage-free during February – so only four days left!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 26th May
Posted by Paul Raven on May 26th, 2010 at 13:35
It’s Wednesday afternoon here in the north-west of the UK, which can mean only one thing… PS Publishing reviews round-up time!
We’re greatly privileged to be mentioned by a modern master in praise of a living legend, as the one and only Neil Gaiman extols the virtues of Ray Bradbury’s Machineries of Joy at The Times:
Bradbury’s best short-story collections have themes and they have patterns. They are arguments and they are conversations. The Machineries of Joy is a reminder of a Bradbury who, while too many fine writers were still writing for the pulps, had liberated himself and was writing for the glossies. He had been one of the first writers to have made the transition from the world of people who read that sort of thing to the world at large.
The tales in The Machineries of Joy are, with a few exceptions, stories in which genre elements are muted or absent. A collection of stories, some fantasies, some not. Priests argue about space travel, and an old woman seals her house from Death, and we ask, who are the Martians?
Bradbury at his best really was as good as we thought he was. He built so much, and made it his. So when the wind blows the fallen autumn leaves across the road in a riot of flame and gold, or when I see a green field in summer carpeted by yellow dandelions, or when, in winter, I close myself off from the cold and write in a room with a TV screen as big as a wall, I think of Ray Bradbury . . .
With joy. Always with joy.
The ultimate accolade! Bradbury is one of Pete’s all-time literary heroes, and it’s that very same joy that Gaiman feels that moves him to republish these classic collections. Order one today and find out why!
Meanwhile (and very distant, at least in terms of geography), pseudonymous Russian book blogger Ray Garraty tucks in to S T Joshi’s Black Wings as his first taste of Lovecraftian short fiction. Allowing for a little linguistic slippage (English is the guy’s second language, after all – a Russian version of the review can be found here), he seems pretty impressed:
When I picked up this tribute compilation, I admit I thought «Black Wings», like its predecessor «Lovecraft: Undound», edited by Ellen Datlow, are perhaps the pioneers in Lovecraft-building, but I was wrong. Lovecraft-ish anthologies are out a lot, almost every year, but not all of them equally well. This one, edited by S.T. Joshi, is excellent, although not all stories included in it equally well, too.
There follows a run-through of the majority of the TOC, before Garraty rounds it up with this:
The most successful stories there are those, where the beyond, space, frightening are only in contact with daily life, measured way of life, our reality. Those stories, which the space replaces, dominates the natural way of things, have turned out inconclusive. «Black Wings» is a very strong anthology, another masterpiece from PS Publishing.
We try our best, Mr Garraty, and we’re very glad you liked it.
Next up comes an appreciation of the criminally unerappreciated, as Larry from OF Blog of the Fallen takes a long run around Escher’s Loops with Zoran’ Živković:
… Živković’s less-is-more approach toward storytelling appeals to me as a reader. I enjoy being allowed the freedom to approach stories at cross-angles, without the author intruding too much into the text that s/he has created. In virtually all of Živković’s stories, whether they be part of his “story suite” mosaics or more traditional novel-length tales, he leaves plenty of gaps through which an imaginative reader can delve further into the mysteries hinted at but often never directly stated within the texts.
[...]
The life threads that run through our own lives are put through the warp and woof before being re-thread back into our life journeys. The same holds true for Živković’s characters. Although failure, frustration, and death greet several of his characters, there is this sense of optimism that pervades this story. Živković does not focus as much on suffering as much as on how experiences end up enriching the lives of the characters involved. This sense of optimism makes for a suitable ending to these interconnected life threads that constitute Escher’s Loops. Certainly one of the more enjoyable reads I have had this year and on par with Živković’s other fictions. Very highly recommended.
Last of all, the Bookventures Bookclub takes a look at Stephen King’s “One For The Road”, as recently repackaged by us in a limited edition (and lavishly illustrated) landscape format. Most of the review deals with the detail of the story itself, and so as to avoid offending the Spoiler Police, I’ll not excerpt from it at length; instead, I’ll just point out that the piece closes with this simple recommendation:
If you manage to get your hands on a copy of this limited edition book, do give it a read. You won’t be disappointed.
You really won’t, you know. :)
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 19th May
Posted by Paul Raven on May 19th, 2010 at 13:43
It’s that time of week again – let’s take a look in the PS Publishing reviews postbag, shall we? It’s looking pretty svelte by comparison to the last few weeks, but there’s still some gems in there…
First up, Charlie Jane Anders of sci-fi superblog io9 takes a wander through The Sorcerer’s House in the company of one Gene Wolfe, and agrees with many other reviewers that it’s rather a different book by established Wolfean standards:
It represents a bit of a departure for Wolfe: It’s a standalone urban fantasy novel that unfolds like a classic mystery. [... A]nd it’s pretty much lightweight fluff, without much of the darkness or density of Wolfe’s other work.
[...]
Throughout the book, Wolfe drops little insights into the nature of magic and faerie – including the idea that magic, at its root, is a form of diplomacy. And the idea that nobody ever ages or dies in faerie — so the place must be extra-hostile and barbaric, to keep the population from growing endlessly. There’s more than enough cleverness and fun in this book to keep you zipping through on your way into the heart of the mystery.
Meanwhile, Paula Guran of Fantasy Magazine is very satisfied with S T Joshi‘s Black Wings anthology:
… the result is 21 stories that mostly pass Lovecraft’s “test of the really weird”—which also serves as this tome’s epigraph: “…whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim.”
[...]
Overall, the anthology avoids pastiche, lackluster imitation, and Cthulhu rip-off crap. Like Ellen Datlow’s Lovecraft Unbound, Joshi’s HPL tribute proves there’s still plenty of life in the Elder Gods yet—and plenty of highly talented writers penning dark fiction these days.
And finally, we’re pleased as punch to see PS’s very own Robert Wexler mentioned in Booklist‘s 2010 Top 10 SF/F titles list for The Painting & The City:
Art, nature, and commerce; the importance of the past; and the everyday oppressiveness of capitalism percolate through Wexler’s complex urban fantasy about a sculptor’s obsession with the rediscovered 1842 portrait of a young woman.
Prestigious, and very well deserved – bravo, Robert!
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 5th May
Posted by Paul Raven on May 5th, 2010 at 18:51
There’s still five hours of Wednesday left here in the UK, so the post title holds, I think… my apologies for the lateness, but I’ve been busy moving house and chairing discussion panels at film festivals and hell knows what else over the last seven days. That’s the thing with this crazy rock’n'roll lifestyle of mine, I guess – it always all happens at once, doesn’t it?
Talking of things all coming at once (oh, what a segue!) we’ve got an overflowing reviews inbox this week… so let’s get cracking! First of all is a review of Mike Resnick’s Shaka II at the rather unique illustrated speculative fiction/comics mash-up magazine, Murky Depths (which pretty much buries the notion that spec fic mags have to look boring, by the way). Says our reviewer:
For a novella Resnick’s packed a lot in. He writes concisely, not dwelling on the trivial. There’s no background detail. You don’t know carpet colours or how his spaceships work – no intricate sub-plots, no fleshing out incidental characters. This is fiction pared down to the essential.
But it’s not devoid of emotion. Thanks to first person narration (from Robert’s brother and confidante, John) this is elevated from a simple history. John makes it human; you can’t help but feel for him. He wants to believe in his brother, but all too soon realises he’s more a problem than those he seeks to overthrow. It’s great pathos.
Sticking with reviews in the sphere of print, Tania Scott takes to the pages of Foundation – the peer-reviewed journal of the Science Fiction Foundation, no less – to praise Darrell Schweitzer’s Living With the Dead. According to Tania, when we read it…
…we succumb to the most important aspect of horror literature: the uncanny effect on the reader. On this count Living With The Dead is a triumph. The brevity of the novella form means that there are no superfluous phrases, every word adds to the chilling atmosphere. [...] Schweitzer’s novella is memorable and inventive, and a worthy addition to the horror novella canon.
And here are two more print reviews, these being from big-hitting Booklist, the magazine of the American Library Association. First off, the imminent Urbis Morpheos from Stephen Palmer, reviewed by Regina Schroeder:
Psolilai and psolilai, each dreaming of the other, seek wisdom and knowledge in a world of two ecosystems at odds; namely, the nearly forgotten natural ecosystem and the manufacturing ecosystem, which produces such horrors as narcoleptic snow. After her escape from the prison of Tall Cliff Steel, Psolilai seeks her wisdom in strange forests and searches for the ancient artifact the Constructor. Meanwhile, psolilai seeks wisdom in the haven of Mahandriana. Both eat mushrooms that provide knowledge of the world around them. When Psolilai eats from a giant mushroom that has been growing under ice for thousands of years, she begins to understand the weather patterns of a natural world. Both are aided in their quests by peripatetic mycologist Gularvhen, who knows more than he’s admitting to and rides a horse with six voices and three ears. Set in an eerie world that’s fascinating to visit, the story of Psolilai, psolilai, Gulharven, and their various companions is certainly something to savor.
Sounds like a real strange journey… looking forward to getting my copy! Meanwhile, here’s Carl Hays on S T Joshi’s Black Wings anthology:
In introducing this exceptional set of original horror tales, editor Joshi places a little extra emphasis on the term Lovecraftian to describe its contents. Instead of simply mimicking Lovecraft’s distinctive gothic style or spinning stock variations on his famous Cthulhu Mythos, the contributors use Lovecraft as their inspiration for a breathtaking range of colorful new ideas and literary styles. Laird Barron and Philip Haldeman abandon Lovecraft’s New England to put their Lovecraftian monsters in the Pacific Northwest, while William Browning Spencer and Donald R. Burleson place theirs in the Southwest. A hard-boiled crime story is followed by stories of psychological terror and some in which Lovecraft himself is a character. Standouts include Caitlin R. Kiernan’s “Pickman’s Other Model,” wherein sketches by Lovecraft’s eccentric painter are discovered depicting a disgraced actress’ true, bestial nature; and Stanley C. Sargent’s “Black Brat of Dunwich,” which cleverly deconstructs Lovecraft’s classic “The Dunwich Horror,” about a half-human creature lurking in rural New England. The high level of craftsmanship throughout will delight even horror fans completely unfamiliar with Lovecraft.
D’you know, I think he liked it! Robert E Waters of Tangent Online wasn’t so impressed, but there you go. As Pete himself says, “you can’t please everyone”.
We appear to have done a decent job of pleasing Adam Groves of Fright.com, though, as this week’s final triumvirate of reviews demonstrates. There’s our illustrated special edition of Stephen King’s “One For The Road”, for instance:
This 38-page hardcover presents the story in a lavish edition with 17 gaudy illustrations by the prolific cover artist James Hannah. His art has a colorful simplicity (even though it doesn’t always match King’s descriptions), particularly in the haunting depictions of a spindly vampire woman emerging spread-armed from a snowy woodland and a creepy red-eyed child staring menacingly up at us. In its design and layout this volume feels like the scariest children’s picture book ever, and is a terrific companion-piece to King’s 1983 Berni Wrightson illustrated triumph The Cycle Of The Werewolf.
As for “One for the Road” itself, it’s a fine, shivery example of old fashioned horror.
Or how’s about The Night Cache by Andy Duncan?
The Night Cache is told from the point of view of a young gay woman who meets a like-minded gal while working at “Yarns Ignoble.” The latter woman, one Destiny Creech, makes her entrance in singular fashion via the purchase of a Val Lewton DVD set. The nature of Lewton’s films–horror–is an appropriate introduction to Destiny’s courtship with the protagonist, which evinces disquieting undertones almost immediately. Destiny has a daredevil streak, which goes against the heroine’s more cautious nature, and eventually Destiny none-too-unexpectedly passes on. But is she really dead? Or rather, is she really gone?
[...]
The Night Cache is extremely well characterized and endearing. The supernatural business doesn’t actually kick in until the final pages, yet the rest of the tale is resonant and chilling.
And last but by no means least, A Web Of Black Widows by Scott William Carter:
This brisk 97-page collection, the seventh of PS Publishing’s “Showcase” series, contains six stories. All are extremely well written and imagined, and linked by a number of elements. In his introduction author Scott William Carter claims the thematic similarities “happened by accident” yet acknowledges them just the same. Its impossible to ignore the fact that all these tales take place in modern-day America and deal with longing and desperation in various horrific ways.
The title story is a stunner, an altogether unique depiction of longing, madness and (possibly) the supernatural, involving several protagonists and some disquietingly lifelike spider tattoos.
[...]
“Static in A Still House” finishes the collection out. Like the rest of these stories it pivots on loneliness, in this case that of a broken man attempting to work up the nerve to ask out a Goodwill receptionist. The man finds he can somehow hear his future with the woman as his wife. That future turns out pretty bleak, yet the story ends on a hopeful note, as do most of its companion pieces. As Carter intones in his intro, “as dark as any of these stories get, there’s hope in there, too. There has to be. Otherwise, why write at all?”
Why, indeed. The world’s dark enough without abandoning hope entirely, after all. :)
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 28th April
Posted by Paul Raven on April 28th, 2010 at 14:50
Gor blimey, guv – it’s a right bumper crop of reviews this week, and no mistake. Strike a light!
![Darkness, Mist & Shadow - The Collected Macabre Tales Of Basil Copper [Vol 2]](http://news.pspublishing.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/hot-linked-image-cacher/upload/store.pspublishing.co.uk/acatalog/Basil_Copper_Vol_2.jpg "Darkness, Mist & Shadow - The Collected Macabre Tales Of Basil Copper [Vol 2]")
As is surely only proper for a two-volume book, the man Johnny Mains’s review of Darkness Mist & Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper appears at both AllThingsHorror.co.uk and Tales From The Black Abyss… and it’s a rousin’ five-out-of-fiver, too:
These two books, the first with an introduction from Stephen Jones, and the second a critical assessment from Kim Newman bring together every macabre and supernatural story Basil has ever written – from the well known to the privately printed. While Basil freely admits he is all written out, his legacy is assured.
[...]
A considered purchase, yes, but a purchase that will reward you with every story you read. If you are a fan of Basil Copper – these books are a welcome addition to any collection and if you are discovering Basil Copper for the first time, what are you waiting for? Buy the books now before they become extremely sought after collectibles.
Say no more, me old china – say no more! And here’s Andrew Wheeler on Gene Wolfe‘s latest novel, The Sorcerer’s House:
Sometimes, as with the breathtaking but utterly insular “Short Sun” books or in Wolfe’s great novel Peace, the trip is more than worth the bother. And sometimes, as with the recent “Wizard Knight” duology and odd misfits like Free Live Free, the reader is left wondering why he bothered to put in so much effort. [...]
The Sorcerer’s House falls on the Wolfe continuum closer to the first group than to the second; it also falls on the other axis of Wolfeness — determining how readily it gives up its secrets — towards the end of clarity and transparency, with Pandora by Holly Hollander and There Are Doors. It’s an epistolary novel, told entirely in the letters sent by a middle-aged ex-con, Baxter Dunn, and in the letters sent to Baxter by various others.
[...]
This is a mature Wolfe novel, full of sly secrets and offhand misdirection, but not as ambitious or major as his series work. Baxter is a mostly reliable narrator, as well — and that’s about as clear as one can ever get from Wolfe!
A reliable narrator in a Wolfe novel! Would you Adam an’ Eve it, eh?
Over the other side of the river (erm, pond), Michael Rowe takes to the printed pages of Fangoria to give Old Man Scratch by that charmin’ rogue Rio Youers a big old slap-on-the-back:
Rio Youers’ Old Man Scratch is a superb example of the horror novella at its best: a tightly-told tale in lean prose with maximized imagery.
[...]
In theme, style, and quality, there are echoes of Stephen King’s early gothic regionalism, though not in any derivative sense. Like King, Youers owns his rural landscape, flawlessly reproducing his characters’ rural idiom and aesthetic without parodying it. Also like King, his characters’ moral ambiguity is presented unvarnished. By the end of the story, only one of the characters is completely innocent and there is enough “monster” to go around for the other characters. Youers admirably demonstrates that true horror can live right next door, whether it’s a neighbor who deliberately keeps your cancer-ridden wife from sleep, the excruciating human tragedy of the cancer itself tearing a long-married couple apart, the depths of depravity to which hate can drive a loving man, or the actual monster itself—the monster that lives in the shadows of every great horror tale. And Old Man Scratch is a great horror tale indeed.
And talking of ol’ Stephen King, lips are flapping about our lavishly illustrated landscape binding of his classic short story “One For The Road”. Here’s a short sweet mention at a French Stephen King fan community:
L’éditeur m’a fait parvenir un exemplaire du livre : environ 38 pages, et le texte de la nouvelle est reproduit dans son intégralité, accompagné par 17 belles illustrations. N’hésitez pas à vous le procurer!
Mais oui, mon brave! Et aussi, a Lilja’s Library (un autre fansite de King, naturellement):
One For The Road has previously been published in Night Shift back in 1978 but here PS Publishing has given it its own book and they have done a great job with it. The book is illustrated beautifully by James Hannah and when the book was designed someone know what he or she was doing. On each uneven page in the book there is the text and on each even page is the illustrations and one line of text. This makes it possible for a quick version of the book if anyone wants that. By looking at James illustrations and reading that single line you get a pretty good idea of what the book is about. This feels very clever and gives you an alternative way to read the book, a chance to focus more on the illustrations if that is what you want.
[...]
I also like the fact that the book is printed so that the height of it is shorter then its with. This gives the pages a different dimension that I like. It’s also a bit smaller then a normal book and all this gives it a very nice look that I appreciate and like quite a lot. Everyone involved with this book should be very proud of themselves.
I’ll tell yah, Lilja, they most certainly are proud… ‘strewth, Pete’s probably a bigger King fan than even you! (Honestly, the guy has about ten different editions of everything King has published, and those are just the ones I’ve seen. Total obsession-grade fandom, for real. It’s almost scary.)
Now, quick – let’s jump on the omnibus from rural America to Eastern Europe, and catch up with our old mucker Zoran Živkovic, who’s been delighting and baffling in equal measure (as is his way, y’see). Tamaranth of Cambridge falls in the baffled camp with The Bridge:
This short book consists of three linked tales set in a nameless city with an East European feel [...] I’m not wholly convinced [The Bridge is] representative of Živkovic’s work, but it has an unsettling, Borgesian dream-logic to it, and resonates with images and symbolism that are opaque yet laden with significance.
[...]
I confess that if The Bridge is a series of riddles, I failed to unravel them: if there was closure, explanation, resolution I missed it. The dreamlike surrealism is intriguing; the text seems well-translated; but I came away with the sense of there being something I didn’t see.
Paul Charles Smith is keen as mustard on The Last Book, though:
On the surface, Zivkovic’s The Last Book reads like a detective novel. The main character is Dejan Lukic, a literature loving police inspector, who is accidently called to the Papyrus Bookstore when a customer drops dead of seemingly natural causes. However, when another customer dies the following day and the medical examiner can find no reason why either person should have died, Dejan realises there is something more going on. Is someone poisoning books to imitate the killer in Umberto Eco’s seminal The Name of the Rose (If you are thinking of Sean Connery right now, go punish yourself accordingly – Ed.)? Is the culprit one of the many eccentrics that frequent the store that co-owner Vera Gavrilovic refers to as “patients”? Why does Dejan keep having the feeling of déjà lu, that he has read this before? Could the deaths really be caused by the mysterious eschatological Last book?
[...]
In his introduction to Twelve Collections and The Teashop, Michael Moorcock wrote “I believe that [Zivkovic’s] work is on par with some of his greatest contemporaries, such as Borges, Milorad Pavic, Italo Calvino or Danilo Kis”, and reading The Last Book there is no doubt in my mind that he belongs in such fine company. His work is meaningful, and almost dreamlike in its lack of definite details. He trusts the reader to feel his way through, and every dénouement leads to a thousand possibilities.
The only real question for me is why he hasn’t won more English language literary awards.
We’ve wondered the same, Paul, old chum. Perhaps it’s just cos he’s an acquired taste, somethin’ for the cognoscenti. Mum’s the word… know what I mean? Nudge nudge, wink wink… our little secret, innit?
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
[ For those regular readers who were wondering, I have no idea why this week's reviews round-up has been delivered in Jamie Oliver-meets-Dickens Mockney. These things just 'appen, don't they? Nice one, geezer. ]
Wenesday reviews round-up for 21st April
Posted by Paul Raven on April 21st, 2010 at 12:14
Bored of volcanoes and UK party politics? Then let’s look over the last week’s PS Publishing book reviews!
Tim Pratt has good things to say about Scott Edelman’s What Will Come After in the latest issue of Locus Magazine:
What Will Come After is ‘‘the complete zombie stories’’ of Scott Edelman, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more literary and literate collection of tales about the living dead.
[...]
‘‘The Man He’d Been Before’’ is a grim coming-of-age story about a teenage boy living with his abusive father and apologetic mother in a cabin compound above the zombie-infested suburban subdivision where they’d lived almost a decade before – it’s heart-wrenching and not a bit tongue-in-cheek. ‘‘The Human Race’’ movingly considers an aspect of the dead reviving I’d never encountered before – namely, how frustrating the zombie apocalypse would be for a would-be suicide, knowing that, if they kill themselves, they’ll just come back as a monster instead of finding peace. ‘‘The Last Supper’’ is an audacious blend of science fiction and supernatural zombie fiction, a nice twist on the ‘‘last man on Earth’’ story, and manages the impressive trick of having a viewpoint character who is a zombie, incapable of any thought beyond endless hunger.
In the hands of a lesser writer, a book of nothing but zombie stories could risk becoming repetitive, but Edelman’s audacity regarding style and form, along with his brilliant unpacking of the themes inherent in zombie fiction, make this instead a compendium of singular treasures.
And he’s all a-flap about S T Joshi’s Black Wings, too:
S.T. Joshi’s big new (mostly) original anthology Black Wings is subtitled ‘‘New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror,’’ which Joshi stresses in his introduction doesn’t necessarily mean Lovecraft imitations or pastiches, but simply stories that adhere to Lovecraft’s own requirements for his fiction: ‘‘All my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.’’ Many of the stories contain no explicit link to Lovecraft’s work at all, but all share that sense of inhuman, uncaring forces at work in the universe beyond mortal understanding.
[...]
Joshi is to be commended for putting together a volume that rises well above the usual run of Lovecraftian stories (which sometimes seem to amount to little more than Lovecraft fanfic), gathering 22 stories that mostly succeed in conjuring the ‘‘subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings’’ that Lovecraft believed characterized all great weird fiction.
And while we’re talking Black Wings, here’s Orrin Grey of Innsmouth Free Press on the same book:
… comparisons between [Black Wings and Ellen Datlow's Lovecraft Unbound anthology] are inevitable, but I’m not here to tell you which one is better than the other. They each do different things, and even the stories by duplicated authors often achieve very different results. The most interesting similarity between the two is that both of them largely eschew Mythos tales and pastiches of Lovecraft’s style. While Black Wings seems less stringently anti-pastiche (or anti-tentacle) than Lovecraft Unbound, you will still find fewer mentions of Cthulhu or the Necronomicon than you might be used to in a Lovecraftian anthology.
[...]
If you’re looking for more traditional Lovecraftian fare, Black Wings is probably the book for you, but at the end of the day, both are winners, and we fans of Lovecraft – and of good weird fiction in general – should count ourselves lucky to have either, let alone both.
Last but not least, here’s a ‘real-time’ review of R B Russell’s Literary Remains by Des “Zencore” Lewis. Lewis takes a rather unique flow-of-consciousness approach to his book reviews, it appears, but after some detailed thoughts on each of the stories, he seems to have found the book more than satisfactory:
Yes, it is memorable! I’m drawn back here to consider again its overall title: Literary Remains. That seems to bode well in this context of memorability. Honestly, one of those books that is sure to grow on me. (much later) :)
He later mentions that he’s now tempted to become an R B Russell completist, so I feel safe in suggesting we’ve achieved the desired effect with Literary Remains in Des’ case. :)
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 14th April
Posted by Paul Raven on April 14th, 2010 at 15:52
And after the deluge, the drought… only one review this week, though it’s a real stonker, so I’m inclined not to complain. Think of it, perhaps, as a pure gemstone set alone in a simple and modest piece, in order to draw attention to its singular fineness…
… aaaaaaanyway, the review in question is of Scott Edelman‘s zombie tales collection, What Will Come After, and it’s high praise indeed from Adam-Troy Castro of Sci-Fi Magazine (which is run by SyFy, the television channel previously – and arguably more sensibly – known as SciFi). And how could you not love a book that included this?
The most unlikely tour-de-force, and also possibly the best story in the collection, is a feat few horror authors could even attempt, far less pull off: an actual, complete Shakespearean play, the Stoker nominee “A Plague On Both Your Houses”, which puckishly applies the approximate plot of Romeo & Juliet to a star-crossed romance between a living boy and zombie girl. That one’s worth the cover price all by itself.
Preach it, Brother Castro! And for the closer:
What Will Come After will not be an easy volume to find [...] But those moved to seek it out will find a deeply worthwhile collection by one of dark fiction’s most versatile authors.
Well, I’d refute hard-to-find (you can buy our books through Amazon UK now, y’know, and I think that means they’ll show up in Amazon searches in other countries, too), but – like all our titles – it is a limited edition in both states. But we agree with Mister Castro that it’s a deeply worthwhile book – after all, we never publish anything else. :)
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 7th April
Posted by Paul Raven on April 7th, 2010 at 15:00
Two days on, and I’ve pretty much recovered from Eastercon… and (touch wood) there’s no sign of the traditional post-convention plague, so three cheers for providence!
And speaking of providence, here’s a big old batch of reviews to make up for the last few quiet weeks. First of all we’ve got a bunch from the latest edition of Locus Magazine; here, Paul Witcover casts a warm eye over Shunn & Murphy‘s Cast A Cold Eye:
Some collaborative efforts seek to make a virtue out of the clashing voices and styles of the writers involved, while others read so smoothly and of a piece that it’s hard to believe two writers could so completely efface their own egos. Shunn & Murphy fall into the latter category, and I suspect that most readers, like me, will forget, once they are past the title page, that they are reading a collaboration at all. The novella is a taut period piece, ghost story, and character study set in the small town of Branchville, Nebraska, in 1921. It’s a compelling story about letting go and moving on, about growing up, but also about holding on.
[...]
Their depiction of 1921 Nebraska is vivid, with convincing period details, including matter-of-fact descriptions of the photographic process that manage to be informative and also somehow poetic, like rituals from a bygone age that still retain echoes of their former magic. But the real heart of the novella lies in the relationship between Luke and Annabelle, two strong but damaged characters who share an eerie bond.
In the same issue, Rich Horton describes Cast A Cold Eye as “[a]n involving and moving story,” so I think we can count that as a vigorous thumbs-up all round.
Rich Horton also finds some spare column-inches for Beth Bernobich‘s universally well-received Ars Memoriae:
Commander Adrian Dee, still tortured by memories of another past, is sent by his queen on a mission to Central Europe to uncover plots that may lead to a war involving the Prussian Empire, Austria, Montenegro, all this involving revolutionaries in Montenegro, a traitor in Éireann, and, naturally, a strong beautiful woman whose loyalties Dee cannot at first know. It’s fun stuff, but just a bit more routine than Bernobich’s previous Éireann stories, still there is surely more to come, perhaps even a novel, and Bernobich remains one of the most exciting newer writers we have.
And there’s a brief but laudatory mention of Andy Duncan‘s The Night Cache:
PS Publishing’s Christmas special is The Night Cache by Andy Duncan, which is only barely fantastical, but very enjoyable, about the love affair of two young women, and how one of them drags the other into her passion for geocaching.
And in our final Locus snippet (albeit at one degree of remove), Scott “Undead Trousers” Edelman* posts excerpts from Tim Pratt’s review of What Will Come After:
What Will Come After is “the complete zombie stories” of Scott Edelman, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more literary and literate collection of tales about the living dead.
[...]
In the hands of a lesser writer, a book of nothing but zombie stories could risk becoming repetitive, but Edelman’s audacity regarding style and form, along with his brilliant unpacking of the themes inherent in zombie fiction, make this instead a compendium of singular treasures.
A pretty decent haul, no? Oh, but there’s more! So let us away swiftly to RisingShadow.net, where the surely-pseudonymous Seregil of Rhiminee passes positive judgement on three titles from the PS stable. First of all, David Case‘s new collection, Pelican Cay & Other Disquieting Tales:
The title story, “Pelican Cay”, is a good horror story about a reporter who travels to an island to investigate things and finds out that the government has a research compound the island. The government is doing research about chemical lobotomy, but something goes wrong and the results are horrible for the local people. I’m sure that many readers will love this zombie tale.
The other stories are also interesting, but in my opinion they’re not as good as “Pelican Cay”, although I have to admit that I did like Skulls very much. It’s a story which sticks to your mind when you’ve read it and it makes you think about certain things, because the writer demonstrates that he’s able to write a story with psychological depth.
David Case writes fluently [...] so I’m sure that horror readers will enjoy this collection.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Secondly, S T Joshi‘s Black Wings anthology of assorted Lovecraftian weirdness:
S. T. Joshi has done a good job with Black Wings anthology [...] If I had to choose my favourite stories, I’d say that they were Caitlín R. Kiernan’s “Pickman’s Other Model”, Michael Cisco’s “Violence, Child of Trust”, Laird Barron’s “The Broadsword”, Michael Shea’s “Copping Squid” and Ramsey Campbell’s “The Correspondence of Cameron Thaddeus Nas” (Laird Barron is definitely an author to watch for in the future – his story is surprisingly good).
Although Lovecraft died several decades ago, he still inspires new writers to write macabre stories and these stories are proof of his huge influence on modern literature. These stories show the reader how well Lovecraftian horror can de adapted into different types of literature and how well new stories can be written. In my opinion every Lovecraft fan should read this collection, because these stories are simply fantastic.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
And finally the mammoth two-volume epic that is Darkness, Mist & Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper, evidently well served by Seregil’s love of the Lovecraftian:
“Shaft Number 247″ is a fantastic Cthulhu Mythos story. It’s a perfect story for fans of H. P. Lovecraft. Another excellent Lovecraftian novella is “Beyond the Reef”. These two stories are Lovecraftian masterpieces and they’re among the best Lovecraftian stories I’ve ever read. Both stories are weird and fascinating [...] “Beyond the Reef” is actually an amazing story, because the writing style reminds me of Lovecraft’s writing style – it’s a story which Lovecraft could’ve written himself.
All the other stories are also highly enjoyable and fascinating. They’re excellent entertainment for horror readers and lovers of macabre happenings. I can highly recommend these two volumes to readers who like good stories.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
And there’s more to come! In the hallowed printed pages of the latest issue of F&SF, Charles De Lint waxes lyrical about John Berlyne’s bibliographical epic, Powers: Secret Histories:
This is what all bibliographies should be. Not dry lists of titles and dates that go on for pages, but the same information presented in a lively fashion with anecdotes, commentaries, and profusely illustrated with photos, book covers, and art by the author, all preserved on good, glossy paper stock to show off the illustrated material in its best light.
Not only does it have everything you might expect from a profusely illustrated bibliography, but more than half the book is the equivalent of a DVD’s bonus features: notes, outlines, poetry, even a generous portion of an unpublished 1974 novel, To Serve in Hell. Add to this contributions by Dean Koontz, James P. Blaylock, John Bierer, China Miéville, and Karen Joy Fowler, and you have a wealth of material that will keep you reading for weeks.
And it looks so good: from the clever cover where Powers’s face morphs into a drawing of Byron, through the overall design of the book.
And here he is (figuratively) on Joe Hill‘s Horns:
I didn’t think I was going to finish this book. I didn’t much care for Perrish when I first met him and every character I met after just seemed worse. But the writing is excellent, and then I hit the flashback section with Perrish and the girlfriend who was later murdered (how they met, Perrish’s life as a kid) and I was won over — even by Perrish.
I’m not going to pretend this is a cheerful book. But it is astonishingly good, covering the complete range of human emotion, often in the same character. I was frequently surprised, and while there are many brutal sections, there’s also great heart and hope. And I loved the treehouse, of which I’ll say no more.
This isn’t a book I’ll reread. As I’ve already said, it’s extremely well-written, and that’s the problem. The characters and situations feel too real and much of the book is such that I don’t want to relive it again. Do I regret reading it? Not remotely, but be forewarned going in. You’re about to step onto a real emotional roller coaster.
Iain Emsley, scholar of the fantastic and former Interzone reviews editor, appears to have come to a similar conclusion:
I picked up Joe Hill’s second novel, Horns [...] at Eastercon, which I gulped down yesterday. As with gulping down beer, the experience has left me with a hangover but it was worth it. Despite what could be deeply unpleasant material in too many hands, Hill’s writing explores and reveals aspects of relationships and people. In some ways it carries on from the loneliness/emptiness of Heart-Shaped Box, his first novel.
And to close this week’s excellent selection of reviews, we have Stephen Studach of ChiZine expressing a respectful awe of the writerly talents of Scott William Carter as displayed in his PS Showcase, Web Of Black Widows:
Scott William Carter makes it look easy. But if anyone thinks that writing good, intriguing fiction with a clear, plain voice is easy . . . Well, they should try it sometime.
Carter seems to me to be a writer who will not box himself into any fiction category. He is a cross-genre traveller. And he travels far, casting his webbed net into strange seas, hauling up peculiar treasures.
All of these stories are restrained but involving pieces. All over this showcase represents the rise of a tall, wide and clean-cut talent, still developing in upwards motion. Here’s to more showcases from PSP.
Oh, there’ll be more Showcases, Mister Studach – you can count on that! :)
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
[ * Please note that all nicknames ascribed to Scott Edelman on this website are entirely fictitious and in no way representative of what people actually call him in real life.
Or are they? ]
Wednesday reviews round-up for March 31st
Posted by Paul Raven on March 31st, 2010 at 14:14
So this is spring, apparently. From my temporary vantage of the Wolds in East Yorkshire, I remain to be impressed – it’s cold and grey out there. Still, there’s some sunshine in the form of a Postscripts story taking a Bram Stoker gong at World Horror last weekend, and on Friday morning I’m off on a public transport odyssey to Heathrow for a weekend of beer and book-related waffling at Eastercon, so I can’t really complain too much.
It’s another quiet week on the reviews front, with another lone review for S T Joshi‘s Black Wings anthology, courtesy of wandering reviewer Mario Guslandi, cropping up this time at Rick Kleffel’s Agony Column. Guslandi didn’t like all of the stories, but he has kind words for quite a few in particular, including the following:
“Rotterdam” by Nicholas Royle is a very dark tale where a novelist and wannabe scriptwriter involved in the adaptation of a Lovecraft’s story changes into a bloodthirsty murderer. In “Susie” the distinguished artist Jason Van Hollander abandons for a while his usual craft to pen an effective tale where the death of Lovecraft’s mother is retold as a vivid nightmare. “Lesser Demons” by Norman Partridge provides a spicy mix of Lovecraftian atmosphere and zombie horror, while “An Eldritch Matter” by Adam Niswander describes very dramatically how a man gets physically changed after pocketing a metal object of alien origin.
By far the best tale in the volume is the outstanding “Substitutions”, a happy return to dark fantasy by the talented Michael Marshall Smith. The story (which, truth be told, is barely consistent with the general topic of the anthology) is an insightful, superb exploration of the desire to live a different life and to share it with a different person. The cruel twist in the tale introduces a horrific ingredient, which makes the yarn suddenly creepy and deeply disturbing. Which proves, once again, that good fiction defies the limits of the assigned subject and mainly relies upon solid storytelling. Even Lovecraft would agree.
Definitely a must for the die-hard Lovecraftian – grab a copy now, before Cthulhu wakes!
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 24th March
Posted by Paul Raven on March 24th, 2010 at 15:31
Round about now, PS head honchos Pete and Nicky Crowther will doubtless be heading south toward glorious Brighton, the UK town hosting this year’s World Horror Convention. Many new books will be launched, and many PS authors old and new will be milling around chatting, among other members of the global horror fiction glitterati. So say “hi” if you’re going along – you’ll find most or all of them in one bar or another, I expect.
Yours truly isn’t attending WHC, unfortunately… but I will be at the Odyssey Eastercon at Heathrow next weekend. As I’ll be the only member of PS staff at that event (to the best of my knowledge), please feel free to deliver any refreshing beverages intended for more senior and authortitative members of the team directly to me; I’ll be happy to drink them on their behalf. ;)
Convention excitements aside, here are a triumvirate of PS publication reviews from the past week. First of three is a look at Edison’s Frankenstein: Postscripts #20/21 by pseudonymous Russian lit-blogger Ray Garraty, who goes into some detail about his favourite stories from the anthology before summing up thusly:
Definitely a strong collection of short prose, in which everyone will find something to one`s taste, and a few stories from there are worth to including in year`s best anthologies.
We certainly hope so, Mr Garraty. :)
Next we have an honest assessment of The Painting & The City by our very own Robert Freeman Wexler, from none other than that seemingly-tireless mainstay of fandom, Cheryl Morgan:
I hope that Robert Freeman Wexler won’t mind me describing his writing as an acquired taste. After all, Jeff Ford says as much in his introduction to The Painting and the City. Thank heavens, therefore, for PS Publishing, because they are willing to take a chance on experimental fiction.
[...]
If you enjoyed Brian Francis Slattery’s novels you will probably enjoy this one as well, although Slattery, being an economist, makes rather more sense to me. Wexler’s book has a bit too much of the “commercial = evil” for my taste, though again I’m sure that’s fairly typical of artistic communities. If you prefer to read prose that is simple and straightforward then give this one a miss.
Not an easy read, perhaps… but as Cheryl points out, PS likes to publish stuff that might not get published elsewhere. Did you know that The Painting & The City has been considered by the judges for this year’s Arthur C Clarke Award, as has Sebastien Doubinky’s Babylonian Trilogy? Perhaps a PS title will make it to the shortlist once again… only time will tell. :)
Last of the threesome is a review of Joe Hill‘s long-since-sold-out sf novella Gunpowder from a site named “The Razor”. I can’t tell you much more than that, because the site is so new that there’s nothing in their “About” page beyond the boilerplate copy from the CMS theme it’s using… but we can at least excerpt from the end of this very positive (9 out of 10) review:
The main cast of characters had distinct natures, and behaved believably like children, and their mother, and the novella has some of the best action sequences, and imagery I’ve imagined (probably helped along by the wonderful cover, even though the Gunpowder in my mind looked different). The length of the story ensured that it doesn’t have any excess, but runs a wide spectrum, and lives up to the maxim: Always leave them wanting more.
It’s always lovely to hear people praise the cover art of our books, because PS is very keen on the book-as-artefact – it should be as much of a delight to hold and behold as it is to read. The cover of Gunpowder goes a long way toward explaining why we use Vinnie Chong‘s work so often, too… :)
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 17th March
Posted by Paul Raven on March 17th, 2010 at 13:31
I guess it’s a bit of a stretch calling it a ’round-up’ when there’s only one item to mention, but hey – I think consistency is an admirable thing. That said, it’s the hobgoblin of small minds according to some, but they’re apparently misquoting the good Mr Emerson, so I’m just gonna carry on as usual if that’s all right with you all. Yes? Jolly good.
So, yes – the review, which is a reckoning by Martin Andersson of Dead Reckonings Magazine of S T Joshi‘s Black Wings anthology of new Lovecraftian horror – a venue that, I think we can all agree, knows a thing or two about Lovecraft. Andersson goes to town and looks closely at a large number of the stories individually, but he zooms out for the big picture at the end of his piece:
How well does this anthology succeed as a vessel for the modern Lovecraftian vision? My answer would be, “Very well.” Even though the stories span a wide range of different subgenres and styles, they chime together in a dark symphony as eldritch and as cosmic as the music of Erich Zann. I sincerely hope that there will be more books like this in the years ahead.
You can’t ask for a more sterling recommendation than that, now can you?
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 10th March
Posted by Paul Raven on March 10th, 2010 at 10:55
Ah, the sweetness of March, as the hours of sunlight increase in number… makes us Seasonal Affective Disorder types much more fun to be around, y’know! So let’s embrace this phototropic cheeriness and look at the PS reviews inbox for the week just gone.
First up, Mark Watson of Best SF takes a look at Stephen Baxter‘s XeeLee novella Starfall; there’s a fair bit of plot summary there (so possibly best avoided if you’re the sort who doesn’t like spoilers), but that seems to be an indication that he enjoyed it a fair bit, prompting the following comments:
Baxter is virtually unparalleled in the way he does far future, hard SF, and space opera. [...] Baxter’s official website has a Timeline, which serves as an indication of the breadth of scope of Baxter’s stories, and makes this reader wonder whether he has two or more brains in his head! If people of my age are ever allowed to retire from work, I’ll be setting out a couple of months to pull all the stories and novels together and work my way through this timeline!
It has to be said, the Baxter back-catalogue does grow at an alarming rate – a few years ago it felt like I’d read the bulk of ‘em, but looking at the list now it feels more like I’ve read less than half! Would that I had the time to do a catch-up binge, as Watson suggests… which is the lament of readers the world over, I guess. :)
Next up is a review from another Mark – this time it’s Mark Graham, veteran book reviewer of the Rocky Mountain News, guest-posting at Tor.com and waxing lyrical about Joe Hill‘s Horns, before coming to the following conclusion:
The transitions between the present and the past are handled so deftly that they are almost seamless. Hill sprinkles a multitude of demonic references through the narrative: names, music, places, everyday items and more, and he uses horns in a variety of ways. I don’t want to mention any of them here and spoil the fun.
While the conclusion of the novel is a bit over the top, Hill somehow manages to make a protagonist with horns and supernatural powers seem not only acceptable, but normal. Horns is an addictive read. Plan on a couple of late nights glued to it and checking the mirror in the morning to make sure that nothing weird is sprouting from your noggin.
There already is something weird sprouting from my noggin… but I’m pretty sure my Mad Max crowd-scene-extra’s barnet isn’t concealing anything more demonic. Well, not yet…
Our third and final link for the week isn’t to a review as such, but Tangent Online‘s list of recommended reads for 2009 contains – among dozens of other excellent stories from all sorts of venues, print and online alike – a generous handful of PS publications:
- “In Winter” by Nancy Kilpatrick, “The Hungry Heart” by Michael A. Arnazen and “Devil’s Arcade” by Mark Charan Newton, all found in Darkness on the Edge
- “The Red King Sleeps” by Marly Youmans and “The Portrayed Man” by Justin Cartaginese from Enemy of the Good (Postscripts #19)
- “The Healer” by David Hoing, “Black Fragmentaria” by Michael Cobley and the title story “Edison’s Frankenstein” by Chris Roberson from Edison’s Frankenstein (Postscripts #20-21)
- Gilbert & Edgar on Mars by Eric Brown
- Cast a Cold Eye by Derryl Murphy and William Shunn
- Shaka II by Mike Resnick
A pretty respectable showing, I think… certainly far superior to the British team’s honours list in the Winter Olypics, eh? ;)
Remember to click on the cover art (or listed links) to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Wednesday reviews round-up for 3rd March
Posted by Paul Raven on March 3rd, 2010 at 15:01
This week’s round-up is only a two-fer, so let’s get straight to it. Number one, the presumably-pseudonymous Seregil of Rhiminee from RisingShadow.net heaps praise on Scott Edelman‘s zombie shorts* as collected in What Will Come After:
These stories are disturbing, but they can also be called hopeful. In my opinion this is quite an achievement, because it isn’t easy to combine hopefulness and disturbing things – Scott Edelman has managed to do this and he’s done it amazingly well.
The first story, What Will Come After, is a surprisingly tender, but shocking story about love, life, death and life after death as a zombie. It’s a fine example of what a good writer do with words. The other stories are also well written, but I especially liked the Bram Stoker Award nominated stories (Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man and A Plague on Both Your Houses).
I can recommend What Will Come After: The Complete Zombie Stories of Scott Edelman to all horror readers, because it’s worth reading. If you like good zombie stories, these stories will charm you.
Four out of five stars – that’ll do nicely!
Number two, Tangent Online sets Kathleen M. Kemmerer on Postscripts #20/21: Edison’s Frankenstein. As explained before, the traditional Tangent formula with anthologies is to examine each story in turn, so excerpting isn’t very easy – but if you want to test my assertion that it’s a generally very favourable review, feel free to pop over there and check. Put it this way: the review concludes by saying “[t]his is a collection to savor. Nearly all readers will find something to love here.” Our work here is done. :)
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all top state pre-orders go postage-free!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
[ * That's 'shorts' as in short stories, not short trousers. For the record, I have no idea whether or not Mr Edelman possesses any zombie-related clothing. Though now I find I kind of hope he does. ]
Wednesday reviews round-up for 24th February
Posted by Paul Raven on February 24th, 2010 at 16:20
Yeah, I know, this is a little later than usual… but I’ve had a busy morning. And hey, at least it’s on the right day of the week!
Anyway, blather aside, it’s reviews time here at PS Towers, so let’s see what we’ve got in the virtual mailbag…
First of all, Black Static‘s Peter Tennant tucks in to two recent titles in their latest issue (print only, web-heads!), with high praise for Rick Hautala‘s Reunion:
There are no mixed feelings about this novella [... It’s] pretty much good enough reason to slaughter a metaphorical fatted calf or two. My only problem is that it’s ruddy awkward to review without giving away the main plot twist. I can’t even see a way to touch on the theme of the book, which is so eloquently pinned down by F. Paul Wilson in the afterword (and there’s a reason it’s an after- rather than a foreword), without slipping in a horrendous plot spoiler.
[...]Reunion is perhaps more SF than horror, but it’s a beautifully written story that manages to draw from the deepest wellsprings of human emotion to deliver a tale that is rich with melancholy and sadness for lost opportunities and wasted lives, that manages to be minatory and yet without any real sense of menace, no monster but life itself. It kept me reading to the very end in anticipation of how it would all turn out, even though I felt I already knew. Yes, there is a predictable element to the narrative (perhaps ‘feel of the inevitable’ would be a more accurate description) but that isn’t really a concern, as the tale’s chief value and appeal doesn’t lie in any plot twist, but with the things it enables Hautala to say about the human condition, of how so often in our lives wisdom speaks in a vacuum.
If you haven’t read Hautala before, start here. Start now.
That’s about as unambiguous as it gets, no? Tennant also feels good about Cast A Cold Eye by Murphy and Shunn:
This short novella does many things right. For starters, its setting is immaculately captured on the page, with a real sense of rural Nebraska in 1921 coming over thanks to a wealth of tiny details, such as the ins and outs of photography or a look inside the house of a wealthy widow. There’s a strong emotional grounding too, for both Luke and the society in which he is placed, an aching sense of despair undercut with a feeling that perhaps the worst is past, so people can look to the future with hope, an optimism confirmed in its denouement. Characterisation is spot on, with no-one who can be considered either evil or a criminal, just ordinary men and woman with all the flaws and virtues that implies.
[...]
The supernatural side of the story is suitably understated, so that we believe but also take on board the possibility that the ghosts could only exist inside the hearts and minds of the people who see them. With a subtext suggesting that the spectral world is just another aspect of life, wishing us neither good nor evil, but just there, a case could be made for Luke as the ‘I see ghosts’ boy from Sixth Sense picked up, rather like a reverse Dorothy, and put down in rural Nebraska, but that might be stretching things. In any event, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it without reservation.
That’s two in the bag, then. Next up, Gnostalgia investigates The Night Cache by Andy Duncan, calling it…
… a diminutive 42-page ghost story that is told from the perspective of a young lesbian woman named Jenny. Jenny is a cashier at “Yarns Ignoble” (Oh come on Andy!) who is looking for love. She meets Destiny Creech, a young geocacher, and the two become a couple.
One does not need to be a prophet to anticipate what will happen to Destiny. I guess that was Destiny’s destiny. After Destiny’s quietus, Jenny is led on a series of geocaches and codes. Is Destiny speaking from the grave?
Nice cerebral ghost story with a cool ending.
Horror Drive-In‘s Andrew Monge seems quite keen, too:
The thing that jumped out at me as I read THE NIGHT CACHE was how well Duncan captured the personalities and voices of the two girls. Destiny is portrayed as a free-spirit, always full of energy and on the lookout for her next adventure, whereas Jenny is left in awe of her new friend and tries her best to keep up as she’s swept along. Despite the girls’ brief time together, their relationship and conversations felt authentic and were enjoyable to read.
The other aspects I liked were the descriptions of geocaching and the various cryptography methods used to find the treasure. At various points in the story, Duncan shows the reader charts, codes, etc to illustrate what the girls are analyzing along the way. These sections get the reader more grounded in the girls’ world, and even allows him or her to take a crack at breaking the codes.
Mass Movement Magazine‘s Jim Dodge Jr., however, could only get beyond the fact that the book features (gasp!) lesbian sex for long enough to describe it as…
… a little bit ghostly, a little bit erotic and quite a bit of fun to read.
Mister Dodge does better with details for less titillating fare, however, with the following tantalising summary of Scott William Carter‘s Web of Black Widows:
A small town sheriff wanders onto a scene where one man is surrounded by two dead bodies and there is blood in the surf. The lone survivor is holding a shotgun. This sounds pretty straight-forward doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. It’s a little bit crazier than that.
Steven Langdon is a tattoo artist running from his grief. When he stops to eat at a diner in the middle of nowhere a pregnant housewife approaches him asking for a tattoo. She’s willing to pay whatever he asks for just one little spider on her belly. He says no. He tells her that he can’t, that he doesn’t do that anymore. She pleads. She begs. Finally he agrees, telling her to disappear when he’s done. Instead…well instead of leaving as she’s asked she becomes one of the three main characters in this sordid tale.
You may ask, who do the dead bodies belong to? Who is left holding the shotgun? Who’s the third person on the beach? You’ll have to read the story Scott William Carter has woven for us. It’s a shame to waste such a well spun yarn.
And he even has a soft spot in his heart that only Scott Edelman‘s zombie stories, as collected in What Will Come After, can truly touch:
The stories collected here are sad. They’re full of tragedy and despair. Though these tales are chock-full of survivors they still manage to be really, completely…well…sad. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed anything zombie-related as much as Scott Edelman’s newest PS Publishing release but I will say I needed to make sure I got some sunshine when I was finished. He really pulled the old heartstrings with this book and I loved every minute of it!
Zombies pulling on your heartstrings… now that’d make for an interesting orchestra. :)
Last but not least, The Mad Hatter joins the chorus of praise for Beth Bernobich‘s Ars Memoriae, calling it…
… a subtle Science Fiction story, which falls into place with an unexpectedly sweet and romantic ending. Adrian’s spy tactics are well thought-out, but the story meanders a little too much during his initial investigations causing a very slow start. Once another pivotal character is introduced the speed bumps even out to a strong and climatic ending. There is a steampunk/dieselpunk aspect, but it is little exploited in this novelette for me to get a grasp on, but there is quite a cool device that turns up at one point.
Fans of Kage Baker and other time twisters should definitely take note of Ars Memoriae and its associated stories.
And that’s all the reviews for this week, I’m afraid, unless there are some that my intertube spymonkeys have failed to inform me of… stupid monkeys. Always gossiping behind my back. Feh.
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse.
And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates, and that all pre-orders go postage-free during February – so only four days left!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!