Archive for March 2014
Review Delay
For those of you waiting for my review of Vera Nazarian’s COBWEB FOREST, I’m sorry to say that it’ll be another week before I’m able to review it.
Why?
Mostly, I ran out of time . . . partly, it’s because other things have gotten in the way of reviewing and blogging over the past week or so. (As you might’ve noticed from how little I’ve blogged lately.)
I’m hoping to blog tomorrow about a few new books I’ve enjoyed, including my friend Chris Nuttall’s new SCHOOLED IN MAGIC and perhaps discussing in a little more detail Rosemary Edghill’s new short-story collection FAILURE OF MOONLIGHT . . . maybe I’ll throw in a bit of talk about Katharine Eliska Kimbriel’s KINDRED RITES in the bargain.
But that’ll have to wait until the morrow . . . until then, keep on keepin’ on. (And for my fellow baseball fans, enjoy Spring Training — the most optimistic time of the year.)
Lightspeed Magazine Passes on My Story…
Folks, Lightspeed’s “Women Destroy SF” issue has passed on my story, which I still won’t name as I’ve immediately sent it off to another market (as writers must do).
Let us hope the second market will be more interested than the last, hey?
Two New Reviews Up at SBR Over the Weekend
Folks, I had a busy weekend with regards to reviews, which is one reason I wasn’t able to write an after-action report right away with regards to Friday’s review of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s newest novel in their ongoing Liaden Universe, TRADE SECRET.
You see, my latest review, up as of a few, short minutes ago, is for Vera Nazarian’s haunting and compelling COBWEB EMPIRE, the second in her Cobweb Bride series. Her series is dark fantasy, yet there’s somehow an underpinning of optimism that carries you through nearly unimaginable suffering . . . in Ms. Nazarian’s conception, Death needs a bride and has refused to go on taking souls until he gets one. But he can’t have just any bride . . . oh, no. He needs a specific bride he calls the “Cobweb Bride” (hence the name of the first book of the series, COBWEB BRIDE, and the series itself, natch), and nothing else will do.
This universe is unlike anything I have ever seen. It is rich, dark, menacing, yet there are plenty of good people who populate it, including the couple at the heart of all the chaos, Persephone “Percy” Ayren and her own dark knight, Duke Beltain Chidair. (Note that Beltain hasn’t yet accustomed himself to being the Duke as his father is undead and certainly doesn’t wish to give up the title, being as distressing a personage as can be imagined . . . at least until an even worse one, Sovereign Rumalar Avalais of the Domain, shows up.)
I have enjoyed reading Ms. Nazarian’s conception thus far, and can’t wait to dive into COBWEB FOREST . . . which is why I plan to read and review it this week. (I’ve already skimmed it, but there’s many, many more things to discover by reading it multiple times.)
At any rate, I also enjoyed Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s TRADE SECRET quite a bit. It’s told in an unusual way that I likened to a mosaic, as nothing really fell into focus for me until right before the end — then I understood it completely.
Why a mosaic? Well, with a lot of mosaics, you can’t really tell what’s going on until you can stand outside and ponder them. And as that was definitely the case here, it seemed to fit.
So there you have it: Two new reviews are up at Shiny Book Review for two interesting and thoughtful books that both delighted me enormously, albeit in radically different ways.
Hope you’ll enjoy the reviews — then, if they intrigue you anywhere near as much as they did me, go buy the books. (Hours of reading enjoyment await. And the re-reads . . . did I mention the re-reads yet?)
Barb Caffrey's Blog 