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Review: Last Plane to Heaven by Jay Lake

Sep 292014
 

lake-lastplanetoheavenRT Book Reviews: This posthumously published collection of Lake’s short stories, spanning decades, was planned and put together by Lake himself. At first I was worried that I’d be unable to disconnect the emotion of Lake’s personal story with the impartiality required of reviewing, but Lake’s fantastic writing and worldbuilding made that worry irrelevant. This collection is well worth the time and investment; even the weakest story stands out. Readers will find themselves justifying the read of one more story before bed and discover they are awake well into the wee hours of the night. None of the stories are less than well-written and Lake’s voice is strongest in the stories where he ties in military roughness with his impressive imagination.

The Mammoth Book of Gaslit Romance by Ekaterina Sedia

Sep 182014
 

cover for The Mammoth Book of Gaslit Romance by Ekaterina Sedia. Close up on the elaborate cameo choker of a white lady in a lacy white Victorian dress.A fantastic collection of stories of love and intrigue that focus on the trappings of the popular Victorian era, enlivened with fantastical elements and incorporating some noir and detective pieces, by Vivian Caethe; Leanna Renee Hieber; Seth Cadin; Tiffany Trent; Eliza Knight; Sara Harvey; Rick Bowes; Genevieve Valentine; Nisi Shawl; Maurice Broaddus; Ella D’Arcy; E. Catherine Tobler; Sarah Prineas; Barbara Roden; Mary Braddon; Mae Empson; Caroline Stevermer; Delia Sherman; Tansy Roberts; N. K. Jemisin; O.M. Grey.

Last Plane to Heaven by Jay Lake

Sep 162014
 

cover for Last Plane to Heaven by Jay LakeLast Plane to Heaven is the final and definitive short story collection of award-winning SF author Jay Lake, author of Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura.

Long before he was a novelist, SF writer Jay Lake, was an acclaimed writer of short stories.  In Last Plane to Heaven, Lake has assembled thirty-two of the best of them. Aliens and angels fill these pages, from the title story, a hard-edged and breathtaking look at how a real alien visitor might be received, to the savage truth of “The Cancer Catechisms.” Here are more than thirty short stories written by a master of the form, science fiction and fantasy both.

Stories of the Raksura: Volume 1 by Martha Wells

Sep 162014
 

Cover for Martha Wells' Stories of the Raksura volume 1: The Falling World and the Tale of Indigo and Cloud. A humanoid creature with reptilian scales and large feathered/leather wings soars in the foreground, with a flying sailing ship in the background.Martha Wells returns to the Raksura with a pair of brand-new novellas!

In “The Falling World,” Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud Court, has traveled with Chime and Balm to another Raksuran court. When she fails to return, her consort, Moon, along with Stone and a party of warriors and hunters, must track them down. Finding them turns out to be the easy part; freeing them from an ancient trap hidden in the depths of the Reaches is much more difficult.

“The Tale of Indigo and Cloud” explores the history of the Indigo Cloud Court, long before Moon was born. In the distant past, Indigo stole Cloud from Emerald Twilight. But in doing so, the reigning Queen Cerise and Indigo are now poised for a conflict that could spark war throughout all the courts of the Reaches.

Stories of Moon and the shape changers of Raksura have delighted readers for years. This world is a dangerous place full of strange mysteries, where the future can never be taken for granted and must always be fought for with wits and ingenuity, and often tooth and claw. With two brand-new novellas, Martha Wells shows that the world of the Raksura has many more stories to tell . . .

Review: Maplecroft by Cherie Priest

Sep 052014
 

Cover for Maplecroft by Cherie Priest. A woman's whose blond hair is in a proper Victorian updo has her back to us as she stands between two forebodingly lit marble columns. She is wearing a fancy blue Victorian dress. In her left hand, held slightly behind her, she holds a bloody ax.Romantic Times: Priest takes the epistolary format H.P. Lovecraft was fond of and uses it to far better effect, both in terms of characterization and horror. Her protagonists (Lizzie, her sister, her lover Nance O’Neil and the friendly Dr. Seabury) are extremely well drawn even as the nerve and mind-shredding events of 1895 drive them apart. Priest skillfully makes the menace around them specific and concrete while also remaining shadowy and unknowable, achieving maximum impact. Putting real historical characters in genre settings is an idea that’s seemed tired for a while, but this novel shows how compelling it can still be in the right hands. Continue reading »

Maplecroft by Cherie Priest

Sep 022014
 

Cover for Maplecroft by Cherie Priest. A woman's whose blond hair is in a proper Victorian updo has her back to us as she stands between two forebodingly lit marble columns. She is wearing a fancy blue Victorian dress. In her left hand, held slightly behind her, she holds a bloody ax.Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one….

The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny.

But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean’s depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness.

This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.

Deal: Jim Butcher

Aug 052014
 

Photo credit: Julie Woodman-Schneider.Kerrie Hughes and Jim Butcher’s FIERCE, a new contemporary fantasy anthology featuring the fierce breed of warriors who use their unique abilities to fight back the darkness and often skirt its edges (including stories by Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Mercedes Lackey, Rob Thurman, Kat Richardson and others), to Anne Sowards of Roc, in a very nice deal, by Lucienne Diver of The Knight Agency and Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

Herb of Grace by Adina Senft

Aug 052014
 

Cover for Herb of Grace by Adina Senft. A young, white, blond, Amish woman kneels in the foreground, holding a watering can and tending to her herb garden. The background is a pleasant Amish farm.Amish widow Sarah Yoder has been struggling to raise her two teenaged sons and provide a home where family and members of her Old Order Amish church can find fellowship and friendship. Though she is close to her in-laws, lately it feels like her relationship with her boys is splintering. Her stepson Simon wants to move out west with his cousins to find work. And her youngest, Caleb, is spending far too much time over at the tumbledown home of a man who left the church long ago. Henry Byler only returned recently to Willow Creek when he inherited the family farm–under protest–and now seems caught in a struggle between the faith of his childhood and the world he’s come to know. Ruth Lehman, the local Dokterfraa, believes Sarah should use her gift for growing plants to become an herbal healer, too. Sarah is reluctant, however, uncertain if caring for others will take her away from her family–the place where she believes God wants her. But when she feels called to help members of her community, she soon discovers that the heart can be scarred as deeply as the body. As she compiles her herbs, she waits for God to do his healing work in a man who rues a harsh decision, in a lonely prodigal who has lost everything, and maybe even in a herbalist-in-training who firmly believes she will never love again.

Review: Last Plane to Heaven by Jay Lake

Aug 012014
 

Cover for Last Plane to Heaven by Jay Lake. Top half is a silhouette of a plane flying upward into ethereal blue skies and stars. Bottom half looks like it had the cover torn away, and lists the short stories within.Library Journal: Perhaps inevitably this collection has a sense of yearning to it: a desire for escape, a wish for broken things to be fixed, a longing for more time. Here both literal and metaphoric narratives deal with Lake’s struggles with terminal cancer, but readers will enjoy plenty of adventure and pure flights of fancy as well. Continue reading »

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