Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was published in 2004. When I first read it in February 2005 I wrote a review on my Livejournal (full review here), to which I shall quote from because it is still my substantive reaction:
It’s set at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in an England that is the same but distorted by the operation of magic on history, and it concerns the bringing back of practical English magic.
What it’s about is the tension between the numinous and the known. The helical plot, which ascends slowly upwards, constantly circles a space in which the numinous and the known balance and shift and elements move between them. It’s a truly astonishing feat and I’ve never seen anything like it.
I’ve just read it again, and I could pretty much write that post again. In summary—this is terrific, it reads like something written in an alternate history in which Lud in the Mist was the significant book of twentieth century fantasy, and it goes directly at the the movement between magical and the mundane.
Welcome to the Avatar: The Last Airbender MUSICAL EPISODE!
Many people think this episode is cheesy and a waste of time, but this episode has some major moments in it that resonate throughout the rest of the series. It also has an abundance of cute Appa moments, so I have a soft spot for this episode.
The Hugo Awards voting deadline is fast approaching! The deadline to turn in your ballot for your science fiction favorites is this Saturday, July 31st.
Having trouble deciding? Tor.com has reviewed the nominees in several categories, including Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, Best Short Story, Best Graphic Story, and more. Need to re-familiarize yourself with those nominees? (A full list is here.) Click away!
The Hugo novelette category is one of my favorites. It consistently features, in my opinion, the best fiction on the ballot. This year, the novellas might have a slight edge in consistent strength across all the nominees, but I feel the strongest stories from all the 2010 short fiction Hugo nominees come from the novelettes.
The six novelettes all deal with identity and what makes something sentient. It’s interesting to see these disparate stories and find a thread that pulls them all together. There’s no reason for a commonality among the nominees to exist, but I’m always pleased when I find one.
As it’s been noted on the other wrap-ups of the short fiction nominees, there are spoilers ahead. If you haven’t read these stories yet and intend to read them at some point, you should probably skip reading this until you get the chance to read them.
When trying to figure out what to write for my Tor.com blog, I thought about my life a year ago. I was a bartender, writing on a dream and slinging drinks at night. I was also finishing my MA in fiction at Rhode Island College and completing a thesis. Most of my writing was minimalist short fiction and I never imagined I would write a novel, let alone a vampire novel.
But during a moment of free writing, I tapped into a character. She had a dark past, she was British, and most surprising, she was a very old magical creature. She was also extremely angry. I didn’t know it, but I had discovered my main character, Lenah Beaudonte, and Infinite Days came to light.
Robothut, whoever you are...You. Are. Awesome! (And a much better papermodel builder than I.)
Irene Gallo will someday come clean to the fact that she didn’t actually build the model in the Flatiron photo. (Although she did “help.”)
Everyone knows that being a heroine is all about how you look. Forget about kicking supernatural ass—the skills are secondary, and you can always use props. Look at Rachel Morgan (from The Hallows Series by Kim Harrison). Most of her skills come from amulets she bought and potions she brewed based on recipes. She has backup to do the hardcore fighting.
In other words, it’s all about how you look while you do it.
Do you want to be a paranormal heroine? You can be. You just have to dress the part.
Welcome to Wednesday Comics Pull-List, here on Tor.com! Every week we post short reviews of a select handful of this week’s comic releases.
This week’s batch includes:
The Wonder Woman reboot...is it working for you? We’ve got some strong opinions on Batman, as well. We’re apparently done exploring Wolverine’s past, too. And is there anything greater than a time traveling Abraham Lincoln?
Dive in to our coverage and feel free to post your own reviews and/or suggest books we should read next week.
Through the magic of Google Alerts (*hangs head in shame* yes, I regularly Google every incarnation of tordotcom possible) I ran across The Rocketry Blog. Real rockets. Paper rockets. Flyable rockets. More rockety goodness than you can shake a nose-cone at!
Irene Gallo sez, egg him on to give Stubby the gift of flight!
Reading the Hugo-nominated novellas every year always feels like a chore before I start. It’s the same way I feel about the novels. It’s not something I’ll get done quickly, and more likely than not, it will take longer than I’d like to get into the stories. However, I almost always find that to be not true. The novellas are engaging, swift-paced, and entertaining.
This year we have six novellas on the ballot, and it felt pretty strong to me. It was difficult to determing my voting ranking, and there wasn’t a lot separating the novellas from each other in my mind. Unlike the short stories, there doesn’t seem to be any artifical theme I can force upon the novellas.
As always, read on with caution. I don’t actively look to spoil stories, but I inadvertantly always do.
Welcome to the Malazan Re-read of the Fallen! Every post will start off with a summary of events, followed by reaction and commentary by your hosts Bill and Amanda (with Amanda, new to the series, going first), and finally comments from Tor.com readers. In this article, we’ll cover Chapters 6 and 7 of Gardens of the Moon (GotM). Other chapters are here.
A fair warning before we get started: We’ll be discussing both novel and whole-series themes, narrative arcs that run across the entire series, and foreshadowing, so while the summary of events may be free of spoilers, the commentary and reader comments most definitely will not be. To put it another way: Major Spoilers Next Eight Months.
Another fair warning! Grab a cup of tea before you start reading—these posts are not the shortest!
I’ve known Leanna Renee Hieber for nearly two years now—we’re half of the team that curates Lady Jane’s Salon, a monthly reading series dedicated to romance fiction—so my enthusiasm for The Strangely Beautiful Tale Of Miss Percy Parker and its recently published sequel, The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker is far from objective. When I was invited to participate in Tor.com’s paranormal romance and urban fantasy month, I knew Leanna was one of the authors I’d be interviewing, and I arranged to ask her a few questions during a quiet moment before the most recent Salon event.
Random randomness, celebrity epic epicness, and quotable quotes from Comic Con.
April
The eerie thing about Paige Adolpha wasn’t just that she turned up right when I was reading about her in the paper. It wasn’t her fame as the star witness in the big local werewolf trial. What brought on the gooseflesh, first time I saw her, was that she was the spitting image of her murdered sister. Identical twins, you know?
I was at the Britannia branch of the public library, absorbing what passed for Vancouver news and wishing the local papers would come up to the standards of the Edmonton Journal—even the Globe & Mail—when one of the regulars caught sight of her.
“It’s that lady from page three,” he stage-whispered.
I slept through the alarm this morning and it’s Charlaine Harris’ fault. You see, I love well-done urban fantasy. Yesterday, after work, I went and picked up a couple of her books and...well, let’s say I stayed up WAY past my bedtime. Nor is it the first time. I pick up a book, or tune into a show, and if it’s well done enough, time just passes me by.
So I started thinking, what makes me come back to a story or show again and again, as opposed to setting down the book or changing channels and feeling that I’ve wasted my time?
Doktor Sleepless isn’t quite a new comic—it started its run in 2008, but has only managed to span enough issues for one trade collection so far. (I blame Warren Ellis’s huge spate of other projects, films, books, etc.) All the same, I’m rather fond of it, and I hope it goes somewhere one day. I even have a shirt with the grinder-gears symbol on it that says “Science Bitch.”
For fans of Transmetropolitan, Doktor Sleepless will strike a similar chord: it’s about a maddened future and a lead character who has more than a few screws loose. The difference is in the worldbuilding: the world of Doktor Sleepless is much less positive than the world of Transmetropolitan. It’s not a dystopia, per say, but the characters are much less hopeful, the message is questionable, and the relationships are all strained to the point of breaking.
If you’re looking for something like Spider and his Filthy Assistants and their combative rudeness and hilarity—you won’t find that here. Instead, you get something that strikes closer to home for our attitude toward our own future.
We live in the future, which means that many of the problems that baffled our ancestors have been solved. Need to get somewhere in a hurry? Try teleportation! Running out of bookshelf space? Try an e-reader! Dying of the plague? Try antibiotics!
But love is a mystery no machine can make sense of and artificial intelligence can’t replace a good heart-to-heart chat; some problems will never be solved by science or advanced technology. Where can the modern citizen of the universe turn when facing a personal problem? “Word to the Wired” will resolve all your futuristic dilemmas, from time travel troubles to alien relations.
[I traveled back in time and accidentally killed my own grandfather! What should I do?]
So, like, hi and stuff: welcome to another Wheel of Time Re-read!
Today’s entry covers Chapters 5 and 6 of Winter’s Heart, featuring INCANDESCENT RAGE and, uh, not a great deal else. Yay?
Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, in which you can find links to news, reviews, and all manner of information regarding the newest release, The Gathering Storm, and for WOT-related stuff in general.
This re-read post contains spoilers for all currently published Wheel of Time novels, up to and including Book 12, The Gathering Storm. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.
And with that scintillating endorsement, on with the post!
Dan Dos Santos created the quintessential urban fantasy cover when he painted Patricia Brigg’s Moon Called cover. As an art director, seeing the printed proof was one of those professionally jealous moments, “Damn, I wish that was ours!” (Luckily, Dan and I are friends; pride outweighs jealousy.)
Like most artists, Dan utilizes models to create his paintings. I asked him to introduce us to the woman behind “Mercy Thompson” and a bit about the process of taking real-world elements to bring fictional characters to life. Five “Mercy Thompson” books later, and a sixth around the corner, Dan and Jaime, the model, have created a series of paintings defining one of urban fantasy’s most beloved heroines.
As a member of RWA, I’ve come to expect that things labeled as romance come with a Happily Ever After (HEA) or at least a Happily For Now. So, when my characters made it clear in my debut series (starting with the paranormal 13 to Life) that there were significant romantic elements throughout, I had to wonder about teenagers and love.
Although my novels incorporate things well outside of the “norm” (at least I haven’t run into werewolves in the small town I live in—though there is that one neighbor who makes me wonder...) there also has to be a sense of authenticity to my characters. So I sought a balance between memory and my current observations of teens.
What Urban Fantasy Means to Me by Susan Sizemore
Down This Gravel Road: A Look at Contemporary Rural Fantasy by Deb Coates
Word to the Wired: Personal Advice, Science Fiction Style by Ellen B. Wright
