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Jared Shurin

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Hex Life and Why We Need Our Witches

Tue Oct 1, 2019 1:30pm Post a comment 3 Favorites [+]
Background image: Cristian Escobar [via Unsplash]

Hex Life is a collection of 18 “wicked new tales of witchery”, edited by Christopher Golden and Rachel Autumn Deering. The witchery—an excellent word!—within takes many forms. There are fairy tales—gothic, contemporary, traditional and revisionist; haunting parables; dark comedies; scary stories, and even a few urban fantasies.

The range is fitting, as the concept of the witch is a diverse and long-lived archetype, and one that lends itself to many angles of exploration. Hex Life is particularly interesting when set against the backdrop of modern witchcraft, and its increasingly mainstream cultural presence. Contemporary witchcraft, at least in this popularised form, is “a combination of the aesthetic and the search for something spiritual”, according to Elisabeth Krohn, founder of Sabat. In a chaotic era, where so many people are searching for meaning, self-empowerment, or simply faith, the traditions and practices of witchcraft have stepped in to fill that void for many.

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Joe Abercrombie’s A Little Hatred: A Book at War With Its Past

Tue Sep 17, 2019 2:00pm 8 comments 1 Favorite [+]
Background image: Kyle Frederick [via Unsplash]

What must it feel like to live in your own legend?

This is one of the key themes of Joe Abercrombie’s books: characters swept up in their own narrative, sometimes willingly, more often not. The burden of being a Named Man or a hero; the heart of the narrative, the one in the spotlight and the storybook.

[A Little Hatred continues the theme…]

Winning Isn’t Everything, it’s the Only Thing: Welcome to The Gameshouse

Thu Jun 20, 2019 3:00pm 6 comments 5 Favorites [+]

Claire North’s The Gameshouse was first published in 2015, as a series of three, interconnected, digital-only novellas. In 2019, at long last, the three are collected into a single volume, and in a format where it can sit snugly on the shelf alongside North’s other works.

In case the laudatory flavour of that introduction is in any way misleading, let me be clear: I wholly believe The Gameshouse is one of the ‘single’ best works of modern fantasy. Nor, thanks to its unusual path to publication, is this recency bias. I’ve had four years to read and re-read The Gameshouse, and it gets better every time.

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Wastelands 3: The New Apocalypse Presents a Distinctly American Perspective on the End of the World

Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:00pm 3 comments Favorite This

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse is the third volume in John Joseph Adams’ curated series of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic short stories. With this edition, the series now collects over 80 different stories of cataclysm, disaster, and general tribulation.

The New Apocalypse differs slightly from its predecessors, in that it includes original stories as well as carefully selected reprints. With over 30 stories included, there’s no perfect way to draw conclusions about the anthology—however, there are some clear patterns that emerge across the book.

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An Unquiet Revolution: A People’s Future of the United States

Wed Feb 6, 2019 2:00pm 7 comments 3 Favorites [+]

There are a couple of ways to judge an anthology.

The simplest way to appraise one is to reduce the book down to its constituent parts. An anthology is, after all, a collection of stories. And A People’s Future of the United States—edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams—is, indeed, a collection of stories. 25 original stories, from a veritable Who’s Who of contemporary American speculative writers.

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“Home is Waiting for You” — The Space-faring Futures of AfroSFv3

Tue Dec 4, 2018 4:00pm Post a comment 9 Favorites [+]

AfroSF Volume 3 is—exactly as the title would indicate—the third volume in a series of original fiction by contemporary African writers. The first two volumes, published in 2012 and 2015, featured authors that have now become household names for genre readers, including Nnedi Okorafor, Sarah Lotz, and Tade Thompson. The third volume, with a dozen stories commissioned by Ivor Hartmann, continues the series’ commitment to introducing contemporary African writers to readers around the world.

The theme, loosely, is space. As Hartmann notes in his introduction: “We are ineffably drawn to it, and equally terrified by it. We have created endless mythologies, sciences, and even religions, in the quest to understand it.” It is, Hartmann says succinctly, an “astronomical wilderness.”

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Under Neon and Starlight: Revealing the Table of Contents for The Outcast Hours

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Mon Nov 19, 2018 9:00am Post a comment Favorite This
Photo courtesy Rebellion

The Outcast Hours is only our second anthology, but it is fair to say we already have a bit of a shtick: we like diverse thinking on universal themes.

With The Djinn Falls in Love, it was, well—djinn. One of the few truly global ‘creatures’ of lore. With The Outcast Hours, we wanted something that was equally relevant: something that every culture experiences. Rather than raid the bestiary again, we went higher concept—not to a particular myth, but to the source of myths. Something that everyone, everywhere, shares: the night. We all experience it; it affects everyone, everywhere, in every culture.

So that’s half the shtick: the universal theme.

The other half is where the real work comes in. To us, there’s no point in reading the same story two dozen times. The joy of something universal is that everyone approaches it from a different angle. To capture the breadth, the depth, the vastness that is the ‘night’, we needed wildly different perspectives. The Table of Contents represents our best efforts to capture this range.

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Fight With a Vim and You’re Dead Sure to Win: Adam Nemett’s We Can Save Us All

Wed Nov 14, 2018 2:00pm 4 comments 1 Favorite [+]

If there’s not an official sub-genre for “edgy, dissolute fantasy set at elite American universities,” we should step into the void and name it ourselves. Ivorypunk. GrimIvy. Because, let’s face it—the New England university setting is an immensely popular secondary world. Think of remote towns filled with disengaged, drug-addled youths: screwing their brains out, dodging classes, lazily committing felonies, also as part of their search for some sort of greater existential purpose. Add a touch of fantasy into the mix and the metaphoric stew gets all the thicker. From The Secret History to The Magicians (and the former is a fantasy novel, bring it), there’s a long, quasi-nihilistic-and-deeply-enjoyable tradition of reading about America’s best and brightest, snorting and bonking their way through a Quest for Meaning.

We Can Save Us All is the latest entry to this tradition. All the Bacchanalian misadventures and soul-searching, but, this time, caped and cloaked as superheroes. Adam Nemett’s debut novel features a group of disillusioned and dissolute Princeton students, groping around for their place in the universe. Our ostensible hero is David Fuffman, a sort of bearded (neckbearded, in fact!) everygeek. Committed to a (largely conceptual) love of comic books, romantic angst and the “cooler” parts of his grandfather’s wardrobe, David’s an oddball, even by Princeton standards.

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Why Was 2006 Such An Epic Year for Epic Fantasy?

Thu Jun 8, 2017 9:00am 8 comments 4 Favorites [+]

If you’re a fantasy reader (and, if you’re reading this, I suspect you are), 2006 was a vintage year. One for the ages, like 2005 for Bordeaux, or 1994 for Magic: The Gathering. The Class of 2006 includes Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself, Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire. All of which, remarkably, are debuts (except Mistborn, but Elantris was only the year before and Mistborn was the breakout hit, so we’ll roll with it). And hey, if we stretch the strict definition of “2006,” we can even include Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind in the mix as well.

These are five authors that have dominated the contemporary fantasy scene, and to think that they all published more or less simultaneously is, well, kind of ridiculous.

[So how did it happen?]

The Jinn Are Everywhere (Including In These 6 Books)

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Thu Mar 16, 2017 12:00pm 8 comments Favorite This

Jinn are everywhere. Every culture has them; they lurk in every literary tradition.

On one hand, it makes collecting a list of “jinn” reading an impossible challenge—there’s simply no way to represent all the ways in which the jinn appear. It is the sort of task that, in a classic story, the feisty protagonist would trick a jinn into solving instead.

On the other hand, the size of the task is so impossible that we needn’t even attempt it. Wherever you are, whatever you read—rest assured that there’s a jinn for you.

So rather than trying to cover the vast range of jinn in books, we’ve selected a few of our very favourites—fiction and non-fiction, old and new, fantastical and literary.

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The Dragonlance Chronicles Reread: It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over

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Fri Sep 2, 2016 10:00am 8 comments 3 Favorites [+]

Thank you for sticking with us for eighteen months, three books, sixty posts (75,000 words!), and seven guest posts! We’ve fought dragons, marvelled at Goldmoon’s hair, escaped death knights and (endlessly) argued over Laurana’s agency. WE’RE ALL THE REAL HEROES.

To wrap things up in a fun—and hopefully interactive—way, we’ve decided to interview ourselves. A simple 10 (+1) question discussion, easily numbered, so you can take part in the comments! Please chime in, and answer the questions you want, or make any other comment you’d like. We’re easy!

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Series: Dragonlance Reread

The Dragonlance Chronicles Reread: Dragons of Spring Dawning: Homecoming

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Fri Aug 26, 2016 9:00am 25 comments 2 Favorites [+]

Bad news, good news. Bad news: a super-short week, with a denouement and another (steel yourself) poem. Good news: it’s all Raistlin!

Join us for the last dying moments of the Dragonlance Chronicles. And, fair warning—next week, we’ll be doing our big rambling overview, so get ready to share your own favourite moments and monsters!

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Series: Dragonlance Reread

The Dragonlance Chronicles Reread: Dragons of Spring Dawning Part 3, Chapters 13 and 14

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Fri Aug 19, 2016 10:00am 7 comments 1 Favorite [+]

Welcome back to the Dragonlance Reread!

Last week, Raistlin showed up draped in black velvet and used the dragon orb to save everyone (but not before toying with Caramon, of course) while Laurana turned her back on Tanis. But now we’ve reached the big, epic, Michael Bay-sized conclusion, so let’s get on with it!

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Series: Dragonlance Reread

The Dragonlance Chronicles Reread: Dragons of Spring Dawning Part 3, Chapters 9 and 10

and
Fri Aug 5, 2016 11:00am 6 comments Favorite This

Welcome back to the Dragonlance Reread!

Last time, Berem was revealed as the Green Gemstone Man as he and the rest of our imprisoned party were busy trying to escape the dungeons. We also met the Queen of Darkness not-quite in the flesh, and—at Kitiara’s urging—Tannis knelt before her to pledge himself to her service. This week, the pell-mell continues as Kit schemes, trumpets blare, and everyone’s conflicted wizard makes his return…

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Series: Dragonlance Reread

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