Jared Shurin's Blog, page 19

Dead Letter by Benjamin Descovich

I'm a sucker for many, many things: wizard schools, arranged marriages where they learn to love one another, business thrillers, the list goes on. Another? High fantasy worlds where the magic isn't important. 

I have a lot of respect for authors that take the complete freedom of an imaginary world - where the very physics and cosmology can be arranged at their very whim - ... and then write stories that really have nothing to do with any of that. Books that clearly have elaborate, intricate w...

Under Witch Moon by Maria Schneider

Adriel is a witch. 

That's not her real name, by the way. She's not an idiot. Far from it - Adriel's one of New Mexico's best. She's a magical trouble-shooter who can scare off a werewolf, de-curse your home, or rescue a straying husband from the ill-effects of a love potion. Moreover, she's got a heart. She'll keep your secret, say 'no' to vampires and even slip the cops a tip or two, if they're in a bind. All of which - as you might expect - makes a perfect platform for an urban fantasy.

Ad...

SPFBO: Dungeon Crawling with Criteria

No reviews in this update, but stick with me, as I'm going to share my FRAMEWORK for EVALUATION. That's saucy stuff, right?

So, I'll confess - this is my favourite part of SPFBO. Getting 30 down to a handful is a bloodbath. And evaluating the final 10 is nice, but I don't have the same sense of freedom - or responsibility. I'm just one of 10 votes, after all. (And, as noted, at length, repeatedly, I really struggle with numeric scoring.)

At this stage, however, I've got a few (four!) books t...

Small Press Shakedown: Michael Curran of Tangerine Press

The UK has a fantastic small press scene. To celebrate the people behind the imprints, and help out the writers that are looking to them for publication, we've asked a number of editors to share what they're working on - and what they're looking for. This week our featured publisher is Tangerine Press.

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Could you tell us a bit about who you are and what you're doing?

My name is Michael Curran and I founded Tangerine Press in 2006. The original plan was to publish limited edition, handbou...

Simplified Fantasy Cover Art

It is Friday afternoon, and I'm playing with simplify.thatsh.it - a website that creates 'random modern art by simplifying images to their core elements'. Basically, we're one step from Skynet, people.

Anyway, I've taken the liberty of simplifying some of my favourite SF/F covers. They're pretty remarkable.

Have a play - tag us in your experiments on Twitter at @pornokitsch!

Cover: Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself (As Ninefingers says, "You've got to be realism")

Cover: Dragons of Autumn...

SPFBO2017: The First 26 Reviews!

I'm participating in this year's Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off competition - all the background, details and updates are here.

The first step is to filter through the buffet of 30 books that have been sent my way. Although I'll bring some fancy-shmancy grading criteria in later in the process, at this stage I'm being unabashedly subjective: do I want to keep reading it?

For each book, I commit to reading at least the first 20%. At that point, I make the call. If a book's got me hooked, I s...

Otared, Graustark and The Winning of Barbara Worth

One very modern book and five very old ones. Are there common themes? Is there a pattern?! Not really, no.

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Mohammed Rabie's Otared (2016) is a harrowing existential thriller, set in a near-future Cairo. The city has been occupied by a mercenary army - a sort of quasi-Masonic organisation that swept through in a sudden coup with distinctly Cruaderish underpinnings. Cairo persists - everyday life plods along, despite the foreign invaders and the ominous ring of battleships.

Otared is a for...

Hamish Steel's Pantheon - "Because gods are people too���"

���terrible, terrible people.

The great civilizations of the past are most often portrayed with a great deal of dignity and respect, be they the martial-and-marble Romans, the philosopher Greeks, or the austere, death-obsessed Egyptians.  As well as being terribly inaccurate, this approach is highly reductive, preventing us from seeing these as cultures made up of real people; every bit as varied and three-dimensional as we are today.

The respective deities of these cultures tend to be treat...

"This slum of literature"

I've been reading some of the 'best books', which has been surprisingly fun. Perhaps slightly less educational than I had assumed it would be, but there's a virtuous buzz that comes from reading anything with

Although not one of Sinclair Lewis' best works, The Job has a lot going for it. This is a sort of Babbitt for the working woman, and Lewis tries to balance warm-hearted (and progressive) feminist thinking with a thinly-veiled disgust for, well, everyone, including its own protagonist.

I...

What of the fans?

The Journal of Science Fiction was published by a fan group based at the University of Chicago. Like many zines, it was short-lived - despite some (now) star-studded issues, it only existed for four short issues. 

I can't vouch for the tone of the first three, as I've not found them yet, but the fourth is a corker. Whether the JSF was established with this particular tone, or if the editors took to the final issue with nihilistic zeal, the content - especially the editorials - is passionate...