Challenging Expectations

[image error] Perspehone Lounges

This week’s reading list includes some new-to-me works that have challenged my expectations, usually in a good way.

For those of you unfamiliar with this column, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.  The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

A reminder that I’m always happy to hear what you are reading!

Recently Completed:

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny.  Almost done.  Enjoying all over again.

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede.  Full Cast Audio Productions version.  A friend reminded me of this charming series.  Originally published in 1990, this was one of the first series to take on what has now become a common trope: turning fairytale (especially Disneyesque) expectations for princess and princesses, wizards, witches, and dragons, on their head.

Searching for Dragons by Patricia Wrede.  Audio, also full cast, although not credited to that company; includes many of the same performers.  Focus shifts to a new main character, but many introduced in the prior book have key roles. 

In Progress:

Calling on Dragons by Patrica Wrede.  Audio. More broadly comic than the prior two, with (to this point) a lot less plot.  Kudos to the readers for “Killer” the rabbit turned into a donkey which gets turned blue and…

Mr. Campion’s Farthing by Margery Allingham and Youngman Carter.  A posthumous completion by Allingham’s husband.  Well-written but, like many of the post WWII Campion novels, has a grim note.

Also:

As I noted last week, I’ll be writing the Introduction to a reprint anthology featuring the best of DreamForge and Space and Time magazines, so I’m doing a bit of reading to get prepared for that.  I hadn’t realized that Space and Time magazine features as much horror and poetry as it does.  From the title, I’d expected a majority space opera and hard SF.