News & Views

Starred Review for Ghost Summer!

GhostSummer-200Publishers Weekly already listed Tananarive Due’s forthcoming Ghost Summer: Stories as a Top 10 horror, science fiction and fantasy for this fall. Now they’ve published a *starred review*:

In these extraordinary tales, American Book Award–winner Due (My Soul to Take) uses a clear-eyed view of history to explain (but never excuse) the present. Sexual predators are recast as lake creatures (“The Lake”), and werewolves choose cosmetic treatment to disguise their monthly changes (“Aftermoon”); Due craftily employs these shape-shifters to explore how humans embrace transformations in ourselves and one another, even when the result is monstrous. Ghosts abound, bringing past and present into liberating contact. In the title novella, a family under threat of divorce finds reunion through a boy’s ghost hunt, which exposes the historical tragedy splitting the Florida town in which they summer. Childhood acts as a prism for varied emotions, encouraging readers to empathize with a weary mother who allows a well-behaved spirit to possess her unruly child “just for the summer” (“Summer”). Pandemic disease in “Patient Zero” and zombie apocalypse in “Danger Word” (the latter coauthored by Due’s husband and frequent collaborator, Steven Barnes) heartbreakingly overwhelm adults’ best efforts to protect the young. Even facing the end of the world and what comes after it, Due remains in control, carefully unveiling characters’ thoughts and feelings to her enthralled readers. Nalo Hopkinson provides an introduction; Barnes contributes an afterword. (Sept.)


Year’s Bests Beat the Heat!

YBSFF2015-200What? You haven’t started reading your copies of The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy (edited by Rich Horton) and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror (edited by Paula Guran)?

Okay, maybe they are a little heavy for beach books (and who wants an ereader at the beach?), but otherwise they’ll fill the empty hours you now have with Game of Thrones over, only one more week of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and with movies tickets costing so much. how many times are you going to see Mad Max: Fury Road, Jurassic World or Avengers: Age of Ultron?

YBDFH2015-200Don’t take it from us, read what Jaffalogue has to say:

Jaffalogue Reviews: The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy
“This anthology promises the best in new stories and delivers on that promise . . . I’ve never had so many 4- and 5-star ratings in one anthology before (17 of the 34 stories).”

Jaffalogue Reviews:The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror

“A great many of these short stories and novellas are excellent in this sixth annual edition of this collection. Editor Paula Guran can be counted on cast a wide net when it comes to tone and genre, but to glean the best therein.”


MERMAID Mentions

MERMAIDS-200B&N New Book Roundup

Jaffalogue Review:”Another excellent Paula Guran anthology! This time thoroughly exploring the breadth of folklore and mythos surrounding water-based entities: rusalka, selkies, mer, nereids, et al. Whereas vampires often personify passion and sex, and zombies claw at the very definition of humanity, these creatures often personify longing, dysmorphia and gender-dysphoria. Creatures with a foot is two worlds rarely fully sync with both and that discomfit makes for great story telling”. . . [full review]

Tor.com: Fiction Affliction: Genre-Benders for May (week four)


PW Review: New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird

Publishers Weekly:
NEWCTHULU2-200From the seemingly bottomless reservoir of Lovecraftian pastiches and homages, Guran (New Cthulhu) has sieved 19 above-average reprints, all published between 2010 and 2014, and most tailoring their terrors to contemporary times. The monstrous horrors of “Momma Durtt,” by the late Michael Shea (to whom the book is dedicated), are matched by the real-world vileness of toxic waste dumps and organized crime. The otherworldly infestation of Charles Stross’s “Equoid” occurs amid black-ops espionage. Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette’s send the intrigues of their futuristic “The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward” into outer space. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth” casts its shadow over several of the book’s selections, the best of which—Brian Hodge’s “The Same Deep Waters as You” and Ruthanna Emrys’s “The Litany of Earth”—are parables whose events evoke modern political responses to terrorism. Some stories are more explicitly Lovecraftian than others, but all demonstrate how Lovecraft’s dark mythology continues to inspire outstanding tales of modern horror.


Tiptree Honor for Ascension

ascensionJacqueline Koyanagi’s novel Ascension (Prime/Masque Books 2013) has been named to the Tiptree Honors List 2014 with the following comment:

A fun, fast-paced space opera with surprising heft. Its beautifully diverse cast of characters explores intersections of gender and race, class, disability, and polyamory, all while racing to save the universe from certain destruction.

Congrats to Jacqueline!


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