“But men in all ages have beene so desirous to know the effect of their purposes, the sequele of things to come, and to see the end of their feare and hope: that a seelie witch, which had learned anie thing in the art of cousenage, may make a great manie jollie fooles.”
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Book XI, Chapter IX
“Men mocked and reproached the lover because he acted like a fool for love’s sake. The lover felt contempt for their mockery, and reproached them in turn for not loving the beloved.”
— Ramon Llull, Book of the Lover and the Beloved
John Lundwall’s Mythos and Cosmos stands in a line of brilliant and essential books that pierce through the fog of modernity to ask the question: what were our ancestors thinking?
In particular, Lundwall examines the connections among mythology, liturgy, and astronomy in the context of oral culture. He explicates myth as a vehicle for narrating the stars as initiatory maps that gave human life meaning and oriented us towards the larger universe, connecting the microcosm and the macrocosm in the primordial unity captured in the words “as above, so below.” On the way, he sheds new light on such perennial favorites as Herakles and Gilgamesh.
If you enjoy the insights of such thinkers as Joseph Campbell, Giorgio de Santillana, Frances Yates, Mircea Eliade, C.G. Jung, and Jane Ellen Harrison, or if you are simply interested in a different perspective on what was really going on with ancient mythology before Rick Riordan and the D’Aulaires got their hands on it, this book is for you.
Lhaurel is a young woman of the desert people, the Sidena, who take shelter on stone during the part of the year when the reptilian genesauri rampage on the sands. Lhaurel has always been a bit different — tall, thin, and red-haired — and the consciousness of her difference has given her a compassionate eye for the tribeless outcasts who also wander the desert, and whom the Sidena use and abuse.
On Lhaurel’s wedding day, her ideas about belonging and indeed her entire life are shattered. Earlier than they should, earlier than the Sidena thought possible, the genesauri burst into camp and scatter Lhaurel’s people.
Lhaurel is rescued — or is she taken prisoner? — by a warrior of another people, the Roterralar, who ride, to Lhaurel’s astonishment, immense birds. In the path to proving herself to her new people / captors, Lhaurel demonstrates persistence, cleverness, weapon skills… and a surprising magical talent.
Now, against the backdrop of ecological disruption and the suddenly changed habits of the desert monsters, war among the clans looms. Lhaurel is positioned to play a decisive role in the conflict… and maybe even head it off.
Sands is a YA adventure tale that is one part Dune, one part Dragonriders of Pern, and three parts fun.
The cat has no name, and she won’t get a name until she discovers a deeper iteration of her self that reveals it. She has nine lives.
Well, eight, after her death in Alexandria at the hands of a Japanese shikome demon sent to kill a homunculus, which assassination fails.
The homunculi are artificial people. Lacking natural gods in Gaia, an earth-of-all-mythologies, they seek godfriends in the hope that they might end up with an afterlife in an underworld anyway. And the homunculi Herakles and Tyro, having offended the Japanese Yakuza by deserting from and sabotaging their fighting force, mostly hang out in the international sanctuary on Atlantis, where universal agreement protects them from their former bosses.
Only the sanctuary’s charter is up for a vote again, and this time the Yakuza — and other sinister forces — are determined to end the safe zone.
Homunculus & the Cat is sometimes wry but always funny, inventive, irreverent, and action-packed. If you like Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye’s Myth books or Piers Anthony’s Xanth, this is for you.
Julianna is a Duchess in her own right, an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle, a marriageable young lady, and the child of fate. Gods and goddesses watch her path, some protecting her and some seeking her destruction, and one — Grandfather Shadow, the forbidden ancestral god of her people — choosing her as his high priestess and liberator.
I’m a sucker for blackpowder (or “flintlock”) fantasy, and First Chosen is a fun one. It’s also a dark fantasy, about the coming of the promised redeemer for worshippers of Shadow, where the forces of both Sun and Night are oppressors. This is the beginning of a (nearly completed) epic series, Tears of Rage.
M. Todd Gallowglas is an oral storyteller by day and a latter-day wandering minstrel, appearing at multiple renaissance faires, comic cons, and similar events to tell tales. That background shows itself here: First Chosen is brisk and story-focused, driving from one event to the next with a pace that doesn’t flag and populating each scene with vivid characters in high (and sometimes comic) conflict.
Space Operae is the independent publication (and elaboration) of a story previously published in two novellas in the Space Eldritch and Space Eldritch II: The Haunted Stars anthologies. Set among those other tales of Lovecraftian space opera, the two Space Opera “episodes” shone as learned and off-kilter gems — here, they positively blaze.
Michael Collings is a master in full possession of his craft, which drills down to the nuances of controlled vocabulary choice, poetic punctuation and capitalization, and neologism to beautifully and creepily convey an alien point of view. Embedded deep within this disturbingly sweet confection are surprising candied tidbits that wittily reach across the cold depths of space to tweak the noses of some of the great classics of science fiction without every disturbing the story’s mood. From start to finish, the text is a master class and a virtuoso performance enjoyable in many dimensions simultaneously.
This is a first contact tale, and there are humans in it. The first great twist to the story is that it is not told from the humans’ point of view. The second great twist is that, even before the hiveminded and insectoid aliens arrive, the humans are not alone…
Ken Scholes’s Lamentation begins with the eradication of the ancient city of Windwir, home of the Androfrancine monastic-technological order. It leads us in fast-paced, Kevin J. Anderson-esque adventure-focused storytelling through the impact, the fallout, and the maneuvering of the powers around ancient Windwir to fill in the void left behind.
Lamentation looks like fantasy, and its characters used words like “magick” to talk about their extraordinary feats, but this is science fiction in the vein of A Canticle for Leibowitz, leaning towards epic rather than towards literary. This is a future, largely post-technological world, and in the Named Lands the Androfrancines — hated by many, hypocritical in some behaviors — have carried on the torch of learning. Now their capital, and the vast bulk of their order, have been destroyed by their own research; Windwir was blasted by a curse reassembled from fragments by the monks and recited by one of their own mechanical men (that is to say, droids).
But the mechanical man, Isaak, has done so against his will, and apparently as the result of sabotage. So Rudolfo, Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses, and Lady Jin Li Tam of the Inner Emerald Coast, maneuver against Sethbert, Overseer of the Entrolusian City States, who appears to be to blame, in order to stop him from seizing the Androfrancines’ mantle.
And meanwhile young Nebios, illegitimate son of an Androfrancine who died in the blast, looks for his revenge.
Chuck Gannon’s debut novel and first Caine Riordan book, Fire with Fire, is Jack Ryan in a first contact story.
Caine is a writer and researcher, sometimes a journalist and spy, and a polymath. His inability to waste mental energy on things he doesn’t care about and his tendency to ignore mission priorities in order, for instance, to save an innocent life, make him a handful to the coalition of governments that send him as their agent to Delta Pavonis, but his unpredictability also helps him worm out of apparent dead ends and traps, subtle and not-so-subtle.
In the Delta Pavonis system, monumental archaeological finds clearly show that the system’s principal planet once held intelligent life. The real finds are being suppressed by big industry, though, which wants not only to extract fossil fuels from but also establish manufacturing on the planet, which will let them become the cheap and therefore preferred industrial supplier to the frontier. Caine’s ability to outmaneuver his corporate hosts through the false fronts of formal protocol and the twisting passages of outright subterfuge lead him to discover first, that the size and nature of the finds has been downplayed and second, the intelligent life itself.
Even making it off the planet alive, though, is just the beginning. Back on Earth, Caine and his new partner find themselves embroiled in the layered lies and drawn-dagger politics of multinational blocs, international corporations, and first contact.
Fire with Fire is a great read. It’s a brisk, intellectually-rich adventure story, very much in the vein of Tom Clancy, with smart, hard science fiction ideas in place of Clancy’s cold war military hardware. I can’t wait to pick up book two.
Nik Granjer doesn’t believe in the Bug.
The Bug is the disease that wiped everyone else out a century ago. And it’s not that Nik doesn’t believe that the Bug once existed, but viruses just don’t live that long without a host, so he’s pretty sure that the Bug must be gone by now. He’s willing to test his theory, by blinding the wristbound monitor (the “Papa”) that he, like all New Frisko residents, wears, and driving his heartbeat up to speeds that are supposed to be fatal.
Because the Bug, supposedly, kills you when your heart beats too fast. To prevent death by the Bug, the Papas knock out their wearers when the wearers’ heart rates reach 140. This is just one of many features of the structure of New Frisko that are allegedly in place to keep the residents safe — windows do not open, all food is flavorless paste, jobs and marriages are assigned, and so on.
So Nik pads his Papa, races his cycle, drives his heart rate up to 168…
and lives.
But when Nik’s friend Bren does the same thing, he dies horribly, and apparently of the Bug. And immediately, squads of heavily armed Enforsers [sic — spelling has been simplified in New Frisko, along with the rest of life] come after Nik.
So does the Bug exist or not? If it does, why is Nik immune? If it doesn’t, what killed Bren? And why is Nik suddenly an outlaw?
Beat is an exciting debut YA dystopian novel from Jared Nathan Garrett. It’s the Apocalypse of Fitbits, and a story with lots of heart and a bias in favor of human freedom.
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