The Solaris Book of New Fantasy | ||||||||
edited by George Mann | ||||||||
Solaris Books, 510 pages | ||||||||
|
A review by Rich Horton
That's the good news. The letdown, at least in the case of this book, is that it is somewhat disappointing. For one thing,
I thought several stories did not work independent of their various series novels. In the case of Hal Duncan's "The Prince
of End Times", related to his novels Vellum and Ink, at least the reader can fall back on Duncan's quite remarkable
prosodic inventiveness, but the story as a story didn't mean anything to me. Janny Wurts's "Reins of Destiny"
is weaker still -- nothing that happens (and not much in the way of a resolved story does happen) means anything at all
to someone who hasn't read the series of which it is a part. Much better is Juliet McKenna's "The Wizard's Coming," which seems
probably to feature characters who have appeared in other stories, but which is a complete story, and a good one, on its
own: about a small country threatened by raiders who hire a wizard for protection. Likewise, T.A. Pratt's "Grander than
the Sea" is a good story set in the world of his novel Blood Engines, but you needn't have read the novel to
follow this tale of Marla Mason dealing with an insane sorcerer who is about to try to raise a dark god from the sea.
I called the book disappointing, but that is relative to my hopes, perhaps. There aren't really any knockout stories here,
and there are a couple quite weak stories, but there are plenty of entertaining ones. Mark Chadbourn's "Who Slays the
Gyant, Wounds the Beast" is set in an alternate fantastical Elizabethan England, an England at war with Faerie, and spy
Will Swyfte has been dispatched to Warwickshire to deal with a problem caused by Edmund Spenser and his love affair
with a denizen of Faerie. Nice stuff. Chris Roberson's "And Such Small Deer" sends Abraham van Helsing to the East
Indies where he encounters a strange man with the initials F.A.M. (another well-known fictional character -- but
I'll leave the secret for readers of the story to suss out) and some terrible mutilations among the native staff. The
protagonist of Jay Lake's "A Man Falls" is the son of an influential man in a society living underground, but he
gets in a lot of trouble when he foolishly ventures to the surface, and encounters another society of humans -- and
huge birds. Jeff VanderMeer's "King Tales"
consists of three short "fairy tales" of sorts -- but quite matter of factly different tales. Intelligent and
amusing at once. And perhaps the best piece is "Lt. Privet's Love Song", by Scott Thomas, in which a sailor spending
some time in a coastal city while his ship undergoes repairs gets in some trouble when a love potion he intended
for a pretty barmaid ends up in another man's wife's drink instead. At the same time his kingdom is undergoing a
succession crisis, as the old king is dying, and his two twin sons are about to take over. Things work out rather
intricately, and pleasantly -- it's a fun and somewhat refreshing work.
This is a thick book, and there is plenty of variety here. I have suggested I was disappointed -- and as I said,
I was, relative to expectations. But I worry I'm being unfair -- this may not be as good a book as I hoped for,
but there is a lot to like here, and certainly it offers good value for money.
Rich Horton is an eclectic reader in and out of the SF and fantasy genres. He's been reading SF since before the Golden Age (that is, since before he was 13). Born in Naperville, IL, he lives and works (as a Software Engineer for the proverbial Major Aerospace Company) in St. Louis area and is a regular contributor to Tangent. Stop by his website at http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton. |
If you find any errors, typos or anything else worth mentioning,
please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide