Fantasy Book Critic: Fantasy Book Critic’s 2008 Review/2009 Preview

2008 FAVORITES (In no particular order):

1) Two collections, both of them “specialist” in content but terrific for the general reader, with the proviso that Periphery probably comes with a parental advice warning :)

“The Starry Rift” edited by Jonathan Strahan. Sixteen surreal, skiffy, fantastical and plain weird stories for/about young adults.

“Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures” edited by Lynne Jamneck. A fresh perspective on standard fantasy/sf situations, some real gems. Much talked-about and deserves the attention.

2) One graphic novel (in two episodes):

“Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood” and “Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return” by Marjane Satrapi. “Persepolis” (English version) was originally published in 2004, but I “discovered it”, along with a lot of other people, only after I'd seen the b&w animated film, which came out in May 2008 in the UK. Rebellious girlhood in Iran, at the time of the 1979 revolution. “A graphic novel of immense power and importance”. It's not exactly fantasy, but it's fantastic, wonderful.

3) One poetic, satiric re-visioning of Alex Haley's Roots:

“Blonde Roots” by Bernadine Evaristo. I reviewed this for Strange Horizons HERE.

4) And one episode from a highly superior traditional fantasy sequence:

“An Autumn War” by Daniel Abraham.

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2009:

I'm looking forward to reading “The Price of Spring”, the last episode of Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet.

ON THE HORIZON FOR GWYNETH JONES:

I have a story collection, “Grazing The Long Acre”, coming out from PS Publishing (UK) in the spring. In the US, there'll be a collection of essays from Aqueduct Press, called Imagination/Space. Aqueduct will also be publishing a compendium of my short fiction; no details on that as yet though. I'm also working on another story set in the same universe as “Spirit, Or The Princess Of Bois Dormant”, and I hope to finish playing Zelda Twilight Princess, if I can ever beat the increasingly pesky dungeons.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Gwyneth Jones is the author of more than twenty novels for teenagers, mostly using the name Ann Halam, and several highly regarded sf novels for adults. She's won two World Fantasy Awards, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British Science Fiction Association short story award, the Dracula Society's Children of the Night award, the Philip .K. Dick award, and shared the first Tiptree Award in 1992, with Eleanor Arnason. For more information, please visit the author’s Official Website.

NOTE: For more author responses, please visit Fantasy Book Critic's 2008 Review/2009 Preview index HERE.