The 39 Steps (1939)

I read The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan more than 15 years ago. I did not remember much about the book except that it was about a man on the run from a dangerous criminal mastermind who wanted to reveal the country's military secrets to the enemy. I also remembered that there was no female protagonist in the book, and that ( Read more... )

Lately, I've been consuming speculative fiction centered around Japanese/ Shinto creation mythology. It was not by design, but through a series of posts at various other blogs I follow.


( Read more... )

( Read more... )

( Read more... )

When you read the other urban fantasy works out these days-with those badass heroes and heroines in leather and hijinks and fancy weaponry-McKillip’s Ombria in Shadow seems a tamer work in comparison. It was hard for me to get started with the book-the scenes were too rustic, the heroine too commonplace, the hero too subdued. You may have heard of ( Read more... )

Until I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I hadn’t realized that madness gives you a key to the faerie/ magical worlds. Then I read Bleeding Violet, which shows that crazy can be cool- though with some immediate repercussions.

The blurb from Amazon:
Hanna simply wants to be loved. With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full ( Read more... )