Second paragraph of third chapter: Triss’s eyes opened. Something scratchy was touching her cheek. She reached up, pulled the dead leaf out of her hair and stared at it. One by one, she recalled her actions the previous evening. Had she really climbed out of her window, gobbled windfalls and then stood on the banks of the Grimmer, feeling that it ( Read more... )

I was slightly, but only slightly, spoiled for this by reading Abigail Nussbaum's review, part of her submission for the Hugo Packet where she is nominated as Best Fan Writer. This too is part of the Hugo Packet, as evidence for Samatar's candidacy for the John W. Campbell award; and it is good evidence. I'm always a sucker for apprentice sage ( Read more... )

A problem with the Hugo category of Best Graphic Story is that the nominees are often very diverse in form. Here, for instance, we have the fourth of a six-volume sequence, itself consisting of six individual issues of which the first three are relatively distinct from each other and the last three more closely linked; but there is a lot of ( Read more... )

I must admit that at various points in this novel I wondered how Jo Walton had got inside my head. Her narrator is a teenager in 1979-80, growing up reading Vonnegut, Zelazny, Heinlein and all the classics of science fiction, coping with the usual pains of growing up. Of course, Mor has a few extra problems that I didn't have: no real friends at ( Read more... )

A late Christmas present which I had been very much hoping for, this takes Lovecraft's classic novella and puts it into a stark graphic novel adaptation, beautifully suited to the tale. The original story is a masterpiece of horror, ratcheting up the tension and dread with each sentence; Culbard's adaptation must play with the text a little, but ( Read more... )

Gaiman claims here that he is returning to his roots, by writing a piece about his first serious fandom (though he does not put it like that); it is a two-part story about Batman's funeral, but in Gaiman's hands it becomes much more than that, developing into an exploration of story and modern mythology and what they might mean to those who ( Read more... )

23) Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman ( Read more... )

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