Year of the Unicorn (which has absolutely nothing to do with unicorns) was a favorite of mine when I was twelve or so. But I hadn’t read the loosely related The Crystal Gryphon until now.

I still like Unicorn very much, and though I’m sure I would have liked Gryphon more had I read it at the proper age, it’s still pretty good. Both novels have ( Read more... )

As someone said, the internet's oldest established permanent floating flame war has started up again ("Just like the Greeks thought that they'd successfully put Hector down and that no one would survive to avenge him, so the establishment thought it had successfully put Heinlein down and no one would survive to avenge him,") reminding me of how ( Read more... )

Back in the 60s, Andre Norton wrote a series of children's books with "magic" in the titles: Steel Magic, Dragon Magic, Lavender-Green Magic, Fur Magic, Red Hart Magic, and Octagon Magic. The ones I've read (mostly when I was about ten) were fun, if not classic. Several have protagonists of color, though I haven't read those recently enough to ( Read more... )

Donorboy: A Novel
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These are both very short sf children's novels which I read while doing laundry yesterday. The Key novel is Scholastic and the Norton is Avon Camelot with the big C, and both editions, though I'd never read those particular books before, brought back fond memories of childhood reading ( Read more... )

Just what I didn't want to read: a pseudonymous article in salon.com by a woman who sold her first book for a large advance and with much excitement, only to end up broke, depressed, and returning to her day job. Her conclusion: unless you're John Grisham, you're all doomed ( Read more... )