Roanhorse, Tread of Angels (2022)

Rebecca Roanhorse, Tread of Angels. Solaris, 2022. Pp. 176. ISBN 978-1-7861-8874-8. £9.99.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

The story begins in a gambling joint in Goetia, a mining town in the mountains run by a privileged elite. It’s an unholy place and Celeste, a dealer at the card tables of the Eden, “Perdition Street’s premiere gambling and drinking establishment,” has seen her share of squalor, degradation, and exploitation and there’s the obligatory saloon-fight in the first ten pages. But when her sister Mariel, a singer at the Eden, is arrested for a particularly nasty murder, Celeste is forced to embark upon a quest to prove her sister’s innocence. In doing so, she sees even more of the town’s darker side than she ever thought existed.

Kewin, Eye Collectors (2020)

Simon Kewin, The Eye Collectors (a story of her Majesty’s Office of the Witchfinder General, protecting the public from the unnatural since 1645). Elsewhen Press, 2020. Pp. 288. ISBN 978-1-91140-964-9. £10.00 pb/£2.99 e.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

The “Magic Police” is a firmly-established sub-genre by now, but Danesh Shazan of Her Majesty’s Office of the Witchfinder General is an interesting addition to their ranks. Most people think that the “office” is a historical anomaly, “a ridiculous piece of quasi-mediaeval pagentry, like so much of the British governmental and judicial systems,” but in fact it exists to protect the public from unutterable and eldritch powers from Beyond. Danesh, a recently-recruited Acolyte in the Welsh branch of the office, headed by the terrifying Campbell Hardknott-Lewis, works with mundane cops on cases which have a flavour of the supernatural about them. And when he’s called in by D.I. Nikola Zubrasky to investigate a murder in Cardiff, this “flavour” is worth at least three Michelin Stars.

Berry, Million Eyes (2020)

C.R. Berry, Million Eyes (Million Eyes series book 1). Elsewhen Press, 2020. Pp. 336. ISBN 978-1-9114-0948-9. £9.99 pb / £2.99 e.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

We begin with William II of England (William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror) with a book in his possession. A book called The History of Computer-Aided Timetabling for Railway Systems which is, says William, “an omen foretelling a future that God is compelling me to avert.” Shortly afterward, William is killed by a stranger who talks into a flat rectangular object, swallows a red object like a small pebble, and disappears. The book, however, is passed down through generations of Royalty (at one point ending up with the Princes in the Tower and Princess Di), though hunted after by mysterious and murderous agents. Eventually, the story of these events comes to the attention of former history-teacher and obsessive researcher Gregory Ferro and Jennifer Larson, a history graduate with a fondness for Dr Who, a terrible record for keeping jobs, and a reluctance to getting into mad conspiracy time-travel theories about books published in 1995 referenced in a history book of 1977 and mentioned in a 14th century letter. For part of the book, they become a kind of Mulder-and-Scully duo, but the said mysterious and murderous agents become extremely murderous if a bit less mysterious, being employees of a tech firm called Million Eyes which at one point is referred to as recently having bought up Apple. At their heart is the dangerous, sinister, and glamorous Miss Morgan.

Malikyte, Echoes of Olympus Mons (2019)

Eric Malikyte, Echoes of Olympus Mons. Self-published, 2019. Pp. 270. ASIN B07MCMD2GN. $11.99/$3.02.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

Geraldo “Hal” Leon and his roommate Akio Sato, students at Olympus One (a Martian University) have invented a kind of camera that detects dark matter. Not only do they face the opposition of their hidebound teachers, they find that they have somehow summoned a kind of consciousness that proceeds to slay their fellow-students and staff. Are the shapes that they see a kind of re-creation of something traumatic that happened to Mars?

Johnstone, How I Learned the Truth About Krampus (2017)

Tom Johnstone, How I Learned the Truth About Krampus. Eibonvale Press, 2017. Pp. 36. ISBN 978-1-908125-58-3. £6.00.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

A young academic researching folkloric traditions becomes fascinated by the figure of Krampus, the horned monstrous companion to St Nicholas who, in Austrian tradition, punishes naughty children. We are reading his letter to his wife, written as he is awaiting arrest: their baby has disappeared; and the narrator is attempting to explain (and/or justify) what really happened following his trip to Germany to follow up the work of an expert on Central European folklore whose work was excluded from the most important work on traditional folk performance customs. He learns that Holger, the German academic had, apparently, strayed too far into the territory of "what one might call cryptozoology." Holger's former partner Claudia takes the narrator into the Tyrol, where they find Holger's tent and a weird, intricate carving which he takes back to England and gives to his fiancée. After their marriage, dreams of her "straddling" the monstrous carving, which sometimes bears the face of the narrator's friend Mike, sometimes his own face, haunt him. When their child is born his wrinkled skin and deep black eyes remind him of something he saw in Germany. The police have their own theory…

Greenfield, The Time Machine (2017)

James W. Greenfield, The Time Machine. 89 minutes. Starring Don McCorkindale, Michael Orenstein, Nathan Nasby, Juliet Lyons. $14.99.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

Apparently inspired by Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, audio engineer/musician Greenfield’s double album takes H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine and re-interprets it as a musical project, loosely adapting the text and offering musical interpretations.

Hutchinson, Europe in Winter (2016)

Dave Hutchinson, Europe in Winter. Solaris, 2016. Pp. 295. ISBN 978-1-78108-463-2. £7.99.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

There’s a scene early on in Europe in Winter in which we meet Gwen, a civil servant who is part of a group of conspiracy-theorists whose focus is the Community, the parallel-universe/constructed world to which Hutchinson’s previous two novels Europe in Autumn and Europe in Winter have introduced us. Suddenly, with the revelation of the existence of the Community to Gwen’s baseline world, her superiors are intensely interested in it. “The government was being forced to make up policy towards the vast new European neighbour on the hoof.”

Zinos-Amaro/Silverberg, Traveler of Worlds (2016)

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Traveler of Worlds: Conversations With Robert Silverberg. Fairwood Press, 2016. Pp. 280. ISBN 978-1-933846-63-7. $16.99.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

Robert Silverberg is a writer I have read far too little of. But then, Silverberg is a writer everyone has read far too little of. One of the most prolific writers in our field, he began selling to the science fiction magazines (interestingly, for the British mag Nebula) in 1955: a mere three years, as he notes in one of his conversations here, after Philip K. Dick began publishing. In his first incarnation, he dedicated himself unflinchingly to writing and selling science fiction for the market, writing stories at breakneck speed (49 in 1956 alone), sometimes in partnership with Randall Garrett, sometimes under a bewildering array of house-names. During the late 60s and into the 70s (when I first came across his work), he changed tack, taking advantage of the increasing openness of the field to new styles and ideas. His work during that period alone would put many lesser writers to shame, both in quantity and quality. Among a series of astonishing stand-alone novels that ought to be on anyone’s bookshelf, Dying Inside (1972) stands out for its dark (some might say metaphorical) exploration of a telepath’s gradual decline of his powers.

Tieryas, United States of Japan (2016)

Peter Tieryas, United States of Japan. Angry Robot Books, 2016. Pp. 377. ISBN 978-0-85766-532-4. £8.99.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

In his dedication, the author points to Philip K. Dick as one of the “Phils” who changed his life; and it is immediately clear that this is a reference to The Man in the High Castle as an inspiration for United States of Japan, We can see Tieryas’ debt in the basic scenario in which Japan won WW2 and the United States of America is divided between a militaristic Japanese empire and Nazi Germany. Here, though, instead of a book offering a vision of a better alternative where the USA won (in the shape of a book or, in the case of Amazon’s recent series, a film), the people of the defeated country are shown—and encouraged to play—a game which shows the US taking on and defeating Japan. This is in itself an interesting nudge at the idea of dominant/hegemonic forms of cultural media, although it is, of course a kind of game that we are playing once we entertain the idea itself. It does, though, in a meaningful way, mould our response to the novel, as do a number of ways in which Tieryas constructs the nature of his future. And so, it is fair to say that I found the novel inferior to Dick’s, but also that many of its readers will be of the age I was when I first read High Castle, and Tieryas’ moulding and construction will be as normal and obvious as Dick’s was to me. I cannot, though, fail to read it through the lens of Dick, and, as the publishers emphasise this novel’s status as one “in the vein of” Dick’s, I am probably not expected to.

Wood, Azanian Bridges (2016)

Nick Wood, Azanian Bridges. Newcon Press, 2016. Pp. 211. ISBN 978-1-910935-12-5. £11.99/$15.99.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

Early in Azanian Bridges, when the two main characters who are drawn somewhat against their wills into standing up against the political system which surrounds them first use the “Empathy Enhancer” which is central to the plot of this fast-moving thriller, there’s a significant moment which sets the tone of what is to follow and raises the book’s level of intelligence above the level of simply “fast-moving thriller”. Martin, a clinical psychologist who has co-developed a device which will capture, record, and interpret human thoughts, needs to know if it will actually work, and decides to test it on one of his patients: Sibusiso, a troubled young amaZulu student who has had a breakdown after witnessing the killing of a friend at a political rally.

Burdon, Almost Invincible (2014)

Suzanne Burdon, Almost Invincible: a biographical novel of Mary Shelley. Criteria Publishing, 2014. Pp. 339. ISBN 978-0-9923540-0-8. £12.99.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

You couldn’t make it up. You really couldn’t. Three young people, filled with new-agey dreams of free love and liberal communitarianism, run away to Switzerland. One of them (who in a couple of years is going to write one of the greatest and certainly most paradigm-shifting novels ever written) is the teenage daughter of the greatest female political writer of her age, forever haunted by guilt stemming from her mother’s death shortly after childbirth. She was brought up by a father whose celebrated philosophical anarchism was a magnet to the young man who has just deserted his wife and child for her: a poet already notorious for atheism and revolutionary views, as well as an almost godlike personal charm. The third (in some ways the most interesting character) is the stepsister of the first: a young woman almost certainly in love with the second but who seemed to have reserved a scarcely sane fangirl obsession for the man whom they are destined to meet: an older and more cynical poet “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

Weaver, Black Hole Bar

Dave Weaver, The Black Hole Bar. Elsewhen Press, 2014. Pp. 241. ISBN 978-1-908168-49-8. £9.99/$17.99.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

The Black Hole Bar is an interesting combination—depending upon how you look at it—of mediocre-to-quite entertaining short stories and unusually-structured novel and actually successful novel, which gradually exposes the nature of the world in which it is set. The back-cover blurb references Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio’s Decameron to rather startling effect. Any reader who knows these works (especially anyone who notices that “Boccaccio” is actually misspelled here) is going to be ironic at the expense of the author, because to the most cursory or charitable reading The Black Hole Bar is not as good a story-cycle as the works of Chaucer and Boccaccio, nor do the stories offer as sharp a satire on their tellers and times. That said—and I’d be surprised if I had been lead to any other conclusion—Weaver hasn’t disgraced himself, and deserves better.

Roland, Curious Case of H.P. Lovecraft (2014)

Paul Roland, The Curious Case of H.P. Lovecraft. Plexus, 2014. Pp. 136. ISBN 978-0-85965-517-0. £14.99/$19.95.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

Paul Roland’s flawed but interesting biography is a record of a flawed but interesting man, designed to fill a need for “a popular but comprehensive biography” as opposed to the plethora of academic/scholarly treatments of Lovecraft which, Roland indicates, weren’t easily accessible outside the USA when he began the project twenty years ago. Now, perhaps, too much is written about Lovecraft, although much of this is partial and partisan, and Roland does his best to steer through some of the controversies and speculations without losing sight of either the facts of the biography and the substance of the fiction. He offers, for instance, the common suggestion that Lovecraft had Asperger syndrome (which of course had not been conceptualised in his lifetime), but notes that for each instance of Lovecraft’s Asperger-like behaviour other explanations can be offered. He several times notes, and is rightly judgemental about, Lovecraft’s attitude to race, which was extreme enough to be commented upon unfavourably in his lifetime. His chronological approach allows him to take Lovecraft’s fiction and comment upon it in the context of his life. This allows attention to be given to those earlier works which seem nowadays to be increasingly overlooked: the “dreamer” fantasies such as “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” and “The White Ship” which are as important to Lovecraft’s rejection of the world as “The Horror at Red Hook” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth”. For those new to Lovecraft, this is interesting and worthwhile.

Price, Kilgrace and the Singular Situation (2014)

C. Price, Kilgrace and the Singular Situation. Ragged Angel, 2013. Pp. 136. ISBN 978-1-910092-00-2. £3.99 pb/£0.99 e.

Reviewed by Andy Sawyer

This is part of a series involving two scientists trying to get back to their own continuum after becoming stranded in a backwater where “conservation of energy and E-MC² are in effect”—which might take some time to work out, but does make sense! Susan—a humanoid (hints suggest not human) and Cet (“Killgrace”) an alien in a comprehensive life-support system—are not only not the same species, they are at war with each other. They also must co-operate to get back “home”. Here, they find themselves on a spaceship which is engaged in rescuing two “interstellar mega-fauna” from the region surrounding a Black Hole. Passing themselves off as a rescue team (fortunately they are able to hack into all necessary databases to create a plausible cover story) they join in with the operation. It’s rather like Doctor Who, though with a much more equal relationship between the protagonists.