Time to pick from the long list of nominees for the Locus ballot 2023, covering work published in 2022. It’s a big list, since it represents the consensus judgment of a large group of reviewers at Locus magazine, and I can’t pretend to have read it all. I think part of the purpose of such […]
9 Favorite Fantasy Fiction Books I Read in 2022
Though I’ve usually thought of myself as a science fiction reader primarily, this year’s favorite fantasy fiction has shown me how diverse and vital this vast category can be. None of the nine books in this list resorts to the tired conventions of Eurocentric medieval-style settings and hero questing. Each one takes a completely original […]
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
Impressed as I was by Simon Jimenez‘ beautiful and moving first novel, The Vanished Birds, I have to say I’m just staggered by his second, The Spear Cuts Through Water. Using the second person, the narrator lures “you” with intensely lyrical but dramatically apt prose into a world between worlds. One of several story tellers […]
