Fantasy books
Days of Blood and Starlight
by Laini Taylor (Hodder & Stoughton $29.99) If you’ve not yet read Daughter Of Smoke
And Bone, go and find a copy. This is the series Twilight would have been had it been written by someone with non-stone age sexual politics and rather better prose skills. This second volume is as readable as book one, though much harsher in tone. Events have gone horribly wrong for the angel and devil who fell in love and tried to change the world: war, betrayal, genocide. Things are going to get even worse.
Black Spring
by Alison Croggon (Walker $24.99) Imagine what might have happened in
Wuthering Heights if Heathcliff or Cathy had had the power to curse people. Alison Croggon has recast Emily Bronte’s classic as a fantasy novel, hewing closely to the mood and plot of the original, but moving the story into a vividly imagined world of witches, curses and blood-soaked ancient traditions. She writes well, supporting her admirably ambitious aims. This is a severe book, but a completely absorbing one.
The Eternal Flame
Gods (Powers 14)
by Greg Egan (Gollancz $39.99) Intellectually formidable science fiction writer Greg Egan has produced, with this second volume of the Orthogonal trilogy, his most challenging work to date. In a universe with very different physical laws to ours, a civilisation stands on the brink of a revolution in scientific understanding, and also on the brink of destruction. Egan has dreamed up a fascinating world, with fascinating social structures, but I have to admit that following his detailed arguments over imaginary physics (accompanied by many, many diagrams) was frequently too much for me.
by B.M. Bendis and M. A. Oeming (Icon $39.99) If you have a fondness for superhero comics, but feel the big corporates that control the mainstream titles have become too soul-less and too devoted to movie tie-ins, you should try the Bendis/Oeming series, Powers. Very much adults-only material, this is the ongoing story of the cops who have to mop up in the wake of crimes involving superhumans. It features graphic sex, extreme violence, cracking good dialogue and absolutely unpredictable plotting. New volumes appear infrequently, and rarely fail to improve my world.
White Cloud Worlds Volume 2
ed. by Paul Tobin (Ignite $79.99) A second collection of fantasy art from people working in or associated with New Zealand, many of them linked to Weta Workshops. The new book has all the strengths of the first — wild originality, high production standards — and few of the weaknesses. A significant cohort of female artists has been brought on board and the tendency towards heavy metal-style soft porn has been curbed.