Monday 27 March 2017

Wednesday 22 March 2017

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

(March 2017)



I am, once more, rendered incoherent by Li's writing. I genuinely can't fathom how anyone is capable of producing anything simultaneously so precise yet so supple, so pitiless yet so profoundly humane. Just extraordinary.

Monday 20 March 2017

Viriconium

(March 2017)
  


A full compendium of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium stories, originally published separately (as three short novels and a short story collection) between 1971 and 1985. I’ve previously written about how superb Harrison is as a stylist, and while that’s clearly evident here, I also suspect that reading all these stories together like this didn’t really do them many favours.
  

Monday 13 March 2017

The Stars Are Legion

(February 2017)



Very good, very meaty (figuratively and literally), but I also read this with an increasing sense of déjà vu.

Wednesday 8 March 2017

Monday 6 March 2017

Norse Mythology

(February 2017)



Asgard reimagined as the prototypical frat house. Which is not such a departure from the source material, to be honest.

Friday 3 March 2017

The Steerswoman

(February 2017)
  


Continuing what has become an impromptu ‘Competent Women’ season here on this is how she fight start, we have the first volume of Rosemary Kirstein’s long- and glacially slow-running Steerswoman series.