Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia, and writes in analogue Australian settings. Her novels The Moving Water and Amberlight were finalists for best fantasy novel in the 2007 and 2008 Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards. See maps and excerpts at Dr. Sylvia Kelso’s 
Riversend by Sylvia Kelso
Speculative fiction sometimes gets a bad rap for being nothing but "escapism." While there are certainly plenty of "just for fun" books in the genre, what people sometimes forget is that sci-fi and fantasy have often been a place where writers can experiment with unusual prose styles and tackle controversial themes that might not go over well in mainstream, "realistic" fiction. Sylvia Kelso's Riversend is an ambitious novel, blending dense, lyrical prose with a thought-provoking look at gender roles and unconventional relationships, and it's a good story to boot.
The prose is not going to be for everyone. It took me a little while to catch the rhythm of it. The narration is poetic and filled with sentences that are often long, descriptive, comma-laden, and sometimes fragmentary, as in this description of the character Alkhes:
Worse than outland; rankless, nameless, certai... Read More
