At The Edge of the Universe, we review books that may not be classified SFF but that incorporate elements of speculative fiction. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

While mid-20th century Russian propaganda wizards were twisting words to hide the truth, Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a response that proved fantasy could be used to reveal wisdom rather than confuse it.

An absolute feast of a book, The Master and Margarita serves up a delicious variety of characters and scenarios — naked witches, talking cats, and a devil’s ball — as a less-than-subtle riposte to communist cant. In the process, Bulgakov simultaneously subverts the doctrine of his day, declaring the universal power of the written word to have a staying power government ideology can never achieve.

Reading the incisive and often comedic manner in which Bulgakov eviscerates communist dogma, it’s a wonder fantasy is not used satirically more often. Suffice to say, The Master and Margarita is not meant to be read as a story in any linear sense. There is a plot, but symbolism and metaphor bear the lion’s share of the narrative, and as such it is difficult to sum up the story into a neat sentence or paragraph.

Painstakingly written to avoid censors, The Master and Margarita requires effort from the reader to place meaning and sort through the variety of representations as they relate to the work’s ultimate message. That Mikhail Bulgakov is likewise able to draw in threads of religion and history into an already powerful theme elevates his work to a height achieved by few novels ever written. If you thought you had read all of the best literature of the 20th century but not yet picked up The Master and Margarita, by all means do, if not for the re-read value alone.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

I haven’t actually read every page of The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, yet I’m giving it my highest recommendation. Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Master and Mistress of Weird, The Weird is 1126 pages long and should really be considered a textbook of weird fiction. It contains 110 carefully chosen stories spanning more than 100 years of weird fiction… The Weird is not meant to be read front to back all at once, but is rather more like a manual or primer in the scholarly field of Weird Fiction. I read many of the stories (most of them were stories I had not previously read) and familiarized myself with a few authors I’d never heard of before. I look forward to reading all of these weird tales eventually and I’m glad to have this text on my shelf. The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories deserves a place on every speculative fiction lover’s bookshelf. Read the rest.

Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor

… Although it’s been a while since Kelly reviewed Lips Touch: Three Times, her enthusiasm for it obviously made an impact, for whilst I was browsing through the YA section of my local library, I saw a familiar-looking face staring up at me. It was the cover art for Laini Taylor’s book, an image which had clearly been stored away somewhere in the back of my mind, waiting for me to recognize it in the real world. And so, a few years later, I settle down to take Kelly’s recommendation. I’ve ended up with the same bouncy enjoyment, and can’t wait to track down more of Laini Taylor’s work… Read the rest.

The Gathering of the Lost by Helen Lowe

… The Gathering of the Lost is the second installment in Helen Lowe’s THE WALL OF NIGHT quartet, the first being The Heir of Night, in which we were first introduced to the story’s protagonist: Malian, the rightful heir to the House of Night, the first of the Nine Houses that garrison the mountain range known as the Wall… Like all good sequels, The Gathering of the Lost is bigger, longer and more complex than its predecessor, expanding on the world and its characters in order to explore just what’s at stake… Lowe maintains a good balance between the plot’s political intrigue, action sequences, and character development… Lowe keeps a handle on her extensive cast of characters and settings without losing track of the story, cleverly incorporating several twists that will make you want to re-read in order to pick up on all the clues that she has strewn throughout each chapter. It’s an immensely satisfying second installment in a series that will continue in the next book, Daughter of Blood. Read the rest.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Readers considering whether they should read Neal Stephenson’s breakthrough novel, Snow Crash, would do well to read the novel’s opening chapters about the Deliverator. Rarely has a sales pitch been so blatantly — and so masterfully — launched at the start of a novel. Even James Bond must envy such a rich opening gambit. For some readers, the remainder of Snow Crash will not live up to the pacing of the opening sequence. In fact, I’d even go so far as to suggest that Stephenson’s hero, Hiro Protagonist — who carries a katana and who is supposed to be “type A on steroids” — does not live up to his introduction. Yet, the style and sheer attitude of the opening is a joy to read, and this mood, which skates the line between irony and geek enthusiasm, is maintained throughout. Read the rest.

The Best of Kage Baker by Kage Baker

The more I read Kage Baker, the more I love Kage Baker. Of the hundreds of speculative fiction authors I’ve read, I rank Kage Baker in the top ten. Maybe top five. She’s that amazing. I love her clever imagination and her style which is unembellished, straightforward, and full of wit and charm. Which is why I was jumping up and down when the nearly 500-page story collection called The Best of Kage Baker showed up on my doorstep… In my experience, story collections are almost always a mixed bag, but The Best of Kage Baker is not. Even those I’d read before were welcome re-reads. I enjoyed every single story in this collection. It sounds like a cliché, but it’s the honest truth that nearly every one of them made me think, smile, laugh, or cry. What can be better than that? And at the very end, I wanted to cry just because Kage Baker, who died a couple of years ago, will write no more of her wonderful stories. We have lost such a great talent. The Best of Kage Baker is one of the best story collections I’ve ever read. I will treasure this volume. Please don’t ask me if you can borrow it. Read the rest.

We’re happy to welcome back reviewer Ruth Arnell from retirement!

WOOL by Hugh Howey

WOOL is the omnibus edition of Hugh Howey’s WOOL series. The first book in the series, Wool, is more of a short story. I don’t even think it hits novella length. It would be just a good-sized chapter in some epic brick. And what do you do at the end of a particularly good chapter? You just turn the page and keep reading.

That’s something to keep in mind for anyone who plans on reading the WOOL books. Just buy the omnibus edition, because you will want to keep reading when you get to the end of the first story. And then you will yell at the book and want to keep reading at the end of the third. And by the time you get to the fourth, you will just think, “I can ignore my family for a few more hours because I really need to keep reading this right now because I am freaking going to kill someone if they keep me from finding out what happens next.” I will admit, I was reading WOOL on my Kindle while proctoring exams, and gave at least one student the stink-eye for interrupting me to ask a question. And so I am reviewing them all together, because I tend to think of this as one story, released in serialized form like novels from 50 years ago. Amazon puts the print edition at 548 pages, which honestly would just make Robert Jordan fart in the general direction of this tome. Read more »

Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

… Robert J. Sawyer is a master at taking an interesting thought experiment and turning it into a full-length novel. What would a Neanderthal world be like? What would a modern Neanderthal do if he were dropped into our world? It’s fascinating to think about. Sawyer answers those questions in a thoughtful, heavily researched, and entertaining manner. Ponter Boddit is one of the most dynamic and interesting characters I have ever read. He is thoughtful, intelligent, and quick-witted. He is the key to making Hominids an amazing work of fiction, and is a big part of the reason it won a Hugo Award… I listened to this on Brilliance Audio CD, narrated by Jonathan Davis. Davis is smooth as butter, and provides so much life to the characters he reads. I highly recommend getting the audio version of Hominids if you can. Read the rest.

Lily of the Nile  by Stephanie Dray

After the defeat and death of Cleopatra, her three youngest children were taken to Rome and paraded as spoils of war, then adopted into the household of the victorious emperor, Octavian. Of the three, the one who went on to make a mark on history was Cleopatra’s daughter, Cleopatra Selene. In Lily of the Nile, Stephanie Dray tells the story of Selene’s coming of age in Rome, with a magical element added. Read more »

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

The scholar Brian Attebery in his book Strategies of Fantasy writes that works of science fantasy can be divided into two categories: the beautiful and the damned. No middle ground to be had, technology and the supernatural remain relative to the era, and combining them is disastrous to the point of comedy or successful to the point of being a mind-opening experience. Falling into the latter category, Lord of Light, unlike many of Zelazny’s other works of science fantasy, is a flawless blend of the archetypes of science fiction and the mythologies of Hinduism and Buddhism. The result is simply the peak of imaginative literature… everything propels Lord of Light into the highest ranks of science fantasy. Quite simply, it’s a masterpiece that anyone calling themselves a fan of speculative fiction must read… Read the rest.

Icefall by Matthew Kirby

… Matthew J. Kirby perfectly creates an unbearable tension… Every major character is complex… All of this great storytelling and characterization is enhanced even more by beautiful writing… I very nearly missed out on Icefall twice. I received an ARC last year, but was swamped and knew Bill was a Kirby fan and passed it along to him, and then after reading his stellar review, selfishly wished I’d held on to it! Then, recently, I checked it out from the library, but kept not getting around to it, until I got an overdue notice and decided to hurry up and read it before I took it back. I’m so very, very glad I did. Don’t make my mistake, people — don’t put off reading this book. Icefall is stunningly good. Read the rest.

Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk

Written by David Lindelof, Art by Leinil Francis Yu

A little background for newcomers or fanboys/girls who have been away for a while: Marvel comic’s ULTIMATE story arcs are a rebirth of the Marvel Universe for a new generation of readers and have storylines that fit better with the recent movie adaptations.

Bruce Banner is sentenced to death and executed by nuclear bomb. Soon after, three random disasters occur in remote places around the world that were not due to nature or terrorists. It doesn’t take S.H.I.E.L.D. long to determine the most likely cause is the Hulk. Nick Fury must find someone capable of hunting Hulk down and taking him out as quietly as possible; a super-human with no qualms about getting his hands dirty. Wolverine is the best there is at what he does, and what he does best isn’t very nice. Marvel’s ULTIMATE WOLVERINE VS. HULK is a six-issue storyline that pits primal rage against godlike fury.

ULTIMATE WOLVERINE VS. HULK is so freaking awesome that I’m not sure I can do a proper review without rampant expletives. The story opens with Wolverine lying in blood-drenched snow, wondering why he can’t feel his legs. When the next panel reveals what happened a few moments before, my reaction was to hiss “holy $#!+”.

With the decades of complex history in the Marvel Universe, it’s a monumental undertaking to invent new stories while remaining true to who the characters are, even more so for A-listers like Hulk and Wolverine. Many make the attempt only to crash and burn.

The creative team behind ULTIMATE WOLVERINE VS. HULK made a comic book exactly how it’s supposed to be done. The illustration carries as much weight as the words. The fonts and placement complement the ambiance. Point of view shifts from issue to issue. The sequence of events constantly changes from the present, to immediate past, to days prior, to a few minutes from now. It would be nearly impossible for this story to have the same impact in any other medium.

Mr. Lindelof’s writing is as good as it gets in comics. The dialog, which is often an overlooked factor that makes or breaks a comic, grants the individual characters their own unique voices. The reader would easily know who is saying what even if there were no speech balloons. If Mr. Yu’s artwork had any more life in it, you’d feel a pulse. He uses fine lines that detail down to the smallest fragment or blood spatter. Yu’s rendition of these popular superheroes is like a glimpse into their very souls.

The reader feels dangerously close — almost too close — to the onslaught that is super-beings doing battle. Every time that I pulled my eyes away from these comics, I half expected to find my house in ruins. There are even rumors that medical doctors are prescribing ULTIMATE WOLVERINE VS. HULK to increase low testosterone levels.

Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan

… Woken Furies is Richard K. Morgan’s third and latest TAKESHI KOVACS novel. Raw-edged violence, graphic sex, and bad attitudes continue to be a mainstay of this series. (Can you say awesome?) Altered Carbon is still my favorite but Woken Furies comes in as a very close second. Without risking a spoiler, I will say the conclusion of Woken Furies is the most satisfying of the three books… While Kovacs’ antisocial behavior, violent tendencies, and authority issues may make him self-destructive and a danger to society, they make one helluva a dark adventure for readers. Kovacs holds a special place in my jaded heart. Read the rest.

At The Edge of the Universe, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.

The Snow Child had me from the first page, specifically these two sentences:

She had imagined that in the Alaska wilderness silence would be peaceful, like snow falling at night, air filled with promise but no sound, but that was not what she found. Instead, when she swept the plank floor, the broom bristles scritched like some sharp-toothed shrew nibbling at her heart.

I loved the way Eowyn Ivey used alliteration and onomatopoeia here to reinforce the picture she described, and I was pretty sure from that moment that I would enjoy this book. And I did. I know I’ve found a good book when I find myself wanting to babble on about both the story and the mechanics of its telling.

The year is 1920. Mabel and Jack are a fiftyish couple who have moved to remote Alaska to get away from constant reminders of their childlessness and years-ago miscarriage. Mabel feels prissy and useless in this rugged land but isn’t quite sure how to change that. Jack feels that he “married up” and is ashamed that he can’t give Mabel a soft, easy life. Both are haunted by the lack of the children they wish they’d had. The Snow Child follows the evolution of these characters and of their marriage as they adjust to the harsh realities of their new home, befriend a rough-and-tumble neighbor family, and encounter the snow child of the title: a little girl who appears the morning after Jack and Mabel impulsively build a girl of snow.

The child, who calls herself Faina, is an enigma. Is she a supernatural being, a magical fairy-girl like the one from the “Snegurochka” tale Mabel’s father read to her long ago? Is she an ordinary flesh-and-blood orphan scratching out a solitary existence? Or is she a figment of Mabel’s imagination, conjured out of loneliness and cabin fever? Ivey feeds this ambiguity by writing dialogue differently when it involves Faina. These conversations are not set off in quotation marks the way the rest of the book’s conversations are. It helps one wonder whether Faina has the gift of speaking directly into people’s minds — or if she only exists in their minds in the first place. We do eventually get some answers about Faina’s nature, but later these seemingly definitive answers are called into question yet again.

The prose is skilled; one has the sense that every word in The Snow Child is carefully chosen, yet the book never seems overwritten. Ivey has a knack for using just the right word, not necessarily the prettiest word — they’re not always the same thing and she gets that. Ivey’s writing evokes both the stark setting and the moments of beauty to be found there, as well as the inner landscape of the characters. Here’s another sample that stood out to me, and seemed to perfectly describe the feeling of worrying about something and hoping that the worrying itself could somehow bring about a happy outcome:

It was a possibility she could not bear. She wound herself tightly, as if within her girdled ribs she could contain all possibilities, all futures and all deaths. Perhaps if she held herself just right. Maybe if she knew what would be or could be. Or if she wished with enough heart. If only she could believe.

The Snow Child is a moving fairy tale adaptation, and seems to tell us that no matter how we find our loved ones — whether by birth or marriage or friendship, or maybe by magic — we never know how long we will have with them. Life is uncertain; we might have more time than we expect, and we might have less. All we can do is make the best of it.

Initiate’s Trial by Janny Wurts

Janny Wurts’s latest novel in the WARS OF LIGHT AND SHADOW, Initiate’s Trial, is another rock-solid installment in what has become one of my favorite series. Janny’s use of the English language, her ability to sculpt characters with concepts and characteristics that make them live and her continuing commitment to solid storytelling make her work some of the best ever. Initiate’s Trial is a perfect example of why her books are always worth the wait… This is epic high fantasy at its finest and immersing yourself in this world of beauty, magic and characters that are both real and painfully flawed is simply a joy. I can’t wait for the next book. Read the rest.

CYGNET by Patricia McKillip

Two Patricia McKillip books in a single volume, what could be better? As two of her earliest works, the CYGNET duology (composed of The Sorceress and the Cygnet and The Cygnet and the Firebird) make for more challenging reads than her later offerings. McKillip is renowned for her complex writing techniques. It’s obvious to those who are familiar with her distinctive poetic-prose that she’s still getting the hang of it here, and sometimes the density of it threatens to overwhelm her story… But once you’ve got the gist of it (or even if you don’t) it all adds up to a unique reading experience. McKillip’s fantasy novels are special because they veer away from the usual “epic fantasy” tropes, and are simply interested in telling a relatively straightforward story in an unusual way… her work is filled with enough imaginative invention to make other authors green with envy… Read the rest.

GIRL GENIUS: Agatha Awakens by Phil & Kaja Foglio

“Adventure! Romance! MAD SCIENCE!”… I only read one graphic novel and that’s GIRL GENIUS by Phil & Kaja Foglio. I love this comic and I must not be the only one —it’s won the Hugo Award three times (and lots of other awards, too). Therefore, I was thrilled to see that Tor is releasing hardback omnibus versions of GIRL GENIUS because this comic is a work of art that deserves to be beautifully bound and displayed on coffee tables everywhere… If you’re already a fan of GIRL GENIUS, you will be more than pleased with this omnibus. I rarely buy hardback books these days since I have two e-readers, but even though I’ve already read this story online, I love being able to hold it in my hands so I can examine the intricate gorgeous art. I’ve read this comic in several formats, but Tor’s hardback omnibus is the very best way to experience GIRL GENIUS… Read the rest.

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

… In the author’s afterward to Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card explains that this was the novel he had always intended to write and that Ender’s Game, its more famous and popular prequel, was just an introduction. I’m sure that’s why, as much as I loved Ender’s Game as a thrilling action-packed YA adventure, I liked Speaker for the Dead even more. This is a more mature, thoughtful, and far-reaching story… Though this is a meaty and thought-provoking work, Speaker for the Dead is populated with characters you can love, hate, or otherwise relate to, and Card holds it all together with a heart-wrenching story about loneliness, bullying, abuse, hate, jealousy, adultery, incest, companionship, guilt, forgiveness, redemption, love, and death. There’s a lot going on here… Read the rest.

The Crowfield Curse by Pat Walsh

Once in a while, a book comes along that surprises you. I picked The Crowfield Curse up on a whim, being attracted to its stark cover art and intriguing title, and it turns out to have been the best book-related choice I’ve made in months. A rich, unsettling atmosphere, imaginative use of old folktales and legends, a sweet, likeable protagonist, a fascinating central conceit — this book has it all. Read more »

Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson

Robert Charles Wilson’s novel Julian Comstock is set in a vastly changed 22^nd-century USA — after the end of the age of oil and atheism has resulted in disaster. Technology is mostly back to pre-20th century levels, and the population has been vastly reduced due to social upheaval and disease. Society has become fully class-based, divided into a Eupatridian aristocracy, middle-class lease-men, and indentured servants. The country — which now stretches across most of the North American continent — is involved in a lengthy and brutal war with the Dutch over control of the recently opened Northwest Passage.

In this setting we meet the novel’s extraordinary hero, Julian Comstock, the nephew of the dictatorial president Deklan Comstock. Julian is a free-thinker with a deep interest in the apostate Charles Darwin (whose heretical theories are anathema to the Dominion of Jesus Christ, one of the three branches of the government with the president and the senate). Julian is forced to flee his country hide-out with his friend Adam (the amazing narrator of the novel) and Sam Godwin, who is Julian’s mentor since his father died in battle — his father being Bryce Comstock, army commander and brother of the president, who was sent into a hopeless conflict by Deklan, fearing his brother’s growing popularity would endanger his own tyrannical rule. Read more »