Ekaterina Sedia

According to Crow — (2005) Publisher: Josiah was born after the war was over, but its shadow still lies across the land of Sium. Even though the two countries had remained at peace for the past seventeen years, there is little doubt that the Meran Empire will continue its conquest one day. Josiah is too young to remember the war, but he is reminded of it every day; his dark skin betrays his Meran blood. Josiah meets Caleb, a Meran missionary. Caleb becomes interested in Josiah's origin, and finds out something Josiah has suspected for a long time — his father was a Meran general, Sefar, killed during the war near Josiah's hometown. Mireille and Crow decide to leave Sium as well, fearing prosecution. The four of them travel to Mer, and Josiah discovers a different culture and a different world. With a new war looming on the horizon, Josiah must decide whether he wants to be a conqueror or the conquered. But how can he take sides without betraying a part of his heritage?

The Secret History of Moscow — (2007) Publisher: Every city contains secret places. Moscow in the tumultuous 1990s is no different, its citizens seeking safey in a world below the streets-a dark, cavernous world of magic, weeping trees, and albino jackdaws, where exiled pagan deities and faerytale creatures whisper strange tales to those who would listen. Galina is a young woman caught, like her contemporaries, in the seeming lawlessness of the new Russia. In the midst of this chaos, her sister Maria turns into a jackdaw and flies away — prompting Galina to join Yakov, a policeman investigating a rash of recent disappearances. Their search will take them to the underground realm of hidden truths and archetypes, to find themselves caught between reality and myth, past and present, honor and betrayal... the secret history of Moscow.

The Secret History of Moscow

Much praise has been attached to The Secret History of Moscow and I can understand why. Ekaterina Sedia weaves an enchanting story drawing from both Russian mythology and history. I'm not really familiar with Russian myth (or history for that matter) but that didn't hindered me from appreciating this novel. I expect that readers more educated in those areas will appreciate all the allusions Sedia includes in The Secret History of Moscow.

However, the real strength of The Secret History of Moscow is Sedia's writing and how closely she pays attention to characterization. This novel has a huge cast, and in nearly every chapter Sedia devotes time to flesh out the histories and personalities of various characters — whether they're the heroes of the story or merely victims of events. However, The Secret History of Moscow isn't one of those big epics with endless characters and perpetually shifting perspectives. Rather, Sedia mainly sticks with three protagonists. Her characters are complex, tragic in many ways, and they drew me in and kept me hooked.

If you're looking for a tour of Moscow, Sedia accomplishes that not by excess physical descriptions of locales, but rather by capturing its atmosphere, its bleakness, and the characters who live in such a place. Her language is easy to get into and lyrical at times and her writing is infused with a distinct but comfortable Russian voice.

Overall The Secret History of Moscow is a highly recommended read regardless of whether or not you're familiar with Russian lore. —Charles Tan (guest)
FanLit thanks Charles Tan from Bibliophile Stalker for contributing this guest review.

The Alchemy of Stone — (2008) Publisher: Mattie, an intelligent automaton skilled in the use of alchemy, finds herself caught in the middle of a conflict between gargoyles, the Mechanics, and the Alchemists. With the old order quickly giving way to the new, Mattie discovers powerful and dangerous secrets — secrets that can completely alter the balance of power in the city of Ayona. However, this doesn't sit well with Loharri, the Mechanic who created Mattie and still has the key to her heart — literally! A steampunk novel of romance, political intrigue, and alchemy, The Alchemy of Stone represents a new and intriguing direction by the author of the critically-acclaimed The Secret History of Moscow.

The Alchemy of Stone

CLASSIFICATION: With its intriguing blend of steampunk, gothic romance, political intrigue, and fairy tale spirit — not to mention metaphors on such real world issues as terrorism and racial discrimination — The Alchemy of Stone is like a bizarre, but captivating cross between Frankenstein, Pan’s Labyrinth, Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy, Tool’s animated stop-motion music videos, and the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle). Recommended to readers who like their stories fantastical yet relevant, enchanting but surreal, and deep while also fanciful…

FORMAT/INFO: Page count is 304 pages divided over nineteen chapters and an Epilogue. Narration alternates between Mattie’s third-person POV and a plural first-person perspective via the gargoyles. The Alchemy of Stone is a standalone novel although I could see this world being revisited. July 2008 marks the Trade Paperback publication of The Alchemy of Stone via Prime Books. Cover design is by Stephen H. Segal with David Defigueredo providing the artwork.

ANALYSIS: This time last year, I had never even heard of Ekaterina Sedia. Now, she’s a rising star in speculative fiction and I seem to be seeing her name everywhere — the Paper Cities anthology, the Clockwork Phoenix anthology, the much-praised Secret History of Moscow, etc — so I’ve been curious to discover for myself, what all of the excitement was about. Well after reading the author’s third and most recent novel, The Alchemy of Stone, the reasons are pretty obvious.

For starters, Ms. Sedia can write. Specifically her prose, which can be either smooth as silk or hauntingly evocative, is just breathtaking:

We cannot explain this feeling, this stirring, wistful like the smell of linden blooms in the blue moonlit night. We only feel, we feel the absence of love from the stone, from the city, we feel uprooted from our soil. And we seek salvation from all of the unloved children of the world.

Of course there’s more to writing than just prose, but readers needn’t worry. The characters are interesting and likable; dialogue is smart and witty; the plotting is intricate enough to keep readers engaged and guessing at what happens next, yet at the same time is easy to follow; and the novel is excellently paced so that the pages just speed by. I suppose some of the secondary characters like Iolanda, Sebastian and Niobe as well as the story’s steampunk/industrial revolution-setting and such concepts like the Soul-Smoker could have been fleshed out more, but these are minor issues that don’t detract from The Alchemy of Stone’s overall appeal.

Besides the prose, the best thing about The Alchemy of Stone is Ekaterina Sedia’s imagination. For instance, how many novels have ever featured an intelligent automaton as the main protagonist? Mattie doesn’t just think however, she also has emotions and can feel both pleasure and pain, the former of which includes a creative sex scene between her and a human. What’s most fascinating about Mattie though is the way Sedia explores racial discrimination through her emancipation from a house servant into a self-employed alchemist as well as the prejudice she has to deal with; her involvement with Mechanics/Alchemists/rebel politics and her different worldview; and the complex love/hate relationship that she has with her creator, even going so far as plotting against Loharri to steal the key to her heart, which requires constant winding. Then there are the gargoyles, another rarity in speculative fiction — at least for me. In this case, the gargoyles are living creatures, birthed from stone and guardians over the city that they fashioned from their own hands. The problem is that the gargoyles, who speak with a single voice, are rapidly becoming extinct — turning back into the stone from which they were born — and they’ve enlisted the aid of Mattie to discover a solution that will solve their dilemma. Thirdly, we have Ilmarekh the Soul-Smoker, a person who consumes the ghosts of those who linger in the world as well as the souls of criminals, and whose soul will lead the others to their rest & freedom when he dies. What’s interesting about the Soul-Smoker is the fear that he inspires in everyone around him — which is why Mattie is his only friend — and how all of the souls retain their memories and can speak through the Soul-Smoker’s voice. In addition to these three imaginative ideas, there are also Stone Monks, homunculi, blood alchemy, spider miners, the Calculator, and mechanized ‘caterpillar’ vehicles.

CONCLUSION: Last year I read two books by authors who I felt should have been signed to a major publisher. One was Matthew Hughes’ The Spiral of Labyrinth. The other was The Sword-Edged Blonde by Alex Bledsoe who has since gone on to ink with Tor Books. Blessed with exquisite prose, an extraordinary imagination, smarts and wonderful storytelling skills, Ekaterina Sedia is without a doubt another author who deserves to be on the payroll of a major publisher. Whether a publisher will be smart enough to recognize Sedia's talents is another matter. In the meantime, read The Alchemy of Stone, a magnificent tale of change, betrayal and enchantment, and discover for yourself the magic of Ekaterina Sedia. —Robert Thompson

Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy — (2008) Publisher: This anthology of 21 original fantasy stories explores humanity's most dynamic and forceful creation — the city. Featuring tales from fantasy heavyweights such as Hal Duncan, Catherynne M. Valente, Jay Lake, and Barth Anderson, the collection whisks readers from dizzying rooftop perches down to the underpasses, gutters, and the sinister secrets therein. Mutilated warrior women, dead boys, mechanical dogs, and escape artists are just someof the wonders and horrors explored in this bizarreassembly of works from voices new and old.

Paper Cities

Bring up urban fantasy nowadays and most readers will probably assume that you’re talking about such authors as Laurell K. Hamilton, Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, Kim Harrison, Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon and so on, but in this new anthology from Senses Five Press, which is edited by Ekaterina Sedia, Paper Cities reveals that Urban Fantasy has actually been around for almost two hundred years and can be traced as far back as the Arabian Nights. You see, this anthology doesn’t treat Urban Fantasy as a subgenre, but rather as a form of storytelling and the common denominator with these stories is the setting. So what Senses Five Press and Ekaterina Sedia have done here with Paper Cities is compiled a list of twenty-one writers and their original short stories — each of which offers a uniquely rich setting to explore — who they feel represent the next generation of Urban Fantasy:

1. “Andretto Walks the King’s Way” by Forrest Aguirre. Before even starting the anthology, I knew that the stories in this book were going to be quite different from what I usually associate with urban fantasy and “Andretto Walks the King’s Way” just confirms that. Set in a conventional fantasy milieu — think European medievalism — that alternates viewpoints between a king, a queen, a prince, the dwarf Andretto, a whore, a soldier and others, Aguirre’s short is a tale of irony that quickly degrades into something much more horrific when the Black Death surfaces…

2. “The Tower of Morning’s Bones” by Hal Duncan. Like his previous novels Vellum and Ink and “The Prince of End Times” short story from The Solaris Book of New Fantasy, Hal Duncan’s latest offering is at once dazzling and frustrating, featuring beautiful and poetic prose that is offset by a nearly incomprehensible plot. Definitely more for those who like to read between the lines…

3. “Courting the Lady Scythe” by Richard Parks. This short story is also set against a fantasy backdrop and is like a gothic fairy tale where a young man employs the help of a mythical creature to win the woman — Lady Scythe — of his heart, and ends up getting much more than he bargained for… An enjoyable story even though it doesn’t really offer anything I haven’t already read before.

4. “The Bumblety’s Marble” by Cat Rambo. On her website Cat Rambo’s writing is described as ‘urban mythopoeia’ and I think that’s a pretty apt description for her story which takes place in a magical world that is part Harry Potter, part Brothers Grimm and part ‘New Weird’. While the plot is fairly simple — two youths on a quest for a marble that holds something valuable — I definitely wouldn’t mind visiting the port of Tabat again in the future…

5. “Promises” by Jay Lake. One of my favorites, this tale of the City Imperishable (Trial of Flowers) blew me away with its portrayal of one female’s harsh ascension from Girl to Little Gray Sister to Big Sister in a world that requires the women of the Tribade to be “strong enough to stand against it”… I know that “Promises” is really only a glimpse of what the City Imperishable has to offer, but it just sounds like a place I want to get lost in…

6. “Ghost Market” by Greg van Eekhout. At only four pages “Ghost Market” gives new meaning to the term ‘short story’, but it’s an intriguing concept where inhaling ghosts is a form of drug dealing, and I think it would make a pretty interesting series. We’ll have to wait on that though because Van Eekhout's first novel Norse Code is “a mythic fantasy set in contemporary Los Angeles in which a minor Norse god, a modern valkyrie, and a Viking thug are pitted against the Norse pantheon in an attempt to stop Ragnarok, the long-ago foreseen destruction of the entire universe.”

7. “Sammarynda Deep” by Cat Sparks. This one was interesting. The backdrop is an Egyptian-influenced port that features such strange customs as sacrificing something of great value — an eye, love, etc — in return for honour, water jousting, the forbidden Glass Rock and the Sammarynda Deep, a Lovecraftian chasm that can change a person in unnatural ways while the story concerns a man, a woman and the tragic past that they share… Considering the way the short was narrated and its ending, I wouldn’t be surprised to see “Sammarynda Deep” expanded into a novel and personally, I hope that’s exactly what happens.

8. “Tearjerker” by Steve Berman. Keeping in tone with the anthology, “Tearjerker’s” best quality is the setting, specifically the Fallen Area, a ‘reality infection’ that has been quarantined from the rest of America and populated by Talented, Afflicted, normals, tearfreaks, hags, carnivorous alleys and other wild ideas including a man who communicates by making sentences appear on his skin. Apparently Berman has written a number of stories set in this Fallen Area and it’s easy to see why…

9. “The Title of This Story” by Stephanie Campisi. From a writing standpoint I was very impressed by Campisi’s prose and was really intrigued by some of the ideas in the story like onomastics — the study of proper names of all kinds and the origins of names — photographia, the linguistic angle and the city of Skendgrot. As far as the actual plot, “The Title of This Story” is rather ambiguous but I hear Campisi is writing a novel set in this same world so perhaps some of the short story’s many questions will be answered…

10. “The One That Got Away” by Mark Teppo. I’m not quite sure what to make of this story. It’s basically about a bar — The Alibi Room — where people go to escape from their mundane lives by telling made-up stories, but tired of the same lies four friends decide to make a new story by hunting a unicorn. While the short asks some interesting questions, “The One That Got Away” never really grabbed my full attention. Nevertheless, Teppo has a book called Lightbreaker which sounds really promising…

11. “Alex and the Toyceivers” by Paul Meloy. According to the preface this short is actually the first chapter in a novel that draws from a bunch of the Meloy’s other stories so readers are thrown right into the fire with little idea of what’s going on except that a menagerie of grotesque beasts called Toyceivers have come for a boy named Alex. There’s also a cat called Bong, a dog named Alehouse, the old man Hemog who is a friend of Alex’s and the town of Quay-Endula which looks to figure prominently later in the book. Definitely possessing more of a YA tone — at least so far — this novel shows potential…

12. “Godivy” by Vylar Kaftan. Another short one — only three pages — “Godivy” is quite crazy with office workers mating and producing offspring with photocopiers, strippers who produce espresso from their nipples, and walking mermaids. It’s also quite pointless…

13. “Painting Haiti” by Michael Jasper. I initially heard of Jasper when his SF novel The Wannoshay Cycle was released, but this short is the first time I’ve actually sampled the author’s work and is more of a suspense/horror tale that follows a financially struggling artist whose past comes back to both haunt and free her… Not one of my favorites, but the story was well-written and I appreciated the painting and voodoo elements.

14. “The Funeral, Ruined” by Ben Peek. This short story starts out slowly, but once the setting was established — Issuer is a city that trades in the industry of death — I was captivated by the tragic love story with its Frankenstein/steampunk influences. Definitely one of the anthology’s better contributions…

15. “Down to the Silver Spirits” by Kaaron Warren. Narrated in the first person, Warren’s short is a disturbing ghost story about a group of desperate parents who are unable to conceive a child, but are given a second chance when they learn of Cairness, a forgotten city where the souls of unborn babies are supposedly waiting to be reborn. The truth of course, is far more terrifying and will make you shiver…

16. “They Would Only Be Roads” by Darin C. Bradley. This story was pretty weird, featuring a world where technology and magic has collided, resulting in hacker-like people who have mechanical familiars and use the Pipeline — think Internet — and charms to cast rites that have something to do with wishes. Definitely inventive, but the story was one of my least favorites…

17. “Taser” by Jenn Reese. Another succinct story at six pages, “Taser” examines street life through the eyes of a youth who must make a decision that will scar him forever. Short, but intense…

18. “The Somnambulist” by David J. Schwartz. When awake, Judy is just your normal everyday housewife. When sleepwalking, though, Judy becomes a powerful tool — bodyguard, mechanic, dragon slayer, assassin — for her magician husband and embarks on fantastical adventures that she thinks are only dreams. But when her husband’s life is in danger, will the somnambulist become his savior or his destroyer… Creative and empowering, I enjoyed this little short story and really look forward to reading Schwartz’s debut novel Superpowers.

19. “The Age of Fish, Post-flowers” by Anna Tambour. One of my least favorite stories, Tambour’s short is a meandering mess about a post-apocalyptic world plagued by deadly orms — fish/worm-like creatures — and a shortage of food…

20. “The Last Escape” by Barth Anderson. I was really impressed by Anderson’s novel The Magician and the Fool, so I couldn’t wait to try out his short fiction and the author doesn’t disappoint. Starring the Houdini-like Scarab, “The Last Escape” is an engaging tale of escapology that ends on a darkly ironic note…

21. Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente. Author of the excellent Orphan’sTales duology, Valente is really starting to make a name for herself and for me her short story was the one that I was most anticipating. Basically a preview from her novel of the same name, Palimpsest is a viral city whose citizens bear parts of the city on their flesh and can be visited in dreams, while the plot “follows four such people as they search for others like themselves and a way to enter the city permanently.” As usual, the prose is excellent, the story alluring and the author’s imagination mind-bending…

Overall, Paper Cities is much like any anthology. It has a theme and stories that range from excellent to bad depending on one’s tastes, but it’s also unique in several ways. For starters, I knew virtually nothing about this side of Urban Fantasy, so for me this anthology was an eye-opening experience that made me appreciate the aesthetics of this particular brand of storytelling. Secondly, despite the predominant theme, the twenty-one stories included in the anthology were vastly different from one another and is an aspect that I really value in my reading, so I loved the book’s diversity. Thirdly, aside from Catherynne M. Valente, Jay Lake, Hal Duncan and Barth Anderson, Paper Cities was my introduction to seventeen extremely talented writers who I had never read before and who have significantly increased the number of books that I want to check out. And lastly, Paper Cities is just a pleasure to read and will at times entertain, challenge, and inspire the reader. —Robert Thompson

Running With the Pack — (2010) Anthology. Publisher: Remember the werewolves of classic stories and films, those bloodthirsty monsters that transformed under the full moon, reminding us of the terrible nature that lives within all of us? Today's werewolves are much more suave — and even sexy — and they've moved from British moors to New York City lofts, shaved, and got jobs. But as the tales of these writers will show you, they remain no less wild and passionate, and they still tug at the part of our being where a wild animal used to be. Running With the Pack includes stories from Carrie Vaughn, Laura Anne Gilman, and C.E. Murphy, and they will convince you that despite their gentrification, werewolves remain as fascinating and terrifying as ever.

The House of Discarded Dreams — (2010) Publisher: Trying to escape her embarrassing immigrant mother, Vimbai moves into a dilapidated house in the dunes... and discovers that one of her new roommates has a pocket universe instead of hair, there's a psychic energy baby living in the telephone wires, and her dead Zimbabwean grandmother is doing dishes in the kitchen. When the house gets lost at sea and creatures of African urban legends all but take it over, Vimbai turns to horseshoe crabs in the ocean to ask for their help in getting home to New Jersey.

Heart of Iron — (2011) Publisher: In a Russia where the Decembrists’ rebellion was successful and the Trans-Siberian railroad was completed before 1854, Sasha Trubetskaya wants nothing more than to have a decent debut ball in St. Petersburg. But her aunt’s feud with the emperor lands Sasha at university, where she becomes one of its first female students — an experiment, she suspects, designed more to prove female unsuitability for such pursuits than offer them education. The pressure intensifies when Sasha’s only friends — Chinese students — start disappearing, and she begins to realize that her new British companion, Jack, has bigger secrets than she can imagine! Sasha and Jack find themselves trying to stop a war brewing between the three empires. The only place they can turn to for help is the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, newly founded by the Taiping rebels. Pursued by the terrifying Dame Florence Nightingale of the British Secret Service, Sasha and Jack escape across Siberia via train to China. Sasha discovers that Jack is not quite the person she thought he was… but then again, neither is she.