I’m in the middle of reading Susannah Clarke’s first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which is a fearsomely long fantasy novel. When the advanced reader’s copy arrived a week or so ago I noticed that the front cover was black, the back was white, and the spine was half black/half white. Now, originally, I’d thought this was to reflect the fact that the publishers wanted to preview the fact that they’d be producing two separate dustjackets for the book, and superficially this is the case, but last night I realised the real reason. I was sitting in the office – enjoying reading the book but feeling as though I was reaching the point where, instead of wishing that I was reading the book, I was wishing I’d read it – that I had an epiphany. The color divide on the spine exactly denotes the halfway point of the book, giving feeble reviewers like your humble correspondent hope that the end is in sight, progress is being made, do not abandon hope. Considerate really, when you think about it.

This new blogger interface, which so many others have complained about, is truly crappy. I lost a post yesterday about John Birmingham’s new novel Weapons of Choice, pointing you over to Paul Di Filippo’s review at SciFi.com. I’m not going to redo it completely, but you might want to check the book out.

Vale Peter McNamara

Peter McNamara, editor and publisher of Aphelion Publications, died yesterday. I first had dealings with Peter in the first part of 1990, when he provided assistance with getting Eidolon on its feet. In the intervening 14 years, I think we were in the same place maybe three or four times, but we talked on the phone every few weeks, off and on, throughout that time, and even co-published a book in 1999. What was he like? Kind, generous, big hearted, full of life and full of humour. I realised this morning when I heard the sad, but not unexpected, news (he’d been sick for some time), that his achievements in speculative fiction (impressive though they are) and his contribution to Australian SF in particular, are actually in some ways the least of his achievements. His real achievements were his family (Mariann and Pat) and his enormous circle of friends. We should all be so well loved. Vale.

It’s reviews week

What do you say about a book? I’m always asking myself that question. This is ‘review writing’ week, which those of you who read Locus regularly know comes around less often for me these days, and I’ve been scratching my head and trying to work out what to say.

First up, I don’t review everything I read. The most obvious instance of this at the moment are Small Beer‘s two June titles, Sean Stewart’s Perfect Circle and Jennifer Stevenson’s trash sex magic. The reason I’m not reviewing them is that we’ve had a few reviews of each in the magazine already, but they’re both good books, and the Stewart is staggeringly good. I got emailed pdfs of the books to read (something I’m not really able to deal with so easily these days), and have to get the hardcovers when they come out. I don’t often actually buy books these days, but these ones are really worth it.

So what, you ask, am I going to review. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but most likely
Margo Lanagan’s Black Juice; Charles Stross’s Iron Sunrise; Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s The Faery Reel; Al Sarrantonio’s Flights; and Minister Faust’s The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad.

The Lanagan book is a collection of previously unpublished stories, all rich, strange, unusual and with a dark theme. I think at the moment she’s Australia’s best kept secret, and her short fiction is quite incredible. Some day soon a US publisher is going to wake up and realise what they’ve been missing. The Stross novel is just his best novel-length work yet. I liked his Hugo-nominated novel Singularity Sky, but this is better. It has all of the energy of that book, but more of the conceptual depth of his short fiction. The two anthologies, The Faery Reel and Flights, are both good, but the Datlow/Windling is the prize of the pair. Why? It’s more consistent. The Sarrantonio is a big baggy thing with some wonderful, wonderful stories (by Gene Wolfe, Elizabeth Lynn, Jeff Ford, Tim Powers and others), while The Faery Reel is tightly edited, with very few duds (except for the poetry, which I can’t abide, though that’s just personal taste), and a lot of variety. And then there’s the Minister Faust book. It has a title that sounds like some old Sun Ra album, and is kind of like a hip hop version of ‘Tim Powers lite’. It’s got music, egyptian stuff, and I really thought I was going to hate it a lot. And I nearly did, but somewhere around page 50 it really grabbed me. It’s goofy and fun and energetic. A great novel? No. A good novel that’s fun to read? Yup. So, that should be the column. Of course, what I actually review will depend on what I finish tonight and tomorrow, but we’ll see.

Oh, and a little bird told me that The Locus Awards is to get a starred review in Booklist, which seems to be a very cool thing! Can’t wait to see it.