Strange Horizons Reviews, February 28-March 4

This week on Strange Horizons, Nader Elhefnawy rounds off February with his review of L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s Empress of Eternity, which Nader thinks has its strong points, but is ultimately a disappointing execution of an interesting premise.  Dan Hartland kicks off March on a more positive note, with a glowing review of Zoran Živković's short novel The Ghostwriter.  Continuing the trend, C.B. Harvey is also quite pleased with Col Buchanan's debut fantasy, Farlander.  John Clute is less cheerful in the latest installment of his column Scores, in which he is decidedly unimpressed by three recent novellas, Tobias Buckell's The Executioness, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Alchemist, and Elizabeth Bear's The White City.

Comments

John's column is a particularly good one, I thought. 'One word I like in particular is (of course) intihuatana...'
Niall said…
It is a truly great use of the parenthetical "of course", that's for sure.
This is my favorite part:

"When a well-trained writer, one versed in the obedience-school mantras of the writing workshops of the West, composes by rote, he may imagine himself enacting the rules of story laid down by the god within to keep the sun upon its course, but what the reader often senses is not so much afflatus as template. The problem is that the true verb of template is not to template but to churn."

Truer words were never written. As for the Buchanan book, it sounds like it left no cliché unticked.

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