BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - FICTION

Kraken (2010) China Mieville We are definitely not into spoilers so it is hard to go too far into the story of this dark fantasy on a scientific theme. A preserved and valuable giant squid disappears from the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Musum and one of its staff, Billy Harrow, discovers a world of cults and magic that threaten apocalypse. So far, so very obviously dark fantasy, but China Mieville adds, with Kraken , a major work to a genre that owes a great deal to the psychogeographical cult of London as the world's most magical city. Its fault is that of all modern creative fantasy - far too many ideas for a basic story line that could be culled from any urban thriller. Although resolved satisfactorily, there are moments when you feel that greatness has eluded Mieville because of an inability to develop fewer ideas in more depth. In the end, despite hints of something deeper, and some remarkable invention and (in places), yes, ideas, it ends up being an ente

The Alchemist (1908) The Cats of Ulthar (1920) H P Lovecraft Cthulhu's Reign (2010) Editor, Darrell Schweitzer The Lovecraft Anthology: Volume I (2011) Editor, Dan Lockwood   The Black Wings of Cthulhu (2012) Editor: S. T Joshi   I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H P  Lovecraft (2013 Edition) S T Joshi At some stage, we should review all of Lovecraft's stories but we mention two only to start the ball rolling, the first only to dispose of it as juvenilia. The Alchemist must be regarded as o ne of Lovecraft's weakest stories but then he was only 17 or 18 and it was his first. The basic story line is fairly trite (which we will not repeat for the sake of spoilers although it is barely worth the effort). However, Lovecraft is good at absorbing Gothick memes and replaying them effectively. In other words the story is worth reading for its 'atmosphere' as an antiquarian throw-back to the world of 'The Castle of Otranto' or of Ann Radcliffe over a cen

The Lady of the Shroud (1909) Bram Stoker  Midnight Tales  Bram Stoker (Ed. Peter Haining, 1992)   Who Is Dracula's Father? And Other Puzzles in Bram Stoker's Gothic Masterpiece (2017) Jon Sutherland Dracula (1897) is a seminal cultural text - brilliantly written. There is little more to say other than to advise that you read it and enjoy its dark pleasures - but what of the later Bram Stoker? The Lady of the Shroud (1909) is a truly dreadful book in so many ways - theatrical, sentimental, nonsensical, militaristic, imperialist, patronising (to women and to the peoples of the Balkans) and often leaden. Beyond being one for Bram Stoker completists - and the early failed promise of creepy thrills - it is nothing but a fraud designed to inveigle the reader of the 1900s into a conservative political tract. So why bother reading it? Two reasons make this worth it (although only for the dedicated): the psychological insight into the fantasy world of an aging Edwardian male;

The Sandman: The Dream Country (Volume 3) (1990) American Gods (2001) Interworld (2007) - With Michael Reaves Neil Gaiman The Dream Country is third volume of the acclaimed The Sandman series but is stand-alone. This edition also contains the original script for the first of its four stories, Calliope, which might be of interest to students of illustration. Much of The Dream Country has been translated to film very effectively as part of a Sandman TV series shown on Netflix. If we are to be honest here, Neil Gaiman was engaged in a project to bring Tales from the Cryp t up the literary and artistic food chain. There is no doubt that he succeeds admirably in his task, aided by a series of excellent illustrators, but the stories, with the exception of his re-thinking of the origins of Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream', are not complex - poetic and suggestive perhaps but not complex. The first story, Calliop e, tells of a writer's abuse of an incar

Divine Endurance (1984) Spirit: or, The Princess of Bois Dormant (2008) Gwyneth Jones One of the themes of my reviews is the 'first novel' especially in genre fiction. Sometimes these show remarkable ability. Sometimes they demonstrate immaturity. Sometimes the immaturity lasts for several early novels (as in the case of Grahame Greene) before the genius breaks through with practice and experience. Gwyneth Jones is an interesting science fiction/fantasy cross-over writer (where what appears to be fantastic is grounded in future science). We can compare here an early with a mature work separated by a near quarter of century. In fact, Divine Endurance was something of a disappointment even allowing for it being a first attempt largely because it was self-indulgent experimentalism in high science fantasy by someone who was clearly intellectually way ahead of the bulk of genre writers but who missed the point about narrative - out there is a reader who must comprehend. In her

The Penguin Book of Horror Stories (1984)   Editor: J. A . Cuddon   Redshift: Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction (2001) Editor: Al Sarrantonio   The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels (2007) Editor:  Gardner Dozois The Penguin Book of Horror Stories has some gems and a certain breadth but it suffers from a weak almost nerdy academic introduction filled with fact but weak on interpretation. It is a Wikipedia article before its time. The definition of horror is very wide. The brutal realism of Prosper Merimee's primitive and vengeful Mateo Falcone (a story that disturbed me as a child and disturbs me today) sits alongside a pulp tale of derring-do (the oft-anthologised Leiningen Versus The Ants ) and a sardonic and satirical horror tale like Robert Graves' Earth to Earth . But yet there is little true cosmic horror - no H P Lovecraft or Arthur Machen. What are the best stories in an average collection? Apart from decent works by Hogg, Merimee (see above), Poe, H

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (BFI TV Classics, 2005) Anne Billson   Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home (Season 8 Volume 1) (2007)  Joss Whedon/Georges Jeanty Anne Billson's short guide to the Buffy TV series is one of a series from the British Film Institute, providing 'critical readings' of TV series. The series follows similar and generally excellent guides to important movies. Unfortunately, the editorial guidelines have encourage the authors to see these series in the context of their 'personal response', a dangerous licence to self-indulgence especially as the film-related booklets benefited from offering in-depth research on their subjects, albeit from different perspectives, without constant use of the 'I' word. Anne Billson is not too bad in her judgements. Given the iconic status of Buffy in promoting contemporary 'girl power', it is useful to have a woman outline her responses to the series as it unfolded. She can be tiresome

Skizz (1983) [ with Jim Baikie ]     Captain Britain Omnibus (1985-1987) [ Various Contributors, notably Dave Thorpe, Chris Claremont and Grant Morrison ]     Lost Girls (2006) [ with Melinda Gebbie ]     The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen [ with Kevin O'Neill ]        Black Dossier (2007 ) [ also with Ray Zone ]        Century 1910 (2009)      Century 1969 (2011)     Neonomicon (2010) [ with Anthony Johnston and Jacen Burrow s]     Fashion Beast (2013 originally from a 1985 film script) [ with Anthony Johnston and Facundo Percio ]   Skizz , first published in 1983 for British comic series 2000AD (originator of Judge Dredd and many other iconic comic figures), is a rather heart-warming tale. Yet the tale is told without losing an ounce of the dystopianism for which the British are so well known. Set on the Planet Burmy-Gam, it helps to read the text in a Brummy accent to get a real feel for it. Alan Moore is very good with linguistic clues – his brutal and unhinged