I've never read alchemy treated in this way before. The Alchemists' Council was so engaging, I wrote a review for The Bull Calf.
Category: Fantasy
Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant
Here the tradition of heroic fantasy is pure. There's no steampunk, cyberpunk, slipstream, or New Weird; historical fantasy, urban fantasy, and magic realism are likewise nowhere to be seen. This is the fantasy of the hippies and the anti-Vietnam protesters.
Sleepless Knights by Mark H. Williams
At the beginning of another MythCon, this one in Colorado Springs--where I am now, giving a presentation--it is fitting to review the book of the first MythConer with whom I ever struck up a conversation. This is one of the only cases where I knew the author before I knew he was an author. I found him waiting …
Greenmantle by Charles de Lint
What happens when you combine Robert Graves's The White Goddess with Martin Scorsese's mafia flick Goodfellas? I'm not sure, but it wouldn't be far from Charles de Lint's 1988 'mythic fiction' novel Greenmantle. Called the father of urban fantasy, Charles de Lint is the author of dozens of novels that combine fantasy with mainstream fiction. …
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
The following is an excerpt from the presentation I made earlier this week for my seminar on (Post)Colonial Geographies with Professor Sandeep Banerjee at McGill University. The young protagonist of Salman Rushdie's children's fantasy novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories asks his father Rashid Khalifa, a great storyteller better known as the Shah of …
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Julian the Magician by Gwendolyn MacEwen
Julian the Magician is the work of a poet of the mythic, the magical, and the exotic: Gwendolyn MacEwen. Although she is better known for her poetry--and mostly, I suspect, by academics rather than the general public--I recommend reading her today. Her style is a "sort of powerful poetic mad half-abandoned prose somewhere between [Kenneth] …
The Year’s Best Fantasy, eds. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
It's like fantasy tapas, or if you prefer, a buffet: fantasy short stories contain all the excitement and inspiration of a novel, in a way that requires less commitment. Instead of reading a five-course fantasy series of 900+ pages, you can hunker down for a 10- or 20-page adventure. And while you're at it, eat …
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Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever: Lord Foul’s Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson
Beware! Leper unclean! shout the crowds. Don't touch me! responds Thomas Covenant, the antihero of Stephen R. Donaldson's memorable epic fantasy trilogy. In this exchange, which Convenant repeats in his mind like a mantra for his sanity, Donaldson summarizes the conflict of his protagonist. Despite being unlikeable, Covenant tends to garner your empathy. He's a …
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The Secret History of Fantasy, edited by Peter S. Beagle
If you're like me, you have probably starved for an original fantasy novel. So many novels and short stories rely too heavily on The Lord of the Rings and the epic fantasy genre that spawned from it. Are there any original fantasy works that use impossible situations without having elves, orcs, and dragons run across …
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The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I, by Stephen King
What do you get when you combine Tolkien and the Western? Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Meet Roland, the last gunslinger. He's Aragorn meets John Wayne. A solitary man “wandering but not lost,” he carries two six-shooters that were once his father's pistols. His single quest, which he pursues with an instinctual audacity, is summarized …
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Matthew Rettino 