THE UNLIKELY HERO – Beau Schemery’s Aryan teenage unicorn fetish

Despite the suspicions Mother Dragon shared with Celestrian before her death, he may be the last surviving unicorn of Vrelenden—though most may simply think him some crazy person with a horn attached to his forehead. Nevertheless, Trian has nothing to hold on to but hope, and he’s about to hang that hope on an unlikely hero named Renwald Mallorian. Ren may have been born an accountant’s son, but he’s longed to be a professional hero for as long as he can remember, and he’s read every book on the subject he could get his hands on. When Trian arrives and hires him to find the last remaining unicorns, Ren jumps at the offer and their quest begins.

But the evil Father Denkham is intent on obtaining the last unicorn and sets a deadly assassin on their trail. If that isn’t bad enough, they’ll face a Vampire, Dragon, bandits, and zombies. Their only hope now is for Ren to prove he’s the hero he always dreamed of becoming—but no book in the world could have prepared him for what’s in store.

Yes, that’s a unicorn furry wearing a thong. This, as you will soon gather, is a book about copious teenage unicorn sex. Rejoice, for we’re about to embark on the beautiful and magical journey of someone’s D&D campaign involving a shitload of erotic roleplay turned into a novel.

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THE ALCHEMY OF STONE – Ekaterina Sedia

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. This doesn’t sit well with Loharri, the Mechanic who created Mattie and still has the key to her heart – literally.

I was surprised that this was captivating from the first pages on, seeing that Sedia’s other steampunk novel–Heart of Iron–was a bit hit-and-miss with me. This is a stronger book than that by far, if not quite a match for The House of Discarded Dreams

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MOSCOW BUT DREAMING – Ekaterina Sedia


The first short story collection by award-winning author Ekaterina Sedia! One of the more resonant voices to emerge in recent years, this Russian-born author explores the edge between the mundane and fantastical in tales inspired by her homeland as well as worldwide folkloric traditions. With foreword by World Fantasy Award-winner Jeffrey Ford, Moscow But Dreaming showcases singular and lyrical writing that will appeal to fans of slipstream and magical realism, as well as those interested in the uncanny and Russian history.

More magical realism than fantasy, melancholy across the board, and if Sedia’s House of Discarded Dreams was your cup of thing then this should be too.
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THE HOUSE OF DISCARDED DREAMS – Ekaterina Sedia

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.

This isn’t a book, I suspect, that too many typical genre fans would like since it shades into magic realism. It’s orders of magnitude better than any other novel I’ve read by Sedia, and much superior to Heart of Iron. But it’s also a book where the author writes of a non-dominant culture and experience not her own, so standard precautions apply. See Tricia Sullivan’s post about writing Double Vision and her many, many, many fails with regards to writing black women and Japanese people.

Having said that, we can’t ignore the context of Sedia being from a non-dominant culture and Sullivan being very much so: there’s a vast gulf of experiences between a Russian immigrant to the US and a white American born and bred in the UK who never needs to apply for a visa to travel much of anywhere, and whose passport will never make her a subject of scrutiny.

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Ekaterina Sedia’s HEART OF IRON – feminist Russian steampunk

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.

This is a book that wears its feminism on its sleeve, loud and proud. It waves its feminist flag. It goes “I’m feminist, and I’m not sorry.”

To say that that’s wonderfully refreshing would be an understatement of galactic proportions.

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underrated: Tricia Sullivan’s DOUBLE VISION

Combining William Gibson’s mistrust of consumerism with Philip K. Dick’s ability to twist reality through ninety degrees, DOUBLE VISION is the stunning new novel from the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of MAUL. When shy, psychic bookworm ‘Cookie’ Orbach watches television, she sees things. But not the things that you or I would see. Cookie sees The Grid – a strange, shifting landscape where human forces battle against an enemy they dare not kill. Her employer, the mysterious Dataplex Corporation, pays her well to watch this war, and asks only that she report her observations but take no direct action, which suits her passive demeanour just fine. But Cookie’s quiet life is about to be shattered. Her two very different worlds are threatening to merge in  a way that shouldn’t really be possible, and everything is about to change. And we do mean everything…

I’ve always wondered why Tricia Sullivan isn’t talked of very much within the genre, nor feted as she she deserves. I loathe the usual “like Tolkien meet Rowling!!!” or “like Chandler meet Philip K. Dick!” (and if ever you see the latter brace yourself for a lot of misogynistic dipshittery) marketing claptrap, but I think in this case the comparison has some use. So: yes, this will make you think of Dick. If Dick only wrote good books instead of a lot of samey stuff with the occasional gem, and weren’t a sexist.

Double Vision most strongly recalls Ubik which is in turn one of Dick’s best. It was the first Sullivan I ever tried, and easily one of my favorite SF titles.
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Ekaterina Sedia’s THE SECRET HISTORY OF MOSCOW

Every city contains secret places. Moscow in the tumultuous 1990s is no different, its citizens seeking safety 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 is an empty chore. You go in with nothing, you come out with ditto, minus the X hours you spent on an unrewarding, tiresome novel. I felt the tiniest ember of satisfaction for having pushed on (boulders! uphill!) to the end, but even that is negated by the realization that I could have–and should have–read much better books, of which there’re no shortage on my backlog. In fact, I kept thinking the whole time that Secret isn’t much more than a watered-down Neverwhere (which I don’t even like), except Russian, and how much better The City & The City is.
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Salvatore’s ROAD OF BWAHAHA I AM KILLED, WAHOO

RA Salvatore. He’s kind of like the Dan Abnett of Forgotten Realms, except without any of the self-awareness, with only the most remote interest in writing women well, and not even so much as a single solitary acknowledgment that gay people exist. He also keeps writing about the same set of characters over and over and over. This offense is compounded by the sad truth that this man honest to god can’t write. Basically, nothing like Dan Abnett except possibly sales figures. Well, that and whereas Salvatore–when not spitting out identikit D&D novels–writes by-the-dot generic fantasy that makes Eragon look vaguely original. In contrast, when not writing Warhammer 40k fiction, Abnett writes zany alt-history fantasy. Basically one of them can write and the other… you’ll see.

Full disclosure: I didn’t read this crap. I can no longer read anything by this author for more than a page at a time, though admittedly ten years ago I was able to finish his books–after three or four of which I arrived at the conclusion that they were shit, which is quite the epiphany for a teenager who still thought select Dragonlance novels were amazing literary achievements.

But sometimes to show someone just the kind of nadir D&D write-for-hire fiction can hit, I’d pull out a non-too-legally acquired epub of a Salvatore book and perform copypasta (if I’m feeling particularly vicious I’ll subject them to Ed Greenwood instead). I’ll note that I did not troll for particularly godawful snippets. No. I skimmed the text and picked bits out of random. In this case, my random scrolling netted me this:

The second pie Jarlaxle threw came in harder, and was not meant to be caught—except by the man’s surprised expression.

“What?” the woman yelled as the pie splattered across her lover’s face, and he gave a yell, as well, but one of pain.

“Jarlaxle, what are you about?” Piter demanded.

“I am killed!” the surprised man cried. He slapped at his face, sending cream flying and eventually revealing a small dart that had been concealed within the pie, protruding from his cheek. He reached for it, hands trembling, but he couldn’t quite seem to grasp it.

Road of the Patriarch, R. A. Salvatore

I AM KILLED

I MEAN WHO THE FUCK SAYS THIS

HE IS KILLED BY A DART. HIDDEN IN A PIE.
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