It’s that time of year again. The BSFA Award nominations are out.

The full lists can be found here.

The fiction nominees are:-

Best Novel:-

Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith (Newcon Press)

Embassytown by China Miéville (Macmillan)

The Islanders by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)

By Light Alone by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

Osama by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)

Of which I have (so far) read one.

Best Short Fiction:-

The Silver Wind by Nina Allan (Interzone 233, TTA Press)

The Copenhagen Interpretation by Paul Cornell (Asimov’s, July)

Afterbirth by Kameron Hurley (Kameron Hurley’s own website)

Covehithe by China Miéville (The Guardian)

Of Dawn by Al Robertson (Interzone 235, TTA Press)

I have read none of these as yet but only The Copenhagen Interpretation is not available online via the BSFA page linked to above. Presumably the booklet of nominated stories that the BSFA has produced for the past two years will be repeated this time around, too.

Angry Robot, 2010, 349 p

(Plus 4 pages of acknowledgements, 1 page “about the author” and 24 pages containing three short stories from winners of a competition to set a story in the milieu of Beukes’s previous novel Moxyland, an unnecessary addition to my mind.)

I have previously lamented the fact that the general run of fantasy novels seem to be set in a default mediævality and that no-one is trying to write fantasy in a contemporary setting. Well Zoo City is taken by some to be SF – it was on the BSFA Award shortlist for best novel last year – but to my mind fantasy would be a better description. In particular magic is an essential component of the setting and plot. Yet the novel takes place in the present day! (Albeit a present day thoroughly transmogrified.)

Zinzi December is an aposymbiont – who are derogatorily termed as animalled. Aposymbionts are individuals who, as a result of committing a serious crime, have gained an animal companion with whom they have a psychic link, in the process acquiring an attribute. This is not quite the same as in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, which Beukes does refer to in the text, as in his universe the animals begin attachment at birth. Zinzi’s companion is a sloth and her attribute is sensing lost objects. She can follow psychic threads to recover things. This is her apparent job but to pay her debts she moonlights as an email scammer. She is engaged by two rather unsavoury individuals (both animalled) to find a lost pop star and is drawn into a world of intrigue, backstabbing and murder.

Narrated in an urgent present tense, apart from the interpolations of cod press articles and psychological papers fleshing out the background, the novel is of a piece with the thriller feel of much near future SF. But Beukes is good at this – very good indeed – the gritty realism makes her scenario entirely believable while you’re immersed in it. That the novel takes place in South Africa may be one factor in its appeal. African phrases and words are utilised frequently but not so as to obfuscate or confuse. The acceptance of magic is a given (as it may be in “our” South Africa.)

Where the story veers away from thriller SF into fantasy is that the transformation of the world to one where animals can become “familiars” is not given much of a rational explanation.

Zinzi and her boyfriend Benoît, whose animal is a mongoose, are well drawn, nuanced characters with full backstories which mercifully emerge from the story as it is told rather than being dumped on the reader. Others are equally believable.

This was fun, sharp and (the misuse of pre-empt aside) well written stuff.

QPD, 2005, 398p

After the relatively disappointing aberration of Fury this novel sees Rushdie return for his setting to the locales and interests from which he made his name. He treated with Indira Ghandi’s India in Midnight’s Children, Pakistan in Shame and Islam in The Satanic Verses, before returning to (modern) India with The Ground Beneath Her Feet. In Shalimar The Clown it is Kashmir on which he focuses. In this sense the novel’s start is misleading as it begins in California with the daughter of a former ambassador in the days leading up to his assassination by his chauffeur/factotum, the titular Shalimar the Clown.

The book ranges far and wide with many digressions. In a strange resonance with the previous book that I read the ambassador, Maximilian Ophuls, [why Rushdie chose for his character the name of a film director is somewhat obscure; to me at any rate] was a (Jewish) native of Alsace forced to flee, leaving the family printing business behind, after the Germans took over in 1940. He became a leading member of the French Resistance, was involved in US-French relations, emigrating to the US at the end of the war, and was appointed ambassador to India in the 1960s. This novel is not without incident.

The story arc of the book deals, though, with the relationship between Noman Sher Noman and Boonyi Kaul (both of whom, along with Max and his daughter are given sections of the book – I was going to say to themselves, but other characters pop up all the time all over the book, in typically Rushdiean profusion) and the two villages in Kashmir, Pachigam and Shirmal, where they grew up. It seems all of life is here; the picture of a community, a way of life, is detailed. The plot of the novel is almost buried at times – yet this is true of every section. And is the placid, comradely, nature of existence there before the tensions between India and Pakistan led to strife in the region a touch overplayed? Whatever, the growth of Islamic fundamentalist influence, the deterioration in the situation and the horror of communal conflict is well depicted. Neither the Pakistan backed Muslim terrorists nor the Indian Army are spared implicit criticism.

When Ophuls visits the villages Boonyi seizes her chance to escape, only to end up in a different kind of entrapment. Noman meanwhile burns for revenge. He is recruited as a terrorist and suppresses his character while training. In this context the use of his name (no man) as a signifier seemed perhaps a little trite.

A short review can only touch the surface of the myriad elements which go into a novel which, like this, tries to deal with a big issue. There has to be some kind of story on which to hang the subject matter but at times, here, the human dimension is lost in a surfeit of detail. Do we really, for example, need to know the history of the main characters’ parents? This is a trope which Rushdie has employed in previous books. (A similar trait annoyed me in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead where, every time the author switched to a new viewpoint, we were treated to the character’s whole life story to that point, fatally interrupting the novel’s flow.) In Shalimar The Clown moreover, many passages are told rather in the style of a historical narration than a novel. I shall not reveal the true identity of Shalimar, even though it’s not hard to guess.

While I could have done without the ascent into fantasy in the final section, Rushdie’s sympathies are always in the right place and, despite the various horrors the book describes, overall it is, as perhaps all fiction should be, life–enhancing. After Fury, it represents a return to form.

A couple of days ago Dobie Gray, now, on Tuesday, it was Russell Hoban.

Looking on my shelves I find not only his children’s classic The Mouse and his Child nor yet just the remarkable Riddley Walker but also The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, Kleinzeit, Turtle Diary and Pilgerman.

Hoban was quite prolific (Fantastic Fiction lists 87 books) so I didn’t manage to keep up with all his output.

His work spanned a multitude of genres from the post-apocalyptic Science Fiction of Riddley Walker through Fantasy to Realism and he seemed equally at home in them all.

In the field of Science Fiction, though, and its close relation Fantasy, it will undoubtedly be for the tour de force that was Riddley Walker – a novel written in an English so far from the standard that it might at first seem totally unreadable (trust me, with a little bit of effort it isn’t, and is well worth that effort) – and The Mouse and his Child that he will be most remembered.

Russell Conwell Hoban: 4/2/1925-13/12/2011. So it goes.

PS Publishing, 2010, 112p.

This was the collection I mentioned had been in a BSFA mailing about 18 months ago – a taster from Postscripts.
I’ve only just got round to reading it. The authors include Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Ramsey Campbell and Gene Wolfe.

Most of the stories are not SF but are fantasy or horror; the best of which is Lisa Tuttle’s Closet Dreams where a young girl dreams of her incarceration by a man she calls the monster.

Of the out and out SF Eagle Song by Stephen Baxter concerns messages from Altair which recur at time intervals that decrease in powers of three from 7510 BC to 2210 AD. While clearly not our own history it parallels that closely, so the phrase “hippy chick” and the use of helicopter gunships in Vietnam supposedly in 1967 jarred a little. Footvote by Peter Hamilton relates the consequences of a private venture opening a wormhole to another planet and Gene Wolfe’s Comber is set on a world where cities drift on tectonic plates.

The writing throughout all the stories cannot be faulted but the fantasy and horror didn’t do too much for me.

Harper Collins, 1996, 390p.

This collection of short fiction comprises 18 stories first published in the pages of, among others, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Ms., Playboy and Omni, plus some otherwise uncredited. They range in length from 3 to 37 pages. I read quite a few of these on my trip away but was not taking notes and so have not commented in depth. Despite the mainly non-genre organs where they first appeared all have an air of otherness about them, of things not quite explicable.

The most Science-Fictional, Ether, OR, appeared in Asimov’s. It is narrated sequentially by the various inhabitants of a town that can shift its location.
The title story, Unlocking the Air, is one of Le Guin’s Orsinian Tales and relates the story of a revolution in that fantasy middle European country. Daddy’s Big Girl is a near fairy tale about a girl who keeps growing. The Poacher takes as its subject matter a well-known fairy tale but approaches it, in typical Le Guin fashion, at a considerable tangent.

Le Guin’s typical compassion and sympathy for her characters are evident throughout.

Gollancz, 2008, 345p.

This is the most unusual Fantasy I’ve read in years, perhaps ever. Not only does it have two gay main characters, there is also a high (but realistic) degree of swearing, both of which are normally conspicuous by their absence in the worlds of the Fantasy novel.

Ringil, a hero of the finally triumphant war against the lizard folk, grown tired of the political and social disappointments that peace time has brought, now lives quietly in a rural backwater, apart from dealing with the occasional corpsemites which inhabit and animate dead bodies in the local graveyard. A master swordsman, he dispatches the corpsemites with little difficulty. He is drawn back to the capital city when his mother asks for his help in rescuing a female cousin who has been sold into slavery as a result of the debts incurred by her deceased husband. Ringil does not suffer fools gladly and before embarking on his search manages to upset more than a few of the city’s bigwigs. He is also warned that a semi-mythical species known as dwenda may be behind the strange occurrences in the region where she has been taken.

Two of Ringil’s former wartime comrades, Egar, a plains-dwelling nomad chief, and Archeth, last of the Kiriath, are also given narrative strands. All three are fully rounded, Ringil and Archeth in particular seeming like real people with all their flaws.

If I have criticisms then they are that the dwenda, when they appear, despite their ability to flit in and out of the grey spaces, seem to be too like humans – indeed it might be possible to read The Steel Remains as Science Fiction rather than Fantasy – too many of the asides outstayed their welcome, it is a pity there is still a default mediaevality to the setting and the resolution is much as you might expect from a standard fantasy. But it’s all good rollicking stuff.

Morgan deserves huge credit for taking on the Fantasy genre and thoroughly shaking it up. If all Fantasy were like this I might read more of it.

This is a list of top 100 Science Fiction And Fantasy books from the website at NPR BOOKS to which I was directed via Ian Sales‘s blog. I got to it too late to take part in the poll NPR ran where you were to choose your favourite ten.

The usual applies; bold I’ve read, italics means I own but have not yet read it. ???? means I may have read it when I was (very) young but can’t actually remember.

The Acts Of Caine Series, by Matthew Woodring Stover
The Algebraist, by Iain M Banks
Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers
Armor, by John Steakley
The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson
Battlefield Earth, by L Ron Hubbard
Beggars In Spain, by Nancy Kress
The Belgariad, by David Eddings
The Black Company Series, by Glen Cook
The Black Jewels Series, by Anne Bishop
The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Bridge Of Birds, by Barry Hughart
The Callahan’s Series, by Spider Robinson
A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M Miller
The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, by Robert Heinlein
Cat’s Cradle , by Kurt Vonnegut
The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
The Change Series, by SM Stirling
Childhood’s End, by Arthur C Clarke
Children Of God, by Mary Doria Russell
The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R Donaldson
The City And The City, by China Miéville
City And The Stars, by Arthur C Clarke
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
The Coldfire Trilogy, by CS Friedman
The Commonwealth Saga, by Peter F Hamilton
The Company Wars, by CJ Cherryh
The Conan The Barbarian Series, by Robert Howard
Contact, by Carl Sagan
Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
The Culture Series, by Iain M Banks
The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King
The Day of Triffids, by John Wyndham
Deathbird Stories, by Harlan Ellison
The Deed of Paksennarion Trilogy, by Elizabeth Moon
The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester
The Deverry Cycle, by Katharine Kerr
Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany
The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
The Difference Engine, by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K LeGuin
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick.
Don’t Bite The Sun, by Tanith Lee
Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
Dreamsnake, by Vonda McIntyre
The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
Earth, by David Brin
Earth Abides, by George R Stewart
The Eisenhorn Omnibus, by Dan Abnett
The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
Eon, by Greg Bear
The Eyes Of The Dragon, by Stephen King
The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
The Faded Sun Trilogy, by CJ Cherryh
Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser Series, by Fritz Leiber
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
The Female Man, by Joanna Russ
The Fionavar Tapestry Trilogy, by Guy Gavriel Kay.
A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
The First Law Trilogy, by Joe Abercrombie
Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
The Foreigner Series, by CJ Cherryh
The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
The Gaea Trilogy, by John Varley
The Gap Series, by Stephen R Donaldson
The Gate To Women’s Country, by Sheri S Tepper
Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway
The Gormenghast Trilogy, by Mervyn Peake (two only, the third is tbr)
Grass, by Sheri S Tepper
Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End of The World, by Haruki Murakami
The Heechee Saga, by Frederik Pohl
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
The Hollows Series, by Kim Harrison
House Of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski
The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov ????
The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
The Incarnations Of Immortality Series, by Piers Anthony
The Inheritance Trilogy, by NK Jemisin
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
Kindred, by Octavia Butler
The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
Kraken, by China Mieville
The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
Last Call, by Tim Powers
The Last Coin, by James P Blaylock
The Last Herald Mage Trilogy, by Mercedes Lackey – never read it.
The Last Unicorn, by Peter S Beagle
The Lathe Of Heaven, by Ursula K LeGuin.
The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K LeGuin
The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by RA Salvatore
The Lensman Series, by EE Smith
The Liaden Universe Series, by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
The Lies Of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lync.
Lilith’s Brood, by Octavia Butler
Little, Big, by John Crowley
The Liveship Traders Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
Lord Of Light, by Roger Zelazny
The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by JRR Tolkien (one only)
Lord Valentine’s Castle, by Robert Silverberg
Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees
The Magicians, by Lev Grossman
The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
The Man In The High Castle, by Philip K Dick.
The Manifold Trilogy, by Stephen Baxter
The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury ?????
Memory And Dream, by Charles de Lint
Memory, Sorrow, And Thorn Trilogy, by Tad Williams
Mindkiller, by Spider Robinson
The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
Mordant’s Need, by Stephen Donaldson
More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon
The Mote In God’s Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
The Naked Sun, by Isaac Asimov
The Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy, by Robert J Sawyer
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
The Newsflesh Trilogy, by Mira Grant
The Night’s Dawn Trilogy, by Peter F Hamilton
Novels Of The Company, by Kage Baker
Norstrilia, by Cordwainer Smith
The Number Of The Beast, by Robert Heinlein
Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
On Basilisk Station, by David Weber
The Once And Future King, by TH White
Oryx And Crake, by Margaret Atwood
The Otherland Tetralogy, by Tad Williams
The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
Parable Of The Sower, by Octavia Butler
The Passage, by Justin Cronin
Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson
Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville
The Prestige, by Christopher Priest
The Pride Of Chanur, by CJ Cherryh
The Prince Of Nothing Trilogy, by R Scott Bakker
The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge
Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C Clarke
Replay, by Ken Grimwood
Revelation Space, by Alistair Reynolds
Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban
The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E Feist
Ringworld, by Larry Niven
The Riverworld Series, by Philip Jose Farmer
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
The Saga Of Pliocene Exile, by Julian May
The Saga Of Recluce, by LE Modesitt Jr
The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
The Sarantine Mosaic Series, by Guy Gavriel Kay
A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K Dick
The Scar, by China Miéville
The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks
The Shattered Chain Trilogy, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Silmarillion, by JRR Tolkien
The Sirens Of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
The Snow Queen, by Joan D Vinge
Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem
Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury ?????
Song for the Basilisk, by Patricia McKillip
A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin
The Space Trilogy, by CS Lewis
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
The Stainless Steel Rat Books, by Harry Harrison
Stand On Zanzibar, by John Brunner
The Stand, by Stephen King
Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
Stations Of The Tide, by Michael Swanwick
Steel Beach, by John Varley
Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
The Swordspoint Trilogy, by Ellen Kushner
The Tales of Alvin Maker, by Orson Scott Card.
The Temeraire Series, by Naomi Novik
The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay
Time Enough For Love, by Robert Heinlein
The Time Machine, by HG Wells ?????
The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
To Say Nothing Of The Dog, by Connie Willis
The Troy Trilogy, by David Gemmell
Ubik, by Philip K Dick
The Uplift Saga, by David Brin
The Valdemar Series, by Mercedes Lackey
VALIS, by Philip K Dick
Venus On The Half-Shell, by Kilgore Trout/Philip Jose Farmer
The Vlad Taltos Series, by Steven Brust
The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Vurt Trilogy, by Jeff Noon (the first certainly)
The War Of The Worlds, by HG Wells
Watchmen, by Alan Moore
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
Way Station, by Clifford D Simak
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger
Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
Wild Seed, by Octavia Butler
The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi
World War Z, by Max Brooks
The Worm Ouroboros, by ER Eddison
The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, by Michael Chabon
1632, by Eric Flint
1984, by George Orwell
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C Clarke
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne ????

Many of these I’ve never heard of. Quite a few do not belong on a modern best of SF and Fantasy list. The Asimovs and the Doc Smith in particular. These were works from the early days and while bathed in the glow of nostalgia do not have the minimum of literary quality I look for when I consider books to be good.

I’m also agnostic about whether some of the recently published books on the list will stand the test of time.

Notable omissions: the books of Michael Coney and Michael Bishop for starters.

Another one via Ian Sales.

Again, those I’ve heard of are italicised, bold I’ve read at least one work by, and struckthrough I own an example of.

Marcia J. Bennett
Mary Brown
Lois McMaster Bujold
Emma Bull
Pat Cadigan
Isobelle Carmody
Brenda W. Clough
Kara Dalkey
Pamela Dean
Susan Dexter
Carole Nelson Douglas
Debra Doyle
Claudia J. Edwards
Doris Egan
Ru Emerson
C.S. Friedman
Anne Gay
Sheila Gilluly
Carolyn Ives Gilman
Lisa Goldstein
Nicola Griffith
Karen Haber
Barbara Hambly
Dorothy Heydt (AKA Katherine Blake)
P.C. Hodgell
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Tanya Huff
Kij Johnson
Janet Kagan
Patricia Kennealy-Morrison
Katharine Kerr
Peg Kerr
Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
Rosemary Kirstein
Ellen Kushner
Mercedes Lackey
Sharon Lee
Megan Lindholm*
R.A. MacAvoy
Laurie J. Marks
Maureen McHugh
Dee Morrison Meaney
Elizabeth Moon
Paula Helm Murray
Rebecca Ore
Tamora Pierce
Alis Rasmussen (AKA Kate Elliott)
Melanie Rawn
Mickey Zucker Reichert
Jennifer Roberson
Michaela Roessner
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Melissa Scott
Eluki Bes Shahar (AKA Rosemary Edghill)
Nisi Shawl
Delia Sherman
Josepha Sherman
Sherwood Smith
Melinda Snodgrass
Midori Snyder
Sara Stamey
Caroline Stevermer
Martha Soukup
Judith Tarr
Sheri S. Tepper
Prof. Mary Turzillo
Paula Volsky
Deborah Wheeler (Deborah J. Ross)
Freda Warrington
K.D. Wentworth
Janny Wurts
Patricia Wrede

*Megan Lindholm had one story published in the 1970s.

I suspect a similarly low strike rate would apply to a list of male SF/F writers from the 80s.

Voyager, 1998, 591p.

This is a collection of fantasy stories set in the various worlds created by “the best known and most accomplished modern creators of fantasy fiction.” There are two cover paintings, the one above is in the normal orientation, one based on that on the right below being upside down on the back cover.

The Little Sisters of Eluria by Stephen King. (Set in the milieu of The Dark Tower.)

A gunslinger staggers into town with his knackered horse, which promptly dies. He gets beaten up by zombies and handed over to a set of nurses who wish to feed on him and is saved only by the medallion he removed from a dead body earlier.
I’ve never read any Stephen King before – horror isn’t much my thing – and after this I doubt I’ll be reading any more. I wasn’t drawn in, nor was I engaged with the main character at all and as a result didn’t much care what happened to him. This story also betrays an inordinate fondness for the word mayhap. Four instances in fifty pages is at least three too many. Arguably four.

The Sea and Little Fishes by Terry Pratchett. (A Discworld story.)

Granny Weatherwax is asked not to compete in this year’s Witch Trials because she always wins. She accedes, graciously, and everyone else is spooked.
I have read some Pratchett previously and this is the mix much as usual, competently written, diverting, but not earth shattering.

Debt of Bones by Terry Goodkind. (The Sword of Truth.)

A young woman petitions The First Wizard for help to rescue her husband and daughter who have been captured by the evil invaders the D’Hara. For reasons of his own the Wizard assents, but not without seeming reluctance. From there the story unfolds as you might expect, though Goodkind throws in the odd twist or two. The resolution depends on the utilisation of magic; which is always bothersome. If anything can be done (no matter the cost in terms of deterioration to the health of the caster of the spells) then nothing is of consequence. In short, where is the real peril? And why was the good magic not used long since to prevent the bad situation occurring? (Except, of course, to provide us with a story.) On a less philosophical note, just before the climax of the story – the obligatory pyrotechnics and illusions – one of the enemy sorceresses, a Mord-Sith – is, unconvincingly I would have thought, fixated on her immediate task and as a result is overcome too easily. But this is required for plot purposes. In addition, the story’s dénouement is not as dark as the setup warrants.
Goodkind is also new to me. While his writing is readable, I wasn’t moved to seek him out further.

Grinning Man by Orson Scott Card. (The Tales of Alvin Maker.)

Alvin Maker and his companion, Arthur Stuart, meet a man who enters grinning contests with bears. (The winner gains power over the other.) They then travel on to a small town where they at first – due to the grinning man’s lies – encounter mistrust but are accommodated by a miller with dodgy business practices which Alvin eventually reveals with the aid of a bear. The bear, with Alvin’s intervention, has taken the grinning man as a kind of slave. This all sounds bizarre but within the tale it has its own logic.
I have read Card before; and was never enthused by him. This is entertaining enough, but slight.

The Seventh Shrine by Robert Silverberg. (Majipoor.)

Lord Valentine, now Pontifex of Majipoor, delighted to escape The Labyrinth to which his position normally confines him, investigates a murder in the former capital of the aboriginal inhabitants of the planet, the shapeshifting Metamorphs. The Metamorph archaeologist Dr Huukaminaan (or Huukaminaam; the two spellings appear annoyingly interchangeable) has been found dismembered in an ancient Metamorph religious site. Lord Valentine eventually solves the puzzle of the untimely death.
Silverberg is one of my favourite authors. His early stuff was standard 1950s SF but since his re-entry into the field in the late 1960s he has been a major figure, even at his worst never less than interesting. (Silverberg’s worst is always technically accomplished and a cut above the best of most writers in the SF and fantasy fields.) The Majipoor tales, which are from relatively late in his career, are entertainment. The Seventh Shrine duly entertains. Not vintage Silverberg though.

Dragonfly by Ursula K Le Guin. (Earthsea)

Dragonfly is the first female ever to be admitted to the establishment on the island of Roke where mages are trained. The reasons for this, her journey to that point, the reluctance of some of the mages to accept her, are rendered with Le Guin’s characteristic sympathy and attention to detail.
Le Guin is my favourite author of SF/fantasy. Her understanding of the human condition is profound. Her characters’ motivations are always clear and understandable. She can even overcome my reluctance to engage with stories which feature dragons.

The Burning Man by Tad Williams. (Memory, Sorrow and Thorn)

A young woman, Breda, whose widowed mother remarried but died a few years later, tries to understand the remoteness at the heart of her stepfather, Sulis, a political refugee from a foreign country, but one who has retained a retinue of armed guards. The burning man of the title is one of the old Powers, summoned by a witch under duress in order to relieve Sulis of his existential angst.
Williams is also new to me. His writing here is impressive, particularly his invocation of the infatuated love affair Breda has with a young soldier, Tellarin. However, he gives his narrator a tendency not so much to foreshadow as to lay out future events. Fair enough, in that she is relating the defining time of her life from the perspective of old age but the habit was a more than a touch relentless and crucially failed to prefigure adequately Tellarin’s core and the choice Breda has to make at the climax.

The Hedge Knight by George R R Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Dunk, squire to Ser Alan of Pennytree, takes over the old man’s possessions when he dies. Despite never having been dubbed he passes himself off as a hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall. He travels to a large tournament where he hopes to succeed in a challenge and thereby make his fortune. Along the way he picks up a stable lad, who seeks training as his squire. So far. so predictable. Martin, however, complicates and recomplicates his narrative – much as he does the larger Song of Ice and Fire cycle – to great effect. This world of aristocratic houses, heraldry, jousting, (some) chivalry and war, while a straight lift from history, seems to be rendered whole. Each walk on character is believable.* For a story this long, though, there are too many names. Too many Sers clump each other on the tournament field before we get to the point.
*Perhaps my familiarity with A Song of Ice and Fire helped.

Runner of Pern by Anne McCaffrey (Pern)

A young graduate carrier of messages between the various outposts of civilisation on Pern (the runner of the title) suffers a mishap in her first great long journey across the world. Her convalescence and medical treatment are described in detail as is her outfitting for the Gather to take place in the Hold where she is rehabilitating. There is little conflict, if any, only misunderstandings (telegraphed at that.) None of the characters are in any way wicked, sinful or bad. Nothing much happens here. Move on.
I read some McCaffrey many years ago, Dragonflight and The Ship Who Sang. This hasn’t encouraged me to enlarge that experience further.

The Wood Boy by Raymond E Feist (The Riftwar Saga)

Topped and tailed by a crude framing device which highlights the unreliable point of view in the main narrative this is the story of a young servant boy who survives the massacre of his household by another of its retainers and tracks the perpetrator (and the young girl who was his co-conspirator) both of whom die in the struggle that ensues when he catches up with them.

New Spring by Robert Jordan (The Wheel Of Time)

A long tale with two main viewpoint characters, Moiraine, one of the Aes Sedai who can channel powers and Lan, the now stateless King of the Malkieri, where a black sisterhood within the Aes Sedai is trying to prevent the coming of age of a boy who can channel. The familiar mayhem and bloodshed ensue. An unusual touch has a coup de grace in a magic duel not delivered by magic.

Feist and Jordan were also new to me but too generic for my tastes.

Overall I found this a bit of a slog. Some of the settings in Legends are arguably SF rather than fantasy ones but there is a tendency to stock mediævality in too many of the outright fantasies which I find both deadening and disheartening. Is the modern world so unappealing that the comfort of a hierarchical social order is a necessary palliative? Can no-one write a fantasy story set in the here and now?

But then, any sufficiently advanced magic would be indistinguishable from technology.

Legends II is on my tbr pile. It may be some while.