Category: Fiction Book Reviews

December 5, 2015

Multiple Faces of Identity

A Review of Kate Story’s “Show and Tell” In Playground of Lost Toys (Exile Editions, 2015)by Derek Newman-Stille School can be a horror story. It is a space where identity is controlled and regulated and where normalcy and conformity rein. Anyone who doesn’t belong is firmly aware that they are the school’s monster and those who enforce that normalcy treat...

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December 3, 2015

Grey Areas

A review of Tanya Huff’s ” Gate of Darkness, Cirlce of Light” (DAW, 1989) By Derek Newman-Stille Tanya Huff’s Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light is a rare novel in that it features a type of protagonist that is rarely displayed in literature, and particularly urban fantasy literature. Rebecca is a woman with an ID (intellectual disability, sometimes called a...

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November 18, 2015

Timelines

Timelines A review of Joanne Findon’s When Night Eats The Moon (Red Deer Press, 1999)By Derek Newman-Stille Time travel is ultimately about responsibility – responsibility to the timeline, to the past, the present, and the future. Perhaps this is why it works so well for a Young Adult novel. In When Night Eats The Moon, Joanne Findon’s narrator, Holly, begins...

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October 31, 2015

A Spectacle of Beauty and Estrangement

A Spectacle of Beauty and EstrangementA review of Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh Book 3 (S &G Publishing, 2015) The third book of Nigh by Marie Bilodeau brings the reader into the realm of fairy itself, a land hostile to human life but simultaneously an object of desire. Bilodeau’s fairy realm is a land that is changeable between one moment to the next...

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October 29, 2015

Learning How Not To Be A Hero

Learning How Not to Be A HeroA review of Edward Willett’s “Falcon’s Egg” (Bundoran Press, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille Lorn had always wanted to be a hero, always looked up to those revolutionary leaders he saw pushing boundaries and changing society, but when Lorn sees his “changed” government behaving in the same way as the previous regime, he is forced...

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October 3, 2015

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 48: A Discussion of the Work of Max Turner

In this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio, I interrogate the work of Max Turner, an author who explores the notion of the psychiatric institution through the perspective of a vampire. Turner sets his vampiric character in a former psychiatric institution in Peterborough Ontario called the Nicholls’ Ward. In this discussion of Max Turner’s work, I explore ideas of...

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October 1, 2015

Nature or Nurture

A review of Janette Platana’s “Spontaneous Generation” in A Token of my Affliction (Tightrope Books, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille Janette Platana’s macabre tale “Spontaneous Generation” uses the movement of maggots across a floor from a dead bird in the chimney to discourse on notions of life and death, family, and ideas of nurture v nature on personal development. Platana questions...

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September 25, 2015

Transitional Words

A review of Nalo Hopkinson’s Falling in Love With Hominids (Tachyon Publications, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille Falling in Love with Hominids illustrates Nalo Hopkinson’s playfulness with language, her characteristic exploration of the way that language shapes social interactions and develops plot. Hopkinson illustrates her fascination with ideas of sound and the power of mis-hearings, exploring stories that came from her...

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September 16, 2015

The Oddity of Children

A review of Nalo Hopkinson’s “Message in a Bottle” in Falling in Love with Hominids (Tachyon, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille Nalo Hopkinson’s “Message in a Bottle” explores the strange nature of children and the complicated reaction people have to children who don’t fit the norm. The narrator, Greg, explores the social pressure to have children and his own perception of...

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August 18, 2015

Sands of Time and Landscapes of Memory

A Review of Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh Book Two (S&G Publishing, 2014) By Derek Newman-Stille Memory, made of time and place and story, shapes Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh Book 2, a tale about the return of the faeries and the collision of human and faerie cultures. Like the first book of Nigh, this book explores the power of the slippery landscape, changing...

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