Category: Fiction Book Reviews

September 17, 2012

Chimerical Questions

A Review of Douglas Smith’s Chimerascope (ChiZine Publications, 2010). By Derek Newman-Stille Douglas Smith’s short story collection Chimerascope is a chimerical creature itself, a creative hybrid of diverse genres of the fantastic ranging in temporality, theme, characters, and the questions it evokes. Smith names the series after the Chimera, a creature from the ancient Greek world that is a hybrid...

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September 14, 2012

Sometimes Research Bites…

A review of Kelley Armstrong’s The List in Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (ChiZine Publications, 2012) and Evolve Two (Edge, 2011). By Derek Newman-Stille In The List Kelley Armstrong re-introduces Toronto vampire Zoe Takano (from Broken, “Zen & the Art of Vampirism,” and “Learning Curve”) with her characteristic wit and sarcasm. Zoe finds herself (fortunately) absent from a...

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September 13, 2012

Eternal Buddha

A Review of Karen Dales’ The Guest (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/139342) By Derek Newman-Stille Set in a Buddhist temple, Karen Dales’ short story The Guest is a vampire tale about the escape from a very human monstrosity. Outside the temple, the vampire is treated with discrimination and hatred: feared and not accepted – it is a world of fear that is resisted by...

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September 13, 2012

The Vampire’s Gaze

A Review of Nancy Kilpatrick’s Berserker in Vampyric Variations(Edge, forthcoming 2012) Nancy Kilpatrick never makes things easy for her reader or provide them with simple answers. Her creative gift is to teach through her writing and open up questions, complicating the potential answers to remind you that answers themselves are too simple and impossible – answers are the main fantasy...

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September 12, 2012

The Predatory North and the Cold Lick of Vampiric Frost

A Review of Nancy Baker’s A Terrible Beauty (Viking, 1996). By Derek Newman-Stille Nancy Baker plays with misdirection and ambiguities in her novel A Terrible Beauty. Her characters are not immediately morally good or bad, but straddle a grey line that allows them to dip into darkness and come out shadowy. Like many of her vampire stories, this one is...

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September 10, 2012

Needles and Fangs

A Review of Nancy Kilpatrick’s The Vechi Barbat in Vampyric Variations (Edge, Forthcoming October 2012). By Derek Newman-Stille Although set in a psychiatric facility and featuring a Romanian protagonist, Nancy Kilpatrick’s short story The Vechi Barbat is fundamentally a very Canadian tale containing traditional Can Lit themes. Her story is about the struggle between tradition and modernity, the tug that...

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September 9, 2012

Cruising for Blood

A Review of Tanya Huff’s Blood Price By Derek Newman-Stille Tanya Huff’s books never disappoint me. I am always impressed with her ability to work in multiple genres of Speculative Fiction from hard Science Fiction to High Fantasy, to Urban Dark Fantasy and Horror. Blood Price, the first of Huff’s Blood Books is perhaps one of my favorite books of...

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September 6, 2012

Books You Can Really Sink Your Teeth Into: A Reading List for Vampire Week

By Derek Newman-Stille These are a few of my favorite Canadian vampire stories (note that I say ‘a few’, I want to save several for Vampire Week next year). Some of these stories challenge the genre, pushing it into new areas, and some represent those classic vampire ideas for a Canadian audience. There is something about the Canadian vampire that...

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September 4, 2012

SteaMacabre or SpectrePunk?

A Review of Paul Marlowe’s Knights of the Sea(Sybertooth Inc., 2010) By Derek Newman-Stille Submarines are the maritime SteamPunk equivalent of the airship.  In his Knights of the Sea, New Brunswick author Paul Marlowe explores Victorian era Nova Scotia through the lens of a quirky cast of characters including several teens that are considered too smart for their age, a...

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September 2, 2012

Between Worlds

A review of Charles de Lint’s Mulengro (Orb, 2003) By Derek Newman-Stille Charles de Lint’s novel Mulengro: A Romany Tale is fundamentally about culture clashes and the competing interests of tradition and insularity against cultural assimilation. Mulengro is about a group of Gypsies (Romany people) who are being hunted by a man (called Mulengro by the Gypsie leaders) who is...

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