Category: Fiction Book Reviews

August 28, 2012

Spectres, Spooks, and Supernatural S.A.D.

A Review of Ian Rogers’ The Ash Angels (Burning Effigy Press, 2010) By Derek Newman-Stille The second book in Ian Rogers’ Felix Renn series, The Ash Angels, abstracts issues of depression onto a supernatural enemy. Rogers delves into the heart of depression,  exploring the hollow emptiness of the soul, and the monstrous internal threat of the suicidal impulse. Unlike other...

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August 26, 2012

Deep Space Dexter

Review of “Long Leap” by Derek Kunsken. In On Spec Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring 2012. By Derek Newman-Stille Derek Kunsken takes on a huge challenge by portraying a character who is utterly without emotions, a sociopathic (though not officially a sociopath) character who is distanced from the human and who murders. He portrays the ultimate monster – the one...

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August 21, 2012

What is Barbarism?

A review of: Regan Wolfrom’s The Hill Where Thorvald Slew Ten Skraelings (OnSpec #88, Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring 2012) By Derek Newman-Stille Regan Wolfrom’s The Hill Where Thorvald Slew Ten Skraelings recreates a Norse worlds where Seidr, magic, meets Viking might and ideas of strength. Wolfrom challenges ideas of masculinity in this short story, using a group of people,...

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August 17, 2012

This Werewolf Wears Pumps

A review of Margaret Atwood’s Update on Werewolves in Thriller Suite: New Poems (available online at Wattpad at http://www.wattpad.com/5346412-thriller-suite-new-poems-update-on-werewolves ) By Derek Newman-Stille Margaret Atwood’s poem Update on Werewolves explores the shifting culture of werewolves over time. In a lot of the werewolf cinema and literature of the later 20th century, werewolves were predominantly male and embodied the expression of...

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August 15, 2012

Anonymous in the Age of Face Recognition Software

A review of: E.L. Chen’s A Safety of Crowds (in Tesseracts Fifteen: A Case of Quite Curious Tales. Edge, 2011). By Derek Newman-Stille E.L. Chen’s A Safety of Crowds explores the anonymity of modern society and the idea that one can be lost in a crowd and can lose oneself in a crowd of people. Chen explores two women who...

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August 13, 2012

Performing the Monster

A Review of Ian Rogers’ Temporary Monsters (Burning Effigy Press, Toronto: 2009) By Derek Newman-Stille Peterborough author Ian Rogers’ Temporary Monsters is a novella about illusion and performance, the insubstantiality of life and the performativity of everyday existence.  Rogers sets his story of monstrosity amongst a performative group of people, actors and actresses, who need to be ‘on’ while on-screen...

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August 11, 2012

The Canadian Response to Mercedes Lackey’s Five Hundred Kingdoms

A review of Lindsey Carmichael’s The Prince and the Hedgewitch (in Canadian Tales of the Fantastic, Red Tuque Books, Penticton, BC, 2011) By Derek Newman-Stille To anyone who has read Mercedes Lackey’s Five Hundred Kingdoms series, Lindsey Carmichael’s The Prince and the Hedgewitch will strike a familiar cord. Like Lackey’s series, Carmichael’s short story plays with the idea of a...

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August 8, 2012

Hockey 30 Days of Night in Canada

A Review of Sudden Death Overtime by Steve Vernon (Crossroad Press, 2012) By Derek Newman-Stille In his Sudden Death Overtime, Steve Vernon creates an unusual cast of characters in an epic battle on and off the ice. Vernon takes a group of old Newfoundland hockey players from a small, one-pub town and faces them against an encroaching threat of outsiders....

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August 2, 2012

Dark, Cold Memory Lost in Sun-happy Brilliance

A review of John Park’s Nightward in Tesseracts 14: Strange Canadian Stories. By Derek Newman-Stille In Nightward, John Park creates a world that has stopped spinning. The sun beats heavily on one half of the world, leaving the other half in darkness and a twilight in between. People in this world seek the sunlight, standing on towers at the dusky...

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July 28, 2012

Zombie Ethics 101: The Zombie Diet

A review of The Ethical Treatment of Meat by Claude Lalumiere (in Objects of Worship, Chizine, Toronto, 2009) By Derek Newman-Stille For those that have read my work before, you will know that I have a love of the monstrous and, particularly, the ability of the monstrous to question ideas of normalcy. Lalumiere’s short story The Ethical Treatment of Meat leaves...

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