Tag: reviews

January 20, 2013

Cowgouls

A Review of Ian Rogers’ Deadstock (StoneBunny Press, 2011). By Derek Newman-Stille In the Weird West a ghoul’s gotta do what a ghoul’s gotta do and there ain’t nothin’ to stop them… except for a man with a gun that has no bullets and sucks the life from its user and a woman with 52 knives and a cat that...

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January 13, 2013

The Timeless Power of Legends

A Review of The Monkey King & Other Stories Edited by Griffin Ondaatje (Harper Collins, 1995). By Derek Newman-Stille Griffin Ondaatje compiled The Monkey King & Other Stories as a celebration of the 40th anniversary of World Literacy of Canada. The stories within represent Canadian and Sri Lankan adaptations and re-tellings of Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim tales, bringing the timeless...

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January 9, 2013

Subversive Summonings

A Review of Claude Lalumiere’s The Ministry of Sacred Affairs (In Here Be Monsters: Tongues and Teeth: Issue Seven, 2012) By Derek Newman-Stille In The Ministry of Sacred Affairs, Lalumiere demonstrates his love of questioning social conventions and enforced messages by giving voice to a socially abject figure: the goblin, a figure hated by the public and viewed as a...

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January 7, 2013

Abandoned

A Review of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “A Handful of Earth” in Expanded Horizons: Speculative Fiction for the Rest of Us (Nov, 2012) By Derek Newman-Stille Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “A Handful of Earth” available for free online by Expanded Horizons: Speculative Fiction for the Rest of Us ( http://expandedhorizons.net/magazine/?page_id=2442 ) narrates the Dracula story from the perspective of Dracula’s “brides”, the three “sisters”...

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January 3, 2013

Avatars of Reality

A review of Ven Begamudre’s Vishnu Dreams (Gaspereau Press, 2008) By Derek Newman-Stille The Hindu god Vishnu sleeps and dreams the lives of mortals in Ven Begamudre’s Vishnu Dreams, allowing for the intersection of Hindu cosmology and the physical reality of everyday existence. Tales of the Hindu gods are interspersed amongst a seemingly magic-less narrative. Stories and sacred tales become...

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December 31, 2012

The Secret Guide to Keeping Supernatural Secrets

A review of Sierra Dean’s The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters (Samhain Publishing Ltd., 2011) By Derek Newman-Stille Named “Secret” and a person at the crossroads of many secrets, Secret McQueen is a bounty hunter you will enjoy.  Secret is a hybridised half vampire, half werewolf and treated as a second class citizen by the vampires she works for due...

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December 27, 2012

Haunting Lullabies

A review of Holly Bennett’s Redwing (Orca Book Publishers, 2012) By Derek Newman-Stille In her novel Redwing Holly Bennett follows the life of two young musicians who have both been the victims of loss. Rowan has lost his entire family to the plague and has survived. At age 15, he has been forced to search for employment, busking as a...

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December 23, 2012

Postcolonial Vampirism – Consuming Resources

A review of Michael Rowe’s Enter, Night (ChiZine , 2011) By Derek Newman-Stille In Michael Rowe’s Enter, Night, the true terror is not the vampires, but rather the spectre of the small town and its ability to suppress all forms of difference. Small towns are places of secrets because very few secrets can be kept in a place where everyone...

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December 22, 2012

Big Red Suit Scare – A Midwinter Cold War

A review of The Claus Effect by David Nickle and Karl Schroeder (Tesseract Books, 1997) By Derek Newman-Stille Every child wishes they could go to the North Pole to become one of Santa’s elves. What child wouldn’t want to get everything that they want? David Nickle and Karl Schroeder take on the spirit of the holidays in The Claus Effect...

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December 20, 2012

Alien Ecologies

A review of Nina Munteanu’s Outer Diverse (Starfire World Syndicate, 2011) By Derek Newman-Stille The world has changed. Humans have been forced off of the planet Earth by their supposed ‘saviours’, the Eosians. Humans were threatened by a race called the Vos, a race that desired the destruction of humanity, but the Eosians drove them away… only they decided not...

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