Tag: reviews

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...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

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...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

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...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

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...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

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...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

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...

Categories Editorials/Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 2

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...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comment: 1

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...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

August 30, 2012

Everyone Hides Behind Their Masks, Whether They Are Superheroes or Psychiatrists

A Review of Steve Vernon’s The Glint of Moonlight on Broken Glass in Nothing to Lose (Nocturne Press, 2007) By Derek Newman-Stille What does pain do to a person? In what way is victimhood contagious? Asks Steve Vernon in his short story The Glint of Moonlight on Broken Glass.  Vernon’s story is a superhero story, but one that is not...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comment: 1

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...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comment: 1