Fantasy

Artwork: “Gotrek & Felix: The Serpent Queen” by Joshua Reynolds (Black Library)

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I must have said it a hundred times on the blog, now, but I really must get around to reading Josh Reynold’s Road of Skulls, his first full-length novel featuring my favourite Dwarf Slayer and human companion… In advance of that, though, I spotted the artwork for Reynolds’s next novel in the series, The Serpent Queen:

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Sorry for the low-quality image, but I wanted to share the cover anyway. It’s one of my all-time favourite fantasy series, so I’m always excited for news and more fiction (even if it does take me altogether too long to get around to reading them…). Here’s the synopsis:

Gotrek and Felix: unsung heroes of the Empire, or nothing more than common thieves and murderers? The truth perhaps lies somewhere in between, and depends entirely upon whom you ask… Travelling to the mysterious south in search of a mighty death, the Slayer Gotrek Gurnisson and his human companion, Felix Jaeger, find themselves caught up in a battle between warring kingdoms. Captured by the sinister Queen Khalida and forced to do her bidding, the adventurers must brave the horrors of the sun-soaked Land of the Dead, where the dead do not rest easy.

Serpent Queen is due to be published in March/April 2014. Road of Skulls and David Guymer’s City of the Damned are available now from Black Library. In addition, the first in the series, William King’s Trollslayer, has recently been re-released as part of the Black Library Classics series – it is, in my humble opinion, a must-read.

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Q&A with Meg Howrey, one half of MAGNUS FLYTE

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Meg Howrey is one half of the writing team that goes by the name “Magnus Flyte” – Christina Lynch forms the other half. Their second novel, City of Lost Dreams, was released in the US yesterday by Penguin (it is also available in the UK). Penguin US organised a Q&A, which is reproduced below, in which Howrey discusses writing as a partnership, cake (such good cake…), and the two novels (of course).

FlyteM-1-CityOfDarkMagicHow did your collaboration under the name Magnus Flyte come about?

We met at a writers’ retreat on an island off Cape Cod and became fans of each other’s work. When we got back to California, we started getting together for mini writers’ retreats at Chris’s house near Sequoia National Park. The plot for our first novel, City of Dark Magic was hatched on a walk with Chris’s dog Max. The name “Magnus Flyte” is a hybrid (much like our novel). “Magnus” was a usurping Roman senator (not so different from City of Dark Magic’s villain, Charlotte Yates) and “Flyte” is for Sebastian Flyte, Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful lush who, like Max in our novel, has a difficult relationship with his highborn family and the house they live in.

There have been a lot of news stories lately about women who use male pen names, especially when writing genre fiction. Do you think it’s helpful?

Possibly helpful to the author, who may have any number of reasons to use a pen name – a desire to escape gender stereotyping, anonymity, sheer whimsy. One can only imagine how delighted J.K. Rowling was to watch her book get wonderful reviews without any references to Voldemort! Since we had heard that men avoid books by women, we decided to choose a male pseudonym to reach both genders. But then our identities were made public from the beginning, so we didn’t get a chance to see if “Magnus Flyte” would fool anyone. No matter, we love him anyway.

In City of Dark Magic, Prague was very much its own character as well as the setting for the novel. Why did you choose Vienna to be the setting of City of Lost Dreams?

Vienna was the adopted home of Beethoven and we had grown so fond of old LVB in the first novel that we were curious about visiting at least one of the 60 apartments he lived in there as, reportedly, the worst tenant ever. Also, neither of us had ever been to Vienna. And finally, we highly recommend all writers setting a novel in a beautiful European city so that one is forced to travel there and do research (eat sachertorte, visit castles) in a manner that is tax deductible. (Note to I.R.S: don’t even think about it, we have all our receipts.)

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You did quite a lot of research for City of Dark Magic – visited Prague, had a great deal of notes and researched music as well. How much research did you do for City of Lost Dreams?

Binders! Color-coded binders! In the first novel we had briefly touched upon the life of poet Elizabeth Weston, her stepfather Edward Kelley, and Kelley’s partner in magic, Dr. John Dee. These were all characters we wanted to explore a bit more, particularly Elizabeth, about whom not very much is known. (A fact that we believe she would find completely unacceptable – the woman was more famous than Shakespeare in her time.) Along the way we got interested in Franz Anton Mesmer (who gave us the word “mesmerized” and the phrase “animal magnetism”). Not everything makes it in. Well, everything makes it in on the first draft, because Magnus is a terrible pack rat for obscure history, but then we prune him down a bit.

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As a heroine, Sarah Weston is particularly memorable. How did her character evolve in your second novel?

Sarah still isn’t terribly interested in winning prizes for decorum, though perhaps in the second book she is not quite as guided by certain… compulsions. In the sequel she is fighting to save the life of someone she loves, so she’s more focused. The challenges she faces are personal, and she’s questioning herself a lot more: what she believes, what she wants. But as Sarah herself says, she’s no princess. And she’s not one to look a gifted horseman in the mouth.

In City of Dark Magic, the science angle had a lot to do with perception and time travel. You continue those themes in the sequel, and also mix in some ideas about healing and medicine.

We’ve both been interested in the brain’s influence on disease for a while, but in August 2012 when we returned from our research trip to Vienna, Chris’s dog Max was deathly ill. It turned out to be an autoimmune disease with no known cause. With great treatment at U.C. Davis Max went into remission and is now very healthy, but the episode raised a lot of interesting questions about what medicine is and isn’t able to do, and how ultimately mysterious our immune systems are. Why does a healthy body turn on itself? How can that process be reversed? What power does the mind have? And is Chris’s dog Max really – as we suspect – the reincarnation of the 6th Duke of Devonshire?

Your writing is loaded with references from the arts, history and politics. What sort of reader did you envision for this series?

Perhaps we think more of where our potential readers might be when they read rather than what their expectations might be. We think of what we would ourselves enjoy reading on a long plane flight, a weekend with challenging relatives, just after a bout of concentrated study, or feeling mentally frisky. We’re eccentric readers and lovers of long dinner parties where the talk ranges from travel to science to gossip to art, to dreams and dogs and music and philosophy and sex. Our ideal reader takes something away from the books that starts a conversation or a burst of laughter among friends. We’ve loved hearing from readers that were inspired to check out Prague, or listen to Beethoven, or find out more about certain historical characters. And of course we’re deeply indebted to booksellers for knowing whose hands to put the book in. Booksellers are the real celebrities.

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Prague Castle at night

What is your process for co-writing? What are some of the challenges and benefits of writing with a partner? How has that process come to change now that you have completed two novels?

Both books were written in the same way, according to the rules laid down by Magnus Flyte. We alternate chapters, relay style, responding to whatever you were just sent. No rewriting until we get to the end. Trying our best to inspire, amuse, and surprise each other.

Some chapters get sent to the other person with the heading: “You might want to kill me for this one.” (Inevitably, this chapter will be received rapturously.) In the revision process there is a lot more discussion but we give each other a free hand, no “this is my chapter and you can’t touch it.” The best sentence wins, the egos are parked outside. By the end we have trouble remembering who wrote what, and in fact a great many paragraphs and even single sentences are a combination of both writers. People always ask us “what happens when you disagree?” and we have only the dull answer that when we disagree we just talk and listen until we come up with something that we both can live with.

You have developed quite a backstory for Magnus Flyte, who “may have ties to one or more intelligence organizations, including a radical group of Antarctic separatists” and “may be the author of a monograph on carnivorous butterflies.” How did Magnus Flyte, the author, become such a colorful character?

Constructing Magnus’s biography (and extensive bibliography) is actually the only time we have ever written together in the same room. It was a bit like improv…or an accelerated version of our writing process.

Author A: I think Magnus wrote a bibliography of a 14th century warrior…

Author B: A warrior priest. A warrior priest named Clement. Clement something…

Author A: Clement the Bald.

Author B: Perfect.

The legend of Magnus continues to grow. He just accidentally became king of an island nation. He’s taken up smelting. He’s writing a treatise on the best way to make love in the outdoors.

These books sit in an unusual space, crossing multiple genres. What are some of your individual and collective literary influences?

We both emerged from the womb with books in our hands and haven’t stopped reading since then, omnivorously and eccentrically. We have a lot of shared enthusiasms – from Nancy Mitford to neuroscience. Chris has always had a twisted passion for Nabokov and S.J. Perelman, Meg loves Evelyn Waugh and Aldous Huxley. We both love mysteries: Simenon, Sayers, Marsh. The list is long and genres be damned.

Can you give us any hints about your next novel or where the series is going?

Only Magnus knows…

***

Magnus Flyte’s City of Dark Magic and City of Lost Dreams are both out now in the US and UK, published by Penguin. Be sure to follow the author(s) on Facebook and Twitter for more news and updates.

Giveaway! THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DRAGONS by Marie Brennan (UK Only)

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BrennanM-NaturalHistoryOfDragonsUSA quick and cheerful post. I have one copy of The Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan to give away to some lucky reader in the UK. It’s the US Hardcover edition (published by Tor Books), but you should also know that it is going to be published soon in the UK by Titan Books, so if you don’t win, you will be able to get hold of the book easily in the near future.

Here’s what it’s about…

You, dear reader, continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart — no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon’s presence, even for the briefest of moments — even at the risk of one’s life — is a delight that, once experienced, can never be forgotten…

All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world’s preeminent dragon naturalist. She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the misty shadows of myth and misunderstanding into the clear light of modern science. But before she became the illustrious figure we know today, there was a bookish young woman whose passion for learning, natural history, and, yes, dragons defied the stifling conventions of her day.

Here at last, in her own words, is the true story of a pioneering spirit who risked her reputation, her prospects, and her fragile flesh and bone to satisfy her scientific curiosity; of how she sought true love and happiness despite her lamentable eccentricities; and of her thrilling expedition to the perilous mountains of Vystrana, where she made the first of many historic discoveries that would change the world forever.

Leave a comment or email if you’re interested in winning the book. That’s really all you need to do. I’ll select someone at random in one week (December 3rd, at midnight).

Catching up with TOM LLOYD

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Tom Lloyd is the author of the Twilight Reign epic fantasy series, which was completed earlier this year. Today, Gollancz publish the first in his new series, Moon’s Artifice. To mark the occasion, I caught up with Tom to get an update since my first interview with the author…

Your first fantasy series, The Twilight Reign, came to an end this year. How does it feel to have it finished?

Weird – damn good, but still weird. I started on the project when I was 18, so it’s been the major constant of 12-14 years of my life! Even when I was signed up by Gollancz I don’t think I appreciated just how much of my life was going to be devoted to one set of characters, one plot. It was just always there, so to suddenly realise you’ve written the last words puts you into mourning.

Of course, the very last words of Dusk Watchman are the inscription on a memorial stone – I can’t remember if I’d finished all the stories of God Tattoo by then, but most of them. Certainly in my mind, that final part of the epilogue was what really brought it home to me. When I wrote the last words and typed the inscription, I think I might have needed a few moments to myself… And again when I did the second draft of it and finally got the tone of those last couple pages as I really wanted it.

So yeah, years of my life and the voices in my head that had become my friends, all gone. I think that’s one reason why I didn’t want to go straight into an epic again. I didn’t want to have a project that I’d compare so directly with Twilight Reign. Plus I was knackered and the idea of planning a series-spanning plot was exhausting. I wanted a stand-alone book and handily had the bones of one already sketched out. I have an epic (or maybe two) idea at the back of my mind, but there’s the Empire of a Hundred Houses series and then another both ahead of them in the queue.

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Anything you might have done differently?

No book is ever finished, you know that! But at the same time, I’m really happy with it. I know it’s not a simply plot and not a book you can idly flick through – while no-one describes me as a grimdark writer (because of less of an emphasis on cynicism by characters I believe), it’s pretty dark. The tone is grim for large chunks of it, a lot of people die and a lot of people get screwed up by all that happens to them. If you’re writing about war and nations-spanning conflicts, you have to acknowledge the casualties of that – the people who get crushed under the wheels of it all.

So yeah, some people will always have criticisms of any book and I’ve seen reviews that didn’t like how I’d done certain things, but it’s the story I wanted to tell – grim and dark as it may be. I’d happily to do a quick brush-up job on Stormcaller as reading it back I think I over-complicated some passages and interrupted the flow, but aside from making bits easier and quicker to read I wouldn’t want to change it. The plot’s hardwired into my brain for a start, unpicking it would probably cause an aneurism.

Lloyd-MoonsArtificeNow. Moon’s Artifice. The first in a new series. What’s it about?

Dragons! No, not really… But I hear those sell so… ;0)

Ahem, well it’s a secondary world fantasy, but not an epic. It’s being described as swords and sorcery, but that conjures images of bearded wizards and over-muscled barbarian warriors in my mind so I’m trying to coin the term “hood and dagger” to describe an urban-set fantasy action/thriller, albeit to minimal effect!

Anyway – we have a policeman who, at the same time as he finds out his married high-born lover is pregnant, stumbles over a mystery. With no idea what he’s involved in, he’s tasked by an interfering god to find out what’s going on – his only clues being an unconscious thug dressed like an assassin and the accidental poisoning of a little girl. Quickly matters blossom into a conspiracy that threatens to overturn the rigid rules of the Empire and lead to the deaths of thousands at best – and it quickly starts to look like Narin and his new friends need to step up and stop them. Everything is set in the capital city of a fractured Empire – the meeting place of the great nations-hegemonies who have ensured the Emperor’s position is more spiritual than temporal – and takes place in something close to one week.

What was it like starting a new series from scratch again?

Strange – partly because it wasn’t from scratch. When I was looking for an agent for Stormcaller, I realised I might have to just write it off as the book I learned to write with. So I started a new one with very little idea about what I wanted from it. I knew it had to be a different sort of book as I was still learning this writing thing, and it was going to indulge the samurai obsession I had back then. Plus I had a title – Moon’s Artifice – even if I didn’t know how or why that poison fitted in the plot exactly. I knew it did in some nebulous way and just had to wait until the voices whispered exactly how.

You’ll be shocked to hear those chapters weren’t very good, but eight-odd years later, I had a much better idea of what I wanted! All those ghostly half-formed ideas at the back of my mind had had a chance to mulch around and create the bones of a plot. From there, you actually get a chance to pick what you want to do, which was quite fun. I don’t write with a specific message or agenda in mind, I just want to tell the story in my head in a way people will enjoy.

What lessons did you learn from writing Twilight Reign, and how did your experiences with that series translate into your approach to Moon’s Artifice?

I learned to write while doing the Twilight Reign and because I was doing a shorter, less complicated and faster-paced book, I had to actively consider how to adapt for that. A lot of it was simply deciding what was appropriate to the sort of book I was writing. With the experience of a classical European medieval epic fantasy, I had a number of things I didn’t want to do – not that I was rejecting them, I just wanted to do something new and different. Fortunately the Empire setting was halfway there already and just needed some tweaking plus internal consistency which ironed out the creases. Some of which, I must admit, was added by my agent who took me out for drinks and brutalised the setting and idea until he was satisfied with it. Given he’s only making money on how good my books are, that’s the mark of a good agent even if it wasn’t a fun hour or two. However successful you get, you always need to be challenged or you’ll end up phoning novels in.

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Moon’s Artifice is out TODAY! Go on. Go buy it. Here’s the synopsis

In a quiet corner of the Imperial City, Investigator Narin discovers the result of his first potentially lethal mistake. Minutes later he makes a second.

After an unremarkable career Narin finally has the chance of promotion to the hallowed ranks of the Lawbringers – guardians of the Emperor’s laws and bastions for justice in a world of brutal expediency. Joining that honoured body would be the culmination of a lifelong dream, but it couldn’t possibly have come at a worse time. A chance encounter drags Narin into a plot of gods and monsters, spies and assassins, accompanied by a grief-stricken young woman, an old man haunted by the ghosts of his past and an assassin with no past.

On the cusp of an industrial age that threatens the warrior caste’s rule, the Empire of a Hundred Houses awaits civil war between noble factions. Centuries of conquest has made the empire a brittle and bloated monster; constrained by tradition and crying out for change. To save his own life and those of untold thousands Narin must understand the key to it all – Moon’s Artifice, the poison that could destroy an empire.

Also, while you’re at it, The Twilight Reign novels are all now available, published by Gollancz in the UK, and Pyr in the US.

Upcoming: “Half Bad” by Sally Green (Viking YA/Penguin)

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GreenS-HalfBadI just spotted this via an advert on Goodreads (well-played, Google Ad Algorithm, well-played…). The cover really caught my eye, and I thought I’d share it on here. It’s pretty cool, no? I particularly like the way the blood in the water has been shaped (in a surprisingly realistic way) into a face, in an otherwise minimalist image.

The premise is pretty interesting, but I have a suspicion that it’s perhaps a little reminiscent of something else… If only I could remember what it reminds me of… Anyway. Here’s the synopsis:

One boy’s struggle for survival in a hidden society of witches.

You can’t read, can’t write, but you heal fast, even for a witch.

You get sick if you stay indoors after dark.

You hate White Witches but love Annalise, who is one.

You’ve been kept in a cage since you were fourteen.

All you’ve got to do is escape and find Mercury, the Black Witch who eats boys. And do that before your seventeenth birthday.

Easy.

Half Bad will be published by Penguin UK in March 2014. Penguin are also publishing in the US and Canada. It is Sally Green’s debut novel, and the first in a projected trilogy. The author is also on Twitter. Described as “supernatural thriller set in a modern world inhabited by covert witches”, I am pretty sure there are going to be a lot of people interested in reading this. Despite the obvious Harry Potter parallels (justified or not, as they may end up being). There’s a slightly different synopsis on the book’s website:

Sixteen-year-old Nathan lives in a cage: beaten, shackled like a dog, trained to kill. In a modern-day England where two warring factions of witches live amongst humans, Nathan is an abomination, the illegitimate son of the world’s most terrifying and violent witch, Marcus. Nathan’s only hope for survival is to escape his captors, track down Marcus, and receive the three gifts that will bring him into his own magical powers — before it’s too late. But how can Nathan find his father when his every action is tracked, when there is no one safe to trust, not even family, not even the girl he loves?

I did some Googling, and it turns out that the rights to this novel have already been sold in 25 foreign rights deals. Within 13 weeks of Penguin’s first acquisition. Holy crap, that’s impressive. The Bookseller rightly (perhaps rather tamely) referred to the deal as “unprecedented”. No idea how much it went for in the first place – in secret-publishing-deal-speak, the deal was only referred to as “substantial”. This sort of deal is pretty unusual, so yeah. I’m a bit more intrigued…

Upcoming: “Traitor’s Blade” by Sebastien de Castell (Jo Fletcher Books)

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deCastellS-GC1-TraitorsBladeWhile stumbling about on the internet, looking for information on upcoming new books by authors I like, I found the synopsis for this novel. Another from Jo Fletcher Books (a publisher who seems to be publishing some of the most interesting SFF novels at the moment, which I have been singularly inept at keeping up with), it looks rather promising. Traitor’s Blade is the first in Sebastien de Castell’s Greatcoats series. Here’s the synopsis…

Falcio is the first Cantor of the Greatcoats. Trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia, the Greatcoats are travelling Magisters upholding King’s Law. They are heroes. Or at least they were, until they stood aside while the Dukes took the kingdom, and impaled their King’s head on a spike.

Now Tristia is on the verge of collapse and the barbarians are sniffing at the borders. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters.

All they have left are the promises they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission. But if they have any hope of fulfilling the King’s dream, the divided Greatcoats must reunite, or they will also have to stand aside as they watch their world burn…

deCastellS-SpellslingerTraitor’s Blade is due to be published in early March 2014. Penguin will be publishing the novel in Canada, and Piper will be bringing it to shelves in Germany. I’m rather looking forward to it. Although, I do wonder if the Dragon Age-esque aesthetic of the cover is leading…? Be sure to check out de Castell’s website and Twitter for more news. Including, as it turns out, some preliminary information on the second Greatcoats novel, Greatcoat’s Lament (which looked a bit spoilery to me, so I haven’t included it here), and also Spellslinger, the author’s “heroic fantasy with a western flavour” (synopsis below). There is also a free mini-audiodrama, set in the Spellslinger world, “Card Trick”.

A Tale of Magic, Intrigue & Talking Raccoons

Kellen Argos is cursed with the Shadowblack and on the run from his own family when the mysterious young queen of Darome promises him a cure in exchange for his protection. Kellen soon discovers that someone inside the nobility is plotting to take over the country. Now he has to find a way to outsmart the conspirators before they get to the queen over Kellen’s dead body.

Upcoming: “Fortune’s Blight” by Evie Manieri (Jo Fletcher Books)

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ManieriE-SK2-FortunesBlightLast year, Evie Manieri’s Blood’s Pride was one of the pleasant surprises of the speculative genres. The first in the author’s Shattered Kingdoms series, it arrived unannounced one day in the mail. I had known nothing about it, I dove in and enjoyed what I read. Today, I spotted some information about the anticipated sequel, Fortune’s Blight…

Victory for the Shadari rebels has come at a terrible price. Hardship, superstition and a murderous cabal poison King Daryan’s young regime, but help is nowhere to be found: the mercenary who led their rebellion has vanished, their Nomas allies have troubles of their own, and the Norlanders who returned home to plead – or fight – for the Shadari’s independence have found themselves embroiled in the court politics of an empire about to implode.

As the foundations of the two far-flung countries begin to crack, an enigmatic figure watches from a tower room in Ravindal Castle. She is old, and a prisoner, but her reach is long, and her patience is about to be rewarded…

Fortune’s Blight is due to be published in February 2015, by Jo Fletcher Books. So, it’s quite a way off, still, but that means there’s plenty of time for you to hunt down Blood’s Pride in time. (It is also currently for sale in the UK Amazon Kindle store.) Manieri’s series is published in the US by Tor Books.

Also on CR: Interview with Evie Manieri, Guest Post (“Why I Write Fantasy”)

“The Crystal Cave” by Mary Stewart (Hodder)

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StewartM-M1-CrystalCaveOne of the best-loved interpretations of the Merlin Myth

Fifth century Britain is a country of chaos and division after the Roman withdrawal. This is the world of young Merlin, the illegitimate child of a South Wales princess who will not reveal to her son his father’s true identity. Yet Merlin is an extraordinary child, aware at the earliest age that he possesses a great natural gift – the Sight.

Against a background of invasion and imprisonment, wars and conquest, Merlin emerges into manhood, and accepts his dramatic role in the New Beginning – the coming of King Arthur.

Hm. How to review a book that is well-written, well-conceived, but didn’t fire one’s imagination? In brief, I suppose, is the best answer. I received this as part of the Hodderscape Review Project, which has been a great way to try out some classics of genre fiction. True, only one has truly wormed its way into my mind (Stephen King’s The Shining), but I am very happy that I’ve had the opportunity to read these books (this is the third so far). I’m especially looking forward to the next title in the project (by none other than Ursula le Guin…). The Crystal Cave, however, must also be put on the Shelf of Classics That Disappointed.

Despite this, there is a fair bit to like in this novel. Stewart’s prose is well-crafted and fluid – it reminded me of Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice, actually, in style. The characters are interestingly portrayed and well-drawn. Despite these things, the story itself just didn’t grab me enough to make me love it. This is one of the first novels that, after I told friends and family that I was going to read it, was universally met with comments along the line of, “It’s great!” and “It’s fantastic!” Sadly, I just didn’t get swept up by it. The story took too long to get going. I did, however, enjoy how Stewart brought in Merlin’s gift of Sight into the story, and developed it over the course of this first book – he first comes across as incredibly observant, and then we start to see his knowledge of things he couldn’t possible know.

As far as Merlin/Arthur interpretations go, I can certainly see why this has been so popular, and how that popularity endures today. Of the many other versions of this story that I have read (most recently, I think, DC Comics’ Demon Knights and Maurice Broaddus’s Knights of the Breton Court), this is probably the best conceived and in-depth.

It is perhaps the long-game approach that Stewart took that makes the novel not really work for me. It suffers from being too obviously the first part of a series – the characters, ideas and so forth aren’t developed enough, and I didn’t think the plot moved forward enough. Sadly, this means I haven’t got the bug to seek out the rest of the series. At least, I am not in any hurry. As someone who will happily sit through thousands of pages of epic fantasy trilogies (most recently, Joe Abercrombie and Peter V. Brett – both authors for whom I had some catching up to do), it is perhaps strange to say this book didn’t work for me.

That’s quite possibly the most carefully-written, sitting-on-the-fence review I’ve ever written. I’m not proud of it. I just couldn’t rustle up much verve to dig deeper. Which is never a good sign when it comes to a novel. I’m sure, in the future, I’ll give this another try. As it stands, though, it didn’t work for me, and I don’t want to belabour the point.

I Have Never Read… Graham Joyce. (But I’d really like to.)

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JoyceG-SomeKindOfFairyTaleUKAuthor Graham Joyce’s latest novel, Some Kind of Fairy Tale won the British Fantasy Award for best novel this past weekend (announced during the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton). This is the sixth time Joyce has won the Best Fantasy Novel Award. Here is the synopsis:

Some Kind of Fairy Tale is a very English story. A story of woods and clearings, a story of folk tales and family histories. It is as if Neil Gaiman and Joanne Harris had written a Fairy Tale together.

It is Christmas afternoon and Peter Martin gets an unexpected phone-call from his parents, asking him to come round. It pulls him away from his wife and children and into a bewildering mystery.

He arrives at his parents house and discovers that they have a visitor. His sister Tara. Not so unusual you might think, this is Christmas after all, a time when families get together. But twenty years ago Tara took a walk into the woods and never came back and as the years have gone by with no word from her the family have, unspoken, assumed that she was dead. Now she’s back, tired, dirty, disheveled, but happy and full of stories about twenty years spent travelling the world, an epic odyssey taken on a whim.

But her stories don’t quite hang together and once she has cleaned herself up and got some sleep it becomes apparent that the intervening years have been very kind to Tara. She really does look no different from the young women who walked out the door twenty years ago. Peter’s parents are just delighted to have their little girl back, but Peter and his best friend Richie, Tara’s one time boyfriend, are not so sure. Tara seems happy enough but there is something about her. A haunted, otherworldly quality. Some would say it’s as if she’s off with the fairies. And as the months go by Peter begins to suspect that the woods around their homes are not finished with Tara and his family…

Joyce’s other winning novels were: Dark Sister (1993), Requiem (1996), The Tooth Fairy (1997), Indigo (2000), Memoirs of a Master Forger (2009). In addition to these six wins, perhaps more impressive is the fact that he’s been nominated a total fourteen times.

Earlier this year, Joyce was diagnosed with aggressive lymphoma cancer.  The awards ceremony was his first public appearance since his diagnosis – indeed, six months ago, his condition was extremely precarious. Accepting the award, the author stated, “Just being able to stand here today is a wonderful award, thanks to the doctors and nurses of the NHS.”

Graham Joyce’s novels have always somehow managed to escape my attention. True, in this case, the synopsis doesn’t appear to be entirely to my taste. However, given just how many people rave about his work (and irrespective of the number of awards he’s won), I am intrigued. Especially as I start forcing myself to read more outside my ‘comfort zone’, and as my general Reader’s Block continues (‘standard’ fantasy novels have started to blur into one…).

I thought I’d also pick up on something from the biography I received today from his publicist:

“In 1989 Joyce quit his job as a youth worker and went to live and write in a beachside shack on the Greek island of Lesbos. He sold his first novel after a year in Greece. Since then he has written twenty novels and numerous short stories. His novels have attracted admirers including Isabel Allende, Iain Banks, A.S. Byatt and Stephen King.”

I wish I had the courage (not to mention the talent) to do this… Too often, I feel like my life has been dictated by “safe” choices. True, I’d like to retire to a cabin in North America, but there are rather strict visa concerns to take into account…