Waking in Winter, by Deborah Biancotti (PS Publishing) | review by Stephen Theaker

In this science fantasy novella, reminiscent in good ways of Whiteout or The Thing, Muir is working on an alien planet, part of a group of glacionauts working from the Base Station. She’s a couple of days away from going home, though she isn’t keen because her mother’s funeral awaits. On what would have been one of her last trips in her twin-seater flying Otter she sees something under the ice: a gigantic woman, a mermaid with a six-metre-wide tail and miles of hair. She assumes it’s been carved into the ice, but when other team members look at it they each see something different, something rooted in their own cultural heritage. No one wants to talk about it, and Muir doesn’t think it’s a good thing. When a colleague says he sees a lotus flower, “Muir felt something slip inside her. The beginning of an avalanche.” The book never lets us forget how cold it is there, so the reader understands very quickly how dangerous the situation could become. There are only two days until winter sets in, and it’s going to get dark, but her colleagues are keen to dig up what they can. As you might imagine, that’s a mistake. I enjoyed this a lot: it was frightening, and awe-inspiring, and very good at showing how co-workers who spend too much time together can wind each other up. Available here.  ****

A Wizard’s Henchman by Matthew Hughes (PS Publishing) | review by Stephen Theaker

For those readers who have had the immense pleasure of reading several of this author’s Archonate books, A Wizard’s Henchman is simply unmissable. Over many short stories, novellas and novels we have been shown a universe on the point of collapse, rapidly approaching the point at which reality will flip, from being based like ours (one hopes) on scientific principles to being ruled instead by magic, or, to be more precise, by the will. Some books have shown magic bleeding through, and others have even taken us into the future for a brief glimpse of what is to come, but this is where it actually happens! It is very abrupt. Flying cars fall out of the sky. Buildings collapse. People starve. But not our protagonist. Knowing a little bit about what is going to happen, he gloms on to a promising candidate for wizardship and keeps him safe while he prepares and later learns to use his new powers. Less pleasant magic users are also making their play, and the denizens of other dimensional planes are also ready to take advantage of the new status quo. The book offers a comfortingly familiar mix of science fiction, fantasy and mystery, while never being reluctant to offer a shocking image or idea when appropriate. It gives us a protagonist for whom self-preservation is at first a priority, but who grows in stature into a true hero, in large part thanks to his determination to adapt and learn. A brilliant book, probably my favourite new book of 2016. *****

Letters to Arkham: The Letters of Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth, 1961–1971, edited by S.T. Joshi (PS Publishing) | review by Stephen Theaker

This book collects the correspondence (or so much of it as remains) from the 1960s between the prolific writer and editor August Derleth and the young Ramsey Campbell. The latter would go on to be a titan of the horror world, and the former already was, his publishing of H.P. Lovecraft’s work in hardback having done a great deal to cement that writer’s reputation. The letters are often fascinating. Campbell, fifteen at first, is importunate, full of questions – reminding us that this was a time when you couldn’t simply look things up on the internet – a virgin, somewhat testy and defensive. August Derleth, much older, is sexually omnivorous, patronising, encouraging, and exceedingly free with his opinions. One thing I had noted reading Derleth’s pastoral Sac Prairie Journal immediately before this is that August Derleth’s romantic life is completely absent from its pages, and these letters make it obvious why: he was having it off with whoever he could! Given that the letters are remarkably revealing, it’s a credit to Ramsey Campbell and to the literary estate of August Derleth that their publication was allowed. That the book would be edited by Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi must have helped in that regard, and he provides very useful footnotes to the letters, supplying information about everything from incorrect film titles (there is a great deal of film chat) to whether planned titles from both writers were ever published, and if so in what form and under what titles. One of their favourite topics of conversation is films, and reading the book now, when so much of cinema’s rich history is available for a few pounds and a couple of clicks, it’s almost shaming to see the lengths to which the two of them go to watch really good films, travelling for hours to get to a particular cinema on the one night that film would be shown. Since reading the book I’ve certainly been making more of an effort to watch better quality films. It’s essential reading for fans of either writer, and very interesting reading for everyone else. ****

The Last Weekend, by Nick Mamatas (PS Publishing) | review by Stephen Theaker

Even before the collapse, Vasilis Kostopolos was not a nice guy, and not a happy guy either. A self-loathing alcoholic who follows an ex-girlfriend to Boston, who follows random women on the subway while abusing them in his mind, who doesn’t mind if the money he spends on drink helps fund the IRA, he ends up in San Francisco, a surprisingly good place to be when the dead start to rise. There are no cemeteries there, and the zombies struggle with the big hills. He’s a writer, and he can prove that with the print-out of his one published story that he keeps in his pocket at all times, but he takes a job as a driller. When the dying seem likely to turn, he gets a call. If he’s lucky, he gets there once they’re dead but before they’ve revived, but he’s rarely lucky. Turns out he’s pretty good at the job, or at least he doesn’t quit or get eaten. He’s a guy who spent his “adult life trying to avoid adult life, living a simplified version of it without dreams of a family”. Before the collapse he would consider killing himself “a dozen times a day, maybe more”. So when everything falls apart for everyone else (at least in the USA; nowhere else seems to be affected) he copes pretty well, his life hasn’t got much worse. (Also a theme of the later show Fear the Walking Dead, where a junkie adapts better to the apocalypse than the rest of his family.) He even starts to meet women: Alexa, who shoots a boy who jumps out at them, pretending to be a zombie; Thunder, a friend of the dead boy who shamelessly steals Vasilis’s stuff; Jaffe, a civil servant who kept on serving after the collapse. Thunder and Alexa share a desire to get to the bottom of things, to uncover the mysteries of the apocalypse, to find out what the government (such as it is) is hiding, and Vassily gets mixed up in their plans despite himself. This is a terrific book, the kind of thing you might expect if McSweeney’s had a horror imprint, intelligent, provoking, self-aware, and full of interesting ideas. You wouldn’t ever want to be this guy, as a writer, or as a human being, but you can understand why he survives, and why it takes the breakdown of human society for him to write his great American novel. ****

Book notes #8

Notes and ratings from TQF50 and TQF51 for books I didn’t review for TQF. Credits from Goodreads; apologies to anyone miscredited or missing.

Magnus Robot Fighter Archive, Vol. 2 (Dark Horse Comics), by Russ Manning and Philip Simon. Collection of old comics about a guy with super-strength who battles robots who go bad, and when necessary the people who control them. Notable for Russ Manning’s art and the way the bad robots shout “Squeee!” when he knocks off their heads. ***

Nemo: The Roses of Berlin (Top Shelf Productions), by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. These short Nemo books in the world of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are instant purchases for me. This one brings in characters from Metropolis and The Great Dictator. ****

Of Whimsies & Noubles (PS Publishing), by Matthew Hughes. Another fabulous Luff Imbry novella. In this one he is apprehended and sent to a prison world. ****

Planet of the Apes, Vol. 1: The Long War (BOOM! Studios), by Daryl Gregory. Set in the continuity (if you can call it that) of the original film series, this was okay but not much fun. ***

Rat Queens, Vol. 1: Sass & Sorcery (Image Comics), by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch. Funny comic about a group of adventurers whose world is modelled after our world’s roleplaying games. ****

Rebel at the End of Time (PS Publishing), by Steve Aylett and Michael Moorcock. A short novel which throws Leo Del Toro, a 21st century Che Guevera, into the bewildering world of Michael Moorcock’s brilliant Dancers at the End of Time trilogy, where he must battle his despair among people for whom action is meaningless, novelty everything. The difficulty of reading the story comes from the misunderstandings of the people of the future, which leads to surprises in every sentence. Aylett’s story is a great addition to the End of Time, in that it shows us (or speculates on) how a different type of protagonist would handle it. The great man himself Michael Moorcock contributes a twenty-page story to the book, “Sumptuous Dress”, which comes close to causing a meltdown in the space-time continuum by crossing the end of time with the equally confusing Second Ether, producing more bafflement than most readers will be able to bear in a single story ****

Secret Lives (Cheeky Frawg Books), by Jeff VanderMeer. A series of stories written for and about the people who bought the special edition of one of the author’s other books. Not at all as throwaway as their provenance might lead you to expect; some stories are downright excellent. ***

Showcase Presents: Superman Family, Vol. 3 (DC Comics) by Otto Binder, Robert Bernstein, Curt Swan, Stan Kaye, Ray Burnley, Kurt Schaffenberger, Wayne Boring, Dick Sprang, John Forte, Creig Flessel and Al Plastino. I could barely read a page of this without thinking, what the hell, Superman? The description of Descartes’ evil demon fits him perfectly: “as clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has directed his entire effort to misleading [Lois and Jimmy]”. Here are just a few examples. In “Lois Lane’s Super-Perfume” he proposes marriage to Lois – and then takes it back. It was a ruse to trap some swindlers! In “Three Nights at the Fortress of Solitude” he uses a robot to spank her so hard she can’t sit down the next day! And in “The Cry-Baby of Metropolis” he lets her go through the terror of reverting to a baby while pretending he doesn’t know she’s the baby, to teach her a lesson about inquisitiveness! Sometimes he’s astonishingly reckless: in “The Shocking Secret of Lois Lane” he throws two drill-saws at her head to remove a box she’s using as a mask! It’s so sexist: in “Lois Lane’s Signal Watch” Superman gives her an emergency watch just like Jimmy Olsen’s. She summons the Man of Steel to unstick the zipper on her purse… ***

Sin City, Vol. 3: The Big Fat Kill (Dark Horse Comics), by Frank Miller. The last book I read by Frank Miller was so bad that I’d almost forgotten how good he can be. ****

Sin City, Vol. 6: Booze, Broads & Bullets (Dark Horse Comics), by Frank Miller. Short stories collected from various Sin City one-shots. ***

Smiler’s Fair (Hodder & Stoughton), by Rebecca Levene. Slightly disappointing and unimaginative fantasy. Reviewed for Interzone #254. ***

Star Trek: New Visions (IDW Publishing), by John Byrne. Photo-stories based on the original TV series. Not as much fun as expected. Lots of recapping. **

Book notes #6

Notes and ratings from TQF50 and TQF51 for books I didn’t review. Credits from Goodreads; apologies to anyone miscredited or missing.

Fear Itself (Marvel), by Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen. An underwhelming crossover story. Odin has given up on Earth, but Thor and the Avengers think there is still hope. ***

G.I. Joe: Classics, Vol. 4 (IDW Publishing), by Larry Hama, Rod Whigham, Frank Springer, Mark Bright, Bob Camp and Rod Wigham. Collection of Marvel’s attempt to create decent comics based on the daft soldier toys. ***

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlepig (Beale-Williams Enterprise) by Tad Williams. A novella about an angel advocate trying to help out a werewolf client. ***

God’s War (Del Rey), by Kameron Hurley. Grimdark science fiction about an unlikeable mercenary and her gang. Nyx used to be a Bel Dame, sent by the government to take the heads of boys running away from the war, but now she’s freelance. Her world is one of strong religion and what seems to us like magic, where insect life is the basis for technology and wombs can be dropped off at organ banks to avoid putting them in any danger. It’s a bit of a grind, full of torture, misery, and characters who hate each other, but it was good. Reminded me of things like John Carpenter’s Escape from New York and Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley. A bit like 2000AD if it were written by John Brunner instead of Pat Mills & co. ***

Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (PS Publishing), by Lavie Tidhar. Not, as a previous issue of this magazine had it, Gorel and the Pot-Bellied Pig! This is, as its subtitle tells us, a guns and sorcery novella. Gorel was “cast out of Goliris”, “exiled to the harsh lands of Lower Kidron”, where he makes his way as a hired hand, riding an insectoid Graal, hoping always to return home to avenge his family and punish his betrayers. In this story he encounters the froggish falang and the god they worship. This novella dates back to 2011, and ever since this review has glared balefully at me, even while I’ve reviewed several of the author’s other books. That was just because I read it quickly in amongst a bunch of other books, not because I didn’t enjoy it enough to write a review. Far from it: I thought this was terrific, and began a run of Tidhar’s books that have made him one of my favourite authors. It’s an extremely interesting book, reminding me of Elric in the way it attacks the conventions of the genre. You read it assuming that Gorel is a Conan-type hero, but as he does bad things it’s almost as if the author is saying, this is your hero? He’s a drug addict, injecting himself with gods’ dust, and he’s still your hero? What about when he does this? Or this?! How bad can a badass hero get before the reader stops admiring them? ****

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1: Cosmic Avengers (Marvel) by Brian Michael Bendis, Steve McNiven, Sara Pichelli, Michael Avon Oeming and many others. This shows up as a 350pp book on Comixology, so I was expecting an epic in the style of DC’s three-issue crossover Invasion. Sadly not; most of it is a series of single panel guided view strips; the real story is only ninety pages or so. Lacks the verve of the Abnett and Lanning series, but the art is nice. ***

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1: Legacy (Marvel), by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Paul Pelletier. Inspiration for the film, with a similar spark. Here the new Guardians assemble in the aftermath of a galactic crisis. ***

Book notes #2

Notes and ratings from TQF50 and TQF51 for books I didn’t review for TQF. Credits from Goodreads; apologies to anyone miscredited or missing.

Axe Cop, Vol 2: Bad Guy Earth (Dark Horse Comics), by Malachai Nicolle and Ethan Nicolle. Nothing could ever be quite as hilarious as Axe Cop, Vol. 1, which made me laugh so much the sides of my eyes were sore for days from wiping away the tears, and this isn’t, but it comes pretty close. Axe Cop and friends have to battle two psychic bad guys who want to turn everyone on Earth into bad guys. Written by a little kid and drawn by his grown-up brother, this does a great job of harnessing the imaginative fireworks that go off whenever children start to rattle off stories. ****

Baltimore, Vol. 2: The Curse Bells (Dark Horse Books) by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden and Ben Stenbeck. A story in five chapters, which begins with a betrayal in Lucerne. Baltimore searches for the vampire Haigus, who he first encountered on the bloodstained fields of World War One. ***

Baltimore, Vol. 3: A Passing Stranger (Dark Horse Books) by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden and Ben Stenbeck. Lord Baltimore fights his way through five short stories, hunting for his hated enemy. ***

Batman: The Black Mirror (DC Comics), by Scott Snyder, Jock, Francesco Francavilla. Good story about Batman (Dick Grayson, who I think might be my favourite Batman) fighting a weird secret society. ***

Be a Sex-Writing Strumpet (self-published) by Stacia Kane. Reading this didn’t half make me blush. It compiles a series of blog posts on the subject of writing sex scenes, principally for erotic novels. I don’t often include that stuff in my writing, but I’d read some sensible blog posts on responding to reviews by the author and wanted to buy something of hers. And it was useful to me: much of what she says can be applied to other kinds of action. It’s good, though some readers may feel it could have used a rewrite to make it more bookish and less bloggy. ***

Billy’s Book (PS Publishing) by Terry Bisson. A short PS Publishing collection of deliberately fragmentary and repetitive stories about a boy who has odd stuff turn up at his house, like giant ants and wizards and unicorns. They’re okay, but it was a bit of a surprise at the end to see what starry venues they had originally appeared in. ***

Black and Brown Planets: The Politics of Race in Science Fiction (University Press of Mississippi), by Isiah Lavender III (ed.). Interesting book of essays. Two about one episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 are maybe a bit much, and given the title it seems odd that it doesn’t cover India, the country that might well come to lead the space race (the “Brown” section is more about South America), but I learnt a lot from it. Like any book of literary criticism, it can be dull, but that’s outweighed by the issues, authors and stories it works so carefully to bring to our attention. A few essays make great claims without much evidence, but all provide much to think about; it opens up the conversation, rather than having the last word. Walter Mosley is quoted inside as saying: “The power of science fiction is that it can tear down the walls and windows, the artifice and laws by changing the logic, empowering the disenfranchised or simply by asking, What if?” Black and Brown Planets shows how writers and critics are doing just that. Reviewed in full for Interzone #255. ****

Black Science, Vol. 1: How to Fall Forever (Image Comics), by Rick Remender, Matteo Scalera, Dean White. Begins with a pair of scientists dashing through a bizarre alien world, desperate to get back to the children who will die if they don’t get back in time. As the story goes on, it begins to feel a bit like Sliders or Primeval, one of those shows where characters pitch up in a place and have to get out again. It’s better than either of those so far, let’s hope that continues. The art is spectacular. ***

Black Gods Kiss by Lavie Tidhar | review by Stephen Theaker

If I were a judge and this were a court and the case were that of Black Gods Kiss by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing, 184pp), I would have to recuse myself, because by this point I am such a fan of this writer’s work that my impartiality would be in serious doubt. Cloud Permutations, Martian Sands, The Violent Century: each has been remarkable in its very own way. If I were writing a list of my favourite books of the last few years they would all show up on it.

Fortunately this is not a court, not a case, and I am not a judge, and you are quite capable of taking my admiration for this author’s work into account when reading the review.

Perhaps my favourite of his books so far was Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God, to which this is both prequel and sequel. Gorel is an “exile, mercenary, hired killer, thief, and what he liked to think of as odd jobs man”, searching for his home of Goliris, which from the bits we learn about it throughout the book doesn’t sound so great. For example, in a wasteland Gorel asks what caused the desolation: “Only one word was whispered, sometimes, amidst the branches, in the falling of leaves.” Goliris!

In the first story here, “Black Gods Kiss”, Gorel acquires his addiction to the dust of gods. He is hired to kill a goddess, Shar, who has preyed on the men of a village. A kiss from her leaves him craving the essence of the gods. It is how they bind their followers to them, as addicts. This curse is at times of use to Gorel: its hold so tight it shatters illusions, as in “Buried Eyes”, where he encounters a town ruled over by a sorcerer of Goliris.

The third story, “Kur-a-Len”, is the longest, at about seventy-five pages, and is divided into six episodes. Gorel has come to the Garden of Statues, a colossal graveyard where “a thousand thousand graves gleamed as one”, in hope that someone of Goliris may be buried there. In return for the help of the cemetery’s caretaker in finding them, he takes on the role of security guard or sheriff, and must deal with both dead and living troublemakers.

The fourth story is the shortest, “The Dead Leaves”. Gorel takes his guns to kill a man in the Deadlands, paid with god’s dust by a sorcerer who sacrifices his life so that Gorel might rescue his daughter. In the fifth story, “White Queen”, he gets involved in a messed-up version of the Snow White story.

He doesn’t find his way home, not in this book – some say the world he is lost in is infinite – but he finds a few clues, gets his fix, and has a lot of well-written sex. Gorel isn’t picky: gods, queens, ghouls and zombies all get their turn, even though it doesn’t always do the trick: “Sex was sex and it did not fulfil him. Nothing did but the Black Kiss”.

Pot-Bellied God was subtitled a “Guns & Sorcery Novella”, and that’s what this is, classic heroic fantasy with a hero as selfish as Conan, as miserable as Elric and as crafty as the Gray Mouser, but who carries a pair of guns instead of a sword: “fine, hand crafted things, with grips of dark, strong wood and the small, exquisitely wrought silver pattern of a seven-pointed star on each: the ancient sign of Goliris.” There are similarities too with Stephen King’s gunslinger from the Dark Tower: the episode in which that character fought an entire town would have fit into this volume very neatly. If you liked that, you’ll probably enjoy this.

The writing is as good as in Tidhar’s other books, the atmosphere murky and groggy, the language thick and sticky. Gorel swears, which always seems surprising though it shouldn’t. It’s not unusual for dialogue from different characters to appear in the same paragraph, and even in the same sentence – lazy readers should be on their guard. My overwhelming feeling upon reading it is gratitude that such an exceptional writer chooses to write the kind of books I want to read. And if that sounds too gushy, you can’t say you weren’t warned! *****

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Available from PS Publishing.

The Wurms of Blearmouth by Steven Erikson / review by Stephen Theaker

Lord Fangatooth Claw the Render, insane lord sorceror of West Elingarth’s Forgotten Holding, celebrates dominion over Spendrugle village with daily tortures of his brother, his rule upheld by three iron golems with buckets for heads, at least one of whom took him five months to create. By his law, being a stranger is punishable by death, which suits the villagers since it leaves no survivors of the shipwrecks from which they draw their pocket money. But the new folks brought in by the tide are the kind that take a fair bit of killing. Most dangerous are the first to arrive: Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, necromancers, one sharp and expansive, the other taciturn and brutal, both ready to kill at the twitch of an eye.

The Wurms of Blearmouth (PS Publishing, hb, 124pp) is the fifth novella about this pair and their loyal servant, Emancipor Reese. The fourth, Crack’d Pot Trail, was quite brilliant but unusual, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach in the wings till the end as their pursuers preyed upon fellow travellers. Here, the necromancers play a more active role, rather like children poking an anthill. Chronologically, it seems to follow book two, The Lees of Laughter’s End, but knowledge of other books isn’t required for the enjoyment of this one. Characters enter the scene with colourful histories, battle-wounded and vengeful, and whether relevant events happened in previous novellas, Steven Erikson’s eleven colossal Malazan novels or collaborator Ian Cameron Esslemont’s four won’t matter much to anyone except fans trying to piece everything together.

It’s a story of venal grotesques, each uniquely drawn, with whom we’re happy to see dark powers play. Lord Fangatooth, who has Todd Ingram’s way with a quip and a scribe on hand to record them. Whuffine Gaggs, the beachcomber who greets survivors with a smile, but hides a knife behind his back. Felooval, innkeeper, brothel owner, hiding a deadly secret in her bosom. Her daughter, dreaming of big city prostitution while stroking her lizard cat. The broken taxman who wants to take her (but not the cat). Ackle, who, hung by the neck, lives on, and worries about freezing solid in the winter. Hordillo, the sergeant who will never admit to an exceedingly unfortunate marriage. Tiny Chanter, Wormlick, Sordid: all distinctly – often uncomfortably – memorable.

Though its length would make this ideal for those unready to embark upon the ten thousand pages of Erikson’s Malazan novels, only fans and collectors are likely to find twenty pounds an attractive price for such a short book; those unsure should try the novellas collected cheaply as The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach. Those three are terrific, but this is even better, an entertainment for brain and gut; clever, vivid, funny and surprising, with a delicious tone, mining a rich, dark seam – “the delightful pleasure of evil”, Erikson calls it – producing murderously good dialogue. “What? What have you done to me?” asks one villain, to receive Bauchelain’s reply: “Why, I have killed you.” And like Erikson, he does it with style.

After a bit of editing, this review appeared in Interzone #243, back in 2012.

The Last Revelation of Gla’aki by Ramsey Campbell, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Leonard Fairman is an archivist at Brichester University, whose unwise curiosity regarding a series of occult volumes leads to his involvement in the events described by Ramsey Campbell in The Last Revelation of Gla’aki (PS Publishing, hb, 137pp; pdf ARC supplied by publisher). He is invited by Frank Lunt to Gulshaw, a run-down seaside town, to collect the series, which includes such titles as Of Humanity as Chrysalis, Of the World as Lair, On the Purposes of Night, and Of the Uses of the Dead. But Lunt has just one volume, and directs Fairman to the possessor of the next, and so it goes. Reading each of the books brings on strange thoughts and visions, and Fairman becomes desperate to leave this strange, damp, sticky little town. But everyone seems awfully pleased to have him there, and as they say: “there is so much more to see”. Or is it that there’s so much more to sea?

Fans of Lovecraft will regard it as a treat to have a writer of Campbell’s stature producing a short novel in this vein, and it provides many eerie images and scenes; anyone who has seen a British beach studded with jellyfish can imagine the kind of horrors described here. The idea of a seedy seaside town that drops its human facade in the off-season is creepily believable. (“He could have thought the town was not so much resting from its summer labours as reverting to its ordinary state.”) As Fairman finds himself stuck there for an extra day, and another day, and another, while his wife gets annoyed and his boss gets on his back, it’s hard not to empathise – though he’s given so many good reasons to run for his life that you can’t help wondering why he doesn’t.

And that was the problem for me, that the too-frequent hints about what’s going on were too knowing, too nudge-nudge wink-wink, to be truly frightening: for example hands are “glistening” and “soft and moist”, handshakes are “damp and pliable”, palms are “clammy” and “yielded so much”. The innuendo wears a bit thin, and even begins to feel like fan service. Fairman works so hard to ignore or rationalise everything he sees (“Of course the people were wearing plastic beach shoes, which made their feet look translucent and swollen”) that the reader’s eyes begin to roll. Loving pastiche comes close to tipping into presumably unintentional parody.

More positively, the book is so perfectly suited to cinematic adaptation that one wouldn’t be surprised to learn it began life as a film treatment. The role of Fairman would be ideal for Daniel Radcliffe or Dominic West, and a version of this produced to the same standard as The Woman in Black or The Awakening might give us, at last, a definitive mythos film. If this had been the first Lovecraftian story I’d ever read, I would have adored it – as I did Brian Lumley’s The Burrowers Beneath, back in my schooldays. As it is, I enjoyed it, but I’d hoped to enjoy it much more. Still, I’ve often found that horror stories continue to grow in my estimation long after I’ve read them, as the scariest parts fester, and that might well be the case here. The climactic scene in the Church of the First Word is magnificent, and the book is worth reading for that sequence alone.

Martian Sands by Lavie Tidhar, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

In Martian Sands by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing, hb, 224pp), Mars has been settled. The New Israelis are governed by a succession of simulacra, Jewish leaders of the past recreated to act as figurehead prime ministers, but their new Golda Meir isn’t sticking to her programming. “Something is fundamentally flawed with reality,” she tells Miriam Elezra, the woman who commissioned her. There are rumours of time travel experiments, rumours the reader knows to be true having already seen Bill Glimmung in the Oval Office on December 7, 1941, the day before the first death camp opens, offering weapons to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in return for preventing the Holocaust. And yet on Mars we see that Bill Glimmung is a character from the film Martian Sands, “Elvis Mandela’s second masterpiece”. Carl Stone, who built the Golda, has four arms, two extras grafted on to reflect his status as “a Martian warrior, reincarnated in an alien world”. His Revolutionary Brotherhood of Martian Warriors share Barsoomian dreams, visions supposedly sent by their emperor. The most mysterious beings on Mars are the Others, artificial intelligences sometimes ferried by compliant humans, sometimes controlling host bodies. All roads lead to a remote kibbutz in the FDR mountains, the same kibbutz to which Josh has just made the kind of manure sale that could do wonders for his career.

Fans of Philip K. Dick will spot several tips of the hat here – “The Empire Never Ended”, time out of joint, and Ubiquitous Cigarettes (Ubiks for short) – and the quirky cleverness of combining Dick’s themes with the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs might lead people to expect a light-hearted book. It often is, for example in a sequence in which intelligent bullets jostle in a gun, but the book is dedicated to the author’s grandparents, “the ones I knew, and the ones I didn’t”. Despite the risks inherent in the New Israeli attempt to change the course of history, if it were possible, would they be justified in trying? Other writers have portrayed old, decadent Earths ruled by nobles who remain after all others have left, but Tidhar explores, here and in other stories, a related but striking idea: that space could be colonised by the poor and unhappy, who might leave our relatively comfortable home planet in search of better lives. Martian Sands is the work of a serious writer who writes entertainingly, who can be funny, political, speculative, provocative and charming, all at the same time.

The author has mentioned a sequel on Twitter, though he thinks it might be too weird for publication. I’m not going to pretend I understood everything that was going on in Martian Sands, especially towards the end – it’s the kind of book that would repay a second reading, and a tutorial or two wouldn’t hurt – but I would love to read a sequel that was even weirder. Tidhar writes equally well in several genres; Cloud Permutations and Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God were, I thought, both excellent, but so dissimilar that one would be hard-pressed without title pages to identify them as the product of a single author. It seemed to me when reading Martian Sands that for Tidhar “classic science fiction” in the style of Silverberg, Brunner and Dick’s novels of the sixties is just another genre to which he can turn his hand as ably as he does all the others. In some ways that’s almost galling (“Here’s a Hugo winner I made earlier!”), but I hope he does it again.

Available from PS Publishing.

Kindle lending library – some interesting titles available in the UK

Just noticed that some jolly interesting books are now available for borrowing in the Kindle lending library, if you're an Amazon Prime member. (I have been for a couple of years – very helpful for those of us with a tendency to leave Christmas to the last minute.)

Here are PS Publishing's ebooks (many of which are very cheap anyway).

And here's a link to the Chomu Press titles.

You can only borrow one book per month, so if you have any trouble deciding which to choose you might find these reviews of relevant titles helpful:

The Babylonian Trilogy by Sebastien Doubinsky
Gilbert and Edgar on Mars by Eric Brown
Song of Time by Ian R. MacLeod
The Library of Forgotten Books by Rjurik Davidson
The City in These Pages by John Grant
Living With the Dead by Darrell Schweitzer

The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children by Brendan Connell
The Orphan Palace by Joseph S. Pulver Sr
The Dracula Papers by Reggie Oliver
I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like by Justin Isis
Revenants by Daniel Mills
Celebrant by Michael Cisco

The Yellow Cabochon, by Matthew Hughes – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The Yellow Cabochon (PS Publishing, hb, 93pp) is a novella in the far-future Archonate setting frequented by one of my favourite writers of the moment, Matthew Hughes (see issue TQF39 for an interview and reviews of three excellent novels). It follows on from the marvellous Quartet & Triptych (reviewed in TQF34), being a new adventure in the life of Luff Imbry, the master thief with the extra large waist – “the fat man”, as the narrator very frequently (and slightly upsettingly, for those of us on the wrong side of the scales!) chooses to call him.

Imbry has a nice thing going with Nazur Filiatrot, the favourite mortician of the nobility. Imbry supplies the forged jewellery, Filiatrot swaps them with those of the noble about to be encased in amber for eternity. This time, a mysterious off-world customer desires the yellow cabochon of the title, an inscribed jewel the size of a child’s face which befuddles all who gaze upon it – a relic of a lost undersea civilisation. Unfortunately, the owner of the cabochon has not yet seen fit to die, and Imbry is persuaded to attempt a correction of fate’s oversight.

The target is Lord Frons, of the House of Elphrate, minder of the Archon’s formal dining spoon, a descendant of Old Earth nobles who underwent genetic modification to better suit life on a watery new world: imagine Bertie Wooster with webbed toes and access to a mind-control symbiote. Events do not run according to plan – or not, at least, according to Luff Imbry’s plan – and the fat man (now I’m doing it!) finds himself in an increasingly tight spot, nobles and the Archon on one side, the Green Circle mafia on the other, and somewhere, out there, the stranger who set all of this in motion.

Though this is all rather a trial for Luff Imbry, it is a treat for the reader, the book sharing the several strengths of earlier stories in this setting. The plot is clever, surprising with each twist, and the dialogue is sharp, witty, and infused with unusual ideas – as an example of all three, see Imbry’s warning upon encountering Wrython Herrither, a captain of the Green Circle: “If you offend this man, his code of conduct requires him to kill you without a pause for thought. Then he will surely kill me for having had the bad manners to witness the event.”

The integrators appear once again: intelligent, self-aware and often eccentric computers, some so ancient that they remember not only previous geological eras, but even a “period when another universal order of phenomality obtained”. Imbry’s incredulity at this idea receives the delicious response: “I have not the leisure to dismantle your understanding of reality and recast it in an alternate mode. If I did, you might not appreciate the result.” Another pleasure of the novella is its interest in food: one envies Imbry his visits to the finest of Old Earth’s restaurants.

In the run-up to our previous issue I ran out of time to write this review, and when I finally found the time to write it I was a bit fuzzy on the details (understandable when you consider that I’d read three long novels by the same author only a short time previously). How much I enjoyed The Yellow Cabochon is demonstrated by how happily I re-read the whole thing, a very rare experience for me, putting this book in motley company: The Enchanted Wood, Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks, Lyonesse, The Final Programme…

Like some of those, this was a book to whose flaws, if it had any, I might well have been blinded by an overwhelming affection, but never mind objectivity: most of my favourite writers are either retired or long dead, and I appreciate and cherish those times when I get the chance to be a fan of a writer who is still publishing. The ending leaves Imbry in a position to develop his understanding of “sympathetic association” and “axial volition” – in short, magic. Whatever happens next is sure to be amusing.

Interzone #243 (ft. Theaker) – out on Kindle

The latest issue of Interzone is now out on Kindle. It features fiction by Jon Wallace, Jason Sanford, Priya Sharma, Chen Qiufan and Caroline M. Yachim, colour illustrations by Richard Wagner, Warwick Fraser-Coombe, and Martin Hanford, an interview with Adam Roberts, and much more.

But of course the very, very best reason to buy it is that it also features a review by me, of The Wurms of Blearmouth, Steven Erikson's latest Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novella.

Links:

Interzone #243 on Kindle UK
Interzone #243 on Kindle US
Print subscriptions to Interzone (and other TTA magazines)
The Wurms of Blearmouth on PS Publishing's website

A Woman of Mars by Helen Patrice – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

A Woman of Mars, by Helen Patrice (hb, 48pp, available here) is the sixth collection of poetry from PS Publishing’s Stanza imprint, telling the story of a fifteen year-old girl who falls for a handsome twenty-six year-old astronaut—“Only from within his eyes, / did I see clear / for the first time, / a future of steel and stars” (“The Stirring”)—and travels to Mars in the spaceship he pilots to join the founding of a colony. Hence the subtitle: the poems of an early homesteader. The story it tells, of dust storms, disasters and terraforming, isn’t particularly novel, but its point of view is, as shown by the title: she’s a woman of Mars, not a princess, warlord or god; it’s the story of what a normal life might be like, lived on Mars, coping with life and with death, and the subtitle suggests that these are not just poems about her, they are to be taken as poems by her. Not every poem is in the first person—“Buried”, for example, imagines a series of messages sent out to Station five during a sandstorm (“Mining station five, / the storm is abating. / What is your status?”)—but most are, and we see both old and new Mars through the prism of her life and relationships.

In “Transition” she reads all at once the emails that her mother, left behind on Earth, sent while the colonists were in transit and asleep, changing from anger to sadness: “I read her moving from / three word missives: / ‘I hate you’, / through to ‘I would kill him’, / to ‘come home’.” We see the couple search for useful work: “There is no need for an old / boy cosmonaut” (“Finding Home”); and her changing attitude to Mars and its red dust: “The sand eats my booted foot, / even as I stand. / Mars is starving for us all” (“Buried II”). Years later, the red dust driven away by green and yellow, she begins to miss it: “I will never see clear red Mars again, / now that terraforming is begun” (“Mars, Lately”). Having lost Vassily, she now loses even the planet on which they lived. The thirty-three poems vary in length and style, although none rhyme and only two are longer than a page. The poems are direct rather than elliptical or metaphorical, speaking plainly of events in a way that leaves the reader to appreciate their importance to the writer, stories stripped down to the fewest words necessary. It’s a brief book to read, but an interesting one, even to an infrequent reader of poetry like this reviewer.

Ventriloquism by Catherynne M. Valente, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Envying your children doesn’t look good on a parent. My daughter has given five-star ratings to 37 books so far this year, while I've only done it once, with The Art of McSweeney's. I’ve slightly begrudged her the thrill of finding something new and wonderful in almost every single book she reads. At one point I began to wonder, was I losing the ability to be impressed to that extent by a book? Thank goodness for Ventriloquism, which makes it clear that if I want to be impressed, I’ve been reading the wrong books! All thirty-two of the stories in this collection surprised and challenged me with language, allusion and form, and gave me the unmistakable pleasure that comes from reading something I had never read before.

The quality of the writing was extraordinary – for example, a demon’s “eyes do not burn, but in them are long staircases without end, turning and turning in blackness” – but I’m always attracted to ideas, and this book was bursting with them: a snowbound colony on the moon (“Oh, the Snow-Bound Earth, the Radiant Moon!”); a damned monk who has come to relish the visits of his tormentor (“Proverbs of Hell”); and the practical issues involved in unconventional solar expeditions (“How to Build a Ladder to the Sun in Six Simple Steps”), to pick a few. There are stories told by way of strips of film from an unfinished documentary (“The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew”), in the course of a wine tasting (“Golubash (Wine-Blood-War-Elegy)”) and an auctioneer’s guide for bidders on a series of maps (“A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica”).

It’s a book of which a reviewer might well be wary – a reviewer, in judging a book, is judged in return, and in the face of this book’s complexity and artistry I hardly felt up to scratch. I didn’t always understand the stories. “La Serenissima”, in which a nun discovers hidden messages; the strange city of “Palimpsest”; the “sea snail skull” of “Mother Is a Machine”: all left this reviewer baffled. Perhaps the review is slightly compromised by that failure on my part, but one day I will read a book, hear a story, see an episode of University Challenge that contains the vital clue, and the full pleasure of those stories will be unlocked – it was twenty-five years after reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader that I clicked to its echoes of the Odyssey.

Other readers, though, those who don’t need to write a review, certainly have nothing to fear. As with MST3K, if you miss one reference you’ll probably get the next one, and even if you don’t – if you are as ignorant as this reviewer of ancient myth and modern science – your enjoyment of the stories will hardly be lessened. For example, one can appreciate “A Delicate Architecture” – which tells of a confectioner’s greatest achievement and his hopes that it might return him to the Emperor’s favour, and the consequences for his daughter – without noticing the light it reflects upon the story of Hansel and Gretel. Or in “Thread: A Triptych”, one can feel for the plight of immigrant wife Ariadne, trapped in an asylum for the insane, without grasping the significance of her description of her new-born son: “his cow-eyes blinked limpid up at me, and his hair was coarse as my dress, coarse as the tail of a bull”.

Some of the collection’s highlights reinterpret stories with which most readers will be familiar. In “Milk and Apples” we see Snow White’s stepmother, locked away to nursemaid the King’s pale baby daughter, fresh from her own tragedy: “I had borne a dead daughter, I had squeezed a little pale corpse from my body as if I were nothing but a fat coffin.” In “The Maiden-Tree” the spindle tells Briar Rose what to expect from her rescue: “He will be almost too revolted to enter; the smell of twelve hundred months of menses will wash the hall in red ... and then the smell of bed-sweat and bed-sores gone to fester ... He will hardly be able to open the door for the press of your grotesquely spiralling toenails.”

And although there are several such reinterpretations of old stories, many stories are entirely new (so far as I know), such as “The City of Blind Delight”, where a railway station is made of interlinked human bodies; “The Anachronist's Cookbook”, in which a fifteen-year-old pickpocket plants revolutionary pamphlets in a steampunk Manchester; or “Killswitch”, about a computer game that deletes itself upon completion.

Lev Grossman (whose The Magicians - reviewed here - is one of those odd books that has continued to grow on me since I read it) notes in his useful introduction, “If I had the stylistic range and the richness of invention Valente shows off in this one book, I would publish it in half a dozen slim volumes, over the course of 40 years, and call it a career.” These are the kind of stories many writers would sell a wicked stepmother to write, a brilliant blend of fine writing, super ideas and formal experimentation.

It’s tempting to say that Valente makes it look easy, as she jumps from the science fiction of “How to Become a Mars Overlord” to the biblical fantasy of “A Dirge for Prester John”, from the zombies of “The Days of Flaming Motorcycles” to the pirate parrot horror of “The Ballad of the Sinister Mr. Mouth”, without ever touching the floor, but stories this rich in language and detail must surely be the product of a sustained creative effort, a great deal of work and thought – you really do have the sense that these are “six years of stories”, as she calls them in the acknowledgments.

So, this time, I’m not envious of my daughter, I feel a bit sorry for her. She would love this book, its generous selection of female protagonists, heroes and villains, and its imaginative reinterpretations of fairy tales, legends, myths and monsters, but it’ll be ten years at least before she is old enough to enjoy it. As a reviewer, I somewhat regretted choosing such a challenging book, but as a reader I couldn’t have picked anything better. Playful experimentation with serious intent: what could be better?

Ventriloquism, by Catherynne M. Valente. PS Publishing, hb, 352pp. Available direct from PS Publishing.

Stonewielder, Volume I, by Ian Cameron Esslemont - reviewed by Stephen Theaker

I read quite a lot of heroic fantasy as a youngster: Tolkien, Eddings, Brooks, Conan (mostly spin-offs rather than the Howard originals, I’m afraid), Donaldson, Leiber and lots and lots of Moorcock. I kind of fell away from it as the books got longer and longer, and I went through a long period of reading barely anything but comics and Doctor Who novels. But in recent years I’ve started to enjoy my fantasy a lot more, reading and getting quite excited about books by Joe Abercrombie, William King and Steven Erikson - and Game of Thrones is my favourite new television programme of the year.

This novel, of which I’m currently reviewing only volume one (the PS Publishing edition is divided into two luxurious hardbacks) seems to share the setting of the Erikson novellas I’ve read, such as Crack’d Pot Trail, and shares those novellas’ knack of seeming self-contained enough to be enjoyable in isolation, even if those who have read Esslemont’s two previous novels in the series will get more from it. The story concerns the subcontinent of Fist, isolated for twenty years from the Malazan Empire, yet still being ruled in its name. The Empire has decided to set matters straight and despatches a fleet of reconquest. Meanwhile, the Chosen of the Stormwall (and their prisoners) prepare for another assault by the frost-wielding Stormriders, who have been coming from the ocean to throw themselves against the wall for centuries.

We meet a huge cast of characters on both sides of the conflict, and those likely to get stuck in the middle. Each character is clearly and effectively defined, each has their own voice, and is surrounded by figures who help to define them in relief. Ivanr, the farmer with a bloody gladiatorial past who joins an army of peasants. Hiam, Lord Protector of the slowly crumbling Stormwall. Greymane, the Stonewielder of the title, recruited from obscurity to lead the expeditionary force. Bakune, Chief Assessor of Banith, doggedly investigating a series of murders. This rich selection of characters contrasts with, say, Dragon’s Time by Todd and Anne McCaffrey, in which, presented with a paragraph of names two hundred pages in, I had no idea who most of them were.

Stonewielder isn’t as artsy and literary as the Erikson novellas, and it’s a world away from most PS Publishing books, but it is a well-polished, confident and commercial novel that repeatedly made me stay up just a little too late to get to the end of a chapter. And among all the fighting there’s a good deal of wisdom and humanity. “It takes an unusually philosophic mind to accept that all one’s suffering might be to no end, really, in the larger scheme of things,” Ivanr thinks at one point. This volume builds up to a clever and tactical sea battle, as the Malazan fleet tries to break through the Mare war galleys to land its armies on Fist, but the reader is left in no doubt that there is an awful lot more to come. I’m glad of the break between volumes - reading the whole thing at once might have been too much of a good thing - but I won’t leave it too long before returning to see how this campaign concludes.

In the eARC under review there were a handful of typographical issues - mostly missing spaces and quote marks. All were probably fixed before the book went to press, but since we’re talking about a collector's edition that costs £99, I mention them just in case!

Stonewielder, Volume I, by Ian Cameron Esslemont. PS Publishing, hb, 264pp (part of a two-volume slipcase set). Buy direct from PS here.

The Heavenly Fox, by Richard Parks – reviewed

A fox who lives to the age of fifty can transform at will into a human woman; one who lives to a thousand becomes immortal – so says The Den and Burrow Guide to Immortality, and upon reaching that venerable age, by fair means and fowl (one assumes), Springshadow finds the legend to be true. A little regretful about the human males whose yang energy she has drained to get there, and a little annoyed by all the new tails she has sprouted, she takes her cloud up to heaven to see what's happening. The answer being not much, Springshadow must find a use to which she can put her hard-won eternity.

Although it feels like little more than a taster for a full-length novel, The Heavenly Fox performs that duty well, introducing an intriguing world of demons, immortals and deities about whom most readers will be keen to learn more. One touchstone here would of course be the ancient chinese myths and legends – one would be disappointed not to meet a monkey god at some point if this becomes a series – while another would be Piers Anthony at his best. The tone, style and plot revived long-faded memories of the Incarnations of Immortality series. That series ran for quite a while; I can see this one doing the same.

The Heavenly Fox, by Richard Parks. PS Publishing, hb, 78pp. Available from Amazon UK and the PS Publishing website.

One for the Road, by Stephen King – reviewed

My third short book by Stephen King in recent months is another reminder that by not reading his work more regularly I’m really missing out. His Kindle novella UR was good, if a little goofy, and certainly much better than you’d expect an extended advert to be. The Colorado Kid was unusual too, very nearly an essay in fictional form; an investigation into the process and purposes of storytelling. Both left me keen to read more.

The book under review here is a collector’s edition of a short story previously collected in Night Shift in 1978, published this time as a neat little landscape hardback with sixteen captioned illustrations by James Hannah on every other page. This arrangement of text and art causes a problem in that the pictures quickly race ahead of the text in order to capture all of the money shots, giving away the entire plot, but it’s fair to say that most people willing to pay £75 for a twenty page story (£175 for copies signed by the artist) will be big fans of Stephen King, and hence likely to have read the story before, making that less of an issue than it would be for a brand new story or longer book.

The story itself is brief but very good. A stranger bursts into Herb Tooklander’s bar and immediately collapses, having walked through a blizzard to get there. There are grey blotches of frostbite on his face, but he’s more concerned for his wife and daughter, as are Herb, the narrator and the reader once they realise where he’s left them. It’s a story that hits at the heart of how it feels to be a father and a husband, the supernatural horror more than equalled by the horror of the father’s simple powerlessness. When he is taken back to find an empty car, and calls out their names, “you could hear the desperation in his voice, the terror, and pity him for it”. By that point the spoilers in the illustrations have erased any hope of a happy ending, adding a layer of painful fatalism to the story.

Good as the story is, even accompanied by attractive, colourful pictures it doesn’t justify the cost; no short story could. But as a collectable, it’s the kind of book it would feel good to own, a book you could be very proud of, and you’d be surprised to see it diminish in value.

One for the Road, by Stephen King, PS Publishing, hb, 42pp. Available here.

The sky is falling! PS Publishing publish ebooks!

PS Publishing have always combined a commitment to quality in fiction and production with a willingness to embrace experimentation. Not just in the texts they publish, but also in their publishing: for example they were supplying pdfs for review to bloggers years before Netgalleys was around. The review section of our magazine pretty much owes its existence to that generosity.

I'm delighted to see that they have now begun to publish ebooks. What's more, they've settled on much lower prices than originally announced.

We've reviewed six of those announced, and all were well worth the tiny amounts of money being charged:

• LIVING WITH THE DEAD – Darrell Schweitzer, £1.99 – our review
• THE BABYLONIAN TRILOGY – Sébastien Doubinsky, £3.99 – our review
• WHAT WILL COME AFTER – Scott Edelman, £3.99 – our review
• SONG OF TIME – Ian R. MacLeod, £3.99 – our review
• GILBERT AND EDGAR ON MARS – Eric Brown, £1.99 – our review
• THE LIBRARY OF FORGOTTEN BOOKS – Rjurik Davidson, £1.99 – our review

Also publishing at £3.99 are these titles:

• THE LAND AT THE END OF THE WORKING DAY – Peter Crowther
• BLACK WINGS – ed. S.T. Joshi
• CATASTROPHIA – ed. Allen Ashley
• A YEAR IN THE LINEAR CITY / A PRINCESS OF THE LINEAR JUNGLE – Paul Di Filippo
• CLOWNS AT MIDNIGHT – Terry Dowling
• CAGE OF NIGHT – Ed Gorman
• OUT THERE IN THE DARKNESS – Ed Gorman
• THE MOVING COFFIN – Ed Gorman
• SEEING DELL – Carol Guess
• DARKNESS ON THE EDGE – ed. Harrison Howe
• GRAZING THE LONG ACRE – Gwyneth Jones
• TALES FROM THE FRAGRANT HARBOUR – Garry Kilworth
• MOBY JACK – Garry Kilworth
• DIVERSIFICATIONS – James Lovegrove
• CINEMA FUTURA – ed. Mark Morris
• URBIS MORPHEUS – Stephen Palmer
• LITERARY REMAINS – Ray Russell
• OSAMA – Lavie Tidhar
• THE PAINTING AND THE CITY – Robert F. Wexler

And for £1.99 you will be able to get these novellas and shorter collections of short stories:

• THE EXTRAORDINARY VOYAGE OF JULES VERNE – Eric Brown
• STARSHIP SUMMER – Eric Brown
• STARSHIP FALL – Eric Brown
• STARSHIP WINTER – Eric Brown
• THE BROKEN MAN – Michael Byers
• THE MERMAIDS – Robert Edric
• THE LIVES OF SAVAGES – Robert Edric
• HOMESCHOOLING – Carol Guess
• REUNION – Rick Hautala
• SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD – David Moles
• THE LANGUAGE OF DYING – Sarah Pinborough
• THE ENIGMA OF DEPARTURE – Nicholas Royle
• IMPOSSIBILIA – Doug Smith
• CLOUD PERMUTATIONS – Lavie Tidhar
• GOREL AND THE POT-BELLIED GOD – Lavie Tidhar

And lots of individual short stories are available too, for just 79p.

The titles are available in DRM-free epub and mobi formats (suitable for Sony Readers and Kindles respectively, along with many other devices) from the ebooks section of the PS Publishing website. There are at least half a dozen titles there that I'll be buying as soon as they become available…