Musings Of A Monkey - Steven Baxter
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The reason this book is so good is because the author's personality comes across so well; a literary illusion maybe, but you feel like you know him by the end, and he comes across so well you'd happily stand him a pint.
Speaking of which the story of 'the pint glass miracle' in here is worth the price of admission along. Splendid work.
Psychomancer - Alan Ryker
What sets it apart for me (apart from Ryker's typically strong and straight-forward prose) is the ambiguity of the tale to its central character - a victim or a monster? More sinned against than sinning - really? There's more going on here than you think...
Not so conventional after all then.
Infinities - Various Authors
This is a sampler of short stories and extracts from Infinity Plus - I picked it up because it was a) free, and b) contained a piece by Iain Rowan - regular readers will know I rate Rowan's writing, so I thought it was a forgone conclusion I'd like his story the best...
But you know what, there's a number of other great tales here that really run it close. Particular favourites were by Eric Brown, Keith Brooke, and Gary Kilsworth. Overall the quality level is amazingly high - I've read published anthologies with far fewer good stories than are in here. It looks good to, with nice images of the artwork of the books from Infinity Plus catalogue...
As a sample this has served its purpose, at least on me - I'll definitely be buying some of these author's collections and novels.
1 comment:
Glad you picked this up. On our behalf, Keith Brooke has been plugging away on the short story front for years with his Infinity Plus website. By the magic of Twitter, I bumped into him a few months ago. He lives in Wivenhoe, which makes him a little shady, though only if you come from Colchester like me.
Eric Brown is in this anthology. For the first time, I read a couple of his novels this year. I'd heard Eric had the tag of "writes great short stories but can't write novels" Don't know why. I thought both novels were superb. Plus I met him at a book launch in the summer. He drinks real stout, so he's all right in my book (and my 5-yr-old son who tried to chat up Eric's daughter)
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