So recounts Steve, one of the characters in Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem's fantastical memoir The Man on the Ceiling, about his wife Melanie. And Melanie's character, in one of her narrative turns, tells us how a strange and lost man did one night climb through her bedroom window, only to flee when she awoke. The Tems describe their book as "loosely autobiographical" (the book's jacket adds a parenthetical "maybe" to the common descriptor "A Novel") and we can guess that this episode may be one of those that are, as the word is typically understood, true. Given this starting point, a more creatively blinkered author or pair of authors might have left the "man on the ceiling" as a minor aside, a passing nightmare to be commented on and then dismissed. We would instead be holding a straightforwardly autobiographical account of the Tems, of the love and anxieties they have for each other and their family, likely titled "The Man in the Window." And everything in that account would be true. But such a mechanically truthful account wouldn't be the whole story, or the whole truth.

There are of course limits to the written word: we can seldom know, much less share, the whole truth. But we can approach it, and it is in approaching the truth that the man on the ceiling (and The Man on the Ceiling) become our guide. The man on the ceiling is the sort of quintessentially fantastic creation that, in Ursula Le Guin's impossible phrase, puts into words what cannot be put into words. But to attempt an approach: throughout the Tems' accounts of domestic joys and tragedies, the man on the ceiling serves as a representation of the imagination's need to represent what we imagine as meaningful units of Story.

In a book that includes a section on the importance of names, it is telling that the book's name is the naming of the imagination. Melanie's man in the window is a creature of "simple physics," a collection of biochemical processes bound by gravity. In those terms, his mutters are only "nonsense," his actions "not meaning me anything." It is the man on the ceiling who represents how "we make things mean." The gravity-defying man on the ceiling is impossible, obviously so: a creation of imagination. And it is our imagination that encodes positive possibilities for the future into stories we call hopes; our imagination that coalesces negative possibilities for the future (of which death is but the most obvious) into discrete units of story called fears. Our imagination stories the past as individual memories. It stories a house into a home; a stranger into a spouse; legal and biological relationships into a family. The man on the ceiling may be an angel or a demon, as the Tems variously suggest in their narrative, but in the end both identities amount to the same truth: both are "masks of God" (echoing Joseph Campbell), representations of the transcendent. The man on the ceiling is a "necessary angel," of meaning, of sense-making.

As the man on the ceiling represents the drive towards many types of story, so The Man on the Ceiling incorporates many types of storytelling. The book is divided into eleven thematic sections with titles that include "Naming Names," "Telling Tales," "Down the Dark Stairs," and a phrase repeated often throughout the book: "Everything We're Telling You Here is True." The third section, "The Man on the Ceiling," is closely based on the Tem's year 2000 novella of the same name that won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the World Fantasy Award. The other sections, and thus the majority of the book, are new. At different points these sections incorporate both fiction and non-fiction; The Man on the Ceiling is a mixture of fantasy and horror, an essay on where fantasy and horror come from, a family memoir, a how-to book for aspiring writers, and perhaps most abidingly, a snapshot of family life in contemporary America.

It is this last that marks the primary change between the original novella and the new book. The original "Man on the Ceiling" (now most readily found in Datlow and Windling's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection) was an obsidian knife of a story, knapped down to a raw and beautiful universality. In contrast, the new sections situate and ground the book firmly in early 21st century America. Many sections take familiar scenes of Americana as their starting point: sitting down to a family dinner; a visit back to the old neighborhood; a family road trip; the death of a pet; telling stories to grandchildren; a restless night in the large family house. The authors then riff on these scenes, giving their imaginations rein to make connections, add meanings. The road trip -- where "the route coincides with the map only occasionally and, even then, deceptively" -- becomes a metaphor for the imaginative journey of creating a family (the Tems' children are all adopted, but we come to realize that Melanie and Steve have conceived them all the same), and then a metaphor for creating a story. The death of a pet becomes a ghost story, and an essay on why we tell ghost stories. A collision between two small planes near the Tems' Colorado home becomes the man on the ceiling's defiance of gravity (he is "out there, on the ceiling of the world, masquerading as ... the wingtip lights of a doomed plane"), becomes, for post 9/11 America along with much of the rest of the world, a symbol of the looming uncertainty and fear of raising a child at a time when planes do fall out of the sky.

The impact of the additional sections on the original novella is nothing less than a fundamental transformation. "The most disturbing thing about the figures of horror fiction for me," writes Steve, "is a particular vagueness in their form." Yet the additions to the novella sufficiently name, shape, and ground the man on the ceiling so as to dispel a large measure of his vagueness. If the original novella was based in the affective language of horror fiction, the new book in both form and content captures -- indeed literalizes -- the more ambivalent theme of "making a home in the weird" that I noted in the Interfictions anthology of recent interstitial fiction. The Tems certainly realize the magnitude of the transformation, from the questioning of "A Novel" to their word of choice to describe their account, a "testament." Their story has become a self-conscious work of contemporary social observation. It is something we could imagine as the product of a more humanistic Milan Kundera (who shares a similar obsession with gravity), except that the Tem's novel has the layered redundancy of a distinctly collaborative construction. The change from the universality of the novella to the novel's grounding in the zeitgeist acts to highlight the Tems' understanding of the present: how difficult and scary, how impossible and necessary, it is to love in the 21st century; and the kinds of stories we require to do so.

All this largely works because the Tems have crafted a believably honest book. The expanded, sectional nature of the new edition does lead to passages not so much irrelevant as extraneous, artifacts of the Tem's need to fill spaces with tellings and explanations, with connections and meaning. But as this is precisely what the book is about, we are inclined to forgive them. As careful readers, we suspect that the characters of Steve and Melanie are to some unknowable degree both more and less than the authors themselves. (Given the subject matter, it would be surprising if the Tems did not ever engage in the storying of each other, as well as themselves.) Yet the book's frequent refrain that "everything we're telling you here is true" adds an implicit assurance: the we. The we asserts that everything here has been seen and verified not just by the characters of Steve and Melanie, but by the thing called "the Tems" that exists behind the characters, between the real people. What the Tems write may not be the whole truth, but the believable manner and form of its construction let us suspect that it approaches the truth.

The most truly horrific segment within The Man on the Ceiling occurs as we approach the end of the book. The maybe-novel has so far been narrated by Melanie and Steve. Then, a sudden shift of perspective: we're in the head of one of their children. The immediate sensation is one of profound invasion, a breach of trust that a parent would use a child so to tell a story. But then we pull back and realize that of course people imagine stories about those they love, that such imagining in the face of never knowing the whole truth, of never having full control, is one of the necessary attributes that make a good parent, or spouse, or storyteller. The fantastic imagination has ever provided a chronicle of all that humanity cannot know or control. With The Man on the Ceiling, the Tems have created an entry for our time in that chronicle.

-- Matt Denault

Published by Pretty Things Press, Lipstick on Her Collar is an anthology of lesbian romance tales edited by Sacchi Green and Rakelle Valencia. Twenty-three stories make up this refreshing book which includes every different type of lesbian love imaginable. From dykes to butches to femmes- there's something for everyone.

I thought it would be useful to include the first line of a few stories that readers will especially like:

"It started when I kidnapped her dog."
This is a delightful tale about a dog who brings two neighbors together. It's almost like he has a dual personality- eating bacon and eggs with one woman and running on the beach while waiting for the other to come home tired and pat him on the back. These ladies seem perfect for one another and have more in common than just location. Pet owners will definitely appreciate this one.

"You've been with Langston Brothers quite a while now."
This powerhouse short brings two lady executives together. Meredith is the shark patrolling the waters for a new 'friend' and a smart co-worker. One attractive Chinese lady fits the bill perfectly. There's no future for her at Langston Brothers. Making a career change has never been quite so much fun.

"I skimmed the newspaper as I waited for my girlfriend, Leah, to come home from work."
This was a cute story that addresses the mid-life yearning for us all. An enticing personal ad convinces Julie to step out on her relationship with Leah who works long hours and pays her little to no attention. The surprising twist at the end helps turn guilt to satisfaction.

"Let's talk about the eroticizing of the female breast."
Kaitlin refers to herself as a 'frisky little dyke'. Her attendance in Elizabeth Hollingsworth's women's studies classes is no mistake. She has a huge crush on the woman. Ineptness in class leads to a private reprimand and an offer that Kaitlin won't be able to resist.

"I perched on the chintz chair, chatting with my hostess as I waited for my girlfriend Vanessa- not a morning person by any stretch- to come down to breakfast."
This short story will have readers awwwing and sighing, a cry might even fit in there too. Kylie and Vanessa are in love, overseas visiting a friend, and it's Valentine's Day. There is little time to be together without offending their sweet hostess so the two find themselves stranded in separate bedrooms. V-Day has to be the exception. The two finally hook up, tour the country-side, and come to face the reality of their future together. A must read for the romantic at heart!

"My fetish for femmes started in Sister Mary's Scholastica's fourth grade Catechism class and my mother's 1974 kitchen with avocado green and harvest gold appliances."
A short story that takes you back in time to the 70's is a always good. Madame Cecile is a shop owner who takes in a young girl for part-time help. Put together a dressing room, lingerie and two women and you'll get lust. There's one thing her new apprentice must do before she leaves for college and Madame Cecile is just the mentor to help.

"My eyeballs were so hot with rage that I saw the two women through a red blur."
Tara owes someone money and they are not happy with her. Peacemaker Lorraine steps up to the plate and offers to be an indentured servant for one week- no holes barred. Cleaning, washing, and organizing are not the only good things that will occur due to this arrangement. She doesn't plan for the spankings but the effects more than make up for the unplanned activities.

All of the stories in this anthology are amazing. Readers may find a new idea, position, toy, or term while reading this one.

Urban fantasy has long-reaching roots, but it is only in the last twenty years or so that writers and readers have begun using the term in an effort to describe and define a subgenre of fantasy. A subgenre in which the city defines the setting as well as itself as a character. The theme of Paper Cities, an Anthology of Urban Fantasy is to illustrate how cities are like living entities in themselves, and how they affect and influence the lives of those that dwell within them.

Some of the stories emphasized the physical aspects of the city creating distinctive images and atmospheres like Jay Lake's Promises: A Tale of the City Imperishable,

On the roof---a roof, rather, for the Sudgate was ramified and ramparted like some palace of dream---the moonlight was almost violet. The heavy grease-and-shit scent of the Sudgate Districts moiled below them somewhere, miscegenating with night humors off the Saltus and whatever flowed down from Heliograph Hill and the Limerock Palace. Sister Nurse set Girl down so that they stood on a narrow ledge, looking back across the City Imperishable to the north and east as a curious, abrasive wind plucked at them both.

and The Funeral, Ruined by Ben Peek,

Lately, the twin ovens had a tendency to blur around the edges for Linette, but even with the beginning of her deteriorating eyesight due to her thirty-eighth year, the immense girth and height of the creations meant that they were unable to be passed over when she looked at Issuer’s skyline. In contrast, the hundreds of long, bronze windmills that rose out of the city could---and did--- fade from her awareness. The Ovens, however, lurked on the horizon like a pair of dark, hunched watchers outside the city, covered in a layer of soot as a disguise. If you managed to forget them (and Linette doubted she ever could), then you would be reminded each Friday when they belched tart smelling ash, and plumes rose out of each to signal the burning of the weekly dead.

Others showed how peoples lives were re-shaped, adapted to, or otherwise forced to conform to their environment like in the absurdly strange Godivy by Vylar Kaftan where office managers mate with copiers to produce...copies of themselves, and in the sobering story Taser by Jenn Reese in which a gang of human boys is led by a ruthless husky-mixed dog with telepathic abilities. In Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest, the city makes its mark on the inhabitants literally,

I caught a glimpse in my mirror as I turned to catch a loose thread in my skirt---behind my knee, a dark network of lines and angles, and, I thought I could see, tiny words scrawled above them, names and numbers, snaking over the grid.

After that, I began to look for them.

There were the fantastically adventurous stories like Alex and the Toyceivers by Paul Meloy. This short story is actually the first chapter of a novel in which demented toy-like beasts are after Alex. A sudden, violent confrontation and narrow escape left me wanting to know more about the Toyceivers and why they were after Alex. The Somnambulist by David J. Schwartz tells of a woman who awakens most mornings exhausted and aching because …

She dreamed that she carried a fire-tipped lance astride an eight-legged horse, that she excavated bones from the floors of ancient cathedrals, that she climbed the inner walls of ruined fortresses long since given over to tourists and pulled amulets from behind loose bricks. Sometimes she killed faceless things that crawled through wind or flew upon currents of sand. She developed calluses on her hands, woke up sore after sleeping on silk sheets. Her nails never needed to be clipped.

The Tower of Morning’s Bones by Hal Duncan is an exaltation of language that spans time and space to revel in the most ancient of myths and more modern technologies in a single bound. Its tone and prose are reminiscent of his duology, The Book of All Hours,

Over the grey memory of his dream and over the grey reality of the world outside, he sings out loud and long the lines that weave the world around him, music and mosaic, a shape of songlines. This modern muezzin sings from his minaret to wake the mourning city up, and as he sings, a tower of hours arises out of swamp, vines climbing shaft to glassy dome. The songliner laughs---the city’s morning glory. Somewhere a weathervane cockcrows.

Although they all share a common theme, the diversity of the stories and imaginations of the authors make this collection an interesting and compelling read. In Paper Cities, the city is not a mere background against which authors prop their characters to tell a story. The city is a character: an incredibly viable, evolving, and influential one at that.

Megan has been a single mother for a while now. In fact she's done everything in her power to keep it that way. Charlotte is a beautiful child who has never seen her father, Luigi Costanzo, one of the most powerful men in the country. It is Christmas time and Megan finds more than a scarf at the mall, she sees her long lost husband. Of course she hurries home and hopes beyond hope that he did not see her- no such luck. Luigi shows up at her home that very evening. It seems that she left him without telling him why or where she was going, and oops, that she was pregnant. He finds out anyways and mad isn't saying enough about how he feels. He was deceived by his own wife. How could she have done that?

Luigi strikes a bargain with Megan. Bring Charlotte and stay with me for the holidays. I want to get to know my daughter. When his first pleas go unanswered he threatens Megan and she caves. She will have her own room and so will Charlotte, but it this the best thing for either of them? Isn't that the very reason she left in the first place, so that he wouldn't become the father she knew he would be? And what about the fact that he wants his wife back in every way?

Readers will sympathize with Megan and her plight. They will slap the hero's hand one minute and smile at him the next. All of it comes down to the daughter, Charlotte. Margaret Mayo has done Harlequin proud. This is a soft romance like the Harlequins I remember as a young girl. It is part of the Presents line.

When Rudd, a troubled Morman teenager, runs across a series of articles chronicling a vicious murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young, he becomes swept up in the psychological and atavistic aftereffects of the religion's shrouded rituals of love and retribution. Together with Lael, his newly discovered half-brother, and Lyndi, the sole survivor of a slain family, Rudd is soon caught up in a web of secrecy and obsession that casts a veil upon the present as it plunges them all deeper into the violent past.


Sometimes you read a novel so original and forceful that it stuns you into silence when finished. You find that its hard to choose the right words to describe the experience because those words would fail. The Open Curtain is one of those books. I've read Evenson's short fiction over the years and as stunning as it is it does nothing to prepare you for this novel length assault.

My latest review is for Counting Heads by David Marusek. This is a catchy read. The story pulls up sort of like a shiny new car to whisk you off to an exotic location. It is March 30, 2092. That is announced immediately like a road sign. The technology is exotic and plentiful from the get go, so that serves as an invitation to put the imagination on cruise control, kick the seat back and enjoy the scenery that Marusek supplies along the way. Along the way he throws descriptive zingers out there that are good for a laugh. On the first page we get the line:

“Her eyes peered out at you like eels in coral.”

The use of such similes and metaphors could quickly become annoying or look like the author was stretching too far to attempt to impart wit or charm into the tale, but in the context that they arrived it seemed to me that they came with a cheerful, good natured wink.

In 2092 and 2132 technology can do almost anything. Longevity to the point of virtual immortality is prevalent. Death for the most part is an inconvenience to be managed. The affluent in society can totally manage their lives compliments of extremely complex artificial intelligence called valets or later, mentars. There is virtually nothing that technology cannot provide those who have the access to it. But as our main characters, led by Samson Harger, learn technology can also take away as it gives. There are also some personal voids that no amount of technology can fill.

Such is the nature of life in this world that our story unfolds over a span of 40 years, not over days and months. A high tech “misunderstanding” changes Samson Harger’s life forever just when it seems like he truly does have everything. In a matter of seconds, literally, he has all of that taken away and is irrevocably turned into an outcast and fringe member of society.

That is but the beginning of a conspiracy against his family that takes 40 years to unfold and draws in all of the other characters, who cut a cross section across all social classes in the world. We see the affluents, the chartists, and the cloned workforce, as well as the ghosts and uncertainties that haunt them all even as it seems like they have everything that life could have to offer. We see that there always seems to be some longing that technology cannot fix. So not everything is idyllic in that utopian Star Trek way.

Our plot furthers itself as we follow the events of our characters, and they are varied. We have perhaps the only old man in the world who is near death but desires one final social statement before he dies, and a clone security expert who wonders if there’s more to life than the likes and dislikes, traits, and characteristics of his genetic line, and fears that even thinking about that may be a sign genetic clone fatigue. There is his wife, another clone who fears that the skillset of her genetic line is rapidly becoming obsolete in the current world. There is a retro-boy, who desires all the advantages of willingly remaining in a pre-puberty state even as he sees the disadvantages and missed opportunities. His housemeets in the Kodiak Charter also go about their daily lives as they watch their charter continue to decay from its previous heights. We have a social planner who is caught in the middle of a suspiciously improbable accident and finds himself further drawn into events by an AI entity.

Loose connections begin to be made in the plot as all these elements converge, and all road signs pointed to an exciting climax where everything finally came together, all those cherries on the slot machine lined up, and we got our big payout. I was reading eagerly, as the story was original and innovative enough that I didn’t find myself beating the novel to its conclusion. It built up and built up as our character drama reached critical mass. A number of chapters along the way were written with a different style or perspective. They must be there to draw attention to something important or significant, like a flashing hotel sign on the side of an interstate. Things seemed juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust on the verge of all coming together into what I was already anticipating as a big ‘Wow!’ moment. Then just like that the story reached a quick ending. Like the author ran out of words and the story had to stop there. The road ended pretty much exactly where the map for our journey said it would, but the map never said our shiny new car ride would stop at a bridge that was still under construction, with no road ahead left to travel. All those pieces along the way never assembled into a complete explanation. What was the point behind everything that happened? What was the big conspiracy hinted at through the story? You find that you don’t know anymore than what you speculated along the way. Or, like me, perhaps you feel like something of a dense reader, wondering if artfully planted clues and deep interpretations were left out there in plain sight so that all the answers should be self apparent, and that in the end after reading this fine book you managed to entirely miss the point and let it fly over your head.

Perhaps David Marusek wanted to foster conjecture and debate. Maybe somewhere in here he has encoded his secret answer to the meaning of life. Perhaps if I had a Bachelor or Master’s Degree in Literature the message he was conveying would not have slipped beneath my conscious threshold. But maybe he’s already planning for a sequel and wanted to leave them wanting more.

I do want more. I want some concrete answers. So for that I have to drop Counting Heads down a couple notches and give it an 8. I was counting heads but in the end I wasn’t able to report any sort of definitive number..

I am a huge sword and sorcery fan. I grew up reading the mythical stories of Howard’s Conan , Moorcock’s Elric , Leiber’s Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser , and Moore’s Jirel of Joiry . The staging of drama, romance and high adventure set in a fantastic land have always held a special part in my heart—journeys started quietly that end up shaping the future of man. And above all others, I hold David Gemmell in the highest regard.

Like all quests, this one begins with a search. While all quests have different beginnings, they all inevitably have the same outcome; the quest becomes more of a journey to within—to the soul. The journey in Quest For Lost Souls begins with a young boy named Kiall and his journey to rescue a hopeless love and how through the power of his simple kindness, a whole world is changed and destinies fulfilled. Along the way, he encounters the heroes of Bel-azar, the city which was at the center of the last battle fought against the Nadir armies led by Tenaka Khan, the hero of The King Beyond The Gate . Years have passed since that epic battle of Bel-azar and the surviving heroes begin to question why Tenaka Khan allowed them to live, and why he named them the ghosts-yet-to-be. They will travel protecting Kiall to the heart of the Nadir territory and confront Tenaka Khan’s son Jungir who is now khan after his father’s death.

What I have always loved about Gemmell’s books is his overly didactic writing style like the beating of war drums. His action sequences move from point to point, his characters always driving the plot. Some may see this as his having a limited vocabulary, which leads to many of his stories seemingly ripped from one another. Still, what some may see as a weakness, I see as a strength.

Many of Gemmell’s books deal with the theme of love, mainly the folly of love; how love can destroy and bring down the strongest of men to children. Despite this, Gemmell also liked to look at the redemptive power of love; how love can change otherwise ordinary men to heroes—farmers to legends, carpenters to saviors. And with that, Quest For Lost Heroes is really all about love—familial, lustful, innocent and heart breaking.

Gemmell is a master storyteller. However, my fascination with Gemmell’s work is not just because of his thrilling stories and epic struggles. No, my fascination with Gemmell lies with the humanity he brings to his work. Gemmell has that rare ability that not many of his peers have—the ability to show the humanity of life through pain and horror. How the deepest of pains can be strength and how even in the darkest times heroes can exist.

I remember first reading Gemmell’s seminal work Legend when I was a kid. I was young, naïve and lost like most people become at some point in their lives. What I found within those pages was hope. As time passes and I grow older, I find myself remembering the moments spent reading Gemmell’s works, works littered with heroes far past their prime—too old, too lost, too jaded—yet no matter how difficult their lives are and no matter how hard they fight it, they are heroes. And when people need help, they are there. Not because they want to, not because it’ll change the world, but because they must, because it’s what’s right.

One of the many things I have taken away from Gemmell is that one man can change the world—how one man can “matter.” To be a better person, not because you want glory, but because it’s what’s right.

A life-lesson told through a tale of sword and sorcery? What more can anyone ask for?

A disclosure : I readily see the faults of many Gemmell books, but the sub-genre sword and sorcery is my first love and like any first love, we forget the faults and only see the beauty. However, without that love I can see how these stories may seem hackneyed, misogynistic and repetitive and I fully understand if anyone has those views.

Quest For Lost Heroes is a fine addition to the growing Drenai saga mythos and I happily recommend it.

If you liked this also check out: All of Gemmell’s works, Jirel of Joiry , Conan , Usagi Yojimbo , and Dostoevsky.

I was introduced to Jonathan Carroll through the insistence of two strangers. I’m not known to listen to people, indeed I’m a scoffer, but they wanted to be called Wiz and Grub – and since those are of my two favorite things to do I thought they may have been on to something. You add that one knew the Condor Man uniform on sight and the other had reading list that peaked curiosity itself (not just my own) and you had the beginnings of a recommendation that would be followed through. Some years – and what seems like a couple lifetimes later – Jonathan Carroll is one of those authors whose books I buy. That may seem anticlimactic, but Carroll is one of, and perhaps the first writer who went on that list of “all I need to know is that the book is out” authors. I don’t need to know what it’s about, I don’t need to know where or when it takes place, I don’t need to know if it’s called fantasy, mystery, horror or science fiction – because such questions, such words, cannot contain Carroll. Instead Carroll carries Liza’s bucket of pandora paint adding a stroke with a brush here, there and where.

Frannie McCabe is the chief of police in Crane’s View, New York a town he grew up in and the town he’d happily die in if given the chance, not that death was something that was on his mind until the death of an odd dog that he took in at his office. A dog that like McCabe has the marks of a creature that lived – not just existed – and upon its death he took it upon himself to bury ‘Old Vertue”. A small town, a veteran sheriff, a dead dog – it has the makings of a western or a bad country song. At an rate, the death of the dog, the disappearance of a couple in his town, a girl found dead in the school bathroom, his step-daughter’s new tattoo disappearing - the aroma of change in the air would set McCabe on a whimsical story where he will attempt to connect dots while retracing his steps. Like time travel stories? How about a story that captures the scent of American Pie? About love, family, a coming of age story and a going of age story. When you don’t have to meet yourself to disrupt the space-time continuum, but you may have to hang out with him and perhaps more than anything it presents the idea that there would be value in asking your prior self – a unique individual – questions to see the actions of that person and learn something is not just a cog in the present cumulative. If one could point at a fault there is a point where you think McCabe is going nowhere, where Carroll couldn’t seem to bring a conclusion big enough to pay-off everything he introduced. It may even seem – in reflection – a great opportunity for a more than quaint fictional work without Science Fiction and Fantasy elements missed. What I think actually occurs is that we see a reasonable and competent man by most standards completely functioning as a man we would rationally think would in an irrational – a magical - situation. So many times in fiction we are shown protagonists who become so by acclimating themselves, to rise to the occasion. To become something they aren’t and never were – something nobody could possibly be. In many cases there may be fall to overcome as well, but routinely we are described this relying on our preconditioned acceptance of this due to exposure in rather flat fiction. Carroll does not stumble in tying up The Wooden Sea, Frannie does, and related to that the end of such experiences are not end of eras in any way a calendar would understand. The Science Fiction element – a universal awakening – is so over the top for the a Sheriff of an escapist-alcove American town that you can feel the gravity of just how beyond being simply odd or disconcerting such situation would be. You would attack this how you know how – with McCabe, the experiences of a hell raiser as a child, a Vietnam Vet, a veteran of couple of marriages, who lives a more than stable life and now respected in the town he once was once ‘that kid’ of. Frannie is a man who had gone through his ‘cycle’ only to be thrown into something bigger. It is not because he does not have the qualities to identify him as heroic; it is that rarely do we describe the day-to-day, handle shit as it happens manner as such. He is not offered a mantle, he is, when looking back on his life a man with an understanding of service and what we have is a man who doesn’t have all the answers, indeed he doesn’t even know all the questions. For the fantastic to have an effect, you have to establish a base that we recognize and Carroll nails the towns so many of us live(ed) in. Where reputations matter, where people never seem to get away from – and if they do, everybody can recite you the specifics of it. Where downtown is distinguishable only because it has been always been called that, where you’re Smith’s daughter or boy. Where I certainly have no interest in going to such a place now, perhaps the person I will be one day will. It is in such places that America really resides:

From the beginning Carroll confounds us and it’s not just a mysterious 3-legged dog – man’s best friend – that enters his life. We are introduced to McCabe spouting one-liners, a wife and step-child showing up at the job with jibes and apparent issues and instead of getting a fractured soul, another broken cop getting by on booze – he did keep his smokes – that lives only to confound the world set against him we get a happy man, a loving husband, a pillar of the community, and man who is where he wants to be. We find a man not looking for anything, but not to the extreme of a man who fears what he may find – he has found what he wants. We are shown choices we can believe. What would you make god do to prove his power? What would you learn if you observed your father when he wasn’t at the moment being your father? What would you want to tell him? In the midst of events of global, and even universal gravity, McCabe is in his hood and confronting these opportunities as if they were what really mattered. So many times, we are told the world is worth saving in fiction, even if grudgingly, and in The Wooden Sea we see why McCabe’s world is. More than that, I’m not a reader who views it as a requirement of the author to make me root for the protagonist of a story to enjoy it, indeed even in my most get-along-gang of moods it’s still a quality that I can’t completely reconcile as not being a least a little slow, but obviously that isn’t to say such stories don’t often represent the best fiction has to offer and one would find it hard not to find some part of McCabe’s journey that is not relatable, that doesn’t at least brush up against something you carry.

The Wooden Sea shares characteristics with others Carroll books in that he rarely puts a new spin on genre conventions it just always seems like his is the right one we had yet to see, as if others were suddenly a heart beat off, a turn of phrase too early, a sentiment missed. There is also a clarity to Carroll’s work that I think is rather distinct. The Wooden Sea’s brand of wonder is one that questions what you see, feel and believe but never what you are actually reading. In fiction we are sometimes – I think – too enamored with stylistic conceit, and I while I agree with Hal Duncan in that style is substance in literature – but Carroll’s style somehow morphs into what should be fashion at the moment of reading instead of vying for next. I always marvel most at writers who are able to present several stories – many completely different thematically and even in tone –that don’t take away from one another in the absence of recognition. When I interviewed the wonderful Kelly Link she spoke of stories that could be read and reveal something new – a story that grows – and The Wooden Sea leaves more trees to climb, more secrets submerged.

The Wooden Sea is perhaps not Carroll’s most recommended work, but is still a notable chapter in the body of work of somebody who is in the argument of being the most noteworthy American Fantasist today.

So take a ride on a bicycle, grab an oar and watch yourself fly.

Jay Tomio
The Bodhisattva

When I reflect on Shannara, we are going back to the baby steps of a love affair with Fantasy that if not taken when they were, I would have probably found myself not inundated with advanced copies for a site I co-own dedicated to the subject of Speculative Fiction itself. It was not my first venture into Fantasy, but it was perhaps the first series I continued simply because it was Fantasy. Later in life I’d realize I was already a fan of the fantastic and it could be illustrated with books I read before – be it from Tolkien, Stevenson, Lovecraft, or others but I think then it was just about adventures then and Shannara offered another place I hadn’t been before, and at that age being someone who was used to and loved travel even then it was not only enough – it was optimal. I was as a child lucky enough to had already seen places and found myself at a place where so many rarely left their own state. Be it the Coliseum, the Parthenon/Acropolis, Pisa, The Sistine Chapel, Pompeii, Ercolano, the real Oktoboer Fest, Carnivale, Mardi Gras, Big Ben, Venice – Vesuvius or Fuji, the Pyramids, the Louvre a ride on The Orient Express and countless German and French castles and cathedrals and rugs from Turkey later – when I sat in history classes I always felt a chapter ahead, it was a review for me, not an introduction. Later, I’d I found myself in the dirty south of the U.S. which at the time was something not unlike exile from meaningful culture. Later, I’d recognize a highly functionable and welcome order to it all but at the time I think I was substituting that sense of wonder lost, with a maze of wonder at the library. I’m not at all sure if there were books I didn’t like then, in fact there may not have been even ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they were just all part of one large journey for me, some legs were just more memorable and some more staying power - better than I remembered - when I made the journey back, but if not, it does not taint what came before. To me I was just chillin’ with Huck one week, fishing with Ahab the next, sharing riddles in Hed after that, blew trees in the Shire a month after, all while walking through Shadow with my bud Brand who was babbling about chaos, and all because years before I wanted to go beyond where the wild things were. You see, Allanon and me, well, we go way back; before Bremen found him hiding all shook - we were already tight, even before me and Jessica used to have mélange sessions. I’d tell you my last name is Creel, but that’s another shadow, one me and only the Grimpond talk about but what you need to know is that when I wasn’t being a hell raiser as a youth, I could be found plotting my next secret vacance in my room, or what looked like plotting otherwise, why was I so quiet? Nobody complained, least of all me, because I was in my comfort zone – and I had been there before, and in fact I could fuck around and tell you how to get to Varleet from the Vale on a budget right now – like I said I’d been there before.

When discussing Shannara or Terry Brooks work in general – those that even take the time to do so anymore - many find it difficult to isolate a specific topic, having to express their stance on him and the fact alone should speak on his presence in the field. I myself am not gifted enough to buck that trend and as I type this I find myself unable to think in the box. I don’t love or hate the works of Brooks - but no different than any other writer at times I have loved and hated them. It is this relationship, this passion that defines fandom for me. Writers evolve and more importantly readers do as well and it’s not a shift that occurs one or in one direction. If we rightfully view the works of Rowling as an anomaly in regards to its measure of success in book sales – not just fantasy sales – then Brooks sits among the most successful who has ever done this and while to some that is somehow proof of impropriety against art itself, such stances prove to cause only minor chinks in the armor in one of the few writers in this field’s history that I think has a legitimate claim to being a generation’s introduction to the form – even if, irrefutably, largely borrowed beyond anyone’s attempt at shielding with the worst of paper-arguments ‘nothing new under the sun’. For myself, while presently – and for some years - my tastes have moved away from what Shannara has to offer but while I have aged and expanded upon my reading and bear with me, lore, of this corner of fiction that offers a perspective in a larger picture beyond the lines that are often the topics of heated and too often-linked discussions I try not to lose, replace, or dilute the veracity of my experience at the time. Addendums certainly - but no subtractions. The relevance of these statements to this review is due to the relationship that Dark Wraith of Shannara has with previous Shannara material, and more importantly, chapters I’m not only very familiar with, but chapters that I will always be familiar with. While it is The Heritage of Shannara arc that represents the best Brooks has shown in Shannara, and aside from his Word/Void work (in particular Angel Fire East) my favorite in his body of work, it seems to in his first three books in particular that fall into a timeline that sowed and cultivated the fanbase noted above. The Sword of Shannara, The Elfstones of Shannara, and The Wishsong of Shannara are not classic books, but they attempted to capture and perhaps even remind of classic tales in a form many had been waiting for, whether they were conscious of it or not. It is within these three books that the most resonant of threads could be found to truly test the waters of a market and platform I feel very strongly about: the OGN – the original graphic novel. With the success of King and Hamilton projects in sequential art, I’m interested in seeing more of and how others will follow suit and Brook’s attempt will be an interesting gauge due to that existing fanbase noted above.

When Dark Wraith of Shannara showed up at the door in January I must admit some measure of curiosity. I am perhaps a bigger fan of comics than I am in any other form of reading and I think that’s telling for anyone who is aware of how much time I put into a site like Fantasybookspot.com I love getting my VanderMeer, Erikson, Mieville, Zivkovic, Martin, Jonathan Carroll and Jeffrey Ford books – and releases by Saramago, Ishiguro, and McCarthy are close to spiritual experiences bound up and sold on shelves; Speculative fiction is close to my heart, but more than anything, I love my sequential art – I love my comics. It also presents a very low risk investment in my time, I tend to commit to my novels even if I don’t see anything of value hundreds of pages in – a habit that I think is the only plausible explanation on why so many people are familiar with books like The Fifth Sorceress. I have my own preferences and I get perhaps unequal opportunities to explore them and this format allows for a shot of Shannara I otherwise wouldn’t indulge in, and this is something I consider a fortunate circumstance.

Dark Wraith takes place some three years after The Wishsong of Shannara and utilizes principle characters from that book. This was an auspicious discovery for me as my favorite denizen of the Four Lands was introduced within those pages and the opportunity to see further adventures of Slanter was more appealing than I would have wagered. Wishsong, more than the other books really offered a group-quest that lingered due to the number of characters and the finality of where some of those paths led in how they would affect the survivors. It was also the end of the first arc and to the reader a geopolitical era and tone in Shannara that would be come forth from the Heritage arc. Because of this, I think it was the best place to mine further adventures and also a minefield due to a chance of pulling on strands knotted close to hearts. When finishing the 160 pages, I saw both of my thoughts play out. In familiar fashion a member of the Ohmsford family is recruited to continue their legacy as Allanon’s chosen champions and protectors of the land and this time –as promised - it will fall on Jair, burdened with his charge and a promise, he once again seeks out the Mwellrets who (in Wishsong) failing in their attempt and I guess strangely upset at being freed of being enslaved by the power of the Ildratch (because, you know, their evil) have plotted a new course of action: restoring the Druid Keep of Paranor to the land to unlock the knowledge within its walls. It should be said that there is not a tremendous amount attempted here, it’s a straightforward read that offers little in regards to searching for invisible thought bubbles mid-page but I think if it is aiming at the age-group I think it is, this wasn’t unforeseen or unintended. I was reading Brian K. Vaughn’s The Escapist (in collected form) at the same time and there is more going on, more weight on several individual panels and single lines in it then can be found within the entirety of Dark Wraith, but it offered this real interesting dynamic as when I was getting most disinterested in Dark Wraith I’d pick The Escapist up and it was almost telling me to take it (Dark Wraith) for what it was (anybody – and by that I mean everybody should – who had read The Escapists understands). What drove me nuts from the beginning was something that actually makes a substantial amount of sense in regards to character and story – a boy emulating someone he looked up to and able to manifesting what is most likely semi-fantasy even on its own but when augmented with legitimate need becomes something more. In comics nothing is guaranteed, especially death, and while there isn’t a true resurrection within the pages, given the nature of the original character, it’s close enough to want to reflexively argue otherwise – and that isn’t even a problem in itself or abnormal, but it did create this major and what looks to be the central element in any works to come after that if you find yourself not behind puts a very tangible ceiling on how much one can enjoy the story (and possibly further adventures). The death of Garet Jax (Wishsong of Shannara) is one of the really great deaths in the history of fiction – largely because it ended the existence of one of the most heinous, no-dimensional characters ever conceived. Garet Jax was a weapons master – unequaled, the best there is or ever was, yada, yada, yada.. He was also a walking deus ex machina – a mortal force of nature that would solve the majority of the quest’s problems by skillfully, hitting shit - sometimes hard. When he wasn’t (actively) being cool, we were being told how kewl he was by others. Let me say this about Brooks – he is consistently able to bring conclusions that satisfy and he does this by surrounding the inevitable saving of the day with a recognition of sacrifice and acceptance that does resonate and finds a corner in our memory that doesn’t fade. He showed this many times; with Amberle (Elfstones of Shannara), Allannon; he showed this with a debt and bond of two races being acknowledged by an injured Elf and Dwarf – and what these instances do is bind the allegiance of generations of Ohmsfords through representatives of the land – it is the people who become what they fight for, what they are loyal to, and through them the Four Lands and taken to the end the reader themselves. The death of Garet Jax, while welcome by me and clearly writing that was on the wall from the novel’s beginning was still one of those great moments in this child’s reading history. The ambiguity of the event, a mystery of whether or not the mortal demise of a man unequalled was in fact the reward he searched and trained for or was his sacrifice a delightful, if sobering, reality check. Say what people want to say, but these are terrific books for younger readers and Brook’s ability as a closer pays off. Like I said there is no true resurrection, thus it seems like I’m shadowboxing a bit, but the usage of the Wishsong that transforms Jair into Jax is strikes me as an element that would have been high on my list of not basing a story or a series of forthcoming stories on. The other underlining theme of Jair struggling to keep his promise of abandoning the Wishsong that he made to his sister and coincides with the familiar ‘power corrupts and eventually enslaves’ forms the apparent meat of the story that will take new readers for a tour and returning visitors a spin down memory lane. This is really an admittance of not caring for the fundamental premise and it was difficult for me to shake that as I read on as nothing really evolved from the transformation that made me not think just seeing Jair and Slanter reuniting to get by on wits, luck and experience would be more fun. I realize that some could consider it the sweetest thing imaginable, but for me it just strikes me as a decision that sounds better and perhaps even exciting as an idea thrown out there and dismissed after a second thought than it looks on paper and brought to fruition. What we are set-up for is basically a condition that allows Jair to handle any imaginable situation by being someone else and the balance is supposed to be given by Jair’s personal regret of lying to his sister in the course of saving his own life. That just cannot last for any length of time as the fundamental conflict for people who are used to reading even the least competent of fiction - indeed it got old just within these pages alone. We knew it was going to happen, we knew what going to happen when it did, we knew what Jair was going to ponder later and while it is passable – if not memorable - once it is a cycle that has to stop now and cannot carry another story. The backdrop of an adventure; the where, who, and when of it will not matter if these continue to be the bookends of the tale. I don’t know, I was looking for something to occur that even if not perceptible by the new reader, that was an attempt at really grabbing prior visitors – to let us know these graphic novels are projects that go beyond what we may want to read, but reads the afficianado has to read, filling in the gaps in the puzzle or introducing new ones – calling back to what some may hold dear, maximizing the fact that there is a fanbase that’s reading, waiting for that single moment of recognition that goes beyond bearing a name, when we look up and see familiar stars when we stop reading about wonder and start breathing it and Dark Wraith of Shannara never took that step for me. It was like following familiar tracks but upon catching up you find that they just belong to those wearing the same brand of shoes – the occupants, strangers.

It is, I know, awfully hip to say one loves the purity of black and white, and in the sense of seeing older works brought back in a collected or archive format with specific creators/pencilers I agree, but for the most part I’d be disingenuous in saying I prefer non-color. It certainly is appropriate and even optimal in some cases and this happens – I think – to be one of them. Jair himself echoed my thoughts early in the story, as an Ohmsford will once again find themselves on the banks of the Silver River on the way to a greater journey:

The black and white art helps creates this distance even when standing at what amounts to a figurative bridge in-story and for the most part I really took to the art. It is impossible for the visuals we created in our imaginations to be rendered as we saw it but there were no choices that troubled me terribly and even some that played out well and I think balanced the idea of a book for younger readers that still gave the sense of aging for those familiar with the novels and you can see this with Kimber who is a full blown tuttin now and apparently doesn't require clothing any longer. She lives in the cut, not a trailer park, still it is very alive. For the most part, the art exceeded expectations for me and managed find that middle-ground that was part of the contrast we’d see between the first two novels arcs.

Interestingly enough, I feel that the Dark Wraith of Shannara serves as better appetizer for the uninitiated to take a look at the novels and not as much as a product that at the end demands attention by those looking for more Shannara. This was a rather disappointing development for me simply because aside from seeming backwards to me, but from a purely selfish standpoint, as a former reader of Shannara I fall into the secondary category! I think in some ways, it may be underestimating the sophistication of the Manga reader, but I admit the American Manga market is something I don’t have near a comprehensive knowledge of , having not lived on those shores during it’s apparent rise in popularity and my own Manga reads are chosen with heavy deliberation as though I am a huge comic book fan and half-Japanese – I’m not what I’d call an avid fan of Manga. That said, it does give a gist of what occurred in the novel that will not leave the reader with the feeling of an incomplete tale, and that with just about everything else noted really brings us to the bottom line with this release. It’s damn well put together in terms of being friendly for anyone to pickup and comprehend – be it strictly Manga, strictly graphic novel, strictly comic book, existing Shannara fans, people who may have just read Wishsong of Shannara, or any combination of the above, but I finished not at all inspired to read on (the implication of further adventures and a continuing story is implied in the end – and by the time this review sees light possibly even announced) to any but the most loyal of fans and to me would be better suited as a nice online web comic project for fans to read between novels. I was reminded I once liked these characters but they were built with a shelf-life that I thought correctly optimized them already and nothing in these pages suggests otherwise. I think Brooks himself may have initially been aware of this (at the time) and avoided it with his early work by continuing tales in the setting with successive generations. What bothers me the most is that if you are like when you see a new project like this announced, you tend to reread source material to warm up for the event, but this 160 pages ends up not paying that off, indeed it doesn't seem to event attempt to.

The most interesting reading for me came after the story itself in the ‘making of Dark Wraith of Shannara’ segment that is also followed by a sketch-book of the artist, Edwin David. It’s rather brief but has some interesting insight on the collaboration between Robert Place Napton, who adapted (if I’m reading this correctly) Terry’s outline, David and Brooks. Visually I think Dark Wraith of Shannara is a success, the story itself does nothing for me, andI wonder how much could have been done about it, even though its really not relevant in terms of allocating opinion. It is what it is – no matter how it got there. Now in truth, I did find the story flat, a bit uneventful, it never approaches possessing any degree of suspense or a payoff and it reads very much like a preliminary outline put straight to paper. The story itself is just uninspired and felt more like a story that occurred without leaving any evidence it passed. It was like having that feeling that you just read a book but experienced a synopsis and when this occurs what happens is you get an opinion of a project that once finished, doesn’t deviate from whatever (preconceived) you had coming in. I found that upon completion I could describe (if asked) what happens in two - not unusually long - sentences in a manner that would make reading the actual 160 pages an absolutely redundant experience. I don’t like making comparisons out of thin air, as I said before at the same time I was reading this, I also happened to be reading the collected (hardcover) of Brian K. Vaughan’s The Escapists and while I can tell somebody what it was about as well (perhaps with two especially long sentences in this case) it would not in any way diminish the experience of the read itself – it had life beyond summary. There is nothing for the reader to bring to or take away from the story that they didn’t possess before. It just goes through the motions, and one feels like such a venue could be used to get dirty in the Four Lands and really what we are left with what seems more chum thrown to potential new readers than something those of us with the soil of the Westlands still stuck in our boots or seen the pride of Callahorn first-hand can get excited about. It is in a word, unnecessary, and when putting a brand that means something to many on a book, it’s the one quality you can’t be. It should be said I stopped reading Brooks after the Voyage of Jerle Shannara arc and there perhaps may be call-backs imbedded from material beyond that, that may add dimension to this graphic novel that I cannot be aware of but not once did I feel like I ever went back. One could, I suppose, possibly compare it to The Hedge Knight, which was material that chronicled activities that took place prior to the timeline in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and what you got was not a mind-blowing or essential addition, but still it was a piece, and with Dark Wraith and as someone familiar with the material and the legacy of the Ohmsfords it just doesn’t feel like a progression or even just a continuation of that, and if it tripped and fell flat, it somehow managed to do so without ever walking.

Shades!

Which is all it ended up being, nothing substantial; looks good, and while the spark of Jair’s future with Kimber leaves the faintest ripples of interest, there is just not enough brewing here that could ultimately make it recommendable and I find any attempt at lauding it impossible without following it with "for what it is" – and that’s usually the worst of signs.

Jay Tomio
The Bodhisattva

While often times I think fans of comics and thus its creators are a bit too preoccupied with the same ailment that some Fantasy and Science Fiction writers and tend to trade the walking stick for the mirror often and further, stand so close they fog up the picture. Thus my conclusion is that one Brian K. Vaughan has no reflection but truly exists in both worlds, one the fan, one the creator, all the skills, that he has taken on a project spurned on by the creation of another planewalker, Michael Chabon, whose Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay certainly won the Pulitzer throughout the Multiverse in a socially acceptable double dip. Either that, or he doesn’t breath.

The Escapists is several stories, a very isolated, focused and a lay’s Vellum in a small sense, that follows the story of Maxwell Roth chasing a dream and buying the rights to his favorite character simply because the feeling of existing in a world with no more adventures of his pulp hero The Escapist was unacceptable. It is from many perspectives rather pathetic, even going to the extreme of spending essentially all that his family left him to purchase the property and start publishing the comic again. Those who would aid in this rebirth were people he met in real life, doing real things – there is no lab, no dungeon that’s only in and out is a net hook-up and though a Warren Ellis can expose crooked little veins simply by rummaging through e-trash it is an eye trained in the field and that has reflected back at him others of the same that can create so bounty from such rummages. It would just seem sensible that the dungeon comes after the success not before. Roth would meet the pencils that would free the Escapist at his job providing elevator maintenance helping free her from the corporate highway, a freedom she - one Case Weaver - would later put into focus for Roth later. His letterer, Denny Jones, could actually be a superhero in a world that had such – a protector in school and since a lifelong friend. In limited pages it succinctly chronicles The League of the Golden Key’s figurative return to the world and success achieved by literal return in a marketing ploy gone bad until the day was saved. To take from Mr. Vaughan, not really a mistake – but more of a happy accident. Those who haven’t experienced Vaughn’s prowess or can’t read a comic without tights are yawning on their way to pick up the latest issue of what used to be Spider Man and I won’t bore you with Vaughn’s turn of phrase, his timing, his delivery and how this fictional-biography is a creative-reality check, coming of age story that pulls universal strings. I’ll just tell you that there are tights, there are superheroes, there are villains – and the narrative shifts from the ‘real world’ to the adventures in the comics themselves, both current and classic. Shift is perhaps not a correct word, they are layered – and could be viewed next to each other but offer an enhanced landscape when stacked or removed from one another. One of chief and possibly not intentional pluses in reading The Escapists is that a modern reader is able to stroll into past ages without the stigma we may attach going into reading a "Golden" or even "Silver” Age story. There is a preconceived camp many seem to associate with the era, a detachment from our sensibilities, that even someone like me who is a comic collector of examples from both era is not immune to, however, presented side by side by top talent we see the excitement that can be barely contained on page – it’s bigger than life, these pulp masters didn’t need to escape as they lived in a world of possibilities and mystery and as within the pages of The Escapists boundaries did not exist. We will see the rise of Escapists return, another hot product creating buzz that got the attention of the Corporate machine that wanted to buy it back. Vaughan is careful here, he doesn’t come of as creator lobbyist – the Corporation gave what we are to believe is a more than fair value for a borrowed dream, something he gives to us via the Case's reaction to Roth's decline.

There is a touch to The Escapists, or rather an embrace that I liken to another read, Tony Fleec’s underead In My Lifetime but though you get a strong sense that certainly Vaughan is drawing upon self, it’s not at all as biographical as one may think. The description of it being a ‘love letter’ while alluding to a past is telling. We write most love letters for ourselves and they often go unsent, they are an attempt at personal clarity, to make things real and though The Escapists points to the past it’s message is posted to today and the future. We may dream of the past – but they (dreams) are instruments of tomorrow in reality and this is why The Escapists is oddly enough not in advocacy or a – though all forms of fiction are in some degree escapist in nature – call for us to look to fictional locales and occurrences of our imagination to get away from hardship, the grind, or negatives we may associate with our own realities. We can look to other Vaughan projects (any of them – they are all sweet) and see this is not a theme in any of his other work, so much so one may even come to believe he views such crutches with disdain by his avoidance and would rather limp to engage then sprint to avoid. The titular message is something a rather famous white boy from Eight Mile has shouted to us from main street to mainstream – you have to lose yourself to the muzak and I bet Vaughan was the a hellion when it came to hide and seek. To be an Escapist you have to be able to be it and bask in chasing others, learning, experiencing, loving, and even hate – but in the end you have to want to step out and be on the run yourself – to get lost. What separates the super-fan and the marginal (and in some cases even profound) talents who have jobs in the industry from the true creative forces is never to allow our selves to be attached to the thrill of the chase of other’s dreams.

As a reader, even as a life-long fan of sequential art, my considerations bordering on exclusivity always focus on the writer and writing. Narrative, dialogue, plot – all products of great art as well – via the writer has always been my focus. A comic can have just competent art and I could hold it in the high of regard. I have always painted my own pictures in my reading with paints given to by artisans of vocabulary like Calvino, Peake, Clark Ashton Smith, Kafka - and newer scribes who paint with words like Mieville, Valente, and Ducornet and I find that I read comics the first time around completely unaware of art. I go from word to word, balloon to balloon, and then if satisfied I go back and compare visions. By its very nature it’s not very hard to portray or convince us of something that is fantastic, the accomplishment of the art in The Escapists is to illustrate the journey within that is put across in our own world and a fictional comic. The real journey was Bastian's; running from the bullies and reading a book, not Atreyu's. This is the fictional story of fictional storytellers in the midst of creating fiction – sometimes finding themselves in the pages – not breaking the fourth wall, but creating the 6th. The use of books as literary devices is something readers are familiar with recent work like Shriek: an Afterword, or more famously by Lovecraft and so on, but to give seamless physicality to these gates was almost breathtaking. The flashbacks to vintage funny books make you want to go out and explore an era that when names like Schomburg didn’t need variants to make a fool of you and buy books and were labeled by the only titles with words that could contain them: Weird, Amazing, Astonish, Mystery, Strange, Two-Fisted, Suspense, Planet Comics, Wings. The modern pages reminded me of Totleben, who along with the aforementioned Moore heralded the next evolution. No matter where on the timeline or in what reality they chose to inhabit, the art in The Escapists given to us by Jason Shaw Alexander, Eduardo Barretto, Philip Bond and Steve Rolston gave me not only something to interact with, but offer visual bridges to Vaughan’s generational collage. Simply put, the art is top notch throughout and display an era when every page was a Tale or and Adventure. Where dreams were seen for all to witness, but more importantly where one was put down on paper.

I didn’t go to Comic Book inventions when I was a kid. To me they were these semi-mythical events that I could only read about in some Wizard’s report. I was either overseas or never in an area close to these tourneys when I wasn’t but I had a magic kingdom and it was called a flea market. A place that opened its gates every weekend where I could communicate with Hama, Gaiman, McFarlane, Claremont, Shooter, Windsor-Smith, Keith, Lapham, Simm, and Byrne – they were never there but they spoke to me, sometimes through balloons. I was there when people carried on conversations of such gravity only in person, "Who the heck is this Stephen Platt?" - "I don’t know bro but I’m coppin’ Moon Knight". It was a time when Scott Lobdel had the keys to the hottest titles when they had rarely been hotter, when Generation X wouldn’t be thought of as just another X-book in a lame era – but when it was perhaps the only mutant title that carried on the original mandate that once made the X brand great – these kids were different and Chris Bachalo came out of the lab with stuff up he still doesn’t get enough credit for and when Travis Charest pages were still affordable. It’s when we were introduced to some dude named Hellboy in the pages of Byrne’s Next Men, when Gaiman and Moore were advancing the possibilities of the craft, when we read a Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow comic with no word and didn’t miss a beat. I was there when the creation of Image created actual excitement about comics, when Shooter was valiant and defiant, and witnessed Kraven’s Last Hunt. When was the last time comics impacted pop-culture like cowabunga, four turtles and a rat? I didn’t live during THE Golden Age that Vaughan apparently invokes and to many who did I probably fell into their Dark Ages, but it was the only Golden Age I had and one thing that all of them had in common is the wonder they instill. I’m close to thirty years old and you aren’t telling me shit about Archer and Armstrong or Harbinger that isn’t in a reverent tone or risk getting hemmed up and this is why my previous comment was a lie. It is exactly what Vaughn invokes – it is an atmosphere shared by decades and generations; this thing of ours, a specialized bi-lingual attribute shared by those who are otherwise altogether different and never would share more than a nod in passing.

Vaughan goes beyond the admirable skill of knowing how to tell stories – he understands them. He can tell you how to open and close them and then tell you why you shouldn’t as he slams the window that you didn’t see before – that wasn’t even there - on you. Every child who has ever dreamed and any adult who isn’t living it and wants to see Vaughan get missing should lock themselves up with Escapist and watch it break free and then, and only then can you have the chance to know it is not he who Vaughn followed, but what lay a step further, he was chasing that yet and always unseen that the Escapist himself was chasing.

I’m a quoter, a look at my other reviews will indicate such, I pick out lines of no more relevance than any other to consume space in my reviews. Some display stylistic characteristics and others I choose just because they make me smirk. With this read I almost wanted to skip the practice as every line is so in tune I didn’t want to spoil the melody but right after a table-setting intro by Chabon, Vaughan kicks it off with:

We all do.

Jay Tomio
The Bodhisattva

There are fantasists and there are master fantasists; I'd like to suggest that the masters reveal themselves not only by their greatest works, but by what are -- for them and them only -- lesser volumes. Steps Through the Mist, the latest of Serbian author Zoran Živković's novels to be published in the USA, is a revelatory volume of this later sort; it confirms Živković's status as a master. The book's chief flaw is that there is simply not enough of it, leaving us wanting more.

In the United States, Steps Through the Mist follows 2006's Seven Touches of Music (both first appeared in English in the UK magazine Interzone several years ago, and were part of 2006's Impossible Stories omnibus from the UK's PS Publishing). Like the previous American release, Steps Through the Mist is an exquisite slim black volume from Aio Publishing; like that earlier volume, Steps Through the Mist is a mosaic novel, a story suite of short fabulations linked both literally and in thematic concern. Here Živković's concerns are predestination, fate and the future; in the five stories that make up his mosaic he builds a multifaceted view into how modern people might relate to having, knowing and choosing their own fates -- and those of others.

Many of Živković's best-known mosaic novels (the World Fantasy Award-winning The Library, Seven Touches of Music, Twelve Collections, etc.) have followed a similar pattern: a series of seemingly-independent short stories that are drawn together and into a greater aggregate by the concluding story. Steps Through the Mist however diverges from this pattern as a matter of artistic necessity given the themes of fate and future knowledge. Here the first story, "Disorder in the Head," foretells the following four.

"Disorder" tells of Miss Emily, a teacher at a girl's school, who is confronted with a teenage student who claims to have dreamed the dreams of three other students -- and of Miss Emily herself. Emily, orderly and unimaginative, will have none of it:

"Disorder in the Head" deftly encapsulates many of the thematic concerns that recur in Steps Through the Mis