Mirages are images without substance – sometimes sensory illusions, but they can also be hopes and illusions that never can be realized. Heart of the Mirage is the first instalment in Glenda Larke’s trilogy The Mirage Makers, and it offers a narrative that explores the nature of the illusions and delusions that can make and unmake a person. It is a story about the sometimes illusory nature of identity, of loss and betrayal and of the possibility of redemption.

Heart of the Mirage is first and foremost the story of one woman’s journey towards self-discovery and of the recovery of her heritage, hidden beneath layers of callous deceptions. As a young child Ligea Gayed was stolen from her people by its conquering enemies. Adopted by a high-ranking general, she is raised as a citizen of the Tyranian Empire and employed in its service as a member of its fearsome secret police The Brotherhood. When rebellion breaks out in Kardiastan, the land of her birth, Ligea seems the obvious choice to hunt down and eliminate the Mirager, the mysterious and elusive leader of the rebel insurgency.

Upon her arrival in Kardiastan, Ligea devotes herself to her mission with patriotic zeal and ruthless cunning, but the deeper she infiltrates the leadership of the rebellion, the harder it becomes for her to maintain her disciplined self-image as a loyal Tyrianian citizen. There are deep secrets in Kardiastand, secrets that intimately defines the land and its once ruling elite, the Magor. These secrets are also the key to Ligea’s forgotten heritage. As she learns more about her people and her unique heritage, Ligea begins to question the values of her upbringing and her very identity in an ever increasing degree. Ultimately, she is faced with a difficult choice between the values of her upbringing and the nature of her birthright. It is a choice that not only will affect her sense of self, her loyalties but also the future of two nations.

Glenda Larke creates a vivid and exotic world that departs from the more conventional pseudo-medieval settings of fantasy fiction. Thus the Tyrian Empire displays many similarities with the Roman and Byzantine Empires of the Mediterranean world. It is a civilization with a highly sophisticated culture, but it is also an aggressively militant culture, built upon conquest and slavery, a culture where racism and casual cruelty is the norm and where ruthlessness and corruption is rewarded above decency and compassion. Kardiastan is in many ways the direct opposite to Tyrans. Where Tyrans has a Roman or Byzantine “feel”, Kardistan is more reminiscent of Arabian or North African culture. The Kardis are a desert people, hardy and fierce but also very generous and trusting when it comes to people other than their Tyranian oppressors. In the entire Empire, the Kardis are unique in their refusal to bend their neck to their oppressors and assimilate their culture and values. They cling to their own culture and mores with a fierce desperation that quietly disrupts the administration of the Tyrian occupiers. The Magor, the Kardi aristocracy, exists as a unique culture within the larger Kardi society. Set apart by their magical abilities and closely connected to the land, they live by rules and values that are significantly different from those of the ordinary Kardi people. After the invasion, the Magor has retreated to the Mirage, a mysterious and inaccessible piece of land in the heart of Kardiastan. The Mirage is a strange place, where the landscape constantly changes and it leaves a lasting imprint upon Ligea’s soul.

The Mirage is the heart of the Kardi insurgency and the source of the Magor’s powers, but it is not the only mirage in this story. Narrated in the first person, Heart of the Mirage is essentially the story about the illusions and deceptions that has shaped Ligea’s life and person. Structured in four parts, each section titled after the various names that Ligea is given or assumes throughout the story, Heart of the Mirage is ultimately a novel about the illusory nature of identity itself.

With Heart of the Mirage Glenda Larke has written a very enjoyable and utterly compelling story that unflinchingly probes into the psychology of a person who has been robbed of her family, her people and her culture. Ligea’s origins have been stolen from her; her heritage has been denied her - a crime that is compounded by the fact that she has been raised by the very person who has killed her family. Larke has obviously been inspired by real events, mainly the Disappeared Ones of Argentina and the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Australia, a fact that imbues Ligea’s story with a deep-felt resonance.

Characterization constitutes the novel’s greatest strength. It is Ligea’s character that drives the plot and Larke takes the time necessary to build up Ligea’s personality as well as the events and experiences that prompt her to question herself and her values, thus making the manner in which her character evolves plausible. When it comes to characterization, Larke’s work reminds me very much of Robin Hobb. Like Hobb, Larke uses a first-person narrative and she takes the time necessary to build a quite complex character. And like Hobb, Larke is never shies away from revealing bare the less savoury aspects of the protagonist’s personality. Ligea is in many ways not very likeable. Throughout a large part of the story, she comes across as arrogant, self-centered and cruel, but as Larke slowly reveals the forces that have shaped her one can’t help to feel for her. Likewise, the experiences that cause her to change and mature as a person ring absolutely true.

Heart of the Mirage is a very strong novel that offers a multi-facetted and deeply flawed protagonist as well as a well-paced and deeply compelling story about betrayal and identity. Larke has a fluid prose that often emphasizes sensuous detail and if she sometimes veers towards the overly descriptive then this is a very minor complaint. Likewise, the rather ridiculous names – gorclacks and shleths - are but a minor quibble. The only thing that detracted a bit from an otherwise wonderful reading experience was that the novel failed to elicit that “tingling” sense of wonder and enchantment that I associate with truly great fantasy. This is, however, simply a matter of personal taste and it certainly won’t prevent me from recommending it highly.

Trine D. Paulsen

ASH - A Secret History can in many respects be regarded as Mary Gentle’s magnum opus, both in terms of volume (a whopping 1100 pages) and in terms of its ambition and scope. It is also a work of literature that is very difficult, if not impossible, to categorize. It is simultaneously historical fiction, alternate history, fantasy and science fiction. The novel was awarded the Sidewise Award for Alternate History in 2000. It should also be noted that while ASH is published in one volume by Gollancz in the UK, it is published in four volumes (A Secret History, Carthage Ascendant, The Wild Machines, Lost Burgundy) by Avon Eos in the US.

The novel contains two parallel narratives. The primary narrative is the story of Ash, a young woman, who is the captain of a company of mercenaries in the late 15th century. When we meet her, she and her company are employed by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III in a conflict with Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy – both great powers in late medieval Europe. Ash has ambitions for herself and her company. Life as a mercenary is both dangerous and unpredictable, and it is difficult to provide for the hundreds of people that make up a mercenary company in lean times, so she fights in the hope of being rewarded with land, which would provide the company with a secure base. Ash’s own position as soldier who is also a woman is also rather precarious, which she learns the hard way when Frederick to her dismay rewards her with a noble husband instead of land and title. Bound by marriage and her husband’s feudal ties, Ash finds that she has lost control over her company of mercenaries. This, however, turns out to be the least of her problems. At this point Gentle twists her narrative into alternate history as she introduces Visigoth Carthage as powerful and fearsome enemy. In this alternate history, Carthage is a stronghold of Arian Christianity and a place of stark brutality and strange technology – golems, tactical computers and non-human intelligences. Shortly after Ash’s marriage, Carthage launches a crusade of massive proportions against Europe, and Ash learns that the voice she hears in her head is not a saint but something else entirely. Soon it becomes apparent that the fate of Europe rests on the slender and armoured shoulders of Ash; on her origins and, indeed, her very nature – as well as on the continued existence of Burgundy (The Duchy of Burgundy dissolved as an independent nation upon the death of Duke Charles the Bold in at the Battle of Nancy on January 5th 1477, which became a pivotal moment in European history).

Framing the story of Ash is a narrative which plays out through a fictitious email correspondence between a historian working on a biography of Ash and his editor. This part of the narrative is set around the turn of the millennium and focuses on Dr. Pierce Ratcliff, who is translating a collection of late medieval manuscripts that tells the story of Ash, i.e. the main narrative of the novel. As his work progresses he discovers that the history of late medieval Europe that the Ash documents narrative diverges significantly from known history. That is, in Pierce’s time-frame, Carthage did not exist in the late 15th century. As he puzzles about this, trying to construct a theory to fit what the documents narrate, strange things begin to happen. Suddenly most of his source material has either disappear or has been re-classified as myth and literature, while at the same time material evidence of a Visigoth Carthage begin to appear in North Africa. As the novel progresses, it becomes apparent that the story of Ash and the history Pierce is working on is deeply intertwined.

ASH is a very complex novel, which includes some very sophisticated perspectives on the workings of history, myth and scholarship, founded on a thorough knowledge of late medieval Europe and the warfare of the period. In fact, Gentle completed a MA in War Studies as part of the research for this novel. As a piece of alternate historical fiction, ASH demands quite a lot from the reader, more specifically a certain amount of historical knowledge in order for the reader to discern exactly when the fictional narrative deviate from known history. However, Gentle doesn’t just throw in random element to create an alternate history but rather creative extrapolate an alternate history from a certain point of known history. Case in point: Visigoth Carthage! In the 5th century, the site of Carthage was conquered by the Vandals (an East Germanic tribe like the Visigoths), who were in fact followers of Arianism (refers to the teachings of the 4th century theologian Arius, who held that Jesus Christ was almost, but not fully divine). Carthage existed as a Vandal city in a short period before it was annexed by the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century.

In order to facilitate this kind of knowledge, Gentle has provided her narrative with numerous footnotes, a feature that simultaneously support the framing narrative wherein Pierce Ratcliff explores Ash’s life in order to write a historical biography. As the two parallel stories progress, it becomes apparent, that the framing narrative serves other purposes than presenting historical exposition too cumbersome for the main narrative. At first, the footnotes as well as Pierce’s correspondence with his editor serves to mark the moment of departure – what is fact and what is fiction? But as his evidence appears and disappears, the framing narrative develops into a more philosophical exploration of the very nature of alternate histories (couched in scientific terms):

Gentle uses this notion of a ‘first’ and a ‘second’ history to explore the workings of history and the fluidity of historical “truth”. She has elsewhere stated that she views “history” as a construct, that is, that there historical writing always contains a certain level of fictionality. Furthermore, historical sources and documents are continually re-examined and re-evaluated, and the farther they are from the present, the harder it becomes to separate fact from fiction and myth. Considerations such as these are partly made explicit in the contemporary sections of the narrative, but Gentle also lets history and myth blend almost seamlessly together in the story of Ash herself. Thus the astute reader might pick apart Gentle’s often subtle play with myth and history. A good example of this particular aspect of the novel can be found in a rather discreet detail: the many references to the Green Christ (Christus Viridianus), a detail that isn’t really explained until the latter part of the novel when Ash and the company surgeon Floria(n) del Guiz inspect a series of religious mosaics:

In the space of a few paragraphs, Gentle constructs an alternate history of Christ, a history that highlights the specific mythic elements from the ancient world that have since been incorporated into Christianity. The epithet “Viridianus” is not a Christian one; rather it (the colour green), together with the jealous brother and the death on the tree, is specifically associated with the Egyptian god Osiris. The references to Mithras (a sun god of Persian origin, worshipped by Roman soldiers) and Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun, a late Roman state cult of solar deities) are, like Osiris, all examples of an ancient mythic archetype – the resurrected deity (a life-death-rebirth deity). The story Jesus Christ display key structural elements with these deities, and it has been argued that this mythic archetype has been absorbed into Christian theology and symbolism through the religious syncretism of the late Roman Empire.

The above-mentioned elements are deeply buried in Gentle’s narrative and require a rather knowledgeable reader to puzzle out. However, other examples of her play with history, myth and fiction are made manifest on the surface of the story. One such is the ways in which Ash continually is compared and contrasted to the legend of Joan of Arc. Like Joan, Ash is female soldier; like Joan, Ash receives aid from a disembodied voice; and, like Joan, Ash finds herself in the role as the defender of a nation – she is the Maid of Burgundy to Joan’s Maid of Orleans (a bit ironic since Burgundy play a part in the capture of Joan of Arc!). Mary Gentle not only invokes the legend of the Maid of Orleans, she also turns it inside-out thus highlighting the hidden issues of gender and sexuality. Where Joan of Arc was a holy virgin, a peasant girl made into soldier through divine intervention, Ash is a professional soldier who happens to be a woman. Ash’s military competence has been earned by hard work and an iron will. She is single-minded in her dedication to the business of war, which partly is a product of circumstance – she has lived almost her entire life in a mercenary company. War is, in fact, the only thing she knows. As a female soldier, Ash is an anomaly. Her gender presents an obstacle in the context of her chosen profession, but at the same time she uses her femininity, youth and beauty strategically in the dealings with the men of her profession. She knows that her status as a female war leader evokes the legend of Joan of Arc and she’s not averse to exploit it.

Ash might be a brilliant and cold-blooded soldier, but she is also an incredibly damaged young woman with what at best can be described as a dysfunctional childhood. She’s raped at the tender age of 8 and survives childhood as a camp whore – it is certainly no coincidence that Gentle lets Ash’s rapists cut up the girls face. She is scarred, both literally and psychologically, and those traumas are integral elements of her personality. It is, as it is stated in the opening sentence of the prologue: It was her scars that made her beautiful. The rape/scarring also constitutes another form of marking – Ash is not a virgin in armour like the archetype to which she is compared. The fact that she is a sexually active female soldier makes her a potentially subversive and therefore dangerous figure according to the late medieval mind, something that her young husband finds very troubling. He finds her threatening and repulsive, whereas Ash is very strongly attracted to him on a pure physical level but has trouble seeing him as other than weak-willed and cowardly. In many respects, Ash’s marriage seems to be a pivotal moment in her character-development. It is established early on that she isn’t an introspective personality – Ash is all action, and her military competence often make her appear older than her 19 years. Emotionally, she is, however, very young and she has no clue how to deal with the confliction emotions that her reluctant husband elicit in her. It is, however, not this rather ill-luck marriage that forms the most significant relationship in this novel. Rather, the main focus is firmly locked on the interactions between Ash and her company, especially her officers. Here she finds a real sense of belonging, of comradeship. It is an emotional attachment that is never spoken (unless couched in an irreverent banter) but always present in an easy (and often bawdy) camaraderie. Ash and her company are loyal to each other unto death and beyond – and it is Gentle’s skilful and often subtle representation of this heartfelt bond between Ash and her company that constitutes this novel’s heart and soul.

Another wonderful aspect is the level of mimesis that Gentle brings to her story. She delves unflinchingly into the minutiae of the daily life of these 15th century mercenaries, and she never shies away from depicting the less salubrious aspects of late medieval life and war. Ash and her soldiers are, more often than not, both dirty and battered, their armour rusting, their clothes fouled by gore and human waste, their appearance ravaged by the dangers of war and the harshness of the elements. All of this gives the reader heightened experience of the world the protagonists inhabit, all the details makes Ash’s world present in one’s mind. Stylistically, this aspect is reinforced by the way in which the narrative alternates between the past and the present tense. Gentle primarily employs the present tense in action- and battle scenes since it effectively conveys a sense of immediacy – and it works! I have yet to encounter a writer who can imbue a fight scene with such an overpowering sense of immediate experience as Gentle does.

This kind of attention to detail – often anchored in sensory impressions – heightens the realism of the text, and Gentle is most certainly part of the recent trend for the dark and gritty in fantasy fiction. Gentle makes her alternate 15th century Europe real and tangible to such a degree that ASH is a very intense and somewhat exhausting reading experience. I sometimes felt as tired and battered as the protagonists and thus welcomed the sections of the present-day narrative as much needed and well-timed breathing spaces. Yet no matter how demanding and exhausting it can be ASH ultimately offers a deeply rewarding reading experience. It is, in fact, hard to find anything to criticize. It offers a gripping action adventure, a historical puzzle and a slightly foreign world. It has a well-structured and well-paced narrative, built on a solid and extremely impressive foundation of historical research. The main character is complex and compelling, strong yet vulnerable and utterly likeable. The text itself is multi-layered and has a depth beyond the ordinary when it comes to fantasy fiction. The only thing that annoyed me was an odd tendency to arbitrarily vacillate between a third person and a first person narrative in the sections of Ash’s story – this is, however, a very minor complaint in regard to a novel that is very nearly perfect.

I will not hesitate to label ASH a modern masterpiece of speculative fiction. It is a work of literature that transcends genre and offers up an intriguing and highly entertaining exploration of history as a state of potentialities. As a secret or alternate history ASH is not only closely related to the genres of both fantasy and science fiction, but also to the practice of counter-factual history (also called “virtual history”) in academic circles. Mary Gentle’s novel is a highly intelligent and extremely accomplished work of literature that will appeal to fans of historical and speculative fiction alike.

Trine D. Paulsen

"Elephantmen: War Toys #3" is the final issue in a three-issue arc. It reads well as a single, stand-alone issue and, like all the other "Elephantmen" materi that I have read covers highly complex philosophical and ethical issues under the guise of a violent, pessimistic science-fiction odessy. While previous graphic novels have focused mainly on the difficulties the repurposed elephantmen face as they are forced to integrate with human society, "War Toys" focuses on what the Elephantmen were before, namely tools of a world war being waged by China and Africa.

Elephantmen are soldiers created through genetic manipulation to incorporate the DNA of both humans and animals. They are trained, from birth, to be ruthless, obediant, primal killers. They are larger than humans and stronger than humans and rely far more on their instincts. An elephantman (though this is a misnomer, as they not only resemble bipedal elephants, they also come in the forms of hippopautomi, crocodiles, and warthogs) given the order to kill the enemy does so without thought to whether the enemy is a man, woman, or child. They are effective, effecient, and brutal.

The horrors of war become magnified as elephantmen, ordered from the MAPPO corporation by Africa, invade Europe to enact genocide on a population already decimated by a virus. This issue takes place in France and Norway. A lone French woman named Yvette has decided to take on the elephantmen to avenge what has happened to her family, her friends, and her country. She becomes as brutal and every bit as accomplished as the elephantmen themselves. The issue culminates with a climactic confrontation between an elephantman and Yvette.

This is not a happy story. It was never intended to make the audience feel good. Instead, the goal seems to be to encourage people to think about what really happens in wars and in genocides and to assess whether they feel that the actual, human cost of war is really worth it. Elephantmen does not give concrete answers (though there is a fairly obvious slant towards a negative answer), nor does it offer a neatly wrapped package of proscribed ethics. Instead, the reader is offered a very compelling story with characters who truly seem to have no other choices than the paths that they have taken and no other logical endpoint than what is offered in the story. Elephantmen could disintegrate into a messy, didactic parpable that hammers a point home until the reader ends up angry, frustrated, and feeling more than a little gypped. Instead, the writers weave pathos, emotion, and moral dilemma into a skillful story that leaves the reader wishing that there was more. Fortunately, this is a comic book series, which allows for more story and character development.

Unlike previous volumes, this issue is printed in a lush grayscale with a hazy, pencil-shaded look that indicates (this is speculation on the part of the reviewer who only had this issue in the arc) a flashback. This is not to indicate that the artwork has less of a gritty feel or is less detailed. Rather, the quality of linework and shading in this issue is every bit as good as any other issue I've seen in the series. The simple removal of color simply indicates that this is a different type of story and visually draws the reader to the conclusion that these are memories, but they are very important memories.

"War Toys" is a book that I would recommend for adult readers who want a serious storyline that transends comic stereotypes. This, as with many war stories, is graphic and vicious, though not necessarily explicit. It is violent and frank which is in no way diminished by the black and white printing.

If you read a history of a random country in sub-Saharan Africa it either begins at the first contract with Europeans or briefly mentions the state of the country right before the colonial powers show up. Africa often appears not to have a history before that. In Segu Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé shows us a pre-colonial Bambara state centred around the city of Segu (present day Mali) during the period from 1797 to about 1860. A history of the Bamabara empire from the height of it's power to it's eventual fall to the Toucouleur of El Hadj Umar Tall. It's a fascinating historical novel with an unusual subject.

This novel was originally published in French, which unfortunately I cannot read well enough to decipher the label on a milk carton, let alone a novel. I read a Dutch translation of the book. This translation follows the French spelling for the names of places and people strictly. I suspect the English version does not, Segu is spelled Ségou in my copy for instance. I don't have an English copy to check so I may get a couple of them wrong. It should still be recognizable.

The novel opens in the year 1797, on the day the first white explorer, the Scotsman Mungo Park is seen on the banks of the Joliba (Niger) river near Segu. This herald of change causes great excitement in the city, not in the least in the household of Dousika Traoré. Dousika is one of the most influential Bambara noblemen and rules of the huge household comprising of his own family, he has several wives and some twenty children, as well as those of his brothers and he many slaves that work the land he owns. Park's appearance marks change and for Dousika that change comes quite rapidly. That afternoon the first cracks in his position at the court of Segu's ruler, Monzon Diarra, begin to show. Soon he is completely out of grace. The fetish priests are summoned to explain this certain turn in Dousika's fortune and it appears his bad luck is not over yet. According to the family's priest four of Dousika's sons should be considered hostage of the gods, four lives influenced by their unpredictable will, their descendants scattered across the world.

The first is Tiékoro, Dousika's eldest son. The call of the Islam, a religion that is slowly penetrating the Sahel has reached his ears and turns him into a deeply religious man. Unfortunately he is also horny as a toad, and his new religion clashes not only with his traditional family beliefs but also with his own views on sexuality. Sira, the younger half-brother of Tiékoro is sent along with him as Tiékoro leaves for Tombouctou to study the Islam. Sira was born to a slave girl who later committed suicide by jumping into a well. His mother's sin as well his slave heritage make him feel inferior to his brother Tiékoro. A feeling that is only confirmed when Tiékoro's new teacher welcomes his brother but sends Sira on his way.

The third son the gods have claimed is Naba. As a boy he looks up to his brother Tiékoro and when he leaves for Tombouctou, Naba transfers his affection to his half-brother Tiéfolo. Tiéfolo is one of the great hunters of Segu and Naba joins him on many hunting trips. Tiéfolo gets overconfident though, he takes a number of young hunters out on a lion hunt, disobeying their elders and priests. The hunt turns into a disaster when Naba is taken by slave hunters. Naba ends up in Gorée and is later shipped off to Brazil.

Malobali is the fourth hostage. He is a beautiful boy and the most spoiled of Dousika's sons. Until the return of Tiékoro that is. This new holy man in the family restores a lot of the prestige the family had lost after Dousika's fall and he takes all the attention of Malobali's admirers. What's worse, he intends to send Malobali off to a school in Djenné to study the Islam. Malobali does not intend to obey Tiékoro and makes a run for it. He ends up a soldier in the army of the Ashanti empire and is the first of the family to encounter the British.

Segu is not an easy book to read. The author introduces a lot of characters and uses a great number of point of views. You have to keep in mind that the city is the true main character and that Condé uses her characters to show us the various influences on the city. This clearly goes at the expense of the depth of some characters. There isn't a single on that offers the reader an anchor though out the book. Condé also assumes a certain level of knowledge of the history of Africa, colonialism and slavery. There is an appendix in the back of the book (in my copy at least) to help the reader along and she frequently comments on the history of various places in the book but it reads a bit smoother if you have the general background. The history of Mali is not part of the history curriculum in any school I ever attended so you have quite enough on your plate as it is.

Another point that will turn some readers of is that is ends quite abruptly. Keeping in mind that the history of Segu is the star of the show, this makes sense. The Bambara empire is subjugated by the Islamic expansion of Umar Tall, their independence is at an end in 1861. End of a chapter in history. It does however leave the reader with a number of loose story lines with various characters. Condé picks the story of these characters up in the sequel Children of Segu, which covers the period from 1860 to the French colonize the region around 1890. I get to feeling that these weren't meant to be two books to begin with. Reading these two books in one go makes more sense.

What really appealed to me in this novel is than Condé succeeds in showing us the events that influence Segu though African, or maybe I should say Bambara, eyes. Through many incidents throughout the book the proud Traoré show their love for the city and the complete lack of understanding for the restrictions imposed by foreign religions such as the Islam and various Christian beliefs. Why the white peoples have suddenly abolished the slave trade or why the colour of their skin makes them superior in their own eyes is beyond them. Segu is changing but change is slow and sometimes only skin deep.

Condé creates a story on an epic scale in this novel. Many of the developments she so accurately describes are felt in other parts of Africa as well. The story is not new but her choice of setting and characters as well as her profound knowledge of the history of the region as well as that of slavery make this book unique. The history of 19th century Africa is not a happy one. It is not a page in history the colonial powers can be proud of. If you are willing the set aside cultural preconceptions Condé will shed new light on it though. The African view on those events is often underexposed. Condé manages to let it shine in this novel and that is the real strength of this book.

Kushiel's Dart is Jacqueline Carey’s highly successful debut and the first instalment of a trilogy that chronicles the exploits of Phèdre nó Delaunay - exquisite courtesan, talented spy and god-touched masochist. The book received the 2002 Locus Award for Best First Novel, and it established Carey as one of the new and innovative talents within the fantasy genre.

Kushiel's Dart is first and foremost the story of Phèdre, who enters the world graced with an ill-luck name and a flaw in her beauty; a mote of scarlet in one of her dark eyes. She is sold into indentured service at a very young age, and when the enigmatic nobleman Anafiel Delaunay buys her service, he also names what the scarlet fleck in Phèdre’s gaze denotes: Kushiel’s Dart. Phédre is not merely an unlucky child of flawed beauty; she is an anguisette, chosen by the gods to experience pain and pleasure as one.

Reared in the Court of the Night-Blooming Flowers, an exclusive district of sacred prostitution, Phèdre enters the household of Delaunay at the age of ten, where she together with her foster-brother Alcuin is instructed in the arts of love and the skills of languages as well as the arts of covertcy. She and Alcuin are meant to serve as both courtesans and spies at the behest of their master, who is deeply embroiled in the political intrigues that surrounds the throne of Terre d’Ange.

Employed as a courtesan in order to spy on her high and mighty patrons, Phrèdre stumbles on a plot that threatens not only the throne of Terre d’Ange, but also the land and the people itself. Along with her bodyguard Joscelin, a celibate warrior-priest, Phèdre is betrayed into slavery among the barbarian and war-like Skaldi. Here, she must use all her talents, both of the bedchamber and of the intellect, in order to escape and warn her beloved country of an impending invasion and expose treachery hidden at the heart of the d’Angeline court.

Carey spins an elegant and exciting tale where the unravelling of deeply laid conspiracies is well-balanced with action and character development. Kushiel's Dart is not only peopled with a truly wonderful heroine, but also with some great secondary characters: Joscelin, the one-man Cassiline fighting machine; Phèdre’s childhood friend, the irrepressible Tsingano Hyacinthe and last but not least Melisande Shahrizai, a beautiful and alluring noblewoman of Kushiel’s line, subtle and very dangerous.

Kushiel's Dart is a first person narrative, which is one of the strengths of the novel since it provides the heroine with a compelling and persuasive voice, where Carey seamlessly blends the hindsight of an older and more mature Phèdre with the depiction of her youth and emotional development. Through the course of the story, the reader intimately follows her emotional development from an impetuous young girl revelling in her sensuality to a young woman who has to make difficult choices and endure loss and sorrow with dignity and compassion. The effect of the first person POV is one of strong psychological characterization in relation to Phèdre, but less so with other characters since every observation is filtered through Phèdre’s voice, which the reader is invited to identify with exclusively.

In many respects it is not Phèdre but Joscelin who undergoes the greatest change throughout the narrative as he develops from a rather arrogant and prudish boy with a tendency for the dramatic to a man that can accept both love and laughter as well as take responsibility for his actions and choices. His devotion to Phèdre puts him through a lot of trials and tribulations, but I must admit that I found him most engaging when he is posing as a Mendacant, a travelling story-teller since where the reader glimpses a wholly different side to him apart from his awesome fighting abilities and his rather dramatic temperament.

It is also a very beautifully written book. Carey manages to give the language a slightly archaic “feel” without belabouring the point. Rather, she cleverly uses interjections and carefully spaced repetitions that endow Phèdre’s narrative voice with the rhythms and cadences of a masterful story-teller:

As seen in the excerpt above, Carey’s prose is also littered with an abundance of sensual similes and metaphor, which gives the story a lush and visual “feel”, making it a pleasure to read.

Kushiel's Dart is set in a world both familiar and strange. The European continent is the obvious reference point for Carey’s world-building as she mixes loans from many different cultures and historical epochs into a recognizable yet strange and fascinating world. Renaissance France, Celtic Britain and the Old Norse cultures of Scandinavia all serve as distinctive, individual threads that Carey weaves skilfully together into a tapestry of vivid beauty. As with all forms of alternate history/historical fantasy, the depth and resonance of Carey’s constructed world is to some degree dependant on the reader’s own horizon of knowledge. Her world-building doesn’t stop at the level of surface resemblance; she actually incorporates pieces of European history beneath the skin of the story for the discerning reader to discover. The use of place names is a good example since she often uses names loaned or constructed from actual history. Thus Alba is the ancient Celtic name for the British Isles, while Skaldia is named after a specific poetic tradition in Old Norse literature. For me, one of the pleasures of reading Carey’s Kushiel books is the pleasure of recognizing the historical roots of the different elements of Phèdre’s world.

One of the most original aspects of Kushiel's Dart is the fact that Carey constructs a revisionist Judo-Christian theology as an integral part of the world-building. Inspired by Biblical books of Apocrypha as well as Jewish legend and folklore, Carey crafts a very interesting myth of creation for Phèdre’s homeland, Terre d’Ange (“Land of Angels”), centred on a deity (Elua) that symbolizes the marriage between earth and heaven and a race of men begotten by angels:

Carey builds on Biblical apocrypha, particularly the stories of rebel angels who begets children on human women and who betrays divine secrets to the race of mankind. Her unique creation of Elua, child of the union of the chthonic with the celestial, allows her to explore the idea of love as the most powerful and important of divine attributes. The central tenet of D’Angeline religion is simple: Love as thou wilt. Consensuality is a scared tenet, wherefore rape is not just a crime in Terre d’Ange, but heresy! This idea also allows her to explore the different aspects of the sexual in an interesting manner. In Terre d’Ange, sexuality is an integral aspect of the divine, embodied in the goddess Naamah. Prostitution (the Service of Naamah) is an integral part of the religious system, and the act of love itself is seen as a form of prayer. As institutions of the sacred prostitution of Naaham’s Service, the Thirteen Houses of the Night Court highlights different aspects of sexual love; joy, passion, solace, etc. Since her heroine is consecrated as a Servant of Naamah, Carey has included a few graphic sex scenes in her novel, but they are quite tastefully done and always integral to the plot.

Through Phèdre, Carey explores different forms of love; the love between siblings and friends, the love for the mentor, tinged with romantic love, sexual and romantic love, etc. One form, however, predominates, namely the love of country – an aspect that is curiously enough often is overlooked in the reception of Carey’s work. The people of Terre d’Ange are bound to their home by both love and blood as they are the descendants of their own deities, Elua and his angelic companions. Carey highlights this love of country to a discreet and lyrical effect by way of a repeated catch-phrase: The bee is in the lavender /The honey fills the comb, a verse from “The Exile’s Lament”, a fictional piece of D’Angeline poetry.

Another original aspect of Kushiel's Dart is Carey’s decision to feature an openly masochistic heroine. Carey has pointed out that one of her aims with the novel was to highlight and subvert some of the sexist clichés inherent in not only the fantasy genre, but in popular culture at large.
By making Phèdre’s sexual nature play such a prominent part in the story, Carey is able to tap into both the subtext of eroticized violence as well as the time-worn trope of the-woman-as-victim, inverting these aspects in order to explore questions of strength and weakness, cruelty and compassion and the ways that power can play out between individuals. All of these aspects are in one way or another present in the complex relationship between Phèdre and the villain Melisande:

Theirs is a relationship of dominance and submission, of coercion and resistance as well as an almost compulsive attraction. As an anguisette, Phèdre is not only the victim of Kushiel’s harsh love; she is also his weapon, cast against the subtle machinations of Melisande Shahrizai, scion of Kushiel’s bloodline. Phèdre pitches her wit and will against her opponent, but at the same time her very nature makes her vulnerable to Melisande. In a way, they are perfectly matched, Phèdre’s masochism to Melisande’s sadism, but what I find so interesting about that relationship is the fact that Phèdre, despite her god-touched nature, is able to walk her own path and that she struggles to do so.

All in all, I find that Jacqueline Carey’s first novel is a wonderful and almost hypnotic reading experience. It is, as said, a beautifully written and well constructed story, and I haven’t found much to criticize. However, it does feel like Kushiel's Dart is two books pressed into one volume. The first part of the book can perhaps best be characterized as a coming-of-age tale where Phèdre’s education and political intrigue plays the dominant part, while the second part of the book is more like a classic quest-narrative developing into a travelogue as Phèdre and Joscelin struggles to escape slavery in Skaldia and later travels on to the isle of Alba. This is, however, a minor criticism of a most impressive debut. Phèdre and her world made a huge impact on me when I first read Kushiel's Dart and it continues to exert its influence on my imagination. Carey manages to explore some very interesting issues about love, in all its form, as an attribute of the divine, about suffering and compassion as well as will and desire in the power plays that people engages in. She offers up an exciting story with a compelling heroine that also has something to say about the human condition that transcends genre.

Barth Anderson’s second novel, The Magician and The Fool, is marketed as a thriller in the DaVinci Code mode, with the hidden history behind the Tarot being the focus. Indeed, the novel is fast-paced and full of spectacular deaths, chases, and secret societies. But Anderson flips the script of the traditional thriller, and creates something much richer and more mysterious.

Jeremiah Rosemont is an former art historian who has left his tenure track career to hide out in South American, living the carefree existence of a nomad. Part of his leaving academia has to do with his frequent run-ins with his former friend John C. Miles, a whacked out Timothy Leary type who believes in the mystical properties of the tarot and its occult origins. In the past, Miles and Rosemont were a kind of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid team of tarot readers in Austin, at a punk-hippie club called the Circus of the Infinite Wow. Both had considerable power in divination, but where Rosemont didn’t truly believe in his prophecies, Miles clearly did. When Rosemont became a respectable academic, Miles made it his mission to heckle Rosemont wherever he made a presentation. The final insult came when Rosemont gave a career-building talk, one that would have led to a prestigious position, and Miles embarrassingly appearred in the audience, ruining his chances. Rosemont is in Nicaragua when he receives a mysterious summons to Rome, accompanied by an airline ticket. Upon his arrival, he is plunged head-first into a whirlwind conspiracy, having to do with authenticating a series of paintings that may be the basis for the modern tarot deck. Within hours, he witnesses a horrific murder and experiences strange phenomena, such as sudden shifts place and odd visions.

In Minneapolis, a homeless man known only as Boy King begins to have visions of his own. Boy King is a tarot reader who lives in an abandoned warehouse, hiding from someone—or something. Boy King is a broken man, and at first, it is unclear whether the complex patterns by which he lives his life are real or a projection of his psychosis. He is a sorcerer of sorts, surrounding himself with protective talismans and ghosts. When we meet him, he has made a conscious effort not run anymore, and face his destiny, whatever it may entail. Boy King’s sections of the novel are slightly more mystical than the Rosemont sections. They are told in a feverish prose style that emulates the enigmatic nature of tarot readings.

Back in Rome, Rosemont—“the fool”—learns of the occult beginnings of the tarot tradition, which predates the cards themselves. It goes back to ur-Eygptian gods, includes the Fall of Troy, and the ancient fight between Romulus and Remus. He learns these chunks of secret history while on the run from two sinister figures who are searching (and murdering) for the mysterious paintings—DiTrafana and Transom.

The connection between Rosemont and Boy King, and the fate of the paintings makes for suspenseful reading. The resultant novel, though, is less like a commercial thriller than it is like ‘secret history’ fantasies of Elizabeth Hand, like Waking the Moon and Mortal Love. Like Hand’s work, Anderson’s supernatural occurrences aren’t just pyrotechnic window dressing. They are an exploration of the effect myth has on the modern world. Anderson uses leitmotifs through his work—the image of brothers echoes through out the novel, and Miles/Rosemont have a rather more complicated relationship that’s hinted at. At one point, the openly gay Rosemont falls in love Miles. Creatures of myth wander through the streets of Madison, WI, Rome and Minneapolis in both hidden and overt forms. The miasma of elder gods haunts the text. The magic system is wonderfully perplexing. It involves pockets of time, sudden shifts in locale and states of consciousness, and unexplained but intriguing terminology. The tricks that the author-magician plays are persuasive, even if they are trippy and open-ended.

In one chilling scene, Rosemont sees a horrible vision in a mirror:

“A gathering of many colored planes representing the angles and curves of his face stared back at him. The face in the mirror, though, was not Rosemont’s, not remotely…One moment his reflection looked reptilian or birdlike, but then, as the face turned, it seemed suddenly simian, and then the polychromatic mosaic of planes and surfaces frowned into a yawning circle of flower petals, before the light in the bathroom shifted…”

At the same time, Anderson adds humorous juxtapositions. One of the key scenes occurs in a Mexican chain restaurant, referred to as ‘the Chi Chi’s of the Damned.’

The Magician and the Fool is thoroughly enjoyable, and imbued with a rich sense of wonder. What starts out as a juggernaut thriller subtly and skillfully turns into study of magic in the modern world.

With A Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier achieved a measure of mainstream literary success. In spite of this, he stalwartly considers himself a genre author. In fact, he has been announced as the guest editor of the 2009 edition Best American Fantasy. It’s a refreshing change of pace from authors who freely take tropes from genre fiction and thumb their noses at genre (I’m looking at you, Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson). Brockmeier’s fiction definitely straddles the line; his fabulations are openly metaphors and allegories; but at the same time, they cannot be ignored and dismissed as dream sequences and alternate states of mind of the characters. The two Brockmeier fictions I read occur in contemporary ‘real’ world; when the fantastic element intrudes, the focus still tends to be on the characters. In short, Brockmeier creates a kind of ‘mundane’ fantasy fiction (to borrow a phrase from Geoff Ryman, the leader of ‘mundane’ science fiction movement). Think of the work of Haruki Murakami, or perhaps, Jonathan Carroll.

His 2003 novel, The Truth About Celia, has a metafictional frame device. The text is authored by Christopher Brooks, a fantasy novelist. One day, while showing his historical landmark house to a tourist couple, his seven year old daughter Celia vanishes. The resulting mosaic novel is Brooks’ way of dealing with the grief and horror. As he isolates himself and his marriage dissolves, he creates alternative realities in which Celia exists, as a teenager or a single mother with a missing past or as a child who has disappeared into another world. These stories alternate with real life events, such as his wife Janet’s psychotic breakdown in a movie theater, or an overview of the small town when a memorial service is held for Celia. Poignant moments abound in Brockmeier’s direct, crystalline prose.

The opening section, simply entitled, ‘March 15, 1997’ tells the story of Celia’s supposed abduction from her point of view, in childlike, glimmering prose. It’s ominous and magical at once. It ends on an unsettlingly enigmatic note. ‘The Green Children’ tells the story of the sudden appearance of two strange, green-skinned children in a fantasy world. The narrator—a stand-in for Brooks—is a giant man who ferries people back and forth over a treacherous river. The green-skinned girl piques his curiosity; the resonances of the text come from the over-arching frame story. ‘The Ghost of Travis Whorley’ follows 14-year old Celia and her relationship with a mysterious boy. It’s a strange hybrid story, part John Cheever suburbia, part gothic ghost story. In the real world, ‘The Telephone’ has Brooks speaking his missing daughter through a toy phone, as his wife Janet strays into an affair. Each of these stories could be in either The New Yorker or in a fantasy anthology. Brockmeier plays a dangerous fictional game; one misstep, and the stories are too precious or clever for their own good. But his sure hand for character and buoyant, evanescent prose never falters.

Brockmeier’s fiction is ‘post-genre.’ Genre fiction informs the novel, in non overt ways. There’s a reference to J.G. Ballard, and the book has a tricky structure that gives a hint of Gene Wolfe’s elaborately layered work. He has create an elegiac meditation on grief out of scraps of fiction. In a way, it reminds me of Michael Cunningham’s similar experiment of thematically linked novellas, Specimen Days. Brockmeier has a new collection of short stories out, The View From the Seventh Layer. I look forward to exploring his unique voice.

A nameless modern woman steps outside of her home and finds a severed finger on doorstep. Naturally curious, she picks it up. A small grey spider climbs on her shoulder, bites her ear, and she finds herself taken to the Hedge, a timeless, enchanted dimension inhabited by fairytale creatures and talking animals: moths, grasshoppers, and birds along with more traditional fairies. She's to be the bride of the Winter King, who is the titular spider. He needs to marry and ultimately sacrifice a mortal woman to secure his reign. Paralyzed by the spider’s poison, she is the unwitting participant of this grisly ceremony, until she is kidnapped by the Prince of Spider's ne'er do well brother, The Hunter. But not before her hand is lopped off.

At the same time, Richard Dadd in 19th Century England alternates between his life as a mad painter and as the servant of the Hedge's wicked and lovely fairy doyenne known as the Beloved. In his guise as her consort, he wields an axe of iron and does her bidding. Dadd struggles between the two worlds, not certain which one is real. His story is a tragic one, and has genuine poignancy.

The various denizens of the Hedge align themselves with different factions—one seeking to extend the Prince of Spider's unnatural reign, another wishing change—as the missing Hunter and Bride wander through the Hedge and beyond.

If the plot sounds a wee bit madcap, its telling is completely moon-mad. Ms. Gallagher's fairyland is a tricky place, with its own logic. The Hedge is a place of savage whimsy, a portmanteau world that is part Beatrix Potter on opium part Lewis Carroll at his most absurd. Speaking ladybirds and butterflies exist alongside walking corpses and murderous dolls. The Bride witnesses everything through her fevered haze and tries to make sense as she realizes that she is pawn in incomprehensible war.

Ms. Gallagher writes with a poetic exuberance. She throws the reader in the middle of her kaleidoscopic landscape and doesn't pause to explain. This dizzying approach contributes to the sheer alien quality of the Hedge. Many of her point of view characters aren’t human—her evocation of the cold motivations of fairy creatures is highly reminiscent of Sylvia Townsend Warner's brilliant short story collection Kingdoms of Elfin. The two human characters—Richard and the Bride—are mad and fevered. Ms. Gallagher changes tones and scenes with a real facility. For instance, the repartee between the Bride and the Hunter is rip-roaringly funny, and there are moments of slapstick in the book. These mesh well with scenes of unsparing horror—Ms. Gallagher doesn't skimp on the blood letting.

The Spider's Bride is an accomplished first novel. It is quite unlike anything out there—a poetic, comedic, and horrific tale with a magic all its own. Ms. Gallagher turns the idyllic British fairyland of Andrew Lang and Charles Perrault on its head. I look forward to what she’ll do next.

In Last Dragon, J.M. McDermott strips the fat from the bones of epic quest-driven fantasy, then dresses up the resulting skeleton of story in layer upon layer of fragmented and elliptical narrative. The fit of this literary garb on the somewhat typical fantasy understory isn't perfect; indeed, when the reading is done we may feel that the clothes have no emperor -- or rather, empress, as we shall see. But the sheer pleasure the novel infuses the process of reading with, the way it trusts readers to engage deeply and carefully, makes Last Dragon a book that may be equally enjoyable to epic fantasy fans looking for something different and challenging, and to readers who enjoy challenges and who had all but given up on epic fantasy's ability to provide them.

In the most immediate layer of McDermott's multilayered story, elderly Empress Zhan of the Alamedan Empire lies on her deathbed, writing (and by the end, dictating) her memories as letters to her exiled lover Esumi. This layer of memories, of the role of then-teenage Zhan and her companions in the empire's birth decades previous, form the bulk of the novel. And behind Zhan's tale, in rumor, inference and overheard snatches of conversation, is the story of one of Zhan's companions: Adel, daughter by birth and by marriage to the dragon-slaying proconsuls of the city-state of Proliux; paladin in service to the Last Dragon of Rhianna, enemy of Proliux; now returned to Proliux after Rhianna's conquest by the mercenaries of Proliux and the dragon's death. When young Zhan and her uncle Seth, newly-minted village shaman, travel from their village far in the unmapped North to Proliux on the trail of a murderer, it is their chance meeting with Adel that sets in motion the rise of a world empire and Zhan's rise as its empress -- fueled by Adel's recognition that Zhan and Seth's purpose may align with her own.

 

This story in all its layers we must piece together from a highly fragmented narrative. The age and ill health of Empress Zhan send her thoughts skittering across time and place: Zhan's recounting of meeting Adel for the first time triggers an earlier memory of Zhan meeting her sensei; remembering a conversation between Seth and his lover Korinyes triggers a memory of Zhan's own lover Esumi. McDermott uses these free associations to make Last Dragon wonderfully organic and human, while still maintaining a controlled narrative thrust by manipulating our need to make Story out of the fragments. Each memory fragment, each unit of story, is brief, ranging from a few lines to a few pages. By varying the length, the subject matter, and the density of each of these units, like the panel arrangements of a comic book, McDermott brings to the surface the rhythm and pacing found in all good writing. Brief fragments become capable of remarkable emotional power, as when Zhan breaks off her memory of the city of Proliux to write, starkly on a page of its own:

 

And we understand that this may refer equally to both Zhan's past and to her present circumstances.

Last Dragon relies on the reader to not only put the pieces of story together, but to fill in often crucial missing pieces. Very little is baldly stated. The novel assumes that we know -- Esumi as a citizen of his world, we as readers of epic fantasy -- what it is to stop at an inn, walk in a medieval city, travel over a mountain pass, to enter a dragon's cave. These details of setting are skimmed over. Characterization is oblique, densely conveyed via word and gesture, and must be unpacked, deciphered. This deciphering is crucial because Zhan is not -- should not be -- certain about several aspects of her account. In these cases, Zhan recounts the evidence she possesses, and allows us to draw our own conclusions based on what understanding we have gleaned of her companions.

With this uncertainty of story, as well as the novel's fragmentation, its use of a secondary point of view, and with its abiding sense of regret, Last Dragon marks itself as belonging to that millennial class of fiction that deconstructs the category epic fantasy that flooded bookstore shelves in the last decades of the previous century. What's unique about Last Dragon is that it deconstructs not through realism, recursion, or irony, but by taking the familiar epic mode seriously as literature, showing how bloated and unfantastic it has become by reducing it via literary technique to the bare essentials. Indeed the book displays a post-modern self-consciousness of what it is doing.

 

Like most genre deconstructions, what Last Dragon does not do is construct anything truly new in place of the deconstructed. There is at times a disconnect between the newness of the post-modern literary techniques used and the relatively straightforward, normalized fantasy story that they conceal. The techniques promise a challenge; the familiarity of the story means that the gaps and uncertainties can be filled with our pre-existing knowledge of epic fantasy tropes, without requiring us to imagine much of anything new. The challenge of the book is thus closer to the procedural, fill-in-the-blanks challenge of a game like sudoku than the subversive challenge to the imagination that fantasy can imbue Story with. Last Dragon's story, like most generic fantasy, still has Justice as its central motif with dramatic parameters along a sliding scale of duty and pragmatism; its journey is still described by a roadmap of fidelity and infidelities (not just marital); the conflict is still one of martial conquest and still between nations treated largely as monocultures, a people tempered by constant conflict and the natural environment versus a more urban techno-economic nation grown overconfident by its conquests; nobles are still universally oily, plotting politicians; the orphan teen does still rise (all unwitting) to a position of authority; the people with the darkest skin still do organize themselves into tribes associated with animals and the pale-skinned people do still conquer the world (although to be fair, McDermott does some interesting things with race: it is the white-skinned people who are the "barbarians," the brown-skinned the "civilized" -- one darker-skinned character looks with pity on pale-skinned Zhan, thinking her a victim of a deformity).

Most of the time, McDermott succeeds in his balancing act of using enough technique to camouflage yet not so much that the act of reading feels artificial. When he falters -- particularly towards the book's end when several new coats of technique are rapidly slapped on -- the book feels too much like an exercise in just how obfuscated the standard fantasy story can be made. The unreliability of Zhan's narration is established by no fewer than nine different factors in the text: from her fading memory; to a plant the companions burned for warmth that was known to cause odd "demon dreams"; to the belief in the Southern lands that you become that which you kill. Depending on how we read the novel through these filters of uncertainty, the story we search for and in our searching create -- the who-did-what-and-for-what-reasons -- may take one of several forms (McDermott signals the author's preferred interpretation through the book's title). Yet given the choice between these familiar fantasy variants, it doesn't much matter what the real story is: it is the uncertainty of what the story is that is thought-provoking, not the story itself.

If its story does not linger in the mind for all the reasons we might hope, the written form of Last Dragon certainly brings pleasure to the act of reading for all the right reasons. Its call for our participation in assembling a story from the novel's brief fragments and long silences reminds us why we read, makes plain the interactivity that is at the heart of reading's entertainment. Last Dragon literalizes our impulse to Story, to construct narratives out of our memories and circumstances. It is an easy book to enjoy because there's so little else like it, because its flaws are largely de rigueur in fantasy while its many good qualities are so uncommon. McDermott may not precisely breathe new life into old bones, but he does animate epic fantasy into a capable golem that will hold the light for us so long as we have the pages open, that we may read.

-- Matt Denault

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 Mist: the stubborn struggle for dignity -- and control -- of those faced with predestination; the burden on those who might know the future; a sly metafiction combined with the overarching, God-like consciousness of the writer over their characters, the dreamer over the dreamed.

Relying on dreams as a storytelling device can feel clichéd, but this is where Živković shows his mastery. The dream-nature of the stories is stated up-front: it is not used as a surprise, but as another layer, a symbol of fate. That Živković is able to generate such pathos for characters that we know are figments (even more than all fictional characters are) is a testament to his skill as a writer.

 

Displaying or interrogating complex concerns such as fate from multiple angles is a core literary use of the mosaic novel form; Živković does this in the four remaining stories via a variety of situations, points of view, and perspectives. We have (in "Hole in the Wall") a tale of a male psychologist's meeting with a suicidal young woman who claims to be able to see, and choose, the future; a short vignette ("Geese in the Mist") of a woman's encounter on a ski-lift with a man who claims her choice of ski run may have significant, if not dangerous, consequences for the world; we have, inevitably in such a volume, the tale of a female fortuneteller ("Line on the Palm"), aged and jaded, who is hired by a man sure he is fated to imminently die.

And we have "Alarm Clock on the Night Table," the longest story in Steps Through the Mist and a showcase for the style of symbolism that Živković relishes. An elderly woman, whose life for all intents and purposes ended with a choice made long ago, wakes to discover that her alarm clock has stopped during the night. The woman, Miss Margarita, does not need the clock to tell time nor the alarm to wake up, but she has come to need the ticking of the clock to fall asleep. The neighborhood watchmaker is able to repair the alarm clock to this degree -- it will tick, but no longer tell time -- but no further. The questions to be asked seem clear, but then we remember: this story, and Miss Margarita, are the dream of Miss Emily the teacher, one in a collection of Russian Matryoshka doll-like layers of story. Suddenly the questions to be asked come into question themselves. What do the dreams mean to the dreamers, and how do they reflect the larger story?

Those looking for clarity of meaning will likely struggle with Steps Through the Mist, even more than in Živković's previous mosaics. There is a deceptive simplicity to Živković's characteristic stark settings, his ordinary if rather neurotic characters, and his elegantly mannered prose (translated impeccably as usual by Alice Copple-Tošić). We notice trends and patterns in the stories, how all those who encounter the mist of the book's title, out of which knowledge of the future emerges, are women; ironic given women's historic struggle to control their own fate. We notice the descriptive focus on eyes, on seeing. We notice that the age of the mist-seers increases in each story, and we notice the corresponding shifts in how they view fate. We notice the interplay of the fabulous and the scientific, nods to chaos theory's "butterfly effect," and to the roles of observation and choice in quantum physics. Yet despite the patterns and the scientific references Živković's works are to be felt more than known, as the stories themselves often remind us. One judges these mosaics not by how directly they address their concern, but by how completely they encompass it. (And it is here that Steps feels somewhat slighter than most of Živković's other mosaic novels. Bluntly: there are not enough stories.)

Steps Through the Mist is perhaps not the best introduction to Živković's oeuvre, although it could certainly serve. Ideally though it would best be read after sampling some of Živković's earlier mosaics, both because of the variance its front-loaded form represents, and because in tone it bridges those earlier mosaics -- which often revolve around a certain natural order to the universe, even if it is unknowable to humanity -- with the author's later works that tend to be darker, more absurdist and abstract in their focus on human foibles.

Earlier I suggested Zoran Živković as a master fantasist. We know Živković is a true fantasist because his works use symbols and impossibilities to explore those human concerns that cannot be directly addressed by language. We know Živković is a master because his work is instantly recognizable as his own even as he varies and refines the forms of his work, as he does here; we know it because he makes common themes -- like fate -- his own; and we know it (now) because we now know a lesser work from Živković is still among the better novels we're likely to encounter in any given year. In the same way a puzzle with fewer pieces can feel less satisfying to complete, in reading the mosaic of Steps Through the Mist, especially initially, we are conscious that there seems a bit less to it than in Živković's best work. And yet when the finished picture is considered, we realize that in completing the puzzle we have in fact solved nothing: we have reached a beginning, not the end. The puzzle has three dimensions, and Živković has woven complex layers of meaning that linger in the mind long after reading.

-- Matt Denault

“One night, I dreamt that trapped cries of ecstasy were turning to water between the floors, staining my ceiling with the shape of a naked woman. I woke and turned on the light, but couldn’t make out anything from the scattered bruises of damp and the cracks in the wood-chip wallpaper. As I was a bout to drift back into sleep, I heard a faint stirring and a dull moan, then a long shuddering wail. I curled into a fetal position as my crotch spasmed uncontrollably, impregnating the dark shape of my dream….” (The Bootleg Heart)

Mostly set in England’s industrial north, The Lost District Joel Lane’s second collection of short stories uses bleak, unrelenting cityscapes to explore the human condition. The burnt out factories, the grey weather and the depressed economy are ever-present characters in his tales. The cover of the edition, by J.K. Potter, is an apt representation of the imagery within. Smoking grey chimneys, and a sepia-tinged image of an emaciated person’s hand that looks like it’s begging or asking for help. The landscape mirrors the souls that prowl through these tales.

The first thing you notice about a Lane story is that they are full of description. The narratives are dense and layered, mostly unbroken by dialogue. The work of Thomas Ligotti comes to mind—the textuality of the page and the insularity of the imagery are major weapons in the author’s arsenal. The stories also move at a leisurely pace, and linger over descriptions. The action is slow and deliberately torturous. The supernatural content in the story is often implicit in the establishment of mood rather than any explicit action. What action that does happen occurs within the character’s mind, as much as it occurs in the physical world. Lane’s characters come from a variety of milieus; all lead lives of “quiet desperation,” to coin a phrase.

Lee, the protagonist in “Pain Barrier,” is visiting a gay bar, aimlessly looking for sex in a soulless city. He meets Tony, who he recognizes from an avant-garde fetish film. The two of them go to the abandoned house where Tony is squatting, and have sex in a decaying room. The sex scene is explicit but tender, and filled with tension, as Lee recalls disturbing images from the film that Tony appeared in. What threatens to become a gorefest , a la Dennis Cooper, is a meditation on loneliness.

This dark slice-of-life form reappears in “Scratch,” a story about a young man in a Council Estate who befriends a stray cat. The story follows the narrator through the downward spiral of his life: running away from home, stormy relationship with his girlfriend, and living on the dole. The cat Sara is the one constant in his life, until she is killed by hooligans. Lane brilliantly uses cat behavior as a philosophical symbol of human nature:

“People say there’s no such thing as a domestic cat, and it’s true. Females in particular. Whatever you feed them, they still hunt. When they bring you something they’ve killed , it’s not a gift. It’s a lesson. They’re trying to train you, like you’re a kitten…A cat’s world is full of territories, friends and enemies, safe roads and dangerous roads. Patterns.” (Scratch)

The outright horror tale here, “Among the Dead,” is an ironic allegory about vampirism. Corporate culture and the culture of ghouls are compared/contrasted with a skill that doesn’t beat you over the head.

Most of these stories are short, but they are heavy pieces. Like Ligotti, Lane is a writer’s writer. It’s as much about craft as it is about story. For fans of cerebral horror, vectored in the direction of Kafka, The Lost District is an exquisite gem.

The pool is deep; there is no shallow end.

With these words Brett Alexander Savory begins the climax to his second novel. That single line is as an appropriate a description of the novel as you will find. It’s an unsettling journey from the carnival that opens the story to the world of The Freekshow that Michael journeys to in his dreams.

In and Down is, on the surface at least, the story of two brothers, Michael and Stephen. But as Savory takes you in to the narrative and down to the depths of Michael’s mind it becomes much, much more.

After the disappearance of their mother, Michael and Stephen are living with their father. A father who doesn’t look at his son the way a father should. Despite Michael’s near-drowning the man can’t help but put in a pool behind their new home. Michael knows he will die in that pool. But then Stephen doesn’t look at his brother the way a brother should either, and on one occasion made Michael drink weed killer.

While the boys stay at their uncle’s house, Michael begins to dream of a man in a green suit and top hat. A man who calls him Mr. Head, a man who Michael will name Hob. Hob is Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter. Alan Moore’s Joker. The sinister ringleader of The Freekshow. And a man who looks a little like Michael’s father.

After the boys return from their uncle