Midnight Never Come is a historical fantasy, set in Elizabethan England and seasoned with a goodly portion of faerie lore. It is the third fantasy novel from the hand of Marie Brennan (pen name of Bryn Neuenschwander) and her first foray into this particular subgenre of fantasy and historical fiction.

England 1590. Queen Elizabeth is at the height of her power – she reigns supreme as the Virgin Queen, the threat of the Spanish armada has been averted, and the literary and dramatic arts are flourishing. Like so many other Renaissance courts, Elizabeth’s court is not only place of ostentatious display but also a tangled web of political intrigue and aristocratic patronage. Into these dangerous waters enters Michael Deven, a young gentleman of no fortune, as he is enrolled in the Queen’s elite bodyguard, The Gentlemen Pensioners. With ambitions of advancement Michael seeks an aristocratic patron and thus becomes embroiled in the covert operations of Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s Spymaster. Walsingham has long suspected the presence of a “hidden” player in English politics and he chooses Michael to flush him or her out in the open. This assignment takes him into dangerous waters and radically revaluates his perception of the world. For Elizabeth is not the only queen in England, she has a dark double – Invidiana, the Queen of Faerie and the ruler of the Onyx Court, the shadow court that exists beneath the streets of London as a dark mirror of Elizabeth’s royal court.

Invidiana established her sovereignty of Faerie at the same time as Elizabeth ascended to the throne of England, and since then fae and mortal politics have become dangerously and deeply intertwined, often through the faerie queen’s manipulations of both fae and mortal agents. One of these is the faerie Lady Lune, who is sent to monitor Sir Francis Walsingham. Out of favour with the mistress of the Onyx Court, Lune crosses the path of Michael Deven, and together they start unravelling the secrets of two sovereigns in the hope of finding the source of Invidana’s power and break it.

With Midnight Never Come Marie Brennan has composed a very well-structured and tightly plotted novel. The story is intriguing and I found its twists hard to predict thus increasing the suspense factor. Brennan also experiments a bit with the novel’s structure: The main narrative, which takes place in 1590 alternates between Lune’s and Michael Deven’s POV. However, the chronology is broken up as Brennan intersperses flashbacks that illuminate the extent of Invidiana’s interferences in mortal politics. Brennan has furthermore structured the narrative like a play; five acts with prologue and epilogue. Each act is introduced with a short chapter and these are perhaps the most experimental aspects of the novel. Written like as stream of consciousness of indeterminate POV, these sections contains important clues to main narrative. In effect, the novel as a whole creates a rather pleasing reading experience, puzzling out the different fragments of the plot.

The structure is one of the novels strong points. Another is the basic premise of the plot: the idea of Elizabeth and Invidiana as mirrors of each other. This idea of mirroring or doubling was actually quite prominent in Tudor thinking – a fact that Brennan, who holds a degree in anthropology from Harvard, must have come across during the large amount of research, which is necessary for a piece of historical fiction. The Tudor conception of kingship was in several instances, fx legal practice, formulated in terms of doubling, i.e. what the historian Ernst Kantorowicz dubbed “The King’s Two Bodies”, which crudely put, is the distinction between the office and person of the king or queen. The metaphor of the double was especially widespread during Elizabeth’s reign, seeping into the arts where the Virgin Queen was praised through thinly veiled alter egos in poems and plays. Edmund Spenser’s famous epic poem The Faerie Queen (1590-96) was in fact written as an allegory of praise for Elizabeth. In this poem, Gloriana, the Queen of Faerie, serves as on of several alter egos for the Virgin Queen.

As this very short historical overview suggests, Midnight Never Come rests on a very solid foundation of historical sensibility. Brennan has obviously done a lot of research (her research bibliography can be found at her website, www.swantower.com/marie) and for the most part he use of historical detail is for the most part impeccable. She gets her facts right, and besides a few heavy-handed instances (fx Walsingham engaging Deven in a Socratic dialogue about the intrigues surrounding Mary Queen of Scots by means of a chess analogy) manages to seamlessly work the historical exposition into the narrative. But what I find most impressive is the fact that Brennan has delved into the Elizabethan mindset itself for the basic premise of her story. She utilises ideas and element that were prominent in the historical period she portrays as supporting structure of the narrative. Throughout the novel, Invidiana functions as Elizabeth’s dark mirror on several different levels. As Elizabeth ages, Invidiana stays eternally young; mirroring the fact that throughout her long life Elizabeth was never portrayed as an ageing woman, in her portraits she was ever young. Invidiana is also Elizabeth dark double as regards politics and psychology as Brennan ascribes the crueler, capricious and ruthless aspects of Elizabethan politics to the shadow queen of the Onyx Court. Using Elizabeth and Invidiana as mirror images is, as mentioned earlier, one of my favourite aspects of the novel, but I can’t help to feel that Brennan didn’t exploit this facet enough. While the faerie queen has a palpable presence in the story, Queen Elizabeth is far more elusive. Though part of the story unfolds in a place that revolves around her person, Elizabeth is for the most part curiously absent from the tale. She skirts the periphery of the narrative, and I feel that Brennan would have been able to delve deeper into the aspect of doubling and mirroring if she had given Elizabeth herself more space in the story. As it is, Brennan's novel constructs an intriguing and complex set-up that sadly is never really filled out.

In many respects, Midnight Never Come can be likened to a teenage supermodel. Great bone structure, but no curves! Marie Brennan has laid a solid foundation of historical detail and built a great structure rooted in Elizabethan imagery, but she never really manages to fill her ornate edifice with life. Her prose is pedestrian at best and rather awkward when she attempts to work in period expression in the dialogue. The characters are mainly functional; shallow constructions that serves the plot but never really comes to life. As in the case of the characters, Brennan never really manages to infuse a semblance of life into her world, both Elizabethan and Faerie. The novel is rather low on description, which is too bad because Brennan has constructed a complex plot on the basis of a rather intriguing premise. A more thorough attention to detail (sensuous, psychological, etc.) would have added an extra layer of mimesis and characterization which could have given this narrative more depth, adding to its appeal. Midnight Never Come is an enjoyable experience, well-structured, suspenseful and with a slightly eerie feel. I was, however, slightly frustrated with the flaws since the premise has so much more potential than the finished product.

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.

“Set the Seas on Fire” by Chris Roberson is a naval adventure set aboard the HMS Fortitude in 1808, with The Napoleanic Wars as a backdrop. Right on the front cover though, almost as if to assure that this is not another “Master & Commander”, Revolution SF states “Horatio Hornblower meets H.P. Lovecraft”.

That statement kind of threw down the gauntlet for me. It said, “No matter what you read along the way, how the story progresses, or how you think you’re going to categorize the story along the way, just wait.”

So I read. And waited. The story followed through the trials and tribulations of the HMS Fortitude in a vivid, well-written way. I felt like I was immersed in the history of that era. It didn’t feel like the story was just trying to be historical in a way to serve as a flimsy backdrop to “get to the real point of the story”. Roberson seems to have done his research and could bring that era to life. But still there was that statement. “Horatio Hornblower meets H.P. Lovecraft”. Somewhere in there, there would be a twist. The reader was warned, so don’t think you’re reading a sailing adventure and then say “What the hell?” when…whatever…happens. It may not make sense, it may shake things up, but it’s coming, be warned, because the disclaimer is right there.

Hieronymus Bonaventure, the first lieutenant and first officer, is the main character of the story. We learn more about him from chapters from his childhood where he learns swordfighting from his mysterious mentor, Giles Dulac. The book starts in flashback, as Bonaventure seems to be destined for greatness. Now as an adult as the first officer of a British Navel vessel he seems to have not underachieved to date. We learn that not only does he have an adventurer’s heart but he also seems to have gained wisdom along the way, so he doesn’t plow ahead with reckless abandon.

I really thought Bonaventure was depicted well. I enjoyed the character very much and I thought that character information was doled out in just the right fashion.

In the midst of a navel engagement that is possibly ill advised, the Fortitude is pushed by a strong storm out into the unexplored South Pacific. It becomes apparent that the captain of the vessel allows personal glory or perhaps greed to color his decision making in ways that are not in the best interests of his ship. The captain has the final decision making power but it is Lieutenant Bonaventure who has the respect and personal admiration of the crew. I was expecting mutiny, and Bonaventure to single handedly save the ship in a larger than life fashion befitting the greatness that the character seems to be destined for.

I was very pleased to see this not happen. Bonaventure had his adventure, but he nobly stuck to his duty as a British Officer, followed his orders, and supported his captain, presumably until such a time when the best interests of the ship and crew no longer warrant such support. There was no rush in the story to turn Hieronymus into a super-character all in one book. Thus Roberson takes a likeable and interesting character and leaves him plenty of room to grow, presumably in more books. In my opinion, the fast way to make an interesting character uninteresting is to make him too interesting. Having a lifetime’s worth of epic adventure within one book, as if the main character is an adventure magnet, and everybody else is just there to watch it happen, becomes over the top. For me to really enjoy a book I have to be able to suspend my disbelief to an extent.

The beauty here is that while Hieronymus is obviously the central character, he’s also a member of a ship’s crew. He fits into that crew and is not bigger than that role. He will become bigger it seems, but that comes through promotion within the ranks, additional ocean adventures, and additional travels. Just like in real life, all that happens in time.

Within the historical elements of the story this one had all the elements of a seaborne adventure. All of these elements seem to flow naturally though. Ocean sailing was dangerous in this era, and the events that befell The Fortitude were certainly not outside the realm of actual historical occurrences - being lost in unexplored sea, the discovery of a ship’s crew that had come upon mysterious misfortune enough to set the nerves of a typical superstitious seaman of the era on edge, the discovery of an uncharted island, first contact with its locals, and the work to repair their damaged vessel so that they may be able to return home.

Along the way, Hieronymus observes a ceremony of a local shaman, which seems to defy the laws of the orderly scientific universe that he holds to. He falls in love and becomes torn between his heart and his duty but we learn that Hieronymus’s future has already been seen. He will travel on to the mysterious nearby island where a Spanish vessel met misfortune, which in the native’s lore is home to their demon figures. Only heroes travel there, and our first officer is one such here. Hieronymus will not die either there or on this island. He will die many years and miles from here and not on the sea. So now Lieutenant Bonaventure, who shares his family name with many great adventurers, now seems to be prophesied to have many more of his own. No dull life of a British Navel vessel’s first officer. I for one like the teasing and I hope not.

The tone of the book throughout would make one think that once The Fortitude makes landfall on this mysterious island, home to the demons of the native’s mythology that what they will find is nothing but superstition. But remember that proclamation from the front cover. They find something that they never could have imagined. The crew doesn’t get anything in the way of explanation, nor do we. But for those who were there to bear witness, including Hieronymus Bonaventure, nothing will ever been the same again. One final very nice touch was that the crew did not include the true events that they witnessed within their logs. They saw it, they believed it happened, but it was just too unbelievable to put in any sort of public record to be subjected to scrutiny.

But while they may not discuss it with others they know that they experienced something that does not fit into the natural world. It feels like a doorway was opened here, which cannot be closed again. As the Chinese say “May you be cursed to live in interesting times.” That seems to be the case for Bonaventure and maybe the rest of the crew of The Fortitude.

I like the character of Hieronymus Bonaventure very much. I like the feeling of “This is only the beginning”. He seems to be at the beginning of a heroic journey. The Author’s Notes at the end, which Roberson included because he likes to provide just a little more, bear that out. He writes a lot of alternate history fiction at this point. The basic underlying history and flavor in the story seemed very real to me. I enjoyed that very much, as I waited to see exactly where that history and ordered universe was going to take a very sharp turn. Roberson definitely seems to not be so obsessed with writing a story of a ship’s crew encountering unimaginable horror that he glosses over the historical flavor part of it to get there.

That brought a lot of tension and intrigue to the story for me since, if there were horrors awaiting The Fortitude, they would appear all the more horrible in contrast to the very real world that had already been fleshed out.

Set the Seas on Fire also seemed to flow very well. It did not bog down in long chapters that ran off into tangents. It moved along in very short and focused chapters that made for a pleasant read that did not bog down at any point.

The after notes indicate that Set the Seas on Fire is a prequel to Paragaea: A Planetary Romance. I can only presume that the adventures become more exotic and, pardon the pun, “out of this world”. While Set the Seas on Fire saves the exotic of Lovecraftian elements for the end of the book, it was a very solid prequel and I personally am very interested to read both the book that this is a prequel to as well as any other direct sequels that it is (hopefully) spawning. There are enough loose ends remaining from this book that it apparent that the adventure is not intended to be confined within this 372 pages.

I give Set the Seas on Fire a 7.5. I think it sets up for some very interesting follow-up material, which should stretch my imagination further. Roberson handles his characters very gracefully and I look forward to reading additional offerings.

Tick, an introverted and intelligent young man suddenly receives a mysterious letter. By opening it, Tick launches himself on an adventure of a lifetime. Each subsequent letter holds a quirky and sometimes humorous clue, promising Tick danger if he continues and harm to others if he quits. Intrigued and compelled, he pursues each clue vigorously in spite of the risk involved. The mysterious clues drag him across the country and introduce him to a spitfire Italian girl and an all-American jock from California. Banding together, the trio commits to seeing the mystery through.

At the root of it all are concepts of time and reality, the forces that bind and drive creation. In The Thirteenth Reality, Tick discovers more than one reality exists. Life as he knows it continues in Reality Prime while as many as thirteen other Earths continue on different planes of existence. If this seems overwhelming, don’t worry. Dashner lays out his concept of parallel realities in a manner young readers can understand. Even the basis of quantum physics, aka kyoopy, becomes approachable!

I enjoy how Dashner portrays Tick’s relationship with his family. Too many times, parents are viewed as either the idiot contingency or the evil overseers. Not here. Tick’s sisters drive him nuts but he still obviously loves them. Tick’s dad is a wonderful character that supports and trusts him even though this means letting go of his little boy. In a world where Tick is often a target, at home he is safe and loved. Maybe that isn’t realistic, but who said fantasy had to be reality? Perhaps a little wishful thinking would do us all some good.

I liked this story. There are a few classic aspects that walk on stage, but these are presented in a fresh and believable manner. The evil witch (dressed in lemon), a giant with a quasi-Cockney accent, a dwarf as round as he is tall, mechanistic magic that blurs the line between technology and fantasy; all delivered in wrapping paper designed by Dashner himself. He writes in bold colors, splashing strong characters across the pages who demand your attention (and sometimes your fear).

This isn’t a sweet little fairy tale, bad things happen and our hero is faced with tough decisions. Dashner quietly leads his readers from an odd mystery into a hair-raising quest complete with flesh-eating monsters. As odd as some of the scenes are, though, the entire thing holds together. This is definitely a book young readers should sample.

Stirling is the author of the Nantucket series and Emberverse series of books that have now become collectively known as the Novels of the Change. Not having read those previous six books, I can only surmise, based on my reading of The Sunrise Lands, that “The Change” occurred in our world sometime around 1998 which somehow took away electrical power and nearly all other technology effectively negating the advances of the last two hundred or so years.


The Sunrise Lands begins twenty two years after the Change during which a generation of children have been born and raised, and are completely adapted to this new way of survival, of life. The United States is divided into several different political factions, each self-governed and quite unique. Most conspicuously, there is the Clan MacKenzie that harkens back to the ways of old Gaelic culture with their pagan religion, plaid kilts, and affected brogues. The Portland Protective Association, a society emulating seventeenth century England, a former Army officer now in command of his own sizeable military force seeking to reunite the United States and known as Mr. President, and the Church Universal and Triumphant, a religious cult with aims of uniting the country under the rule of their own Prophet.


A stranger arrives at Clan McKenzie in his search for the Sword of the Lady that he must bring back to Nantucket, a place of some unusual happenings. This sword turns out to actually be Rudi, the son of the clan's High Priestess. With a few trusted friend, Rudi sets off from Oregon to cross the country with this man, Ingolf Vogeleer.


One of Ingolf’s first impressions of Clan McKenzie:

The government of 2057 is regretting the deregulation of time travel as private companies deluge the past with tourists. As the delicate web of history flexes under the weight of interference from the future, Jacynda struggles to locate the man who made time travel a reality - Harter Defoe. Cynda’s friends Dr. Allistair and Detective Keats also continue their struggles with Victorian Transitives and a mysterious bloody murder. The stakes are high as Jacynda and her companions attempt to fulfill their duties. With Keat’s life on the line and Jacynda facing eternity in prison if they fail, the odds have never looked worse.

Jana C. Oliver has crafted a sequel that packs a whallop! Virtual Evil is a sensory overload of spine tingling adventure and mind-tickling wit. I absolutely love how she has deepened the characters in this second book. Dr. Allistair and Keats come alive here, standing aside Jacynda as they struggle to put the pieces together in this inventive mystery. Oliver splits her focus between these three characters, yet is able to maintain the momentum and tension in the tale. The action is non-stop as readers follow all three in their struggles to identify an invisible killer that can take on the image of anyone.

If anything, Virtual Evil is even more complex than the first book in the Time Rovers series, Sojourn. Oliver builds the suspense and intrigue, causing readers to doubt the integrity of just about everyone. Not knowing who to trust is one of my favorite aspects of this story. I am also impressed with her concept of time travel as she fills in even more details for readers. In fact, the only weakness I see in the story is the role of government as the Big Bad Brother looking over Jacynda’s shoulder. I feel the writing on that aspect is a bit clichéd and is the only predictable part of this book. However, this did not interrupt my enjoyment of a thoroughly rolicking tale.

Readers, please prepare for this book by reading the first in the series and then jump into this second story. Hopefully, we will not have long to wait to find out just what befalls our heroine and her two companions after the cliffhanger ending of Virtual Evil. I promise you will be breathless waiting for the third book, Madman’s Dance, to arrive sometime in the fall of 2008.

Jacynda is a Time Rover from the year 2057, escorting academic tourists back and forth in the river of Time to engage in historical research. Called upon to recover a reluctant tourist who is enjoying the past a little too much, she finds herself in one of the most terrifying times and places during the Victorian Era - East End London, 1888, the playground of Jack the Ripper. As if a tourist refusing to return isn’t enough, Jacynda finds out a Rover has also gone missing. Woven throughout her escapade is the presence of the Transitives, a group of people with the mysterious talent to alter their appearance by shifting their shape completely. Jacynda must decide who to trust as she finds she is running out of the very commodity she has always controlled - Time.

Winner of the Daphne du Maurier award, Sojourn is an exquisitely crafted tale that takes readers back to the very bowels of the East End. Squalid, derelict, and desperate, the people there are simply trying to survive another day. Jacynda can’t help but compare her life in 2057 with the existence of those in 1888. The author lays the stark and sterile society of the future next to the teeming life of the Victorian Era. Jacynda begins to realize filth and struggle serve to heighten the pleasures of the simple things in life, such as fresh hot scones and a quiet bath.

Jana G. Oliver has performed a masterful feat, balancing the multiple threads in the storyline to culminate in an ending that both satisfies and leaves questions unanswered. The only threadbare aspect to the plot was the relationship between Jacynda and her employer in 2057, but this pales in comparison to the rest of the story. Readers will find non-stop action from the beginning as they tumble from 1888 to 2057 and back again. Ms. Oliver introduces characters and creates personalities, capturing the Victorian fussiness and the “ladies of the night” with finesse. Her addition of the Transitives, shape shifters, serves to add a different twist on the activities of Jack the Ripper. Ripperologists, fear not, this is not an attempt to lay to rest the identity of that cruel fiend. Jack does, however, have a place in the plot (as readers will find out for themselves).

Sojourn was a wonderful adventure, full of unexpected twists and turns. I encourage you, Reader, to experience this time trip for yourself.

“Battle Dragon” by Edo van Belkom is not a deep book, but it does pose an interesting question. If a firebreathing dragon was sent forward in time to the age of airplanes, how would it fare in those battles?

Tibalt is a fire-breathing dragon with revenge in his heart as he terrorizes the English village of Dervon 1000 years ago. Even after vengeance is satisfied the arrogant Tibalt vows to continue attacking humans as they are not worthy to share the world with dragons. Despite being warned that mankind would become more advanced and in the future would be able to be more than a match for dragons in the sky, Tibalt still considers humans worth nothing more than being wiped out. Left with no other choice, the wizard Asvald sends the dragon forward in time, to an era when humans will be more of a match for dragons, and he will learn the foolishness of his beliefs, or so that is the hope. I thought that sending a dragon forward in time to be someone else’s problem in order to solve yours was not very noble and heroic. But anyway…

That time is 1940 Britain, in the midst of World War II’s Battle of Britain. Would Tibalt win in aerial battles against the “steel dragons” of the British Royal Air Force and the German Air Forces? Would World War II air power rule the skies against a dragon?

After a dragon appears in the middle of the war, the Royal Air Force believes that they are witnessing a new German weapon. The Germans believe they are seeing a new British weapon. The dragon may want to destroy every plane it can find, but with both sides looking for him he may get a lot more than he bargained for.

It was a curious “What If?” to keep the pages turning. The storyline was pretty straight forward, with only enough character development to tell the reader exactly what they need to know in the present of the story. I’d put the target audience as Young Adults. “Battle Dragon” read almost like a fable, with a bit of World War II history about the Battle of Britain added in.

The Battle of Britain portion of the story was done in fine detail. I personally enjoyed that aspect of the story more than the dragon aspect. For a younger though who may be getting his or her first exposure to either dragons or history this could very well make for a very nice appetite whetting for both subject matters. Edo van Belkom ends the book with a nice acknowledgement and a bibliography of books and a video about the Battle of Britain to learn more about the real battle. It is obvious that he was very passionate about that part of the story, and he did justice to that piece of historical fiction within the story.

That said, the story is short. It comes in at 270 pages. Even for a young adult book I thought that it could be a little longer. Even 20 pages or so could have fleshed out some of the characters better. The story featured a wizard from 1000 years ago who was still alive in 1940 and proved to be pivotal to the plot. It would have been nice to know just a bit more about him. Other than the fact that he served in World War I and worked in a non-combat support role, that’s about all the information we get about a man who was at least a thousand years old.

In 1940 dragons were the stuff of legend. They existed a thousand years ago, but where did they go? Are they still in existence but hiding? Did man and their technology hunt them to extinction in the past? We never find out, even though we have a millenium old wizard who would likely know the answer. We could have learned more about the wizard and about the decline of the dragons in one fell swoop.

Also, after the drama of both sides in a race to find the dragon and add it to their arsenals, that storyline was ended in very quick and anti-climactic fashion. I realize you probably want to keep a YA book short, but another 20 pages with a little more depth would have added a good bit, and would have still been a quick read.

That’s why I liken the story to a fable. You don’t get much deep information out of the story, or anything unexpected out of the plot. But you learn a little bit about history, and everyone learns a valuable lesson in the end.

It’s definitely one for the youngsters but there’s not enough meat on the bones or in the plot to make this an exceptional read. It is an interesting read in a straightforward fashion and it is a quick read, although not one that I personally would buy new off the shelf. The plot on the back cover pretty much sums it up, so it’s a simple “what you see is what you get”. If I were trying to expose a young teenager to fantasy though I’d give this one a shot. I’m all for any books that get kids reading.

Aliens are living among us. Not the freaky, slimy type of aliens depicted in Men in Black but humanoid beings with abilities beyond us. Each faction, the Greens and the Grays, are refugees from the same world and believe the other group was destroyed. They sought asylum in New York along with millions of other refugees that flooded Ellis Island during the early 20th century. The fragile peace that existed when each thought they were alone while hiding among the human population is now threatened when the Greens stumble upon the Grays.

Roger and Caroline Whittier, a run-of-the-mill human couple, find themselves thrust into the midst of this conflict when they stumble upon young Melanthe Green running for her life. Factions working for peace between the two groups have decided on a strategy to appease everyone. Unfortunately for Melanthe, this strategy is that a Peace Child will be sacrificed - her. The Whittier’s efforts to help her bring each of them out of their self-imposed yuppiedom and challenge their beliefs about each other.

This is not a story about aliens, per se, nor is it the usual space opera that I have come to associate with Timothy Zahn. The focus is really on diplomacy and groups of different types of people getting along with each other. (Although a little twist is thrown in at the end, which I refuse to go into as it would be a spoiler.) Regardless, there are plenty of explosions and shootings, conspiracy and cloak-and-dagger, to reassure me that Mr. Zahn didn’t stray too far afield.

While there are many characters in this book, almost too many, Mr. Zahn still finds time to develop the main ones. I like that Roger Whittier is completely normal yet finds this tremendous strength in himself to do amazing things, even so far as to attempt to broker a peace deal with all the grace and dignity of a UN diplomat (think Jimmy Stuart, here). I admire Caroline for trusting herself, pushing to do the right thing and daring to care for someone who is very different from herself. Most of all, I enjoyed how the two of them are thrust out of the doldrums of their relationship and learn to understand how the other one thinks. In fact, of all the books I have read lately, this one strikes me as having the potential to make a very good movie.

I enjoyed this book because it is different from anything I have read lately. Mr. Zahn has an ability to keep the pace of the story climbing throughout, making it difficult to set the book down until you are finished. I really thought his concept about the Greens and the Grays being . . . Oops, almost forgot - can’t give anything away! I know I will read this book again. Well done, Mr. Zahn.

A condemned man known only as Prisoner Zero. A Chinese emperor in the distant future. A young street punk in Marrakech. These are the players in a struggle that spans space and time, a struggle that the fate of humanity will hinge upon. Stamping Butterflies chronicles the roles, no matter how small or large, they will have in deciding not only the future, but the past...

Jon Courtenay Grimwood's followup to his excellent Arabesk trilogy is at once brilliant and frustrating. Grimwood excels at depicting political intrigues and rendering locales in crystal-clear prose that lends immediacy to the streets of Marrakech or the far reaches of the 2023 worlds. Nor can his creativity or his ability with characters and dialogue be disputed.

Yet for all of Stamping Butterflies' ambition that reaches for the stars (both literal and figurative), it falls short. The three main storylines and their associated subplots never come together in a meaningful fashion - leaving the ending rather tacked-on. Furthermore, Grimwood's style of leaving blanks in the story and either filling them in gradually or leaving them for the reader to deduce - while effective at points, all too often breeds confusion here.

It is unfortunate, as there's a lot of potential here, but Stamping Butterflies ultimately can be likened to a runaway train - powerful but uncontrolled. What worked for the Arabesk books just never hits the mark on all counts here. I did enjoy certain aspects of the book in the end - but I honestly can't recommend it otherwise.

“Inside Straight” is a Wild Cards novel. The Wild Cards universe is a shared universe that was created in 1987 by George R. R. Martin. A number of authors write individual chapters/short stories focusing on a specific character, which Martin then edits together into an overall story. “Inside Straight” is the 18th novel set in the universe.

In the Wild Cards Universe, an alien virus that re-writes human DNA was released on Earth in 1946. It killed 90% of the people it infected. 9% were mutated into Jokers, who were deformed into a wide variety of non-human looking appearances. 1% gained superpowers as a result of their exposure and became known as “Aces”.

In 2008, 62 years have passed since the wild card was introduced into the world. An entire generation has grown up with it. The first generation of aces has grown up, become famous for their status and powers, had children, and in some cases died.

“Inside Straight” now focuses on the new generation, which has grown up with this as part of their lives and imprinted into society’s popular culture. Familiarity with the other books is not necessary. Many of the heroes and events from those books are spoken about, often reverently, by this younger generation. These were the stories that they’d heard every day as they grew up. These were their childhood heroes, and the people that they looked up to. “Inside Straight” does a good job of weaving that into a rich history of the world.

Even when one has superpowers, there are enough other aces around that it is a struggle to stand out, or to find one’ niche in the universe. “Inside Straight” firmly plugs into the culture of the day. On the very first page of the book Daniel Abraham brings us the character of Jonathan Hive, as seen through the postings he makes on his blog. The very first sentence of the book sends the message that this character is going to be edgy, complex, well detailed, and easy for the reader to relate to, whether he has an ace ability to not. Mr. Hive’s ability is that he can turn into a swarm of wasps. In spite of that, he has other ambitions and dreams. He wants to be a writer. His perspectives as seen through his blog are hilarious, brilliant, and serve to continue to tie the various chapters of the book together as the larger plot continues to unfold. I especially liked the blog chapters in the book. It was very cool to see a character just casually talking directly to us, the reader. The style also provided much of the comic relief in the book.

Jonathan Hive knows that what he needs to get his foot in the door of a writing career is exposure. He needs more people to read his blog. So to get that exposure he does what many people in the 2007 real world do. He appears on a reality TV show.

He is not alone. He is joined by a unique and varied cast of characters, such as Jetboy, Drummer Boy, Stuntman, the Maharajah, Water Lilly, Rosa Lotera, Jade Blossom, Diver, Digger Downs, Brave Hawk, Mistral, The Candle, Toad Man, Spasm, Father Henry Obst, Hard Hat, The Amazing Bubbles, Tiffani, Rustbelt, Earth Witch, Curveball, and Wild Fox.

“American Hero” will give one lucky ace the chance to win a million dollars and become the next big ace hero. Not only that but it gave me chapter and chapters of amusement and laughter. This reality show was better done on paper than most reality shows I’ve ever watched. The authors nailed the character interactions, as all the contestants interacted in the house and in their various team challenges for the show. Personalities came together and clashed. Certain ace abilities were more spectacular than others. Some were downright comical. But were any of them useless? That was part of the lesson of the reality show and of the book as a whole.

There’s much more to the book than a bunch of superheroes competing in a reality show. On the other side of the world there is big trouble in Egypt. A new Caliph had united Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and now Egypt, under his rule. Unified Muslim rule was beginning to sweep the Middle East. But in Egypt 6000 + years of culture had caused many Jokers to mutate to the appearance of ancient Egyptian gods and other beings from their mythology. This had led to a rebirth of the old religion that had been in place before the rise of Islam or Christianity. Now in 2008 the rise of a new religious movement and the rise of the old were clashing violently. Not that anyone in the United States was noticing, as the “American Hero” craze swept the nation.

Have no fear. Everything meshes together. Jonathan Hive and his blog is the thread that weaves its way through the story until the big “Aha” moments when it all comes together. “Inside Straight” brilliantly pulls no punches, whether it be characters with colorful language, issues of sexuality, issues of race, the fact that many characters are deep and are not entirely what they appear to be, or just being brave enough to put it out there that even if someone is a superhero sometimes they will die in the performance of heroic duty. This is not “Superfriends” where everyone returns back to the Hall of Justice unscathed to fight another day. If I had to compare it to anything it’s like “Heroes”. But Wild Cards and its group of authors came up with this idea 19 years ago.

“Inside Straight” is a brilliant rendition of people with super powers living in a real and contemporary world. In some cases they are just trying to live normal lives. Almost every contestant gets a chance throughout the various chapters to move to the forefront for character development. The chapters are each told from the perspective of a particular character, so the book gives many opportunities to get into the head of one character after another.

I can say this without a doubt for “Inside Straight”. This is the 22nd book that I’ve reviewed for the site. It was funny. It was deep. It was original (I’ve not read any other books in the Wild Cards universe. In fact I have to admit that I’d never heard of it). In my opinion this is the best book I’ve read so far. That includes my two beloved DragonLance novels. It takes a pretty original telling of the superhero concept to get my attention. I am not a comic book fan. Tales of invulnerable superheroes flying around are usually dull to me. But these characters are not indestructible superbeings who can only be foiled by radioactive rocks from outer space, being bathed in sunlight, from a red star, or other Achilles’ Heels so exotic that it stretches my suspension of disbelief to see them manage to appear with regularity. Most of the characters in this book are regular people, most with regular jobs, who “drew an ace” and happen to have an ability as a result of their response to the alien virus which did not destroy their lives.

I would never have thought that a “book by committee” could have come together so cohesively and seamlessly. I wondered if there would be any inconsistency in character personality or behavior as we saw them through the eyes of a different author. That never happened. I absolutely give a standing ovation to the fine writing of Daniel Abraham, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Carrie Vaughn, Michael Cassutt, Caroline Spector, John Jos Miller, George R. R. Martin, Ian Tregillis, and S.L. Farrell, and to the outstanding editing done by George R.R. Martin. “Inside Straight” makes me re-write my rating scale. I’ve given several other 10’s over the course of the previous 21 books. Based on that I would absolutely have to give “Inside Straight” an 11.

When Manuel Rodrigo de Guzmán González disappears, Wendell Apogee decides to find out where he has gone and why. But in order to figure out what happened to Manuel, Wendell must contend with parties, cockfights, and chases; an underground city whose people live in houses suspended from cavern ceilings; urban weirdos and alien assassins; immigrants, the black market, flight, riots, and religious cults.

As far as I can remember the science-fiction/fantasy genre hasn't ever really had a novel written in this style before. A jazzy, beat-like rush of words that wash over you and result in a total immersion of the environment. This bop prosody style is also very musical. It attains its own rhythmic quality with chord progressions, riffs and multiple layers that may not reveal themselves upon first listening errrrr reading. Every single page is filled with exuberant and intense prose that leaves you breathless.

Mixed up into this Cosmic Slop is a story that manages at times to bring about both the ordinary and the fantastic. Wendell, as our gay Orpheus who must descend into the depths and transform himself to save the man he loves, is indicative of this dichotomy. The transformation of his ordinary being into the superhero Captain Spaceman is total and complete. Its a palpable and very real change but at the same time it really is just a strength training regiment, a make-over & rampant rumors. But to summarize it like this may give off the impression that it is mundane and maybe even boring. That's not the case though and Slattery manages the high-wire act of making us believe that he really is a superhero.

Spaceman Blues is a novel that begs to not only be read out loud but demands to be performed, maybe at a slam if the poets of the Nuyorican Cafe collaborated on a novelization of Parliament songs and the soundtrack was played by Fishbone. If ever a novel left you with the mussed hair, quickie-in-the-elevator-between-floors feeling then this book is it.

--Brian Lindenmuth

A quick side note. While I do love the cover of the book I can't help but think there was a missed opportuinity in not having someone like Pedro Bell do an original piece instead. It would have been an inspired choice that would have fit the tone of the book beautifully. Just an observation and didnt affect how I felt about the book.

**Yes, I realize that the excerpts are longer then the actualy review. Spaceman Blues has a distinct style and I think a review of this book is best served by extended excerpts, which I have tried to be generous in providing. Moreso then what I write they will probably help you decide if this book is for you.

What makes certain writings "interstitial" is largely a matter of expectations, say Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss, editors of Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing. How, then, to set expectations for the anthology itself? For reader expectations may either highlight or camouflage that this is a good if somewhat homogeneous assemblage of literate, fantastic short stories.

To start with, interstitial fiction is not itself a genre or movement in the conventional sense: it has few inherent characteristics or identifiers. Ignore the back cover braggadocio that interstitial writing is "a new type of fiction"; it has been with us, contradict the editors, since at least Shakespeare. Ignore the frequent refrain that interstitial writing "crosses borders," as this is neither intrinsic nor exclusive to interstitial writing. Concentrate instead on the back cover's suggestion that interstitial writing "falls in the interstices of recognized commercial genres" -- and bear in mind Heinz Insu Fenkl's comments from his Introduction to the anthology, that "an interstice is not an intersection. [...] Literally it means to 'stand between' or 'stand in the middle.'" Not stand between separate genres, necessarily (a semantic issue that plagues many attempted explanations of interstitiality), but as the cover blurb hints, between the commercial aspect of a genre and its wider potential.

Interstitial fiction is a label for fiction in the space between the broadest theoretical basis of a genre or movement and the more narrow marketing category of what is easily sellable in that genre. Envision what we know, or think we know, about the world as a core; envision genres as mechanisms to sample this core, that group and emphasize, add and subtract to bring different aspects of our experience of the world into focus. Fantasy in the broadest sense, for example, can encompass any story that contradicts what we know, or think we know, about possibility in our world. Publishing being a business, publishers tend to favor those combinations of impossibilities that are proven sellers: imaginary worlds; magic; monsters. It is commercially difficult to find a publisher for a story set in our world where something impossible happens that is not in any way magical, or a story where magic exists but never directly does anything, or a story set in a place that may or may not be imaginary. These are some of the interstitial spaces of fantasy. (Genre hybrids -- Star Wars is a classic example -- may cross genre borders, but most are not interstitial because their genre elements are solidly in the commercial areas of their component genres, not these interstitial spaces.) Sometimes however a fiction in an interstitial space will become successful; sometimes such a story will even spawn a movement, a subgenre. At that point both story and space cease being interstitial. Borges's early work was interstitial until the success of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the late 1960s brought "magical realism" into a full-blown marketing category in English-speaking markets -- at which point Borges was retroactively reclassified. Delany's Dhalgren was interstitial before Sterling coined the term "slipstream." Interstitiality is thus potentially a transitory label, although not necessarily: works such as Peake's Gormenghast remain unique, interstitial. These stories fulfill something of the remit of a genre, without adhering closely to its commercially recognizable tropes and forms.

That definition made, it is easier to set expectations for Interfictions. The book, published by the Interstitial Arts Foundation and distributed by Small Beer Press, contains 19 original stories as well as the introductory essay by Fenkl and a concluding Q&A with the editors, Sherman and Goss. Each story is focused on the gray area between fantastic fiction in a broadly theoretical, non-mimetic sense and one of the common marketing categories of fantastic fiction: fantasy and fabulism; science fiction; horror. Of these the fantasy-fabulism set dominates.

Works that are interstitial with respect to a genre will reflect something of what that genre is -- and is not -- at the time they are created. They are the pieces of the puzzle that fit around the puzzle pieces of genre. In the fantasy stories of Interfictions there is an absence of the violent external conflicts, magical powers, immediacy of presence, and quests to change the authority structures of the world that characterize contemporary commercial fantasy. Instead, there are internal conflicts focused on absence and anxiety; magic that does things to people rather than being used by people, that poses questions rather than solving problems; there is the treatment of Old Testament-based religions as sources of fantasy just as Greek, Norse, etc. often are in commercial fantasy; there is a bringing of modern sensibilities to old stories and old sensibilities to new stories. Considering the broad territory available for interstitial writing you wouldn't expect overarching themes in the volume, but there is one, which proves problematic. There is, in nearly all of these stories, a "post-slipstream" sense of the need, the inevitability, of coming to terms with the often very strange anxieties of place (in a broad sense, not merely geographic) that characterize the modern world. Of accommodating, rather than conquering, the weird.

Christopher Barzak's "What We Know About the Lost Families of ----- House," the first story in the volume, takes this theme almost literally. A haunted house tale told from the collective voice of the small town that the house is part of, there is no protagonist in the traditional sense. Instead, the "we" of the town chronicles the history of ----- House, and the victims who have lived in it, with a parochial yet matter-of-fact tone; the town regards the house's presence as a regrettable but now inseparable part of itself. "If you know how to hear what those walls [of the house] are saying, you will hear unbearable stories, stories you would never imagine possible, stories we would rather turn away from. But we cannot turn away, for they will only follow us."

Other stories in Interfictions present more benign formulations of finding a home in the weird. In Leslie What's "Post Hoc," a pregnant woman tries to mail herself to her ex-boyfriend in hope of reconciliation; when he refuses to sign for her, she finds herself a resident of the post office. This, she discovers, is a better home than any of the more normal houses she might have chosen. It's an absurdist story, an impossible premise joined to realistic details of stamps and forms and labels. Matthew Cheney's "A Map of the Everywhere" is more wholly surreal, a man who wanders from job to job, place to place, before discovering a place for himself -- and love -- off the map of the expected. K. Tempest Bradford's "Black Feather" revolves around a similar sense of finding one's true place, a contemporary woman frustrated by an unrequited crush, who dreams of ravens and family and flying home. It evokes the Grimm fairy tales of the Six Swans/Seven Ravens, with a dash of Native American myth, the raven as a transformative figure. Joy Marchand's "Pallas at Noon" similarly uses myth to evoke a repressed sense of self, in this case the myth of Pallas daughter of Triton, who was accidentally slain by her friend Athena goddess of discipline and craft (and war). It is the story of a seemingly troubled woman struggling to keep herself in place, grounded in the expectations of a stereotypical housewife, at the cost of repressing her complex inner self.

Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, was a troubled woman not known for repressing herself; Veronica Schanoes's story "Rats" presents a "fairy tale" version of Spungen's life, an ode to both the power of story (in giving us a sense of understanding the inner selves of others, of how even those people we find reprehensible may be driven by some need to accommodate the weird) and the essential falseness of story (the lie that people's lives are coherent stories, that end with resolution and have external meaning). Brutal and powerful, it is a story that eats itself alive -- one of the best I've read this year.

"Alternate Anxieties" by Karen Jordan Allen and Holly Phillips's "Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom" resemble each other, both featuring writers struggling with writer's block who are trying to come to terms with the current sources of their anxieties (in the former a geographically distant mother diagnosed with cancer, in the latter a husband taken captive during a diplomatic mission in a foreign land). In both cases a familiarity with the fantastic -- science fictional concepts in Allen's story, fantasy in Phillips's -- is not an escape from the world, but a way of conceptualizing the ambiguities of the world that must be accommodated. "Which world is the real world" is a question both stories ask, with the only possible answer being the world we live in. Vandana Singh's "Hunger" emphasizes this; it is a thoroughly realistic and tragically earnest story of a dinner party, of modern Indian culture, and of how alien the contemporary world can seem when given an external perspective. "Hunger" is a story you might share with someone should you ever wish to convince them of why the fantastic perspective is important:

In a reversal from most other stories in the anthology, Catherynne Valente's "A Dirge for Prester John" is a tale told from the perspective of the utter strangeness of the world, of a land that never was, its fantastic residents, and the human man who they take in. Valente is scrupulous in depicting the kingdom of Prester John as though it were a real land, just as (and yet not as) John's letter described it -- griffins, pygmies, the phoenix, the marvelous waterless river, and the Basilica with a ceiling of stars. Description, particularly visual description, dominates "Dirge": the use of simile and metaphor that Valente is often associated with is muted here, to good strategic effect. Simile is a way of putting the strangeness of the world into our own words and concepts; while it is used at the beginning of the tale, in Prester John's arrival, it is soon replaced by detailed description, the lists and tallies of Prester John's letter, as the man becomes acclimated to and accommodated by the land and its people. In this transition "Dirge" highlights the author's skill with deft moments of showing-not-telling that tell so much: "[John the Priest], ever the good teacher, tried to make eye contact with each of us in turn, but he could not look at my eyes" captures the so well the inner conflict of a man stranded in a land of the strange -- and the strangely beautiful -- who stridently lectures others to affirm his own fading belief, before gradually succumbing to wonder, becoming a student, making a home and family. (As in the other top stories of the collection, though, the character's initial anxiety never entirely dissipates.) The section headings of Valente's story correspond to the spheres of the Ptolemaic cosmos that had been adopted by Christianity in the middle ages; the ending section, however -- "The Spindle of Necessity" -- reverts to the earlier, pagan cosmology of Plato, indicating a sense of deeper truth, a deeper, non-divine judgment to be made on a person's life choices.

Taken as individual stories those in Interfictions are at the very least uniformly good: taken as "an anthology of interstitial writing," as an argument for interstitiality, their uniformity starts to work against the goals of the collection. The stories individually work as interstitial writing because their pathos stems largely from a thoughtful, adult sense of anxiety of place not often seen in typical genre fantasy, and because the characters generally do not triumph over their anxieties so much as learn to work within them. One starts to wonder, though, reading story after story with this theme, this journey: is this type of story all that commercial genres are missing; is this idea all that interstitial writing has to offer? The self-referentiality -- interstitial fiction about anxiety of place -- is pleasingly clever at first, but wanes on repetition, particularly in the stories that do not offer enough else. The summary of Leslie What's "Post Hoc" -- a woman mails herself to her boyfriend, finds herself living in the post office, and discovers it to be a good home -- more or less is the story. Csilla Kleinheincz's "A Drop of Raspberry" is a beautifully written story (translated by Noémi Szelényi) of a man who has a rebound friendship with a lake after being left by his fiancé...and again, that's it: the "lake" might have well been a human woman given how the story plays out, how there's not enough lakeness to add insight into quintessential humanity. Colin Greenland's "Timothy" is a shapeshifter romance without the romance, just the sex: the raw and instinctive versus the civilized and expected. It's a clever concept but all that remains after reading it is the concept, none of the story. In terms of fantastic stories made memorable by characterization, settings or themes stemming from diverse ideas thoroughly explored, multiple good ideas, or ideas that feel dangerous, the uniformity of the original stories of Interfictions suffers somewhat in comparison to the variety offered by other recent anthologies that also take a broad view of fantasy, such as Best American Fantasy and The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. And despite the broad potential scope of interstitiality, there are no stories here that play off non-fantastic genres such as crime fiction, thrillers, chick lit, etc.; despite the multidisciplinary, multimedia aspirations of interstitiality, there are only one or two stories here that challenge the basic forms of prose storytelling. Instead, the highlights of the anthology -- "Dirge" and "Hunger" among them -- tend to be the most conventional stories ("Rats" being a notable exception), that hew closest to established genres.

There is, within the established genres of the fantastic at least, the feeling that we've entered something of a feedback loop: that change has come to beget change, faster and faster. The transmission speed of ideas facilitated by the Internet combined with the slowness of traditional publishing mean that many movements are defined and codified before standard-bearing stories appear (such as Mundane SF); subgenres like cyberpunk and the New Weird spring fully formed from single works and end before they are fully understood. Our capacity to focus on narrower subgenres has increased ("steampunk" begets "clockpunk"; readers don't just read "fantasy," they read "epic fantasy" and "gritty epic fantasy") as has our ability to process genre hybrids (paranormal romance, paranormal mystery). On one hand this may mean that there are even more (if smaller) "spaces between," more need for interstitial fiction (Sherman and Goss report that an Interfictions 2 is in the planning stages). On the other hand, electronic cataloging systems increasingly are pushing us from a categorizing world to a tagging and linking world, and in this world the concept of commercial genres as immense gravity wells for fiction -- and thus the utility of the interstitial concept -- may become historical relics. Genre readers familiar with Small Beer Press, the distributor of Interfictions, and the authors it has published (among them Kelly Link, Alan DeNiro, and indeed Theodora Goss) will already have a fairly broad definition of the fantastic, fairly relaxed expectations. Fantastic fiction is also increasingly finding a home in mainstream bookshelves, and the mainstream so far seems able to accommodate marketing novels such as Never Let Me Go, The Road and Blindness (to say nothing of the fantastic short fiction published in magazines ranging from The New Yorker to McSweeney's) without needing to further divide and categorize by any standard other than reading enjoyment.

Pragmatically, however -- and interstitiality is first and foremost a movement born of pragmatism -- right now there are gaps in genre categories, gaps in how people understand the difference between genres and marketing categories. Interstitial fiction is important because it can both point out and fill in these gaps. While the somewhat limited thematic scope of this initial Interfictions volume works against it as a manifesto, celebration or sampler of interstitiality -- in some ways even as a collection of fiction -- readers willing to savour the stories of Interfictions individually will find their expectations largely met, and likely at times exceeded.

-- Matt Denault