Further Catching Up: Carper, Berman, Gidney, Pelland, Ehart, Siemienowicz

I get lots of books in the main in my capacities as reviewer and BOTY editor, and I feel a great deal of guilt when I can't get to all of them; or when I can get to them but can't use them in my books nor even review them. But I do appreciate seeing the books. And in the cases of this set of books, I think they are all very worthy of mention, and of interest to readers.

Steve Carper has been writing for a long time -- his first published story appeared in one of the earliest issues of Galaxy I bought when I started reading the magazine -- the March 1975 issue. He has written books in a number of fields, including a lot of nonfiction. But he's not terribly prolific, at least not in SF. So he tends to go under the radar a bit. His story collection, Tyrannosaur Faire, collects stories dating back to the early 90s. In seeing it, I remembered a number of good stories ... "Wrestling With the Demon", "Harlequins" as two examples. And there is one good new story, "Forever With Diamond", about a woman whose lover becomes the first starship passenger, and her obsessive quest to reunite with him.

Steve Berman's Second Thoughts, from Lethe Press, is his second collection of short fiction. I've known Steve mainly as an editor of such fine recent original anthologies as So Fey and Magic in the Mirrorstone. He's been publishing short stories for at least a couple of decades now however, and this is a fine selection of recent work. Steve is gay, and many of the stories here, as well as the insterstitial material, reflect his sexuality -- which is purposeful, as the subtitle (More Queer and Weird Stories) indicates. My favorite pieces were the last two, both originals, though both were aimed at anthologies scheduled from Prime. (Phantom has been delayed until early this year, and I'm not sure of the status of Japanese Dreams.) "Kinder" is a goofy sort of almost-horror story, in which a museum is infected with pests in the form of wooden children, to the distress of the lonely and somewhat inhibited resident. "A Troll on the Mountain with a Girl" tells of a man traveling the world looking for a monster to kill him, and what he does when he finally encounters a real monster in Japan.

Another Lethe Press collection from a young gay SF writer is Craig Laurance Gidney's Sea, Swallow Me. Gidney is a newer writer -- I first recall his name from a 2005 story, though the earliest here is from 2001. Again I'd say these stories are well worth a look. Originals include "Catch Him By the Toe", about the tragic results of a tiger escaping a carnival; "Etiolate", in which a young black man encounters the effects of his particular forms of desire; "Come Join We", set on an island off the Georgia coast, and concerning someone who sees ghosts; and "Strange Alphabets", about Arthur Rimbaud's decision to embrace his muse, as it were, instead of returning to the safety of his home.

Unwelcome Bodies is Jennifer Pelland's first collection. It comes from Apex Publications. She has already got well-deserved notice for her stories in places like Apex Digest, Strange Horizons, and Helix. The Helix story "Captive Girl" was nominated for the Nebula and is strong work. The collection in general showcases an arresting new writer. There are three new stories -- I particularly liked the long novelette "Brushstrokes", set in a weird caste-ridden society in which painting your face in a different way is a profound act of rebellion.

Michael Ehart's The Servant of the Manthycore is a short novel that appeared in 2007 from a small outfit called Double-Edged Publishing. I confess I started reading with minimal hopes. But I was quite pleasantly surprised. The title character and heroine is a Bronze Age woman who with her lover was tricked into an encounter with the Manthycore, a monster that requires a human servant to kill other people for him to eat. The Manthycore has imprisoned the lover in a sort of stasis, as a hostage, while the woman, later named Ninshi, travels around, almost invincible, killing people. By the time of the main action she was for generations been trying to find a way to escape this service. In this book she rescues a young slave girl, kills some bad people, and finds a hint at a secret that may allow her to compel the Manthycore to release her, only to again be betrayed. Besides some fine action and some nicely plotted episodes, and sturdy writing, I enjoyed the hints seeded through the book of some familiar characters. The main weakness is that the novel, assembled from several short stories, is a bit loosely structured. To be marketable to a major publisher it would probably have to be twice its length (and I think it could bear that expansion) and the plot would have to be tightened considerably. But as it stands it's enjoyable work.

And finally I thought to mention Miranda Siemienowicz'z "Lion's Breath", a short horror story first published in the Australian publication Island in 2007. Miranda sent me a copy, but too late for me to consider it for last year's books. I'm not sure I'd have been able to use it -- the ambiguous fantastical element is a bit too symbolic and not fantastical enough for me -- but it is a good creepy horror story, and were I to have been doing a horror collection, "Lion's Breath" would have bit nicely. It's about a young boy who goes into an establishment advertised as "Girls Girls Girls" and the disturbing things he learns.

Tags: book reviews