Omnivoracious

“I Dissolve Tough Like Acid”: Ayize Jama-Everett and “The Liminal People”

Every once in awhile, a first novel catches you by surprise. Sometimes it’s the style and sometimes it’s the pure originality or unique mixing of influences. In the case of Ayize Jama-Everett’s The Liminal People (Small Beer Press), the pleasure comes from all of the above. This taut, intelligent first novel is, as novelist Andrew Vachss called it, “a heady blend of Sci-Fi, Romance, Crime, and Superhero Comic” that provides “a true gestalt of understanding, offering us both a new definition of ‘family’ and a world view on the universality of human conduct.” Yes, but is it entertaining? Yes, it is that, too. Definitely that.

The main character, Taggert, can heal and hurt with just a touch. That’s the kind of ability that can get you in trouble, and that’s exactly what happens when he tries to help save his ex’s daughter. But that daughter turns out to have even more power than Taggert, and that leads him down the rabbit hole of clashing with his own mysterious boss while trying to keep the girl safe. What unfolds next is a smart, savvy read that qualifies as a page-turner with great settings and set-pieces but also satisfies on an emotional and even metaphysical level. There’s great dialogue from Taggert, including lines like “I dissolve tough like acid” and, in response to the question “What kind of man are you?’, the reply of “The kind that refuses to be eaten by animals!”

We wanted to find out more about this first-time novelist who holds a Master’s in Clinical Psychology and in Divinity, so we caught up with him via email. He replied from one of his “messy disorganized offices about town. I’ll write in three more places before I’m done, a café, my other office, and my house. It feels like nothing gets done until it’s touched those three lodestones.”

As omnivoracious as that sounds, his childhood reading was even more so. “The Wretched of the Earth and a gang of Comic books. Also, A Swiftly Tilting Planet. The Neverending Story, Chocky, Aesop’s Fables, some Anazai the Spider African myth book. My mother is a bit of a hoarder. Pathways to rooms were bordered with stacks of books, magazines, and newspapers stacked hip high.”

New York Times Bestseller Beth Revis Brings You “A Million Suns”

With such popular series as the Hunger Games and Twilight ending, voracious readers looking for the next great series devoured Beth Revis’s first novel, Across the Universe, catapulting her from an unknown to a bestseller overnight. Fans of that YA Sci-Fi romantic thriller will be thrilled to find out that the second book in the trilogy, A Million Suns, is now available.

In Across the Universe, protagonist Amy had her cryogenically frozen body unplugged before the spaceship Godspeed reached its intended planet. As a result, she was thrown into the midst of intrigue aboard the ship and its sheltered, strange community ruled by a tyrannical Eldest. That first novel held readers with its combination of exciting space travel, plots and counter-plots, and compelling main character’s romance with the one called Elder.

Now Amy’s back, and in even more dire straits: not only is the society aboard the spaceship ever more claustrophobic, but the Godspeed itself has begun to fall apart. With resources dwindling, how long can Amy and her allies and enemies alike—2,298 people—stay aboard the ship? And where will they go if not? The solution may be found in a centuries-old mystery about the Godspeed, which Amy and Elder must work together to solve. Whether readers preferred Amy or Elder in the first book, they’ll have their choice, as A Million Suns bounces back and forth between both viewpoints. The new book is getting as much praise as the first, with Kirkus Reviews calling it a “ripping space thriller” with “unforgettable” characters, in a starred review. According to Booklist it’s a “crackerjack read, with two game-changing surprises that will effectively drop jaws…Revis might just make straight-up sci-fi cool again.”

Revis has been a big supporter of group author tours, and she’s been traveling around the country as part of several of them: the Smart Chicks Kick it tour, the Ash to Nash tour, and a Breathless Reads tour. Check for an appearance in your area.

Star Wars: Millennium Falcon Schematics and Repair Instructions Now Available

For many years, the Alt-Universe time travel division of the United Nations has colluded with the nefarious Star Trek splinter group the “Federation for One SciFi Reality” to stamped TOP SECRET on the most technical and exacting specifications for various Star Wars spaceships. Certainly, there have been reveals and leaks from time to time— that was inevitable given the enthusiasm of the fan base— but nothing definitive. For those of us who have built rudimentary Star Wars vehicles using 3-D printers and whatnot, it’s been frustrating. My last attempt at creating an SUV-sized Death Star came out looking more like a huge lump of coal, and there were some absurd complications involving the authorities.

But now, Ryder Windham, Chris Reiff, and Chris Trevas have blown the lid off of the U.N.’s unnecessary secrecy. Their Star Wars: Millennium Falcon Owner’s Workshop Manual provides everything you need to build and repair a Modified YT-1300 Corellian Freighter. The Millennium Falcon is, of course, a legendary spaceship, made famous by its adventures under the command of smugglers Han Solo and Chewbacca, whose special modifications transformed their beat-up Corellian light freighter into one of the fastest ships in the galaxy.

Guest Post: Lev A.C. Rosen on Steampunk, the Importance of Being Earnest, and “Men of Genius”

An intriguing Steampunk release from earlier in the year was first-time novelist Lev A.C. Rosen’s All Men of Genius, which seems to have absorbed the lessons of classic Steampunk but also be fully aware of the modern variety. It’s aware of a need to be entertaining and of using the subgenre as social commentary, but also of creating compelling characters and situations. In the book, the budding genius-level inventor Violet Adams wants to attend the prestigious but all-male Illyria College, founded by the late Duke Illyria, the greatest scientist of the Victorian Age. So what does Violet Adams do? She disguises herself as her twin brother, Ashton, and gains entry. What follows is part farce, part adventure, and fun on a lot of different levels—including killer automata, deadly legacies, and a lot of plot twists and complications.

Omnivoracious asked Rosen if he’d give us his take on Steampunk and how it relates to All Men of Genius. This is what he came up with…

Steampunk: Lev A.C. Rosen’s View

What is Steampunk? The question gets asked a lot by people just coming to the genre. Those familiar with steampunk tend to take a “I know it when I see it” approach, and that’s because like many developing genres (although the term has been around since the 80s at least, I think of it as a genre still in flux), it’s still drawing inspiration from and blending with other genres. Many books, films, and video games have steampunk elements. Does that make them steampunk? I think it depends on what steampunk means to the viewer.

"Control Point" by Myke Cole: Black Hawk Down Meets the X-Men

Ever wondered what “Black Hawk Down meets the X-Men” might look like? According to bestselling author Peter V. Brett, that’s exactly what readers get in Myke Cole’s debut novel Control Point the first in his Shadow Ops series from Ace. The praise doesn’t end there, with another bestseller, Ann Aguirre, calling Control Point “hands down the best military fantasy I’ve ever read.”

In Cole’s novel, people are waking up with magical talents—- storm-summoning, raising the dead, and fire-starting—- and creating chaos because of it. Army officer Oscar Britton, a member of the military’s Supernatural Operations Corps, is tasked with bringing order “to a world gone mad.” But when he suddenly manifests a rare magical power, Britton must go on the run from his former bosses. As Britton evades capture and learns more about the world of magic, the stakes rise exponentially. Cole’s career seems almost as exciting (and perilous) as the events in Control Point. As a security contractor, government civilian and military officer, Cole has been involved in everything from counterterrorism efforts to cyber warfare and federal law enforcement. After three tours in Iraq, Cole was recalled to serve during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

With that career background, readers may be surprised to learn that Cole, as he told Omni in an exclusive interview, “grew up with solid nerd roots: from Dungeons & Dragons to comic books to mass-market fantasy. You should be seeing the Terry Brooks, Tolkien and D&D in Control Point every bit as much as you see the Black Hawk Down.”

Cole started writing as a kid, with fantasy a big influence: “My first ‘book’ consisted of transcribing the vinyl recording of Ralph Bakshi's old Lord of the Rings animated film when I had just learned to write competently. I never stopped writing from that point on. I got serious about writing for publication in roughly 1998.”

The Demi-Monde: A High Concept Sci Fi Thriller for Fans of Neal Stephenson

The just-released The Demi-Monde: Winter by Rod Rees comes complete with a frothing blurbalicious frenzy courtesy of Book Reporter: “A brilliant, high concept series that blends science fiction and thriller, Steampunk and dystopian vision. If Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, James Rollins, and Clive Cussler participated in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, the result might be something akin to [this novel’s] dark and ingenious madness.”

While that description may be over the top, The Demi-Monde: Winter does seem destined to be one of January’s more original reads. The Demi-Monde< of the title is a sophisticated U.S. military computer simulation designed to provide a virtual training ground for urban combat. Thus, the world of the Demi-Monde is gripped by perpetual civil war. Stocked with infamous tyrants much as a trout pond is stocked with, erm, trout, the Demi-Monde features cyber-duplicates of Shaka Zulu, Ivan the Terrible, and even Aleister Crowley. (Poor Crowley—he’s so misunderstood.) The author has spent his life traveling the world, living for a time in Qatar, Tehran, and Moscow, and the novel reflects this experience. He’s also created his own religions for the Demi-Monde, including Unfundementalism, HerEticalism, HimPerialism, RaTionalism, and Confusionism.

As might be expected, things go terribly wrong and the President’s daughter winds up trapped in the Demi-Monde by two diabolical villains. A young jazz singer must then attempt a rescue before devastating consequences affect the real world.

There’s more than a hint of camp and the theatrical to The Demi-Monde, to go along with the action and twists and turn of plot. It should satisfy a lot of readers looking for an exciting, thick read this month.

The Map of My Dead Pilots: Fascinating Nonfiction from Colleen Mondor

As we enter the heart of the snowy season for North America, Colleen Mondor’s The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska underscores just what that “winter wonderland” often means for those stuck in it—and especially those who fly through it. Mondor spent four years in the 1990s running dispatch operations for a commuter and charter airline out of Fairbanks, Alaska, and saw first-hand the risks of piloting small planes in the wildest territory in the United States.

This fascinating and knowledgeable look at something we often take for granted delves into the history of aviation in Alaska, the story of tragic crashes, and provides indelible portraits of some of the pilots. In the preface, Mondor notes that she was “initially quite reticent to publish this book as a memoir, preferring the more forgiving fiction route as a way to keep the stories true but the names and places less factual.” For The Map of My Dead Pilots, therefore, she’s changed names and locations where necessary.

As you read through the first chapters, in which the pilots fear the cold weather and its effects on their instruments and planes, experience stress when transporting people, and good-naturedly haze the newest recruits, it’s hard not to think of what Mondor’s describing as a kind of war of attrition. The only difference? The enemy is the elements, with this added bonus: “Everyone lied to them.”

The Company lied from the very beginning, promising bigger paychecks, bigger airplanes, and a better schedule…The village agents lied about the weather…Ops almost always lied about the load …A dozen pumpkins for Ruby School weighing one hundred pounds were really thirty pumpkins weighing God knew what.

As you delve deeper into the book, chapters like “The Dead Body Contract,” “Dropping through a Hole in the Sky,” “The Worst Cargo in the World,” and “One Hundred Crash Stories” live up to the drama of their titles. (In case you’re wondering about the worst cargo in the world, here’s a hint: four paws and a harness.) At one point a pilot asks, “What the hell are my choices up there? You can’t see a damn thing, and mountains in all directions.” In The Map of My Dead Pilots, Mondor does a great job of giving readers a well-documented, frank, and clear idea of the harrowing nature of flying in Alaska. It’s not “Northern Exposure meets Air America” as the flap copy reads—it’s actually something much more interesting. Highly recommended.

Greg Bear and “Primordium,” the New Halo Forerunner Novel

Can a novel set in a videogame universe enthrall fans of the game and entice those who don’t play the game? Iconic science fiction writer Greg Bear’s seem to be a great example of a series that can attract both sets of readers. Halo: Primordium—the follow up to the first volume, Halo: Cryptum—has just been released by Tor Books. The viability of the series is partly a testament to the Halo game and partly a tribute to Bear—a Hugo and Nebula award-winner—who, in his original fiction, brings powerful and original ideas with him.

When Omnivoracious asked Bear, just back from a recent book tour, how he first encountered the game, he replied that his son Erik “followed the game faithfully and played it frequently. I observed and then played it a few times—I was not as good as he was!—and thoroughly enjoyed the action, design elements, the entire science fictional outlook and feel. I was also intrigued by the back story, which seemed fascinating, but just barely touched upon. I’m a sucker for ancient giant alien artifacts.”

In terms of any constraints exploring the implications of those “giant alien artifacts, Bear indicated the Halo team has given him “a lot of freedom to create and play around in the known Halo universe. We have to respect what has gone before, of course—but when there’s a major question or something pretty much undeveloped, I run with it, develop my own solutions and scenarios, then run them past the gang [at 343] to see if they fit. By far, the majority of my creative additions have been accepted, and then added upon by the Halo team. It’s a great collaborative effort!”

Still, Bear acknowledged that there are challenges to writing in an “established universe”: “I’m used to developing my own moods and themes for individual works. Halo has its own moods and themes, which have to be respected...[it] requires some disciplined and thoughtful maneuvering. Fortunately, the Halo universe reminds me so much of classic science fiction, that it isn’t much of a leap to discern what Halo fans are going to enjoy. They seem to like what I like, so far!”

Graphic Novel Friday: The Annotated Sandman by Neil Gaiman

Unless you were abducted by aliens decades ago and have only just been deposited back on Earth, you’ve no doubt heard of the iconic Sandman comics series, for which Neil Gaiman is credited as the principle architect. The Sandman, which ended in 1996, is one of the most acclaimed titles in the history of comics. The basic premise, following the adventures of Dream, ruler of the worlds of dream and member of the family Endless, blends myth, dark fantasy, contemporary fiction, and historical drama. One reason for its enduring legacy and popularity must be due to the sheer flexibility of the concept and how that allowed Gaiman’s imagination free rein.

Now Vertigo has released volume 1 of

The Annotated Sandman in an oversized hardcover. Edited (some might say “curated”) by Leslie S. Klinger, this first volume covers issues 1 through 20. Special extras include a preface, an essay entitled “The Context of the Sandman,” and a foreword by Gaiman himself.

In that introduction, Gaiman remembers reading other annotated books like Annotated Alice and The Annotated Hunting of the Snark: “I loved feeling I had been given a key, or a succession of keys. I loved having jokes I had missed pointed out to me. I loved feeling that there had been scholarship and thought put into something, and that I had been made a gift of it….It’s like going around a museum with a knowledgeable guide, someone who can point up into the rafters, where you might not have looked if you were walking around alone, and point out the gargoyles.”

He also notes that from the beginning Sandman was being annotated: “I was being sent copies of the USEnet annotations being assembled by a group mind.”

2011 Philip K. Dick Award Finalists Announced, Including Maureen McHugh, Mira Grant, and More

The Philip K. Dick Award finalists for best original Science Fiction published in paperback form in the United States have just been announced:

A Soldier's Duty by Jean Johnson (Ace Books)

After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh (Small Beer Press)

Deadline by Mira Grant (Orbit)

The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)

The Other by Matthew Hughes (Underland Press)

The Postmortal by Drew Magary (Penguin Books)

The Samuil Petrovitch Trilogy by Simon Morden (Orbit)

The hot hand here clearly belongs to Maureen F. McHugh with After the Apocalypse from Small Beer, the only short story collection on the ballot. It’s a brilliant book that hit the trifecta of starred reviews in Booklist, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly. Michael Dirda called an “irresistible festival of horrors” in the Washington Post. Publishers Weekly and io9.com both put it on their year’s best list.

Three Movie Deals for SF/Fantasy by Lauren Beukes, Cherie Priest, and Charles Yu

As recently reported by the SF/Fantasy pop culture site io9.com (here and here) and others, three great novels are being developed for the big screen: Lauren Beukes’ Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Zoo City, Cherie Priest’s Hugo-nominated Boneshaker, and Charles Yu’s critically acclaimed How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.

This is in part a coincidental series of events, as the three deals have nothing to do with one another. However, it does confirm the general trend of movie-makers acquiring SF/Fantasy properties, given the popularity of franchises such as the Harry Potter films, perhaps fed by advances in CGI technology. Each of these novels while being unique also falls into popular categories of fiction right now. Zoo City is a gritty noir novel that blends science fiction and fantasy in a way that could be described as “urban fantasy” even though it’s not really in that subgenre. Boneshaker is one of the main fictional ambassadors of the Steampunk movement, and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe takes pop culture and the red-hot time travel genre and mixes it with a very personal story.

All of which boils down to this: movie fans have some great stories and visuals to look forward to in theaters at some point in the future. In fact, we asked all three creators what they were most excited about seeing on the big screen from their books. (Note: some spoilers ahead.)

Fantastical Fiction: Four Unusual (and Suitably Small) Gifts for the Holidays

Editor's Note: This post missed Christmas, but there's still (barely) time for Hanukkah (or, more likely, just a plain ol' present for yourself or loved one).

Are you searching for the perfect stocking stuffer, that elusive seventh- or eighth-day Hanukkah gift, or just in general need an unusual little book to surprise someone and tickle their fancy this holiday season? One of four recent releases, all slim, smartly designed fictions, might just do the trick….

The Ravickians by Renee Gladman—This account of a novelist’s explorations of an imaginary city continues Gladman’s Ravicka trilogy, with each book standing alone. Allied with the fiction of Italo Calvino, Doris Lessing, and others, The Ravickians is entertaining, thoughtful, and a quick read. As with everything published by the Dorothy Project, it’s also a lovely little book to hold in your hand. Opening lines: “To say you have been born in Ravicka in any other language than Ravic is to say you have been hungry. That is why this story must not be translated.”

2011 Overlooked Books? Unique Fantasy, SF, and Horror You Might Have Missed

Every year interesting and amazing books slip through the cracks. Some reach a wide audience and yet still get overlooked at the end of the year, while others reach a select if enthusiastic audience and miss a wider readership. Here’s a run-down of some great titles from the past year or so that you should definitely check out, with a few science fiction books in the mix as well.

The Great Lover by Michael Cisco (Chômu Press) - At this point, it appears Cisco is simply operating in a sphere that most weird fiction writers never reach, or attain only rarely, and is doing it effortlessly. The best work of the weird in 2010, The Narrator, Cisco’s prior novel, may be more accessible, but once you become accustomed to the rhythms of this new book, it is an unforgettable experience. The Great Lover of the title is a sewerman and undead hero and the novel, to some measure, follows his strange adventures. (And if you’re into weird fiction generally, check out this list of weird fiction I put together.)

The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 3, edited by Ellen Datlow (Night Shade Books) – Iconic horror editor Datlow’s latest installment of her best-of reprint series includes chilling stories by Laird Barron, Stephen Graham Jones, Tanith Lee, Joe R. Lansdale, M. Rickert, Catherynne M. Valente, and many more. With great cover art by Allan Williams.

The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction by Haywood Ferreira (Wesleyan) – This fascinating exploration of Latin American SF prior to 1920 points to a parallel tradition to the much better-known North American one. Some of the more interesting sections bring to light a Latin American Frankenstein and chart the course of influence across Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. The book also includes some fascinating images, not least of which is the magnificent cover art.

Joy and Surprise: An Interview with Haruki Murakami

A bestseller internationally, Haruki Murakami is frequently mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature on the basis of several spectacular novels, including Kafka on the Shore, A Wild Sheep Chase, and my personal favorite The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. As has been widely noted, Murakami’s fiction often has a luminous and somewhat surreal or fantastical quality as a natural part of the novelist’s worldview. His fiction also almost always features cats, sometimes in mysterious roles.

At 925 pages, Murakami’s latest novel 1Q84 features all of these trademarks, including the cats, but on a much more massive scale. There has been some resistance to that scale from some reviewers, perhaps because the length tends to further emphasize and highlight the open-ended nature of Murakami’s approach to fiction. However, careful and immersive readers will love this mind-bending story. What is 1Q84 “about”? I’m afraid it’s one of those novels where any pat description fails to convey the true essence and its capacity for brilliant digressions feeding back into the main story. But perhaps the publisher’s description—which calls it a love story, a fantasy, a dystopia, and a novel of self-discovery—is as good a starting point as any:

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

Margaret Atwood’s “In Other Worlds”: Dystopias, Space Squid, and Authenticity

Within the Science Fiction and Fantasy subculture there’s been a wee bit of controversy about Margaret Atwood in recent years. The main point of contention has been Atwood’s remark awhile back that novels like The Handmaid’s Tale are not SF because they aren’t about “squid in space.” Now, although I believe space squid can be handled with great subtlety and literary acumen, it’s no surprise that this statement generated a reaction consisting mostly of consternation, irritation, and outrage. Indeed, as late as this year, Publishers Weekly SF/F/horror reviews editor Rose Fox wrote about “Mouthing Off to Margaret Atwood”.

Seeming to misrepresent a type of fiction to the world isn’t the best way to endear yourself to fans of a genre. But having seen Atwood speak at Florida State University—a really wonderful performance—I can attest to the fact that she made a very good argument for seeing a difference between dystopic fiction and science fiction—even though most people wouldn’t make any distinction between the two. (During that same appearance she also professed a fondness for Weird Tales magazine, which she read as a teenager.)

Halloween Over Too Soon? - Three Dark Tomes to Keep the Season Alive

Some books seem to manifest around Halloween, coming into focus like wraiths, only to fade the next day and return whence they came. Others linger, their horrific and phantasmagorical visions sticking in the mind for good. Having just guided to completion the 2012 US release The Weird, a 750,000-word anthology covering 100 years of dark fiction, I think I have a good idea of which are ephemeral and which truly ethereal. Three dark tomes scheduled to take advantage of the Halloween season seem to have the requisite staying power: the novel Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem and the reprint anthologies Creatures and the oh-so-aptly named Halloween.

Tem’s Deadfall Hotel has been keenly anticipated by weird fiction geeks for more than two decades, ever since horror icon Charles L. Grant published the story “Bloodwolf” in his anthology Shadows 9 (1986). Tem, a winner of the World Fantasy Award and British Fantasy Award, noted that the story was the seed for a much longer work. Hundreds of critically acclaimed short stories and novellas followed and a wonderful collaboration with his wife, Melanie Tem, titled The Man on the Ceiling, but until now no sign of the promised novel.

"Who Fears Death" by Nnedi Okorafor Wins the 2011 World Fantasy Award

Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death has just won the prestigious World Fantasy Award for best novel, announced in San Diego at the World Fantasy Convention. Who Fears Death made Amazon’s Top 10 SF/Fantasy list for 2010. A professor of English at Chicago State University, Okorafor is a past winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature, the CBS Parallax Award, and the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa.

The other winners are:

Novella: Elizabeth Hand, "The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon" (Stories: All-New Tales)

Short Story: Joyce Carol Oates, "Fossil-Figures" (Stories: All-New Tales)

Anthology: "My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me" (Penguin), edited by Kate Bernheimer & Carmen Gimenez Smith

Collection: "What I Didn't See and Other Stories" by Karen Joy Fowler (Small Beer Press)

Artist: Kinuko Y. Craft

Special Award-Professional: Marc Gascoigne, for Angry Robot

Special Award-Non-professional: Alisa Krasnostein, for Twelfth Planet Press

An Interview with Best-selling Fantasy Author R.A. Salvatore: Finding the Personal in the Epic, the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

On the occasion of the recent publication of R.A. Salvatore’s latest novel, Omnivoracious invited Jeremy L. C. Jones to share his thoughts about the book—and to interview the author. Jones, an expert on Salvatore’s fiction, is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher. Along with Jeff VanderMeer, he co-directs Shared Worlds, a SF/Fantasy creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers partially funded by an Amazon.com grant.

Even though Neverwinter by R. A. Salvatore falls late in his heroic fantasy Forgotten Realms series about the dark elf Drizzt Do’Urden, it is an ideal place to start reading—or re-reading—Salvatore’s fiction. Neverwinter finds the veteran fantasist pushing himself (and his characters) harder than ever before—asking bigger questions, meeting bigger challenges, and conquering bigger personal demons.

Though known for writing vivid combat scenes, Salvatore is very much a character writer. His Forgotten Realms novels are "buddy fantasy" in the mode of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories and heroic fantasy in the mode David Gemmell's Legend. Iconic characters like Drizzt Do’Urden, Bruenor Battlehammer, Wulfgar, Regis, and Cattie-brie are, as Salvatore says, “friends to walk down the road of adventure beside.”

John Grant: Affirming Science with the Smart, Darkly Humorous “Denying Science”

For the past few years, John Grant has been intrepidly documenting instances of bogus, corrupted, and discarded science. Now he's back with perhaps the best of the lot: Denying Science. As topical and as cutting as past volumes have been, Denying Science gets to the heart of the problem in today's world—and does so with fascinating, brilliantly written accounts that may curl your toes but that also contain elements of humor and absurdity. In doing so, he tackles such question as “Is global warming just scaremongering?”, “Is evolution ‘just a theory’?”, and “Is autism caused by vaccinations?” Grant provides compelling evidence that the answer in all three cases is a resounding “no.”

But his larger point in these instances and more is to comment on the role of popular media in presenting the interpretation of scientific data as having equally compelling and factual “sides,” blurring the lines between critical thinking/scientific literacy and approaches more common to presenting opposing political pundits on morning talk shows.

Helen Oyeyemi’s New Novel Mr. Fox”: Unruly Disguises, Amiable Silliness, and a Love Story

Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox is one of the more delightful, and delightfully complex, selections on Amazon's October Best Books of the Month. It’s the fourth novel for Oyeyemi, who was born in Nigeria and raised in London, and it’s garnered a great deal of praise from national media, including NPR and the Boston Globe.

What’s it about? Many intricate, tangled-together things. As Amazon’s Heather Delieepan wrote, “[The novel] uses a series of interconnected vignettes to capture the love triangle between wry, self-absorbed writer St. John Fox, his wife, Daphne, and his imagined muse, Mary Foxe. As his muse Mary takes form on the page, St. John struggles to maintain his already tenuous marriage. Through different time periods and characters, he writes and rewrites Mary Foxe as an embodiment of unrequited love…Through them all is the shared and often feverish complexity that comes with sustained relationships….With clever, tender, and often poignant prose, she captures the magic and heartbreak of the love story.”

The novel mixes folktales and a certain meta-element, but those elements are really just a jumping off point for the novel’s main conflict. As Oyeyemi replied when I asked her about the idea of focus in the novel, “Yes, there're lots of disguises going on, appearances and disappearances and reappearances; I took care not to abandon my interest in the central dispute between Mary and Mr. Fox—the one about love and stories; Mary's very serious about both, and Mr. Fox claims not to be serious about either. With a few of the stories I had to rewrite bits over and over until I felt both sides had been addressed.”