Review: The White-Luck Warrior by R. Scott Bakker
The White-Luck Warrior by R. Scott BakkerFifty pages in, I realized I had come to approach this as a horror story rather than epic fantasy, as if I was reading Stephen King or the Lovecraft Unbound anthology. I read horror in a much more defensive mode, trying not to get invested in any character’s survival, and nodding my head whenever a particularly disturbing (I would say, dryly, “quite effective”) scene occurred, making terror an aesthetic observation in hopes of...
Read MoreBook Review: Liane Merciel’s The River King’s Road
This is exactly the kind of fantasy I love: a potentially epic setting but with “low fantasy” focus on the actual people within it. Peasants have the chance to determine fate for a change. Like Saladin Ahmed, I also want “fewer kings and starship captains, more coach drivers and space waitresses” in my spec fic. Beyond class diversity, the spec fic genre also needs progress in racial diversity. It’s something I try to do in my own writing and also something...
Read MoreBook Review: “Blood of Kings” by Billy Wong
I received a free ebook copy through a LibraryThing giveaway in exchange for an honest review. I signed up for the giveaway because I’ve followed Wong’s short fiction casually for years (not least because we’ve frequently wound up in the same places, such as Firefly in Amber etc etc). While his style is fine for short fiction, where it’s of the essence to be concise, I struggled through this novel. An in media res opening perplexed me, especially because the characters...
Read MoreBook Review: Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker (Aspect-Emperor trilogy)
I mentioned this one in my review of The Skybound Sea–where I hoped for the sake of Aeon’s Gate fans Skyes goes on to write a sequel trilogy like this. I cannot remember enjoying a sequel so much in years! Although the worldbuilding behind what Bakker is now calling The Second Apocalypse is beyond complex, and a lot has happened in the 20 years since the close of the Prince of Nothing trilogy, I still felt able to dive right back into this world. I hadn’t realized how...
Read MoreWisCon Rapidfire Book Reviews #4: Aeon’s Gate: The Skybound Sea by Sam Sykes
I have a confession to make: I already took one review copy (Edge of Oblivion), but I couldn’t resist snagging this one, too. I picked it up and meant to page through it to pass the time before the auction, but then I could not put it down. The opening lines beat out a hypnotic rhythm. Gliding past them, I found myself in an oceanside slum near the home of an eldritch abomination. My inner Cthulhu fan’s tentacles twitched pleasantly. I found I liked the characters at once....
Read MoreWisCon Rapidfire Book Review #2: A Stranger on Olondria by Sofia Samatar
Another one of the books I discovered through WisCon–in fact, I discovered Stranger in Olondria through the little sampler pamphlets Small Beer Press handed out out at WisCon 2012. This was daring promotional tactic–because the first 50 pages of this story don’t have much of the plot, though they gave a flavor for style. The style intrigued me enough that I was willing to wait for the plot, and wait I did: not only for a full year to see the book in...
Read MoreSeptember Publications: Scigentasy and Voluted Tales
Happy Labor Day to those of you celebrating it! I’m at this moment not quite employed enough to, but I do have some exciting writing announcements. First, Silver Chests and Plain Sight has been reprinted at Voluted Tales. Half-detective story, it may have been influenced by Peter Tremayne’s delightful medieval monastic mysteries–although my cleric happens to be female. I also have an original story publication: A Marriage, Pure and Good is at the new Intersectional...
Read MoreWisCon Rapidfire Book Review #1: Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
Life is busy, what with the move, the job search, and the Starter Guide, but it’s unfair of me to hold off on these reviews any longer. So: a RAPID FIRE ROUND shall commence, where I give you my thoughts on the books I discovered at WisCon this May in a few hundred words each. I wasn’t able to purchase this book at WisCon proper, but I did see it in the dealer’s room and took note of it. I was especially interested in the setting after returning from Ghana. Chinua Achebe had...
Read More“The Void Test” at the Cast of Wonders Podcast!
This weekend, I had one of my first stories in audio publication! You can now listen to “The Void Test,” read by Chloë Yates in the YA Podcast Cast of Wonders. It’s a story of confronting fears, most importantly the sort of fears even ultimate power can’t defeat. The text is included on the website, slightly revised from its originally appearance in MindFlights Magazine in...
Read More“An Honorable Aunt” at Silver Blade
Silver Blade Issue #18 is live, and includes my fantasy story “An Honorable Aunt”. This was one of those stories it was fun to write simply because I was getting inside the heads of people who view the world so differently from me, that it was a stretch of intellectual–and perhaps empathetic–muscle to show their thoughts and feelings. I think once you read the story it’ll be obvious what I mean, but I will say, just about every character in the story did something...
Read MoreAbout Therese
Therese Arkenberg's first short story was accepted for publication on January 2, 2008, and her second acceptance came a few hours later. Since then they haven't always been in such a rush, yet her work appears in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Analog, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Sword & Sorceress XXIV. Aqua Vitae, her science fiction novella, was released by WolfSinger Publications in December 2011.
She works as a freelance editor and writer in Wisconsin, where she returned after a brief but unforgettable time in Washington, D.C. When she isn't reading, writing, or editing (it's true!) she serves on the board of the Plowshare Center of Waukesha, which works for social, economic, and environmental justice.