Category: Books

More Short Stories from Tor.com

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Tor.com

I’ve really been enjoying reading short stories from Tor.com – it feels decadent to sample one or two different authors during my commute – and so I decided to continue working my way through their treasure-trove of original fiction, each story presented with its own specially-designed cover by one of various talented artists. This selection includes all manner of fantastical sub-genres, taking in horror, romance, morality tales and epic fantasy with a comic twist. Find the first batch here. More coming soon!

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The Half-Drowned King (2017): Linnea Hartsuyker

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★★★½

The Norway Trilogy: Book I

This rollicking tale of Viking adventure opens with oar-dancing in the first sentence, which boded very well for the rest of the story. Based on the sagas of Harald Fairhair written by Snorri Sturluson in his Heimskringla in the 13th century, it looks back to the Norway of the late 9th century, a fragmented peninsula of petty kings and ruthless raiders. Focusing on the stories of a brother and sister fighting to realise their destinies, it’s an engaging tale spiced with the beliefs of medieval Scandinavia.

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Slow Boat (2003): Hideo Furukawa

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★★★

A Slow Boat to China Rmx

This new Japanese novella, published by Pushkin Press in a translation by David Boyd, is an odd beast. I asked to review it as part of my mission to read more from other cultures and because I’ve been generally impressed with the Japanese fiction I have read. The tale of a man wandering in Tokyo on Christmas Eve 2002, pondering the boundaries of the city, the body and the self, it’s a curiously hallucinogenic mix.

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Traitor’s Blade (2014): Sebastien De Castell

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★★★½

The Greatcoats: Book I

I’ve been saving this book as a treat, because I felt sure it was going to be a sparkler and, while I’m not exactly disappointed, it didn’t turn out to be quite what I was expecting. In many ways it ticks all the boxes of a fantasy-tinged swashbuckler, featuring dashing blades, impossible odds and dastardly nobles. These are all very, very good things. There are times, however, when it seems to lose its way: it shoehorns in a vague quest element and too often uses magic as a convenient way to achieve something, or to get out of a tight spot, rather than an integral part of the world. I can’t help feeling it’d be much more successful without its fantasy elements, as a simple character-driven adventure.

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Witches Abroad (1991): Terry Pratchett

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★★★★

The Discworld Reread: Book 12

Stories are dangerous things. As they flow through the world, they cut their paths into the fabric of reality, each time strengthening its shape. As time passes, it becomes harder and harder for a new story to diverge from the old one. In time, every seventh son of a seventh son will become a hero, and every put-upon stepdaughter will be blessed with a fairy godmother. But surely that’s all right? Fairy godmothers are always good, aren’t they? They make sure the story ends as it’s supposed to. But who says what the end should be? Someone in the exotic city of Genua is twisting reality to make it suit the stories, and the three witches of Lancre aren’t having any of that. Despite their fear of ‘forn parts’, they ride out to put things right.

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Vindolanda (2017): Adrian Goldsworthy

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★★★★

One of my forthcoming scheduled reviews questions the current trend for historians to write historical fiction. It’s become something of a fashion but it doesn’t always work: good historians may tell stories with novelistic flair, and good historical fiction writers have to get their facts right, but the two genres do demand a different skill-set. Not everyone can make the transition from one to the other. So I was amused to see that Adrian Goldsworthy, the celebrated historian of the Roman Empire, has decided to try his hand at a novel. Naturally, I couldn’t resist; and I’m pleased to report that Goldsworthy is one of the rare breed who can make the leap. Focusing on the men based at the forts along the northernmost frontier of Roman Britain, he tells a story full of battles, diplomacy and honour, with a very enjoyable ‘odd couple’ pairing at its heart.

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Reaper Man (1991): Terry Pratchett

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★★★

The Discworld Reread: Book 11

All is not well on the Discworld. As we’ve seen in earlier books, Death has a habit of being rather more interested in the lives of his…. clients… than he should be, and the Powers That Be are beginning to notice. When the Auditors decide that his attitude is jeopardising his professional detachment, they decide to take action. And so Death, to his surprise, is sacked. The Discworld, never the most stable place at the best of times, is about to face a whole new challenge…

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Feast of Sorrow (2017): Crystal King

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© Wayne Earl Chinnock

★★★½

The young cook Thrasius is purchased for an exorbitant sum of money in 1 BC by the wealthy Roman epicure Marcus Gavius Apicius. It proves to be a match made in heaven. Although he’s only nineteen, Thrasius has already made a name for himself as the inventor of mouthwatering delicacies, and Apicius harbours designs to become gastronomic adviser to Caesar himself. Together, master and slave embark on a quest to create the most dazzling and most delicious banquets that Rome has ever seen. It’s a collaboration that will enter history, making Apicius’ meals a byword for luxury, producing the world’s earliest surviving cookbook, and probably its first cookery school.

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Manchu (1980): Robert Elegant

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★★

The Imperial China Trilogy: Book I

Sometimes a book wears you down. You find yourself plodding away at it, determined to finish but finding that the number of remaining pages never seems to get any less. This, I’m afraid, was one of those books. A sweeping epic following the Jesuit mission in China in the mid 17th century, and told through the eyes of an ambitious young Englishman, it had scope to be very engaging. And it isn’t screamingly bad. It’s well-informed and detailed to a fault. But one is left with the powerful sense that 200 of its 634 pages could have been cut without any great loss to the story – in fact, probably to its advantage.

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The Malice of Fortune (2012): Michael Ennis

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★★

It’s 1502. Women are being murdered in the Romagna, and their deaths may hold the secret to a mystery that has plagued Pope Alexander VI: the brutal murder of his beloved son Juan, Duke of Gandia. Eager for revenge, he sends an agent north to find out more. The former courtesan Damiata arrives in the town of Imola, the headquarters of the Pope’s second son Cesare, with a powerful motivation to succeed: her infant son is being kept as a hostage at the Borgia court. Yet she isn’t the only one seeking the truth about these murders. Two others are also trying to identify the killer: one is the put-upon Florentine envoy, Niccolò Machiavelli; the other is Cesare’s engineer-general, the Tuscan polymath Leonardo da Vinci.

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