Tag: fantasy

Sorcerer to the Crown (2015): Zen Cho

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★★★½

Sorcerer Royal Trilogy: Book I

This was another recommendation from Heloise, and proved to be another delightful piece of escapism. Set in London in an alternate version of the early 19th century, it reads like the love-child of Georgette Heyer and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. The story unfolds in familiar territory, among the fine houses of St James’s and Mayfair, with White’s and Almack’s constant presences in the background. However, there are also lesser-known institutions, such as the Theurgist’s club, where frivolous youngsters fritter away their talents, and the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers. For this is a London where magic holds sway.

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Mozart Reimagined (2015): Tyson Vick

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Mozart Reimagined: Don Giovanni

★★★★

Some weeks ago I was searching for photos of the Royal Opera House’s classic production of Mitridate designed by Graham Vick, but when I Googled ‘Mitridate‘ and ‘Vick’, I didn’t get quite the results I was expecting. Instead I found the most incredible series of pictures taken by Tyson Vick, an American photographer, who has spent ten years working on an ambitious project to take at least one representative photograph for every Mozart opera. And I mean every. This remarkable book is the result, and it truly is Mozart as you’ve never seen him before.

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The Gracekeepers (2015): Kirsty Logan

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★★★

This was a chance find in the library: I was attracted by the dreamily beautiful cover, which reminded me of The Life of Pi, and by the intriguing summary on the back. Its ethereal strangeness was indicative of the book itself, which turned out to be a pared-back fable set in a fantastical post-apocalyptic future. While it was lovely – and offered me another fictional circus to add to my tally – it also felt somehow truncated, as though it was only just getting underway when the pages came to an end.

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The Philosopher Kings (2015): Jo Walton

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★★★½

Thessaly: Book II

We rejoin the inhabitants of the island of Kallisti twenty years after the conclusion of The Just City, when the project to construct a living version of Plato’s Republic foundered on the rocks of debate, arrogance and divine impatience. A generation has passed since then and, with many of the Masters dead and a new crop of Young Ones growing up, it falls to the Children – those brought to Kallisti at ten years old – to steer their way towards the best possible world. But things are not what they once were and, in the absence of Athene, the high ideals of a philosophical city are already beginning to crumble.

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Uprooted (2015): Naomi Novik

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★★★★

Naomi Novik has now finished her phenomenally successful Temeraire series and I’m looking forward to catching up with the final four books, as and when I can track them down in the local library. In the meantime, I spotted a copy of her new standalone novel, which I carried off in triumph. It takes place in a very different world from Temeraire: a medieval, Eastern European setting rich with fairytale motifs: dense forests, dark winters and a great evil stalking the land. But there’s a Dragon here too, who lives in a tower at the end of the valley and comes down once every ten years to carry off one of the daughters of the peasant families. Things are not, however, exactly what they seem and in fact this gorgeous, sprawling, magical novel stands triumphantly independent of its scaly-clawed forebears.

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The Just City (2015): Jo Walton

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★★★★

Thessaly: Book I

In his book The Republic, Plato dreamed of a just society in which the pursuit of knowledge and excellence would be the highest goal. It was a daring dream, the first utopia: an elaborate thought-experiment which has captivated the imagination of thinkers through the ages. But could it actually work? Athena is determined to find out. Gathering together those who, throughout history, have read Republic and prayed to her that it might be possible to live in such a place, she prepares the groundwork for the realisation of the greatest political fantasy ever imagined.

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The Grace of Kings (2015): Ken Liu

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★★★★

The Dandelion Dynasty: Book I

Choosing books by their covers has sometimes come back to bite me, but not in this case. I’ve wanted to read this novel ever since I saw the simple and very elegant cover design, and the wait was worth it. Although the book has inevitably been dubbed the ‘Wuxia Game of Thrones‘, that doesn’t do just to its dense and labyrinthine originality. Political ambition is interwoven with martial glory, technological experiment and cunning, as two very different but equally brilliant men vie to define the future of a crumbling empire, and the gods themselves are tempted to break their own laws and interfere in the affairs of men. Indeed, so much happens in this book that attempting a summary is doomed to failure, but I’ll give it a go.

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Shadowplay (2014): Laura Lam

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★★★

Micah Grey: Book II

Some months after reading the captivating Pantomime, I discovered that the second volume in Lam’s Micah Grey trilogy was actually available for Kindle after all. Longing for something light and gripping, and unable to exercise restraint, I devoured the entire thing on Sunday in my haste to find out more about Micah, his history and his strange, beguiling world. Please bear in mind that of course this post will include spoilers for the first book in the series, so proceed with care if you haven’t read it.

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Dragonflight (1968): Anne McCaffrey

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★★★

Between the ages of eleven and thirteen, I read a lot of classic sci-fi novels that my dad had bought in the 1970s and 1980s and then relegated to a box in the attic. These were my first ‘grown up’ books and together they opened up a whole world for me, but I haven’t read them since. However, a few weeks back someone donated a treasure trove of these novels to the book stall at the village fete (not my dad’s copies, I hasten to add), and I saw the perfect opportunity to revisit the stories which had had such an impression on me as a child. First up on the nostalgia road-trip was Dragonflight, which I remembered with great fondness. Inevitably, it didn’t quite stand up to the test of time, but – having forgotten virtually everything about it except the characters’ names and the dragons – I still found it exciting and fast-paced, with a clever blend of sci-fi and fantasy at its heart.

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The Princess Who Wouldn’t Come Home (2008): Irving Finkel

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Irving Finkel

★★★★

Let’s establish the key fact first: Irving Finkel is a legend. Not only does he have one of the most impressive job titles at the British Museum (Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian Script), but he can read cuneiform, made a replica of the Royal Game of Ur at the age of nine, and looks exactly as a curator should look. I’m resigned to the fact that, even if I spend my entire career wearing tweed and covered in dust – which, to be honest, happens quite a lot – I’m never going to look as much like a curator as Finkel. It’s all to do with the beard, I think.

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