Book Review: Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories

Having been a long time fan of Horror and recent discover of Inhabit media, an Inuit-owned publishing company in Nunavut, Canada, I was thrilled to find this collection pop up on my FaceBook feed and then delighted to see my wife had already put an order in for it when I suggested we might want to buy it.

The stories included in Taaqtumi range from Thriller to Supernatural Horror and to Science Fiction/Horror. Standouts for me included Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard, by Aviaq Johnston (who wrote a delightful children's story called What's My Superpower that I absolutely loved in 2017), and The Door, by Ann R. Loverock, although the book has stories that would work well for both Horror fans like me and those just peeking into the genre.

An excellent collection and from a company I hope does more like it in the future.

Muse and Reverie

Charles de Lint's 2009 short story collection Muse and Reverie appears to be the last visit he planned to his fictional setting of Newford for some time. The stories, originally published in a number of fantasy fiction collections (including one featuring Hellboy!), are a nice mix of stories, shifting back and forth between urban fantasy and dark fantasy, as well as one adorable Christmas story featuring the crow girls.

The first story in the collection was previous included in his Waifs & Strays collection, but otherwise these were all new to me and were a great delight to read. As I've only got six more stories after this until I'm caught up, and it looks like this is the latest short story collection, I have to admit my enjoyment was a little bitter sweet - soon I'll be joining de Lint's other fans, but like them, I'll have to wait to get more stories until he publishes them.

Book Review: No Last Name

I first heard the name Jack Reacher back in 2010 while reading Stephen King's Under the Dome; his character is mentioned as a character reference for the protagonist Dale "Barbie" Barbara. At the time, I probably wouldn't have put it together, but a friend in my club mentioned that this was referring to Lee Child's book series featuring the character.

Two years later one of my book clubs selected the first Jack Reacher novel Killing Floor as a selection and from that point forward I read a book a month and slowly but surely got myself up to date. Now, like any number of other Jack Reacher fans, I'm stuck waiting for the new title to come out.

Luckily for me, I was able to get my hands on the book No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher short stories. The collection includes twelve short stories, most with Reacher as protagonist and a few with him as a supporting character or even as a cameo. Like the main novels, No Middle Name includes stories told from both first and third person perspective, ranging from senty-ish pages down to less than five. Although normally I like reading short stories in order of publication, Reacher's life is sort of made up of random events punctuated by violence, so the more episodic nature of this collection worked quite well for me.

A great read for fans of the character and also a potentially good jumping on point for new readers.

Book Review: A Handful of Coppers

So for my fortieth birthday my lovely wife tracked down a large number of hardcover Charles de Lint books for me, including a number I had missed out on while reading my way through his work.

Case in point A Handful of Coppers: The Early Works of Charles de Lint vol 1: High Fantasy - the book follows four separate characters through a number of short stories (and one novella), that range from straight Conan the Barbarian/Farfd and the Gray Mouser worlds through to Arthurian legend and beyond, including one book I've read before, but in context with three other stories about the character.

I'll admit some of the earliest stories are pretty rough, but with each of them you can read and watch a master storyteller develop through his early days, and for that alone it is well worth the read.

Book Review: Tapping the Dream Tree

Charles de Lint's fourth short story collection set in Newford mixes perspectives (a number of the stories are told in first person), characters (both old and new), and ideas - including a ghost story unlike any I've read before "The Witching Hour", as well as stories of Pixie infestation via the internet, sequels to a number of favourite short stories from across his career to date and the addition of the novella Seven Wild Sisters as a bonus.

As always, the stories are a great deal of fun, mixed with terror and pathos, and had me looking forward to my next book from de Lint.

Book Review: The Ivory and the Horn

Charles De Lint’s second collection of short fiction set in Newford felt much more interesting to my than Dreams Underfoot (which I also quite liked), with the first collection I was pretty enamoured of how he was building this fascinating city setting and how he would cross multiple characters over throughout stories, switching timelines, perspectives, etc., but with The Ivory and the Horn, although there is a lot of that too, the stories move into some pretty dark territory, and allow the reader to read about some deep real world issues (such as falling in love with a good friend, the effectiveness of social work, dealing with a friend’s depression), and uses fantasy elements to draw the reader in.

For me, stories like “Dead Man’s Shoes”, a vengeance-based ghost story worked great as effective horror, but others like “The Wishing Well” showed exactly how insidious a crisis can be and how easily people might ignore it. The collection moves easily from issues involving homelessness to urban fantasy (my favourite of the latter is “Mr. Truepenney’s Book Emporium and Gallery” which asks how responsible we are for our dreams.

A great collection, and definitely had me looking forward to reading my next de Lint book.

Book Review: Trigger Warning

Okay, fair warning - I'm a pretty big Neil Gaiman fan - I've got all the books and movies, even the BBC Neverwhere series and a couple of CDs, so short answer - I loved the book and yes you should read it.

Okay, now to go a little in depth.

The book has over twenty stories and poems; including ones focusing on Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, and even Shadow Moon (from his 2001 novel American Gods).  In addition the book includes a great fairy tale theme story called The Sleeper and the Spindle as well as a couple great tribute stories to both Ray Bradbury and David Bowie.

The book collects stories that have been published in various anthologies over the last few years, so as it's a great way to catch up on any stories you may have missed out on.

A great read.