Review of Spear by Nicola Griffith

It's obvious, but with the fantasy market flooded authors are looking for ways of keeping things fresh. One trend that has emerged in the past decade is for writers to re-tell classic tales from a different perspective. These efforts, like all writing, vary in success. Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, for example, tells of Odysseus' wife Penelope while he was off having adventures. Pulling back the proverbial curtain on an area of history/legend for which we have less information, the book is a success for the manner which it captures the spirit of Greek myth while injecting new life into story and theme. Nicola Griffith's 2022 novella Spear likewise looks to retelling, but on the northern side of European history/legend. Let's take a look.

Spear is Arthurian legend through and through. But instead of a young man of mysterious parenthood who finds himself and gains knighthood through feats of honor and virtue, it's the story of a lesbian woman who does the same. I normally provide a short plot summary, but that's it. Replace character A with character B, and voila, the same cake but with different color frosting.

Review of Desert Creatures by Kay Chronister

In the primeval phylum of genre, there is perhaps no stronger or more long-lasting line than the Western. While it's popularity today is not that of Louis Lamour or John Wayne's generations, there are modern iterations which have kept the form viable, from Cormac McCarthy to Westworld. The untamed frontier a natural canvas for dynamic story, Kay Chronister adds her name to the line with 2023's Desert Creatures. Question is, how does it stand with the century+ of fiction before it?

Set during an unnamed time in the future after a nuclear apocalypse, civilization is in tatters in Desert Creatures. Across the Arizona desert a father and his club-footed daughter, Magdalena, make the dusty pilgrimage to Las Vegas where Magdalena hopes to have a healing miracle performed at what remains of the Catholic church. Never arriving at the crumbled neon city, the pair find themselves waylaid in a small community of men, women, and children, a community which is surviving but only through the strictest of civil codes. The women branded and travel to and from their collective strictly regulated, Magdalena and her father find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. A situation that can be resolved only through drastic decisions, Magdalena finds herself at odds with her beliefs and the practical necessities of survival as they struggle to survive in the wilds beyond.

Review of Hopeland by Ian McDonald

I have read almost every novel Ian McDonald has produced. The man is a wonder of technique and imagination. Technique is technique, but in McDonald's case it's the ability to write vibrantly in almost any style, from gonzo to core genre. Imagination is more subjective, but he has written everything from market-conforming fiction to fiction which has inspired others to imitate it. Whenever I hear of a new McDonald coming down the pipe, I get excited. In 2023 I was ready for a pair of collections that have been announced for years. But it was a novel which popped out instead: Hopeland. (Still waiting for the collections...)

An amalgamation of his oeuvre to date, Hopeland is squarely an Ian McDonald novel. There is a bit of the eccentric, magic realism of his early novels (Out on Blue Six, Desolation Road, etc.). There is a near-future tangibility not unlike his so-called globalization novels (Brasyl, River of Gods, etc.). And there is a continental social concern which stems from his Chaga series. McDonald's DNA is woven throughout Hopeland. So what is the novel about?