Tag: fiction

Another short-listed novel for the World Fantasy Awards [Corrected post]

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy2 Comments

The 2025 World Fantasy Awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, held this year in Brighton UK on Oct. 30-Nov. 2, 2025. Here I am, deep in my quest to read and review all the novels short-listed for the award.

The list and my next review–and. . an editing mistake corrected:

The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–This novel won the 2025 Hugo Award and was short-listed for the Locus Award. Mentioned in my preceding post, reviewed in my posts about the 2025 Hugo nominees.

The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo (Holt; Quercus UK)–a wonderful overlay of Chinese folklore on the early 20th century historical conflict between China and Japan. Reviewed in my preceding post.

The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint; Titan UK)–what IS this thing? Southern/Appalachian Gothic? Magical Realism? Fascinating read–reviewed in this post.

The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking; Del Rey UK)–combined Monty Pythonesque and Malory Morte-D’Arthur-esque massive novel about the Arthurian world in decline.

The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (Tachyon)–What if profound disillusionment causes you to lose your wings? What would you do to get them back?

The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister

Find out more HERE.

How to categorize The Bog Wife is a bit of a puzzle. It is set in the U.S. Appalachian region, but it’s not a realistic novel akin to Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperfield [oh no! Big editing oversight. The title of this marvelous book is Demon Copperhead. I could say I was swept away by the David Copperfield allusions in Kingsolver’s novel–or just admit I blew it. I blew it! Big apologies!] or Ann Pancake’s Strange As This Weather Has Been. By contrast, and almost right away, you realize Chronister’s novel has a gothic feel. But it’s not “Southern Gothic” (Appalachian Gothic, I should say–its close relative). So what is it? It’s absolutely not a regulation epic fantasy with swords and sorcery. From the cover art on in, no one could possibly mistake it for Tolkien-inspired high fantasy. Can we call Chronister’s book by that mysterious label, magical realism?

Chronister’s novel starts out like a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie but then moves into realism. Here’s a family dominated by its crazed patriarch and cut off from regular civilization–a scenario that could and has happened in real life. Yet from the beginning, a sense of foreboding lets you know a sociological explanation for this family’s woes is not going to give you the whole story. Various family members take turns telling you the story, and each one has a different take on the events as they unfold.

As I read on, I wondered–will the plot amount to smoke and mirrors like those Shyamalan movies or filmed stories with more atmosphere than sense, like The Witch or the HBO series Carnivale? Thankfully no. By the end, though, Chronister’s novel does take a definite and defining lurch into fantasy and magic. Coming so late in the book as it does, I’m amazed that this strange turn actually works. But it does. It so does. As I finished it, I was reminded of books like Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent. I really admired Chronister’s novel. (And in spite of the similar title–and some folkloric elements of its own–it’s nothing at all like The Fox Wife!)

What is “Magical Realism”? A type of fiction that’s not fantasy but can maybe be called “fantasy-adjacent.” Usually, magical realism is characteristic of novels that we might call “literary.” Then again, the distinction between “literary” and “genre” fiction is often arbitrary and unhelpful. HERE is a good quick introduction to magical realism. The features I especially connected to Chronister’s novels are:

  • a realistic story infused with events that don’t seem logical. The predicament of the family in The Bog Wife certainly meets this criterion.
  • a mixture of straightforward storytelling with elements from folklore or legend. In The Bog Wife, this aspect of magical realism unfolds before our eyes, as the story develops.
  • a tone that makes the whole thing seem perfectly ordinary–when it isn’t. In Chronister’s novel, some family members take a more matter-of-fact approach to events than others, leaving the reader to decide which perspectives are more credible.

If this makes the novel seem stranger and more experimental than your usual read, don’t be put off. It is enthralling.

NEXT UP: Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword.

World Fantasy Awards Coming Soon!

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy1 Comment

As promised, I have read all the novels short-listed for the 2025 World Fantasy Awards. The awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, held this year in Brighton UK on Oct. 30-Nov. 2, 2025. If I only had the time, I’d read all the other nominated works, but I don’t. So I’ll do what I love most, read novels and talk about them.

Here are the short-listed novels, and my first two reviews:

The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–This novel won the 2025 Hugo Award and was short-listed for the Locus Award. Mentioned in this post.

The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo (Holt; Quercus UK)–a wonderful overlay of Chinese folklore on the early 20th century historical conflict between China and Japan. Reviewed in this post.

The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint; Titan UK)–what IS this thing? Southern/Appalachian Gothic? Magical Realism? Fascinating read.

The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking; Del Rey UK)–combined Monty Pythonesque and Malory Morte-D’Arthur-esque massive novel about the Arthurian world in decline.

The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (Tachyon)–What if profound disillusionment causes you to lose your wings? What would you do to get them back?

I’ll review one novel per post as we all anticipate the judges’ decision, but in THIS POST ONLY, I’m mentioning two. That’s because I’ve already reviewed The Tainted Cup recently, so I’ll just give a shout-out to the novel here and point you to the review.

The Tainted Cup

Find it HERE.

Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup has already won one major speculative fiction award and has been nominated for another. See my review HERE.

The Fox Wife

Find it HERE.

Yangsze Choo’ s The Fox Wife delightfully combines Chinese folklore about the supernatural nature of foxes with the early 20th century historical conflict between China and Japan. The main character Snow (Ah San), a woman who is actually a shape-shifting fox, has a wry take on the world of humans that instantly charms and engages the reader. When she states, “The first rule about foxes is that you don’t talk about foxes,” she grabs me with this slyly repurposed Fight Club meme and doesn’t let go. Then, as the novel combines the magic of fantasy with the separate magic of historical fiction, I really am a goner. There’s a mystery here, a love story, the broken heart of a grief-stricken mother, and revenge, sweet revenge. Snow the Fox Wife is a marvelous storyteller into the bargain. It’s a wonderful novel. I savored every word.

COMING UP NEXT: my review of Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife.

Indie-published Fantasy and SF: How to Find It

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasyLeave a comment
Thanks to Alice from Pixabay for this fun royalty-free illustration.

In my last post, I wondered about the big speculative fiction awards and what it means that their “best novel” awards tilt so heavily to those sold by established publishing companies. Some of the short-listed novels this year were indie-published, though–that is, they were published by very small presses or by the author herself.

In the past, indie-published novels–and especially self-published novels–were sneered at. A writer who self-published a novel would be pitied or scorned as a victim of vanity publishing–taken advantage of by predatory “publishing” companies that printed a book cheaply, charged a fortune to the naive writer, forced the writer to buy a lot of copies, and dumped them on her with no editorial or marketing services.

Scams of this type still exist, along with many other scammy, scummy publishing practices. Have you ever thought of writing your own fantasy or SF? Make sure you get to know this well-respected site that helps writers avoid traps for the unwary: Writer Beware, an invaluable service to writers everywhere, sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

But in the past few decades, many writers have escaped the bounds of traditional publishing. This trend comes as traditional publishing companies have increasingly fallen under the control of conglomerates whose main focus is not books; as these conglomerates have consolidated so that now there are only four or five big traditional publishers, with a corresponding shrinkage of their lists; as the conglomerates have focused increasingly on safe bets like known writers, or writers with big existing platforms (huge numbers of social media followers, for example), and celebrity writers; as the conglomerates have increasingly cut their marketing budgets for all but a few superstar performers. It’s pretty similar to what has happened in the recording industry. As a result, a lot of writers have struck out on their own, with mixed results for most. If the writer is not adept at marketing, her work tends to go unnoticed by readers. And every writer could use an editor! (Well, maybe not Shakespeare. His admirers enthused, “Shakespeare never blotted a line!” To which his colleague Ben Jonson snidely remarked, “Would he had blotted a thousand”–I guess Ben thought even the immortal Will could have used an editor.) All of the tasks of marketing and vetting fall to the writer herself, and that does not work out well for many. On the other hand, many indie-published writers do well, to the great benefit of readers.

FOR YOU, the READER–how do you discover indie-published books you’d like to read? There are ways to do that. Here are just a few speculative fiction indie-published resources:

Blogs by book lovers–a great resource! Here’s a list of one blogger’s top ten indie faves in 2024. Here’s another blogger’s take. And another, this one focusing on fantasy. I should publish my own list!

Commercial sites for book-lovers publish lists of this type. For example, the Amazon-owned site Goodreads publishes this one for SF readers.

Booksellers themselves: My new favorite bookseller platform, Bookshop.org, publishes lists like this, and other sites do as well (Amazon, Barnes&Noble, etc.)

Your friendly librarian. I can’t stress this enough. Librarians know their stuff, and they are trained to find stuff out.

This blog presents a useful list of small presses that publish speculative fiction.

Big review sites like Kirkus Reviews publish lists of indie fantasy and SF. Here’s one.

There are sites helping indie authors promote their books, such as this one for SF.

Finally: more DYI attempts within a short timeframe, such as this SF and fantasy book sale happening right now. Full disclosure, shameless self-promotion: I’m in this one! So are a lot of other people, though, so take a look.