Fantastic Metropolis

Also this year, I read Warchild, by Karin Lowachee. This is a novel that won the author the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest, the contest which also pushed Nalo Hopkinson’s first novel into a spotlight. Lowachee’s novel is technically military science fiction, which I normally don’t have much interest in, but I was simply captivated by her keen characterizations, her sometimes lyrical descriptions of difficult emotional situations, and the brooding central protagonist. The structure isn’t off-putting, but it does do a few interesting backflips, which Lowachee pulls off brilliantly. I haven’t read the followup novel, Burndive, yet, but I’ll be reading that in 2004 definitely.

Jeff Vandermeer’s Veniss Underground was an eye-opener. I’d read his Cities of Saints and Madmen a year ago, and liked his style, but in this novel he’s really created such an inviting narrative that I wanted the book to go on longer than it did (and I hate when people say that, so for me to say that must mean something).

Amanda Davis produced a good first novel, Wonder When You’ll Miss Me. I enjoyed her previous short story collection, and the novel, a story of a troubled runaway girl who joins the circus, was a strong followup. Sadly the author died in a plane crash this year, during her book tour. We’ve lost a writer who, I think, had a lot more to say.

And lastly, I read Joy William’s The Quick and the Dead. This isn’t a new novel. It came out several years ago, but I read it last year, and it was simply mind-blowing. It made me go read everything else I could find by this author, who mainly published work in the eighties, it seems. It’s a dark comic work of genius, dealing with death and ghosts and our slowly disintegrating world.

Christopher Barzak has published stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies including Nerve, Realms of Fantasy, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Strange Horizons, The Vestal Review, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and Descant. He lives in Youngstown, Ohio, and teaches at Youngstown State University. Recently he has completed a novel, One For Sorrow, which continues the narrative begun in his story, “Dead Boy Found”, which originally appeared in the anthology Trampoline.