You Were Warned

And here I am, back again with more reviews. Hmm — where to start?

Zombies! Cant’ live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em — which seems to hold true for some people, at least. Christopher Golden has come out with an anthology that reinvents the zombie, according to our reviewer — 21st Century Dead. Or . . . → Read More: You Were Warned

Oh, Hi!

Just popped over to help out for a bit — Mrs. Ware’s got everyone in the kitchen chopping up apples or some-such, and we’ve got reviews piling up in the bin.

We start off with a re-issue of an earlier work by that master of adventure and intrigue, Glen Cook. When we reviewed the Second . . . → Read More: Oh, Hi!

On the Story of Robert Holdstock’s Merlin’s Wood, or The Vision of Magic

Merlin’s Wood is not precisely part of Robert Holdstock’s Ryhope Wood cycle, as it is set in France, not England. For an author whose other books in the Mythago Wood cycle are English in motif, this is an odd digression. The rest of the Ryhope Wood cycle takes place in and around Ryhope Wood in . . . → Read More: On the Story of Robert Holdstock’s Merlin’s Wood, or The Vision of Magic

Bone Forest: The True Beginnings of the Holdstock’s Ryhope Wood series

Robert Holdstock’s best known for his sprawling Ryhope Wood series, which encompasses, most readers think, four complex novels: Mythago Wood, Lavondyss The Hollowing, Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn, and Avillion. Of course they are some of the finest writing in the English langage, but as Richard Dansky noted in his review of them,

The . . . → Read More: Bone Forest: The True Beginnings of the Holdstock’s Ryhope Wood series

On English Folk Tales

Arthur Rackham’s ‘And they, so perfect is their misery’

Reynard, Brigid, and me were sitting in Toad Hall enjoyin’ a keg of their stout that had just been tapped, and discussin’ which bands were worth bookin’ for The Wild Hunt festival which will have English, Celtic, and Nordic performers, when he said that he had . . . → Read More: On English Folk Tales

Brian McNeill: The Newest Recordings

Now in his early sixties, Scottish folk musician Brian McNeill has been performing traditional and writing traditionally-inspired music since the late 1960s, when he co-founded the Battlefield Band.  Two of these three CDs are representative of some of his more recent work.  The third, The Road Never Questions, is a compilation of his work from . . . → Read More: Brian McNeill: The Newest Recordings

Ellen Kushner: Mannerpunk, Klezmer, and English ballads

Let the fairy-tale begin on a winter’s morning, then, with one drop of blood new-fallen on the ivory snow: a drop as bright as a clear-cut ruby, red as the single spot of claret on the lace cuff.

And thus starts Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners, the first novel in the Riverside series by Ellen . . . → Read More: Ellen Kushner: Mannerpunk, Klezmer, and English ballads

Norwegian Fiddling

 Judith Gennett has more than a few words to say on Chris Goertzen’s Fiddling For Norway 

“Imagine yourself in Norway.” Ethnomusicologist and fiddler Chris Goertzen found himself in Norway in 1988 teaching Latin and American music courses. While there, he learned a lot about the idiosyncratic world of Norwegian “normal” fiddling. The term refers to . . . → Read More: Norwegian Fiddling

Charles de Lint: An Appreciation

OR Melling wrote this for our Charles de Lint edition…

It’s difficult to review Charles de Lint without getting personal and panegyrical for, as is the case with most if not all of his readers, I feel as if I have had a close relationship with him and his characters for many years now. Like . . . → Read More: Charles de Lint: An Appreciation