More sour remarks about books I tried and found wanting. Hugh Walpole, Portrait of a Man with Red Hair This 1925 novel pops up regularly in lists about the supernatural canon as a gem of twentieth-century Gothic horror. It is certainly horrifying, but it’s a novella stretched out painfully beyond the natural length of its … Continue reading I Have Doubts
Category: Ann Leckie
Ann Leckie’s Provenance
Ann Leckie’s new novel, following the triumphant success of her multiple award-winning novels Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, is Provenance, and it is not at the same level. Her invention and world-building are still top quality, but the plot of Provenance sags, and the characters feel like marionettes, moving without feeling. Yet I read to … Continue reading Ann Leckie’s Provenance
Jemisin, Leckie, Letters to Tiptree: praise ye them
The 2016 Hugo Awards were announced last night, and I am SO PLEASED that N K Jemisin's The Fifth Season won the category of Best Novel. It is groundbreaking, superb, a work of utterly readable literary invention that I am proud to have reviewed, here. Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy was one of the five other shortlisted … Continue reading Jemisin, Leckie, Letters to Tiptree: praise ye them
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy
In the third and (so far) last part of her series about Breq, the last ancillary fragment of a battleship taking on the genderless Radchaai empire, Ann Leckie changes focus again. The first part (Ancillary Justice) was about plotting revenge and heading towards her target (see my review here); the second part (Ancillary Sword, reviewed … Continue reading Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy
The joy of genderless space opera: Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword
Some time ago I reviewed Ann Leckie’s debut and multiple-prize-winning sf novel Ancillary Justice. I loved it, and was highly impressed by what I still think is an immense technical achievement: writing fiction in which gender is simply of no importance at all. Leckie has invented a culture in whose language all pronouns are female … Continue reading The joy of genderless space opera: Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword
Kate Macdonald 