The finalists for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer are Rivers Solomon, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Vina Jie-Min Prasad - whose work I’ve read, and who were on my nominations list - and Katherine Arden, Sarah Kuhn, and Jeannette Ng, whose work I have not read. So, I’ve gone looking for work by the latter three.

Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightengale

I have a confession to make. I have to work a bit to engage with novels that are strongly flavoured with a Russian or Eastern European influence. I’m not sure why, but it’s a thing I have. So Arden’s debut fantasy, set in feudal Russia, took a little time to grow on me. It is a story about bloodlines and magic. The central character, Vasilisa Petrovna, called Vasya, is the youngest child of wealthy boyar Pyotr Vladimirovitch and his now-dead wife Marina, the daughter of a mysterious and beautiful woman who appeared out of the forest, enchanted Moscow, and claimed the heart of Ivan I, .grand Prince of Muscovy. Like her grandmother, Vasilisa has a kind of magic - she sees spirits and other strange creatures of the field and forest.

It was the sense of family and a simple, daily life with its trials and joys that Arden conveys in the early part of the book that won me over, that and the fierce and joyful wildness that is Vasya. Pyotr Vlaidimirovitch loved his wife, loves his children, and hopes, within the bounds of the society he lives in, to see them happy. His children have their flaws - one is perhaps a bit too proud, another a touch too pious, but they care for one another. Sadly, this happy family starts to unravel when Pyotr is pressured into agreeing to two dynastic marriages - his own, to Anna, the daughter of his dead wife’s half-brother, the new Grand Prince of Muscovy, and his daughter Olga’s, to the Grand Prince’s nephew. Anna is deeply unhappy at the bargain, and longs only for the comfort of a convent life, for she, like Vasilisa, sees spirits, but to her, they are devils to be feared.

Meanwhile, the threads of destiny are beginning to weave a web around Vasya. She becomes lost in the forest and encounters a strange man who seems vaguely threatening. And while Pyotr is in Moscow, he has an unpleasant experience with a man who gives him a gift for Vasya, forcing him to swear that he will tell no living soul about this exchange, on penalty of losing his oldest son.

Fairy tales are of course filled with these things, by definition - is it, after all, in fairy tales that they began. That’s why retelling such tales is tricky - to be successful, the writer must keep enough of the tale for it to be recognisable, but make it new enough not to be overladen with too-familiar tropes. The weakness in this book is that it does perhaps rely too much on well-used staples of fairy tale lore.

But what kept me reading was Vasya herself, vibrant, bold, adventurous, different. Her love of wild things, her compassion, her resilience, her stubbornness, and her utterly solid moral compass. This was the first book in a trilogy, and I do think I shall read on, just for the joy of Vasya.


Sarah Kuhn, Heroine Complex

Ok, there is something to be said about a novel that begins with a livestreamed fight between demons in the form of pastries and a narcissistic superhero. So... I’ll start by saying this is a fun book, an interesting blend of satire, chick lit and superhero fiction.The superhero in question is Aveda Jupiter, otherwise known as Annie Chang, who has serious kickass fight moves (her own personal icon is Michelle Yeoh) and a slight tekekinetic ability gained during the first, massive incursion of demons in San Francisco, some years earlier. Fir some unknown reason, the appearance of demons triggered superpowers, mist of them relatively minor and not particularly useful, in a small percentage of the population! Although subsequent demon appearances have not repeated the effect. The narrator, Evie Tanaka, is Aveda’s childhood friend and personal assistant, the person who keeps the whole superhero business functioning, a combination of Batman’s Alfred and Superman’s Jimmy Olsen. Until Annie suffers an injury fighting demons and insists that Evie take her place so that no one discovers that superheroes are vulnerable. The problem is that Evie also has a superpower, one of very few powerful and dangerous ones, and it’s triggered by strong feelings. She works very hard to control her emotions so that she doesn’t hurt anyone, having once allowed anger at a cheating boyfriend to get out of hand, resulting in the destruction of an entire building. But when she appears as Aveda (thanks to a minor glamour cast by a friend who developed magical abilities as a result of the demon appearance), things get out of hand and she manifests her power, which is of course attributed to Aveda.

Being at the centre of the stage instead of behind the scenes, and having to learn new ways of dealing with her power, results in many changes for Evie, her sense of herself and her goals, and her relationships with Annie and the other members of the Aveda Jupiter Inc demon-fighting team.

I like the way that Kuhn uses the superhero genre to create a delicious satire on celebrity divaism. Between the portrayal of Aveda herself, the inclusion of gossip columns from a local celebrity news reporter, and Evie’s observations on the various benefits and social engagements that she has to attend while pretending to be Aveda, we get some very fine puncturing of pretentiousness that I think rings true for any form of social celebrity. Kuhn also takes on internet fannishness, showing how anyone, but particularly women, in the media spotlight can be showered with adulation one moment snd with disgust the next as some fake news story, or almost imperceptible physical imperfection (such as a zit) causes fans to suddenly turn on a firmer hero. The shallowness of public assessments of celebrities in both traditional and social media is a major point in Kuhn’s satire. Add to this some serious examination of the strengths and stresses of relationships between women (there are only two significant male characters, both playing supporting/sidekick roles), and the absurd nature of many of the demonic interactions, and you have an entertaining story with rewarding depths.


Jeannette Ng, Under the Pendulum Sun

Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeanette Ng’s debut novel, is a fascinating and multilayered exploration of faith and the nature of reality. Written in the style of a Gothic romance (which has little to do with romantic goings-on as we use the term today), it is much concerned with the nature of the soul, the limits of faith, the relation of sin and redemption, and the ransom theology of the sacrifice of Christ.

Set in an alternate Victorian era, it follows the journey of Cathering Helstone to the land of Arcadia - the otherworldly home of the fae, a place of magic, mystery, shadows and dangers. Her brother Laon, a Christian missionary to Arcadia, has seemed both troubled and remote in his letters, and Catherine has gained permission from the missionary society to join him - and to carry out a quest for them, to unravel what went wrong with Laon’s predecessor, the Reverend Roche. She is conveyed to Laon’s residence, a true gothic mansion called .Gethsemane, by Miss Davenport, a changeling who grew up in human lands and describes herself as Laon’s companion. Laon himself is away on business, and Miss Davenport warns Catherine that she must remain within the walls surrounding Gethsemane until Laon returns, for her own safety. Waiting for Laon’s return, she debates points of thelogy with the only fae to have been converted, the gardener Mr. Benjamin, and pores through Reverend Riche’s papers and journals.

At first the novel moves slowly, but with an exquisite blend of suspense and strangeness. These are the fickle, treacherous, sometimes benevolent, sometimes dangerous fae of legend, and their land, like them, is full of both strange beauty and ominous shadow. Ng excels at worldbuilding, and her examination of theology and philosophy, wrapt around with a rich set of subtle literary references from Bronte to Milton, and a host of Biblical allusions, is rather delicious - if you enjoy such things, which I do.

Both pace and tone however, change once Laon returns, with Queen Mab and her court following on his arrival. Catherine is disturbed by the changes she sees in Laon, and unnerved by Mab and the inhuman creatures of her court. The visit of Mab forces to the surface the darkest secrets in both Catherine and Laon. Mab and the other high fae delight in cruelty, and in wielding both truth and deceptions as weapons of chais and destruction. The effects of her toying with Catherine and Laon leads to some difficult revelations, and some may find their actions cross lines that are uncomfortable to contemplate. But while Catherine and Laon can be broken, as were the missionaries who came before them, they find a way through the pain to become more than they were. Even when the truth is a weapon, facing it can set one free.

Ng develops an entire theological cosmogony to make room in the Christian concept of the universe for the fae, one that draws on biblical and other legends, and it’s one that I find intriguing. It’s Catherine who searches it out - echoes of the tree of knowledge and other aspects of the story of Eden reverberate throughout the novel even as Ng rewrites the story as we know it. An ambitious and, in my opinion, successful, debut.

Quite a few years ago, a person of my Internet acquaintance, who is known on the Net as The Plaid Adder, started writing one of the best fantasy series I have ever read. It grew to five volumes - a tight trilogy (Taken Child, Another Country and Darkness Bright), a sequel (Redemption) and a prequel (Better to Burn) - and it is in my opinion a great sadness that none of the books were ever published.

I've never really understood why my acquaintance was never able to get these published, unless it was that they were written from a deeply feminist perspective, featured mostly female protagonists, a goodly number of whom were lesbians, and provided, along with compelling stories well-written about interesting and fully realised characters, serious critiques about just about every aspect of Western culture and society, an invitation to really think seriously about things like love, good and evil, materialism and progress, religion, and other core stuff of life, and a meta-narrative about the process of creation. Plus, the core trilogy is somewhat of a genre-bender, encompassing elements of fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, suspense, romance and political satire, and while this kind of blurring of the boundaries has recently come more into vogue, it wasn't as salable back when these books were written.

I was fortunate enough to read these books chapter by chapter as they were written, and then to acquire printed copies of the complete and edited volumes from the author - which I of course reread. Then came my increasing environmental sensitivities, which made my treasured spiro-bound print copies unreadable. But now the author is distributing the novels as ebooks to those who know where to ask for them, and I've had the absolute delight of starting to reread these books again.

The first volume I reread was Taken Child, which introduces the land of Ideire and its low-tech, telepathy and magic-reliant culture, its somewhat eccentric semi-deity Idair and her nemesis the Dark One, the women-only order of magic-using clerics known as shriia who follow Idair and serve the people of Ideire, and their enemies, the female dark users of magic who receive their power from the Dark One.

At the centre of the trilogy is Theamh ni hUlnach, a shriia - albeit a somewhat unconventional one. In Taken Child, we meet as she goes about her duties, including the training of her apprentice Aine. In the course of this, she is sought out by a woman whose child has suffered the supernatural theft of its soul. In the process of trying to save the child, Theamh uncovers a horrifying secret linked to both an old enemy and a long-lost love, and a corrupt plot that threatens the very future of Ideire.

The second volume of the trilogy, Another Country, sees Theamh and Aine following the tracks of Theamh's nemesis, Lythril, into the neighbouring, technology-reliant Cretid Nation, which is in many ways a dystopic distillation of much that is wrong with our own society, as civil war erupts at home. A deft blend of heroic quest, political thriller, biting satire, and poignant love story, Another Country is genre-bending at its best.

The final volume, Darkness Bright, sees Theamh and Aine returned to an Ideire in chaos. They join up with the resistance - both martial and magical - fighting corrupt shriia and their secular allies who have overthrown the legitimate leadership of the country. An unflinching portrayal of the horrors and sacrifices made in war and the tragedy of a country torn apart by lies and greed, Darkness Bright is also a story of courage, commitment to the good, and enduring love.

If anything in what I've written here seems interesting to you, the author can be contacted on tumblr as http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/.

And finally, the last few books from 2013.


Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Magnificat

What would happen if, following the death of the Pope, the Conclave met and somehow unanimously elected someone whose name they had never heard or seen before? Who was everything a Pope should never be - a middle-aged magistrate from communist China, an atheist, a woman? Yarbro imagines it, and it is quite wonderful to read.


Simon Clark, The Night of the Triffids

A quite enjoyable sequel/homage to Wyndham's classic The Day of the Triffids, which begins 30-odd years later among the human survivors on the Isle of Wight. The narrator and protagonist, David Mason (son of the narrator of the original novel) is a pilot who hopes to find evidence of other surviving colonies to unite in the face of increasing indications that the triffids are intelligent and have plans to destroy the remaining humans. In the course of his quest, Mason, like his father before him, is harshly reminded that triffids are not the only threats to the survival of humanity.


Ellen Galford, Queendom Come

Galford's satirical, feminist, woman-centred view of the world is in high form in this novel. Set in Scotland during Thatcher's Blue Reign, the narrative focuses on the sudden appearance of an ancient Caledonian war-queen, called upon, like Arthur, to return in the hour of her nation's greatest need, and the near immortal seer/sorceress who was the queen's counsellor centuries ago and has awaited her return. Funny as hell.


R. A. MacAvoy, The Third Eagle

MacAvoy is a brilliant fantasist, but this foray into space opera is, while pleasant reading, not among her masterpieces. The protagonist, Wanbli Elf Darter, a skilled member of a clan of bodyguard/assassins who traditionally serve the landed classes on the planet of Neunacht, leaves his people and culture behind to travel in space. After many picaresque adventures, he ends up on the "revivalist" ship Commitment, which is crewed by survivors of generation starships sent out centuries before. The crew of the Commitment have adopted a mission to hunt down other such sleeper ships drifting through space - whereupon they decant a few of the frozen people aboard. The rest they kill, because there is no place for them to go - the colonised planets won't accept them, and the Commitment can only take on enough to replace crew lost to injury, illness or old age. Wanbli, of course, finds an answer that allows the sleepers to live. Despite the grim situation of the sleepers, this novel is mostly light-hearted and fun.

I must being your attention to a wonderful small press. I mean, what else can you call a publishing house whose co-founder says things like "The challenge, I think, has always been not only to better inform 'the movement', but to figure out how to get the ideas across to everyone else. In effect, how do we actively contribute to building a movement (however defined) which is genuinely going to take on Capital and the state."?

PM Press publishes both fiction and non-fiction, everything from classics of anarchist thought to vegan cookbooks to science fiction with a left wing consciousness.I've already mentioned one book I ordered from them, Eleanor Arnason's Mammoths of the Great Plains. I actually bought three books from PM Press last year (and plan on buying several more this year). All three books are from their Outspoken Authors series, which showcases authors like Arnason, Ursula Le Guin, Nalo Hopkinson among others. Each volume contains one or more pieces of shorter fiction (novella length or less) plus an interview and a biographical sketch. And they are publishing some very interesting work in this series.


Terry Bison, The Left Left Behind

The title piece in this volume is an absolutely hilarious satire of the Rapture movement in general and the scenario presented in the Left Behind books in particular.

Actually, this is what the publisher says about this piece and the other short piece in the volume:

The Left Behind novels (about the so-called “Rapture” in which all the born-agains ascend straight to heaven) are among the bestselling Christian books in the US, describing in lurid detail the adventures of those “left behind” to battle the Anti-Christ. Put Bisson and the Born-Agains together, and what do you get? The Left Left Behind--a sardonic, merciless, tasteless, take-no-prisoners satire of the entire apocalyptic enterprise that spares no one--predatory preachers, goth lingerie, Pacifica radio, Indian casinos, gangsta rap, and even “art cars” at Burning Man.

Plus: "Special Relativity," a one-act drama that answers the question: When Albert Einstein, Paul Robeson, and J. Edgar Hoover are raised from the dead at an anti-Bush rally, which one wears the dress? As with all Outspoken Author books, there is a deep interview and autobiography: at length, in-depth, no-holds-barred and all-bets off: an extended tour though the mind and work, the history and politics of our Outspoken Author. Surprises are promised.

And it's all true.


Ursula LeGuin, The Wild Girls

Constant Reader must know by now that I believe Ursula Le Guin to be a goddess. Possibly an avatar of the child of Athene and Kwan Yin. A beacon of wisdom and compassionate understanding, while remaining a warrior of the mind determined to bring light to that which brings about injustice. The Wild Girls is pure Le Guin, compressed to diamond sharpness. The story cuts into heart and mind and lays bare the power relations of a rigid and hierarchical society built on inequalities of class, race and gender. Of course, it's only a story. Or is it? I love Le Guin's work because she makes me feel and think.

There's a good traditional review of the book by Brit Mandelo on Tor.dom.

Green Grass, Running Water, by Thomas King

Imagine magical realism with all the satire and bite and planned absurdity of Monty Python’s Flying Circus at its very best. Add in the best of aboriginal storytelling tradition, from some highly unusual and unlikely narrators, and a skillful examination – no, make that evisceration – of the images that white settler culture has created of, about and around aboriginal peoples in North America. And a wealth of literary, mythological, religious and historical allusions and references. Oh, and don’t forget to braid all of this together with a perfectly realistic novel about four people from the same reserve in western Canada who are each, in their own way, on the brink of major changes in their lives, and how their individual pasts, their First Nations heritage and the assumptions and actions of the white people and institutions around them have brought them to this point.

Or, as another reviewer put it:

Imagine four Indian storytellers in the best oral tradition, only with frequent interruptions (“Who, me?” says that Coyote). If I tell you that their names are the Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye, you will begin to get the joke. Their stories are mashups of Native American and Western culture: Changing Woman, meet Noah. They rewrite the classics, rewrite Hollywood Westerns, rewrite Creation itself in the attempt to get it right this time. And while the novel works as a story complete in itself, the literary references, punning names, and recurring motifs are an English major’s Easter egg hunt.

Short chapters, some of them no more than a barrage of dialogue, keep the plot moving quickly. The novel does jump about: between history, myth, Hollywood, Melville, the Bible, and an actual plot, King is keeping a lot of balls in the air. Enjoy the juggling act and the wickedly dry sense of humor. You’ve never read a book about cultural (and patriarchal) oppression that’s this funny. Williamsburg Regional Library review

Then you’ll have some idea of what you’ll find in King’s Green Grass, Running Water (the very title makes reference to the terms in many treaties and agreements made between settlers and aboriginal peoples – “as long as grass grows and water runs” – that were in fact broken as quickly as ink dries).

It’s a book with the rare gift of making people of privilege see their unexamined racism, laugh at themselves – and thank the author for the pleasure of the lesson.

I’ve raved about Thomas King’s writing before, and I have every intention of doing it again, because I heartily anticipate reading everything he’s written. He’s just that good.

Atomik Aztex, Sesshu Foster

This book is a total mindfuck, and that’s a good thing. I simply could not get it out of my mind while I was reading it, and scenes keep coming back to jeer at me, asking me if I really think I figured it all out.

It’s a tale of two worlds, one of which is a brutal slice of life for a Latino worker in the meatpacking industry in Los Angeles sometime in the last half of the 20th century, and the other of which is the war diary of an warrior priest in an alternate universe in which the Spanish got their heads handed to them when they tried to invade Central America, and the great and powerful and bloodily metaphysical Aztec Nation is allied with Russia to defeat Germany during WWII.

Oh, yeah, the warrior-priest and the meatpacking plant worker are the same person, Zenzontli/Zenzon, shifting back and forth between possible universes. Or possibly the two are potential, alternate personalities, whose reality depends on whether you think the Spanish defeated the Aztec, or whether it's the other way around. At the beginning of the novel, you can usually tell which universe he’s in by the variant orthography being used, but toward the end of the novel, the differences between the orthographies of the two different worlds/timelines begin to merge.

The more realistic narrative thread is, among other things, a searing indictment of the meatpacking industry and an expose of the difficulties workers face in attempting to organise - which leads me to consider to what degree the dual storylines may be a literary response to Upton Sinclair's rainforest and survival of the fittest metaphors in his indictment of the meatpacking industry, The Jungle. Certainly there are some similar plot and thematic elements, especially the focus on labour union, and Zenzon, like Sinclair's hero Jurgis Rudkus, is an immigrant (from Central America rather than Lithuania), and an unusually strong man with a powerful work ethic.

But what are we to think of the alternate history plotline? Is it Sinclair's Jungle, where corruption and capitalism (and there is certainly corruption galore in the Aztec Empire Foster portrays) make it almost impossible for an honest, hard-working man to succeed? The Aztec Empire's power is magical, built on the harvesting of human hearts (another kind of slaughterhouse), and it is to this end that the Aztec Warriors engage in the defence of Stalingrad - to begin the colonisation of Europe as a new source of sacrifices to the Empire. Zenzontli is a dealer in European slaves. Does Foster intend to suggest that it doesn't matter who won, that capitalism and empire inevitably lead to corruption, colonialism and exploitation?

I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I’ve taken from the book, but I’m very glad I read it. If you’re interested in a collection of more coherent comments, read this.

Fortune’s Fool, Mercedes Lackey

In this, the third of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, Lackey draws on Russian, Arabian and Japanese folklore for another delightful retelling of old tales with a new and somewhat subversive twist. Several old friends reappear, including the dragons from volume two.

This time, there are two protagonists – Ekaterina (Katya) the seventh daughter of the King of the Sea, and Sasha, the seventh son of the King of Belarus. This being a faerie land, and Tradition being what it is, both the seventh daughter and the seventh son have unusual powers, which their respective parents have put to great use. Katya, like all underwater people, has magical power, and she also has the much rarer ability to transform instantaneously from water-breather to air-breather, and she is quite happy putting her talents to use as her father’s eyes and ears – observer, spy, and agent – both at home and in other kingdoms. Sasha, meanwhile is not only the seventh son, but a Fortune Fool and one born with the gift of influencing the workings of Tradition through his music. His job in his father’s court is to play the fool while subtly easing tensions and manipulating people and events in to bring about good fortune; outside the court, he uses his abilities to manipulate Tradition itself so that the country experiences the best possible consequences of those kinds of situations that can call Tradition into play.

Because this is, after all, a faerie tale (to say nothing of a series written for a SFF imprint of a publisher specialising in romance novels), Sasha and Katya meet one day during the performance of their respective duties, and end up, after various trials and tribulations, happily in love (that’s hardly a spoiler, I think). What is fun is how they get through those trials and tribulations. Sasha is not your typical hero – rather, he’s a truly good man who gets out of trouble by being polite, thoughtful, honest, observant, honourable and diplomatic; three cheers for a hero who doesn’t suffer from testosterone poisoning! Meanwhile, Katya is quite capable of defending herself in tight quarters, and even though the major plotline takes the form of the all-too-familiar “evil creature kidnaps beautiful maidens and hero leads the mission to rescue them” trope, these maidens are well on their way to extricating themselves by the time the rescue party arrives, and the final confrontation requires the efforts of both captives and rescuers to succeed.

It’s light and fluffy, to be sure, but Fortune’s Fool, like the earlier volumes in the series, playfully challenges the conventions of the faerie tales I knew as a child, and that’s a good thing.

First Among Sequels, Jasper Fforde

If you've read anything by Jasper Fforde before, you know what to expect from First Among Sequels. If you haven't, and if you enjoy very clever, funny, absurdist fantasy packed with hilarious literary references and cutting social satire, then what are you waiting for?

Between conversations with Uncle Mycroft, who has been dead for six years, the trials of raising three children, one of whom may not exist, and coping with her two Jurisfiction trainees - Thursday1-4 and Thursday5, characters out of the books that have been written about her - Thursday Next must face an enemy from her past and save Bookworld from the alarming decline in readers. You really don't want to miss any of this. Oh, and a little hint - there are three Thursday Nexts in the book, so watch POV carefully, or you may miss something important.

To the Chapel Perilous, Naomi Mitchison

Just getting to read this book was the fulfilment of a quest. In a comment on my discussion, many months ago, of Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman, wolfinthewood recommended this book, Mitchison’s take on the Matter of Britain. There was no question about it, I knew I had to read this book.

But a quick search revealed that it is out of print, although there had been a recent edition released by Green Knight Publishing, and copies were available via used booksellers and Ebay. My partner looked about in the local used bookstores without success, so we ordered a copy online from a bookseller in Canada; it was shipped and supposedly delivered by the post office, but vanished before we saw it. We tried again, ordering the book from a US bookstore to be delivered to an American friend of ours. It never arrived.

The third time was the charm, and my long-awaited copy arrived just before Christmas.

And by all the gods and goddesses, it was worth it.

The book is a marvel. The premise – what if journalists, much like those of modern times, had been covering the events of the Grail Quest – allows Mitchison to present a story that is deeply satisfying on many levels. It is at once an exploration of the nature of reality, a satire on the influence of the media over public knowledge, and the influence of the rich and powerful over the media, a feminist interpretation of the Arthurian legend that positions women as independent agents, an Arthurian scholar’s delight in its incorporation of multiple source materials and variations, and a damned good romance in its own right.

By sending her main characters – reporters for rival newspapers – on a journalistic quest to uncover the true Grail among all the reports of a completed quest, Mitchison is able to retell the multiple versions of the Grail quest in the various sources that precede what is now generally considered the definitive version of the tale, found in Malory’s Morte D’Arthur.

The journalistic process of investigation, interview, writing, editing, high-level editorial intervention and political influence described in the novel, which winnows many credible Grail stories down to a single media interpretation parallels the evolutionary process through which the definitive story – Galahad’s successful Quest – was established in the real-world development of the Grail material. We see through the eyes of the journalists and the various knights all the shapes and powers that the Grail has assumed in all the literary and mythic threads and traditions that were woven over time into the final widely-known version.

And we learn some great truths – that the Quest is open to all and anyone can follow the Grail that is truly meant for them, and that the story decided on by the rich and powerful to further their own purposes, often bears little resemblance to the realities that may be determined by each person for themselves.

... and why does he write such unclassifiably fascinating novels? I really can't answer this question, but I'm very glad that he does.

Imagine a universe in which books are very, very important (instead of various Christian fundamentalists going door-to-door proselytising, in Mr. Fforde's universe, that knock on the door is likely to be from someone trying to convince you that it was Roger Bacon who wrote the play attributed to Shakespeare). And their characters really do have lives of their own. And the government would actually need to have a force of special operatives, including time travel operatives (as well as many other strange things) in order to prevent people from messing around with the Shakespearean canon, or kidnapping Jane Eyre.

That's just the tip of the iceberg of strangeness gone far beyond simple absurdism that is to be found in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next mysteries:

The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten

It's also a world in which werewolves and other such creatures exist, dodos and Neanderthals have been resurrected via genetic engineering, the Crimean War is still being fought in the 1980s, and... well, I really could go on and on, but that would take a lot of space and time.

And I haven't even gotten to the best things about the books. They are funny. Hilariously, screamingly, quite literally ROTLFMAO funny. They are also delightfully vicious satires on just about everything, from afternoon tea to fascist governments and megalithic global corporations. And there's a literary pun, reference, parallel or allusion in almost every paragraph.

Mr. Fforde has obligingly provided links to reviews of all the books on his own website, which you are invited to peruse if you want to see how other people have tried to describe them.

But I heartily recommend that you just read the books. Because no one can really describe them.