Full review: https://beforewegoblog.com/sfincs-review-reap-sow-by-s-h-cooper/

It’s been a good year for horror in SFINCS. S. H. Cooper’s Reap, Sow, which also made this year’s Stoker Awards preliminary ballot, is a fine example. Voicey and crisply written, Reap, Sow is a work of psychological, dreamlike horror that combines the themes and uneasiness of Jacob’s Ladder with the textured sense of place found in Ania Ahlborn’s Brother. It’s a fast read, and a good one to try if you’re intrigued by horror, but wary of anything too gory. While the threat of violence pervades the novella, Cooper’s focus is on story and atmosphere over gore for the sake of it.Cover S. H. Cooper's Reap, Sow

There’s a lot at the start of Reap, Sow that’s left deliberately (and geographically) opaque. When we meet our first-person protagonist, Lucky, she’s lost in what feels like a dark dreamscape. Gradually, that darkness is interrupted by bursts of memory: visions of butchers’ chains hanging from ceilings, her rural family in the kitchen, a close friend and lover, a sinister old woman. As the story continues, these fragments expand, stretching to fill the gaps in Lucky’s recollections, and alongside Lucky, we begin to piece together what’s happening and who she is. The more Lucky and her audience learn, the more immediate the events surrounding her become, until we’re thrust into what feels like present action. The climax is explosive. Genre markers suggest one possible direction the plot could go, though ultimately Cooper surprises when it comes to the fine details. Although Reap, Sow, isn’t quite historical horror, it has that texture, that weighty sense of place and of the pressure of the past upon the present, that I tend to associate with the subgenre.

Much of what makes Reap, Sow work is its sense of atmosphere and character, something deftly supported by Cooper’s prose. Right away, we’re not reading about Lucky, but immersed in the same shadowy world as Lucky. Moments and images come fast, yet linger, and there’s a careful simplicity to the writing that adds to the realism of Lucky’s characterization. At times, this gives the effect of a younger narrator, adding to her sense of vulnerability, and compounding the audience’s own worries for Lucky’s safety. At turns childlike while propelled by a deep sense of grief and guilt, she’s a character rushing from moment to moment without a safety rail or any kind of guiding force. If moments of security or relief come to her through the appearance of her beloved mother (or the disappearance of her hostile father), they’re disrupted as often as not by the intrusion of what we come to realize is Lucky’s world turned weird. Features of the farm Lucky has been raised on warp around her, while the family she knows and loves appear not as her supporters, but as aggressors. As the layers of Lucky’s background peel away, we’re constantly waiting for a disturbing reveal–is there more than meats (!) the eye to Lucky’s home (and the animal husbandry of the farm)? Just what has happened to her that she now occupies this half-world in which her family threatens her? Certainly, a sense that Lucky herself may be guilty of some terrible crime seeps from the page, underscored, perhaps, by the title.

While I did find the novella’s major twist predictable (I think I was around five pages in when I guessed it), there’s still much to explore when it comes to the rest of the context of the world Lucky inhabits. Figuring out the larger puzzle piece earlier on doesn’t denude the rest of the work of meaning, arguably enriching both the horror and pathos of the page. That said, I do suspect Reap, Sow would benefit from a tighter middle in order to sharpen its delivery in places and really emphasize some of the stronger images Cooper crafts in its middle sections.

It’s clear from its opening onwards that Reap, Sow is a book with a clear vision and perspective, and I enjoyed my time with it. The writing is clean and clear, which lends the novella’s more dreamlike moments an essential deliberateness. There’s also a lot, I feel, that’s valuable about how Cooper deploys the fantastic in service to a conversation about the real. As a mechanism, it’s used here to good effect.

Whether you’re new to horror, or an old hand, this one’s worth looking at.

The Weaver and the Wyrm is a fun, slightly campy fantasy romp that, of all things, put me in mind of Xena: Warrior Princess (but with a little of the added texture of George R. R. Martin’s Dunk and Egg series). This is not a comparison I was expecting to make, and certainly, the opening pages (which feature a lot of geographic dreariness)* suggest more of a bog-standard grimdark (but really just traditional) adventure fantasy. I was pleasantly surprised by Weaver, and the more it leaned into its humour, the more layered the text began to feel. While I do think that fans of the larger Emaneska series to which Weaver belongs are the most likely to get appreciate the story, the novella features a pleasingly self-contained adventure that left me eager to check out more of Galley’s work.

Weaver‘s setup is fairly straightforward, and not so different from many of the other secondary world fantasy novellas from this year’s SFINCS (particularly fellow finalist Parasitic Omens and Dave Lawson’s The Pawns of Havoc). All three feature characters who take on rather murky missions on behalf of individuals or organizations, though each work feels tonally distinct. It’s a solid premise for a fantasy novella–one that promises a self-contained story that should be easy to follow even without the larger context of the world or a main series plot. Weaver’s protagonist, Farden, is a powerful (and somewhat dour) warrior mage tasked by his superior (a vampire named Durnus) with retrieving a dangerous yet mysterious weapon from the land of Albion. With its combination of both Gothic horror and fantasy set pieces, Weaver has a little of a Dungeons and Dragons feel to it, and I could easily see Farden’s adventure as a satisfying one-shot tabletop game, given its balance of investigation, exploration, and action scenes. The weapon Farden’s been sent to purchase is being auctioned by a sinister local merchant called the Weaver, who clearly has hidden motives of his own, and when Farden discovers that the weapon isn’t a sword or spell, but a living reptile (the titular wyrm), he’s torn between setting her free and returning her to Durnus. There are additional dips and pivots in the plot, and it’s a fun one to follow, especially once the wyrm (called Bother) enters the story.

The world of Ben Galley’s Emaneska is one of those rare things in epic fantasy: lived in. For all the grand set pieces and global conflicts at work in many of today’s most popular fantasy series, I often have the problem that while we’re told of the vast lands and disparate regions over which our main characters battle, it never feels as though anyone lives there. This, to me, is a far more important component of worldbuilding than a hooky magic concept or the presence of a lot of capitalized Nouns. To make the reader feel as though the POV characters are more than walking, talking archetypes acting out a role, but are instead persons who move about in the world and who may well mean nothing to those they bump shoulders with in a crowded market, is a rare skill. I was even more impressed that Galley managed this in a novella. Typically, secondary world fantasies run into two problems when shrunk down to fit the confines of short stories, novellas, and slim novels. Either the worldbuilding is so slight that the setting comes off as shallow, or too much time is wasted in a short format trying to cram in as many worldbuilding “facts” as possible, to the detriment of character and story.

Happily, Weaver avoids both of these, yet for all that it’s an easy read with what feels like a textured setting, I did feel as though its target audience was pre-existing fans of the main Emaneska books. For the first quarter or so of Weaver, there was a lot that didn’t particularly stay with me and that felt more in service to Farden’s larger story and his place in it than to the shorter tale being told in Weaver. While certain characters leapt off the page for me (the Weaver and Bother in particular), Farden himself was a little of a blank slate at times. Occasionally, he was world-weary and begrudging, coming off as relatably inept (tripping over uneven ground as he plodded onwards toward yet another miserable quest), yet elsewhere he seemed broody, naive and noble, practically invincible, and charmingly witty. All of these qualities can, of course, reside within one character, but I felt as though I was missing the key as to why they were all qualities that this specific character possessed. That said, I was left wanting to learn more about Farden (and Durnus!), so perhaps Weaver achieved its aim after all.

The writing in Weaver is largely smooth and compelling. It was, in part, Galley’s skill at description that helped paint a vivid picture of Albion and of individual environments. That “lived in” quality I mentioned earlier was achieved in no small part through Galley’s clear and yet textured prose. While there were occasionally awkward word choices, or lines that could have hit harder with some judicious tightening, by and large the writing was a strength. The prose never got in its own way, nor did it hinder my comprehension of the story. It was easy to sit back and let events on-page simply flow. Stylistically, Weaver features a combination of a modern tone with a number of popular medievalisms, but while that combination can often feel forced and pretentious, here it matched the slightly campy feel of the narrative. The slightly cheeky tone came off as self-aware and mature, something that’s often missing from attempts at this type of fantasy. At no point did the humour detract from the stakes, rather, it intensified my investment in the world and Farden’s experiences.

All-in-all, The Weaver and the Wyrm is what I’d call roaring good fun, which turned out to be exactly what I needed in the moment. For all Farden’s occasional gloom (and, certainly, his less than stellar opinions on Albion’s landscape), Weaver felt uplifting and lighthearted, with a little bit of a Sword and Sorcery feel. If Weaver‘s anything to go by, I’m eager to read more from Galley.

• Some of which is, admittedly, clearly played up for humour, as in the case of a “shit-coloured river.”

Full review on Before We Go Blog: https://beforewegoblog.com/sfincs-review-of-all-the-stars-by-kris-madigan/

Somewhat of a slow burn, Of All the Stars by Kris Madigan is an exquisitely written secondary-world fantasy that brings a mythic quest structure into the twenty-first century through its exploration of queerness and the self. I feel as though I’ve used this comparison a bit too often this SFINCS, but I’d recommend Of All the Stars to fans of Your Blood and Bones, Ursula LeGuin, Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter, and Peter S. Beagle.

Magic is disappearing from the world and a young woman named Kosma is determined to uncover why. A scholar and a mage, Kosma is set apart from the rest of her people, dwelling in an isolated tower where she spends her days learning about a world she has yet to truly experience. When she uses magic to transport herself–and her companion fox, Nipa–outside the safety of the tower in order to investigate what’s happening, she’s thrust into a bustling market town far from the lands she knows. But the city in which Kosma finds herself is suspicious of magic and Kosma is quickly arrested and imprisoned. It is only through the help of Avaline, a respected city guard, and Avaline’s companion Mikael, that Kosma and Nipa are freed. Determined to find out why magic is faltering, but desperate to return North to her home, Kosma resumes her quest with the help of her new companions.

Of All the Stars by Kris Madigan boasts the kind of prose I’m always hungry for. Its consistency of style and attention to tone will make this one easily accessible to a trad audience nervous about editorial polish, and its contemplative pace along with its distillation of capital-F Fantasy themes and structures gives it a literary feel that may well draw in readers new to the genre but who have a love of folk and fairy tales. One of the most remarkable features of Madigan’s prose is her command of a lengthy sentence. While some contemporary fantasy praised for its lush writing tends to come off as purple and (to be blunt) vacuous, Madigan wields her pen with equal parts intent and elegance. Of All the Stars is a lucid read–easy to follow and able to be enjoyed for its linework alone.

The characterization in Of All the Stars is simple yet critical to the story’s progression. Kosma and Avaline are truly the stars of the show, with both Nipa and Mikael serving in supporting roles. While the style of the novella may initially come off as distant to many readers, we’re rooted in Kosma’s POV quite intensely, and it’s Kosma and her developing sense of self who drives and inform the plot. Additional characters are sparse–so sparse, even the busy scenes of the market, or Kosma’s start in her home city, feel largely empty. Rather than coming off as a flaw, it instead intensifies the sense of Kosma as someone quite lonely, whose separateness from others must be mended as the story progresses. Kosma and Aveline’s growing closeness, which works its way from distrust to reliance to affection, sits at the heart of the story. Gradual and gentle, the development of their relationship parallels Kosma’s physical journey across a frigid landscape.

A slow but steady pace suits what Madigan is doing well. All the same, during its middle section in particular there’s quite a bit of repetition that could have been tightened to make for a more powerful reading experience. Alongside this issue, key events (such as, for example, the discovery of a body) occasionally happen off-page, with the audience told in retrospect that they occurred. A little of this is sometimes fine–it might be that nothing is lost leaving some experiences to reader imagination–but given the short page count and the impact of certain events on Kosma and Avaline’s development, it wasn’t as effective here as it could have been. In terms of the novella’s structure and plotting, I was also left at the end hoping for a bit more of a solid conclusion to what was happening–a payoff for all the build that Madigan creates in the first two thirds of the story.

Of All the Stars was a treat to read, immediately pulling me into Kosma’s world with its distinct and well-crafted prose and its slightly romantic (in the nineteenth-century sense) setting and style. I get the sense with this one that there’s room for a sequel, and I personally hope Madigan will return not only to the setting, but to Kosma and Avaline’s story. Of All the Stars is well worth a look!