Wind and Truth Brandon Sanderson Some books contain a moment so perfect, so luminous, that it glows up an entire series. I think of the scene in  Lloyd Alexander 's  Chronlces of Prydain  in which  Fflewddur Fflam  burns his harp, or the reunion of Molly and Foxglove in  Ben Aaronovitch 's  Lies Sleeping , or  Cordelia's return from her shopping trip  in  Lois McMaster Bujold 's  Barrayar . Wind and Truth , the latest installment in  Brandon Sanderson 's  Stormlight Archive  contains such a moment. It is when Kaladin, trying to imagine something that would make him happy, realizes, "He wanted to go dancing with Syl." Kaladin, "an old spear who wouldn’t break," is a grizzled veteran who has been a solider, a slave, and a leader and who has survived the hardest of lives. Sylphrena is an honorspren -- that is, she is an audible, visible, and occasionally tangible embodiment of Honor. She and Kal are bound by oaths, not t...

Songs of Innocence and Experience William Blake I have to begin with a disclaimer. Usually I read poetry very slowly, one or two poems a day. This gives me the time to savor it. However, I had surgery two days ago and brought  William Blake 's  Songs of Innocence and Experience  along to read while waiting for the surgeons to slice me open. It is possible that these are not the best conditions for appreciating  Blake . With that caveat, I was more disappointed than pleased by this volume of poetry. It consists mostly of drivel like this: When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it; interrupted by occasional flashes of brilliance like this O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. or this The human d...

A Drop of Corruption Robert Jackson Bennett Every speculative fiction novel is a mystery. We don't necessarily call it that -- the usual term is world-building. But the best F&SF novels don't just tell you about the world you're in: they make it a puzzle that the reader gradually solves. World building becomes world discovery. Some F&SF novels are also murder mysteries, with detectives and the big reveal at the end. Robert Jackson Bennett 's  A Drop of Corruption  is both. It starts out as a locked-room murder mystery. Ana and Din figure out how the murder was done almost immediately, but who did it and why they don't know. That is the mystery that most of the novel is concerned with. It turns out to be deeply tied to the nature of the Empire of Khanum. Although  I loved   The Tainted Cup  -- it was just so much fun! -- I didn't love the world-building. It felt perfunctory to me. This surprised me because  Bennett  is an author who is not afrai...

In That Sleep Seanan McGuire In That Sleep  is  Seanan McGuire 's December 2024 Patreon reward. This came out twice, in a first post, then a corrected one. In the first post , 01-Dec-2024, she introduced it as follows, (Image: Two blue classic tabby and white Maine Coons against an orange and pink background. One, Alice, is looking at the camera.) We've had a few months of pretty short stories. So here is my Hogswatch present to you all, as I return one last time to the well of Titania's shitty version of Faerie, to see how August got on during the enchantment. Warning: quite long. If you haven't read Sleep No More  and The Innocent Sleep , this may not make much sense. I recommend picking them up if you can. Enjoy! The corrected post appeared 06-Dec-2024, with this introduction: (Image: A very green frog sits on a brown houndstooth cane, against a background of blue.) So "In That Sleep" is very long. As in, 60,000 words, as opposed to the normal 8,000 to 10,...

Lyrics 1964-2011 Paul Simon A thing I will never get used to: most people listen to popular songs, and they don't hear the words. Over and over I have had the experience of listening to a song with someone, making a remark on the lyrics, and discovering that the someone, who literally JUST HEARD THEM, is unaware of them. Over and over I have had people tell me, "I don't like poetry." The following conversation often ensues, Do you like rock songs? Yes! Then you like poetry! That's different. And it is different, because they don't hear the words as words that mean something -- they are just sounds like the drums and guitars. They listen to  Bruce Springsteen 's  Thunder Road  without hearing the poetry. It's not a thing I can do. Paul Simon  is, in my opinion, the best poet among popular singer/songwriters. This, of course, is not an objective opinion.  Simon  has been there making sounds in the background of my whole life. He burst into my consciousne...

The Lost Future of Pepperharrow Natasha Pulley I complained in  my review  of  Natasha Pulley 's  The Watchmaker of Filigree Street  that "The ending of the book left me confused. I wasn't sure what had just happened, and there were loose ends that were not tied up, or perhaps merely seemed so in my confusion." I hoped that this sequel would clear up my confusion, and it did that. And it also tells a big story of Keita Mori. Who is this "Pepperharrow" named in the title? It turns out that all this time Mori has had a secret wife, Takiko Pepperharrow, living on his estate back in Japan. Takiko's father was English -- thus the non-Japanese name Pepperharrow. Takiko is the main point-of-view character of this novel. She's an impressive woman, a theater owner who acquired her theater and her position by threatening the former owner. Mori had a use for her, so he abetted her schemes. They married and she went to live on his Yokohama estate Yoruji. We star...

Eric Terry Pratchett As usual when I have just finished listening to one of  Terry Pratchett 's  Discworld  books, I find myself trying to answer two questions: "Was there a plot? If so, what was it?" In the case of  Eric , the original cover provides a clue:    --  Eric  is a  Discworld  version of  Goethe 's  Faust . And yeah, now that you point it out, I do kind of see the resemblance. But that's not what  Eric  is about really. To understand the purpose of  Eric , you need to go back to  Sourcery . In  Sourcery  the Discworld faced a grave danger from a Sourcerer, an immensely powerful Wizard. The Discworld was saved when Rincewind, the Discworld's most underperforming wizard, in an act of uncharacteristic self-sacrifice and courage, clobbered parts of the trouble with a sock full of sand. For his trouble he was banished to the Demon Dimension, which is the place (using the word loosely) in the...