10) The Somnambulist & The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes
The Somnambulist and The Domino Men are both beautifully composed pastiches of classic genre tropes. The Somnambulist is an homage to the Victorian penny dreadful…The Domino Men is Lovecraftian in nature. While both are meticulous literary exercises, The Domino Men holds together more soundly, structurally speaking. The Somnambulist contains dozens of brilliant conceits, few of which coalesce into a fully coherent narrative by the end…The Domino Men, on the other hand, leaves not a single thread dangling…While both exhibit a dark sense of humor, The Domino Men is such a finely tuned machine that one often finds oneself laughing and shuddering at the same time. It rides the razor’s edge of being genuinely funny and genuinely creepy…
[Purchase The Somnambulist] [Purchase The Domino Men]
9) The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman’s cheerfully twisted, unexpectedly warm children’s tale, The Graveyard Book, resets Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book in the present day English countryside and replaces its eponymous jungle with a similarly eponymous cemetery. Kipling’s Mowgli was raised by wolves, along with all of the other animals of the forest. Gaiman’s Bod is raised by the denizens of the graveyard…Neil Gaiman has crafted a true masterpiece in The Graveyard Book, the sort of story that will lure children back again and again into a mysterious world of adventure and enchantment, even as adults will notice how subtly he manages to introduce the young to themes of life, death, and burgeoning adulthood. Most impressively, by the end, he pulls off the neat trick of making adulthood seem every bit as wondrous to a child as the games and pursuits of youth…
8) The Wild Things by Dave Eggers
In his afterword to his companion book to the film, The Wild Things, co-screenwriter Dave Eggers…explains that Maurice Sendak’s original version of Max is based on Sendak as a child, and that Jonze’s Max is based on Jonze’s childhood. Eggers goes on to explain that his Max is a composite of himself and the other two, and that is what makes this novel such a charming little book…Dave Eggers’ The Wild Things is a more than worthy companion to both Sendak and Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, opening new avenues into both works and doing so in a manner that seamlessly blends his own staggeringly genius voice with those of two other staggering geniuses. Together, the three works form a complete vision of one solitary little boy who stands alone in the annals of literature, dressed in an increasingly muddy wolf suit, howling at the moon…
7) Hero by Perry Moore
For a long time, superhero tales have attracted gay fans…The archetype of the outsider, misunderstood by most people, who has superhuman powers and who has to hide what makes him most special from the ordinary citizens, could be seen as a metaphor for an in-the-closet teenager…It is precisely these emotions that Perry Moore taps into so brilliantly in his young adult novel, Hero. By making his protagonist, Thom Creed, the closeted gay son of two superheroes (one with powers, one not), Moore strips away the gay metaphor…Instead, the reader is given a very direct portrait of a young gay male at a very difficult time in his life. True, Thom may have to deal with more than most young men have to do at his age…and training to join the League (of superheroes, natch), as well. But the emotions never ring anything but fully true…
6) The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
Translated from German by a man with the amusing name of John Brownjohn, The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear reads…like a delightful and slightly warped mash-up of your garden-variety fantasy quest novel, Homer, Baron Munchausen, Dr. Seuss, and Douglas Adams…If the novel has any flaw, it is that at times, as Bluebear goes from one adventure to the next, the narrative loses momentum for a while…Be assured, however, that whatever small moments of frustration may occur for the reader in those moments where Moer becomes more wrapped up in his world-building than in moving the story forward, are more than made up for by the sheer, overflowing imagination of his creation…not to mention the stunning, accompanying artwork. While some authors seem to have barely enough creativity for one novel, Moers has enough for at least 13 1/2…
[Purchase The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear]
5) Here, There & Everywhere by Chris Roberson
On the surface, Here, There & Everywhere is actually a joyous romp through time and space–the life story of a singularly unique woman, Roxanne Bonaventure, who, from a young age, is gifted with a very special bracelet, which she dubs “the Sofia,” that allows her to spend her life zigzagging through time and space…Underneath the larksome exterior, however, Roberson’s novel has a rather serious subtext. Although most of the time, Roxanne has a ball traipsing across the universe, she can also be a deeply lonely individual…Here, There & Everywhere captures the alienation of a time traveler’s life in a profound yet subtle manner that never overwhelms the story with pathos but which keeps the novel–even in its most thrillingly pulpy of moments–cushioned in a layer of emotional reality that beautifully complements its jaunty surface…
[Purchase Here, There & Everywhere]
4) The Orphan’s Tales by Catherynne M. Valente (unreviewed)
A beautifully crafted duology, comprised of In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice, Catherynne M. Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales is a collection of nesting tales–tales within tales within tales, like a Russian doll. In other words, in each story, a character begins telling a different story. At the end of each chapter, we either zoom in deeper into yet another story or pull back to a previous one, and so complex is the structure that, eventually, nearly every thread of each of these smaller stories will join into assembling one overarching story, binding the entire work together. The Orphan’s Tales is a sublime concoction–a melding of tropes from obscure fairy tales, folk tales, legends, science fiction, and more–about one strange little girl who has countless stories literally written around her eyes.
[Purchase In the Night Garden] [Purchase In the Cities of Coin and Spice]
3) The Banned and the Banished by James Clemens
James Clemens’ brilliant The Banned and the Banished quintet (Wit’ch Fire, Wit’ch Storm, Wit’ch War, Wit’ch Gate, and Wit’ch Star)…it is an outstanding example of the fantasy genre that uses many if not all of the classic tropes and reassigns them in a manner that, if not completely unique, is certainly rare…The Banned and the Banished is a story composed of an endless number of smaller stories, each of which is a tiny piece of a much larger puzzle. Each of the minor stories is a key to unlocking the series’ larger mysteries, and all of the mysteries eventually unlock one another in manners that are unexpected and at the same time make complete sense in retrospect, so each successive revelation feels both genuinely surprising and inevitable. In short, it is one of the finest fantasy series I’ve ever read…In a word: bewit’ching…
[Purchase Wit'ch Fire] [Purchase Wit'ch Storm] [Purchase Wit'ch War] [Purchase Wit'ch Gate] [Purchase Wit'ch Star]
2) Age of Misrule by Mark Chadbourn
Mark Chadbourn’s Age of Misrule trilogy–World’s End, Darkest Hour, and Always Forever–is a mindshatteringly complex web of mythology and legend, ancient and new, high fantasy, horror, pop culture, and philosophy…Age of Misrule is a grand, epic, quest novel in the vein of Tolkien, but it also has moments of terror that would not be out of place in Stephen King. At the same time, it always remains rooted in the author’s vast knowledge of mythology. Furthermore, from start to finish, Chadbourn is determined to examine the implications of what he has done to the world, not just as far as the physical and emotional toll it has taken on his characters but from a philosophical perspective, as well…The Lord of the Rings is, ultimately, the tale of how magic gradually began to leave the everyday world. Age of Misrule is the tale of how it returned…
[Purchase World's End] [Purchase Darkest Hour] [Purchase Always Forever]
1) Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate, Book the First) by Gail Carriger
Vampire and werewolf stories would seem to have been done to death (please excuse the atrocious pun), as has this brand of urban fantasy to an extent, and yet Soulless, the first volume in debut novelist, Gail Carriger’s The Parasol Protectorate series, makes these supernatural creatures and this genre feel shiny and new again, thanks to the help of supremely witty writing, a meticulously developed alternative history and mythology, and a cast of characters so colorful and so vivid that after only a few pages, the reader feels as if he or she has known them for years…Soulless is a horror/romance/mystery/steampunk/alternative-history/fantasy/satire/science-fiction/comedy-of-manners set in a Victorian-era London populated with vampires, werewolves, parasols, and dirigibles, that blends Stoker with Austen, the Bronte sisters, a splash of Dickens, and just a hint of Jules Verne and Mary Shelley…On top of that, The Parasol Protectorate presents what is perhaps the most original twist on vampire and werewolf mythology to ever appear in the genre…
What might have impressed most of all about this truly beautiful novel, however, is not any one of this multitude of strong points, but how seamlessly all of these strong points interact with one another. Soulless would fit comfortably on the shelf of any of the aforementioned genres from which it samples. It is not, however, just a monumentally successful hybrid but a novel that is so confident and so ingenious that one can find oneself easily deluded into believing that its author invented it entirely from wholecloth. For this remarkable accomplishment, it deserves its own shelf…
Related posts:
- “City on Fire”: Jonathan Barnes’ The Somnambulist and The Domino Men
- Rob Will Review: Now, There’s an App for That!
- The 10 Best Films of 2009
- Wolf Suits: Eggers’ The Wild Things
- “We’ll Eat You Up, We Love You So”: Where the Wild Things Are
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a great list, Rob! You’ve chosen a fabulous array of challenging and well-crafted books, only a few of which (The Graveyard Book and the first two volumes of The Age of Misrule) I have read (and which would, indeed, be on my 10 Best list). I’m now eager to go find these and read them. Thanks!
Rob, I’m honoured.
Shucks, Rob. Thanks!