Target: David Edison’s The Waking Engine Profile: Weird Fantasy There is point during the creative process when too many ideas can be as bad as too few. I’m personally a very poor judge of where that limit is, but The Waking Engine is firmly on the wrong side of it. Some of the book’s core concepts are interesting and fresh, but they are buried under layers of borrowed imagery, and symbolism stolen from across the width and breadth of fantasy and science fiction. The only thing I took […]
The City and the Abcity
Target: China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun Profile: Young Adult, Fantasy, Weird Fantasy ‘China Miéville’ and ‘children’s book’ are not, at first glance, two things that would appear to mesh. Miéville, who I have described in previous reviews as being macabre, dense and sometimes overwhelmingly complicated (in an enjoyable way), is hardly the first person I’d pick to write a book for older kids and young adults. Nevertheless, Un Lun Dun is a triumphant piece of fiction. It taps into the fundamental truths of adventure stories, […]