Author Archives: Gerry Huntman
Edition 10: Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Reviewed by Sophie Yorkston
It can be hard to delve back into childhood; our youthful minds cannot always interpret events that have a significance and adult context. Artfully, Neil Gaiman has carefully fostered the voice of his inner child, crafting The Ocean at the End of the Lane into an adult fairy tale.
Edition 10: The Visiphorical Art by Michelle Ann King
There is much that is not plain to the naked eye and Marcy is someone who can see past the every day into the shadows of the past. A clever and emotive short addressing the gritty underside of life we all suspect is there. SY
There are remnants of lives all over the house, drying out and growing mould like abandoned plates of half-consumed meals. They lie in wait under the surface of reality like landmines, like unexploded bombs. Waiting for the unwary, the ones who don’t watch their step, to explode them back into the world.
But Marcy isn’t one of the unwary, the clueless. She’s careful, she’s a bomb-disposal expert. She picks her way through the booby-traps of memories and the tripping hazards of lost opportunities with skill and delicate flair. She’s intangible, untouchable, an interloper in the territory of the dead. A ghost among ghosts.
The image pleases her. Ghosts have power, after all, even if they don’t know it.
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Edition 10: Notes From the Editor
Welcome to our 10th edition!
Looking back at our choices for this edition, it seems that there was a decidedly dark feel to our selections. So appropriate for the deliciously gritty cover from Luke Spooner of Carrion House. We think his work is phenomenal, and you should all have a look at his portfolio.
It is a great feeling when you know that you are presenting a wonderful variety of authors. Michelle Ann King wrote The Visiphorical Art, which was the inspiration for our wonderful cover art. The Shoe Shine is subtle and dark, in a gritty urban setting from Robert Datson. David Halpert’s science fiction short, That Blasts the Roots of Trees is My Destroyer, is a great look at segregation and how it all can go wrong. Sometimes beautiful can hide dangerous secrets, as depicted in Drunks by Michael C. Schutz-Ryan. Morgen Knight’s sweet dieselpunk story, Mr. Strawn and the Book, is a great story of companionship and shared dreams.
We have some great reviews as well. Mysti Parker reviews Ren Garcia’s Sygillis of Metatron, a dark science-fiction mystery. I review Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, his latest adult novel with a child protagonist. Damien Smith treads new ground with Colin F. Barnes’ The Daedalus Code, a cyberpunk novella.
Edition 11: Cultural Review: Literary Festivals: Why They Are Important
Reviewed by Sophie Yorkston
The hilarious Colin Mochrie leaving the audience gasping with laughter at his Fractured Fairytales event, pictured with broadcaster and host Vicki Gabereau.
This year I had the pleasure of attending several events as both a patron and volunteer at The Vancouver Writers Fest, the annual celebration of all things literary on Granville Island, in the heart of downtown Vancouver. It is one of the city’s highlights for the fall and the largest literary festival for British Columbia.
Edition 11: Finders Keepers by John W. Dennehy
A simple snowshoeing trip leads Jack and his daughter Keelin to a payload of money. How has it lain so long undisturbed in the wilderness? Best leave mysterious money caches. Unfortunately, human greed is such a grasping need. SY
The woods were quiet as Jack and his ten-year-old daughter trudged down the trail. A blanket of fresh snow draped over the forest, cleaving to bare branches and evergreens. Lost in contemplation of the woodland, their peaceful sojourn seemingly left behind adversity from the outside world.
While unloading their snowshoes from his aging Volvo wagon, little Keelin had hesitated about heading off into the shaded woods. Jack encouraged her to forge ahead. And as they busied themselves fastening the snowshoes to their boots, she appeared content about the venture.
Jack could only hear the sound of their snowshoes crimping the trail and an occasional swishing of Keelin’s snow pants as they plodded forward. Keelin quietly plugged along beside him, up and down steep hills, and around bends flanked by bubbling brooks and old stone walls.
Edition 11: Book Review: Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
Reviewed by Damien Smith
I’m going to be old and grey by the time I make a dent in my ever-growing “To Read” pile, but occasionally I seek some distraction from my line up because I feel like reading something specific. At the start of the year I had a sudden yearning for some decent sword and sorcery, which had been missing from my line up since I finished rereading The Complete Conan (highly recommended, by the way, but not what this review is about). A friend mentioned a book Throne of the Crescent Something by someone I’d never heard of as a decent yarn, so I thanked them and then promptly forgot the name of both author and book.
Edition 11: Flagman by Jim Lee
It is a hard task to live up to all that is asked of us, our names and our parents’ expectations. Casimir is worn down with world-weariness because of it. He’s hearing a voice, calling on him to be more. As the flagman signals, will Casimir continue to obey? SY
Casimir Pulaski Williams felt no particular relief as his dusty compact shuddered its way along the four-lane. Another day was finished. It had been no worse than most. Meaning only that he had felt useless, trapped and bored.
Tomorrow?
More of the same.
Another thread in the small gray fabric of his life.
Once, Casimir told himself, he had been proud.
Proud of his mother. Of her steady, uncomplaining nature. Of her perseverance. And of her determination to make their lives secure. Even, at some point, proud of the name she’d given him.
Edition 11: Requiem in Diamond by D. A. D’Amico
Too much carbon in the atmosphere and humans, in all their arrogance, thought they could fix it. Their solution now threatens all life on earth. A human look at impending apocalypse and the frailty of humanity. SY
Even the custom optics didn’t show Clarisse the subtle spectral difference between the Crust and the uncoated surfaces along the fynbos. She thought she could detect a slight glistening in the leaves of distant myrtle trees, or a liquid shimmer in the low yellowbush and bredasdorp along the border of the Olifants River, but there’d be no way to tell until it was too late.
“It’s ungodly quiet.” Peter Marsh squinted into the distance, shielding his eyes with a slender brown hand. Clarisse had always thought him a bit effeminate, but she’d seen him with at least seven women in the last few days, whooping it up in town as the world slowly ended.
She wouldn’t have pictured Peter as one of the ones who’d celebrate the catastrophe. With his pinched features, dark brooding complexion, and fussy habits, she’d always imagined him going out with a whimper, not a bang. He seemed more the bookish type, not a pre-apocalyptic Don Juan.
Edition 11: Book Review: Black Bottle Man by Craig Russell
Reviewed by Mysti Parker
How do you beat the devil and live to tell about it?
Craig Russell explores this mythical question in Black Bottle Man. Though targeted to the teen/YA audience, this metaphorically rich fable is a pleasure for any word-a-holic to read.
Edition 11: The Poet and the Lily by Julia August
A foreigner in the Isles, returning. They leave her to herself, in the place where there was plague, except the young poet. She is happy in her solitude but he seeks her out. There is a value to politeness and leaving well enough alone. SY
She came back to the Isles in the spring mist. She was left on a pebble beach by a ship from the south, which sailed off without even stopping to resupply. A nearby fishing village took her in for a week, after which she went quietly away and the next anyone heard was that she had made a home in what remained of a hamlet abandoned a hundred years ago or more. And there had been plague there, so no one cared to visit, although she did come back to barter southern coins for food.
Eventually people stopped caring. Foreigners were all mad anyway. Who knew why any of them did anything?
~~~
The stream was the same, clear water spilling foam-flecked between brown stepping stones. There were foxgloves still, and green hollows below undercut banks, and here and there the bronze of dead leaves shed by the beech trees coming into their spring growth. Mist crept like a white ghost over the grass.
SQ Mag 
