m. c. de marco

I’m hoping to read some of these stories, but for now they’re just a blog post: William Shunn recommends these top ten Podcastle podcast stories; and Pyr passes along Bookgasm’s top 5 books of the year and also collects praise for Diving into the Wreck by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

At io9, there’s a review of last year’s The Walls of the Universe by Paul Melko. I found it by accident in the library a couple of weeks ago, and I agree with the reviewer, more or less:

The Walls Of The Universe is a really fast, entertaining read, with nice, crisp prose. (At one point, Rayburn hits a guy with a tire iron, and he falls “like a suit off a rack.”) The little character touches, and the parallel between the two Johns’ stories in the two alternate universes, add a lot to the basic idea.

Tor.com has a review of Federations, the new anthology edited by John Joseph Adams marred only by issues with the Kindle edition.

[…] would you believe that Harry Turtledove wrote a humorous story about space-faring hamsters?

I don’t usually write reviews, but somehow I’ve fallen 700 posts behind reading the aggregator and rather than try to catch up enough to reblog something I’ll just mention the last book I read: The Lions of Al-Rassan. There’s quite a bit of information about it at Guy Gavriel Kay’s website, but perhaps Wikipedia sums it up best:

It is set in a peninsula of the same world in which The Sarantine Mosaic and The Last Light of the Sun are set, and is based upon Moorish Spain. The novel concentrates on the relationships between the three peoples: the Kindath (based on the Jews), the Asharites (based on the Muslims), and the Jaddites (based on the Christians).

Also at io9, a review of Peter S. Beagle’s new short story collection:

For decades, musician and author Peter S. Beagle has been hailed as the finest living American writer of fantasy. Now Tachyon Publications has released his latest collection of stories, We Never Talk About My Brother.

John Ottinger at Tor.com highly recommends Genesis by Bernard Beckett. He gives no publisher information, but it looks like it will be coming out in hardcover from Houghton Mifflin next month.

Beckett is addressing head-on theories on the origins of life (hence the title), and from there to theories of consciousness, of the mind, and of the nature of the soul. But never once does he allow the story to drag.

Jon Evans at Tor.com reviews The Yiddish Policemen’s Union:

[…] I approached The Yiddish Policemen’s Union with a certain trepidation, despite its acclaim and fistful of awards.

I needn’t have worried. [Michael] Chabon tackles not just one but damn near every genre here—alternate history, police procedural, noir thriller, fantasy—and succeeds spectacularly at them all.