1. Cat Rambo & Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon's Tale and other stories.
The titular tale, written by both authors, is excellent, probably one of my favourite short stories. A young surgeon tries to bring a dead woman back to life, with consequences that last for the rest of his life. It's available online, and I recommend taking a read of it there (or buying the collection if, like me, you prefer print). "The Dead Girl's Wedding March" by Cat Rambo and "The Strange Case of the Lovecraft Café" by Jeff VandeMeer, M.F. Korn and D.F. Lewis were both very good, while the other three stories were good but not remarkable.

2. M. Rickert, Map of Dreams
3. Electric Velocipede #13

4. Elizabeth Bear, The Chains That You Refuse
I believe this has been remaindered, although it's still out there if you look and, like me, prefer reading from paper rather than screen. Fortunately, its best stories (IMO, of course) are all online if that's your preference. Go read "This Tragic Glass" (seriously, if you only read one of the short stories linked in this post, read this one; I can't really express how I felt reading it, other than the need to let other people know it's out there), "Two Dreams on Trains", "One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King", "Ice" and "The Devil You Don't".

5. Kij Johnson, The Fox Woman
6. Kate Wilhelm, Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop

7. Angélica Gorodischer, Kalpa Imperial.
A book comprising snippets of history, as told by storytellers, of a grand empire. If, like me, you can read detailed and interesting worldbuilding details for a couple hundred pages, with good characters (they don't see the development that characters present for a whole book would go through, but they're not cardboard either), then buy this book. I really enjoyed it. Excerpts here, if you'd like a flavour. Thinking about it, it's a bit similar to Andreas Eschbach's The Carpet Makers, which I also highly recommend.

8. Elizabeth Bear, Dust.
This is my favourite kind of book: intelligent and fun, all at once. Bear sets her story in a generation ship that came to rest in space near binary stars, one of which will soon die. Within the generation ship, there is a threat of war between the Houses of humans, and of a confrontation between the remnants of the ship's A.I. The worldbuilding is fascinating; I loved every detail of the way the generation ship is laid out, the setup of its habitants, and so on. And the characters are even better: Rien, a teenage protagonist who acts like a teenager but is also brave and interesting; Perceval, who is more difficult to categorise but very, very good to read about; Mallory, who... well, I'm just going to say 'oh fuck yes, I need more of this character' and leave it at that =D ; and the fragments of the A.I., who are unlikeable but not definitely not boringly evil (Bear does shades of grey very, very well). The plot is adventuresome, even Questy, but definitely not same-old-blah. Oh, and Bear also deals with gender, sacrifice and love, and does it well. This is the book that made me realise Bear is one of my favourite authors (well, along with "This Tragic Glass"). *fangirls*

not-9. Gregory Frost, Shadowbridge.
The rant is here. I may finish the book sometime, as I'm still a bit curious about what happens when the plot resumes, but for now I have better things to read.

9. Jennifer Stevenson, Trash Sex Magic.
It's about, well, what's in the title. The magical stability of a riverside part of land is in trouble, and can only be solved with sexual magic. Which might sound like the book's just an excuse for lots of hawt secks. Except for the part where Stevenson has written a cast of great, real characters, has made her magic dark and troublesome, has a plot that keeps moving, treats sex as an integral and complicated part of the book. I had trouble putting this one down at night.

10. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, The New Weird.
For those of you who've read the antho, K.J. Bishop's essay matches very closely my thoughts on the issue of categorisation. I'm not comfortable with this need some people have to name trends or patterns in writing. The danger of it becoming prescriptive bothers me too much. That said, as a collection of stories that bear similarities in approach (but, being what they are, are definitely not repetitive), this is a great antho. The writing is unformulaic, dark and bizarre. Some stories were a miss for me, as with any antho, but I enjoyed the majority. I particularly enjoyed the M. John Harrison*, Thomas Ligotti, China Miéville*, K.J. Bishop* and Leena Krohn stories, as well as the round robin at the end (and in that, Sarah Monette's part stood out). There are also some nonfiction bits and pieces, all very good. This is an anthology well worth checking out.
*I'd read these before.

If you want to know my thoughts on the books/zine I haven't gone into detail on, ask in the comments.

Tags: book octopus