Over at The Guardian Sam Jordison is taking a break from excavating the pre-history of the Hugo Awards to take a look at some contemporary fantasy. In particular he has just read George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. Despite the soap opera style and occasional cod medieval speech patterns, he was well impressed.

I have been trying to think of something succinct and intelligent to say about Finch beyond “it is wonderful, buy it”. I am failing dismally. Sorry Jeff, I blame the hamthrax.

On the other hand, if you want a good description of what the book is about, you can do no better than read what Jeff VanderMeer himself said in John Scalzi’s Big Idea.

There are disappointments. The Great Freshwater Squid are no more. They have been driven from Ambergris by water pollution. Who knows where they might have gone? Outer space, perhaps. And if you think that’s unreasonable for a fantasy novel, remember that the definition of weird fiction is that when someone asks, “is this science fiction or fantasy?” the only possible answer is “yes”.

We do, finally, get an explanation of the origins of the grey caps, and of The Silence. I have very carefully not said anything about “the truth”. We also learn more about Duncan Shriek and Samuel Tonsure. So if you are an Ambergris fan the book is a must-read.

Then again, if you like good books, and you are not allergic to the style and violence of noir, this one is for you.

You can also buy Finch merchandise featuring the glorious John Coutlhart cover, here. The importation of mushrooms from Ambergris is currently forbidden under US and European law.

Every so often when I read a book I get that feeling that, in cartoons, causes dollar signs to spring from your eyes. I had it when I first read Naomi Novik’s Temeraire, and I had it again reading Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary and Rue.

To start with the book is squarely in the popular urban fantasy mold (but not paranormal romance, males readers please note). The heroine is a fairy private eye living in San Francisco, and McGuire knows how to do a good noir gumshoe. It also has some nice light touches, mainly involving cats. The plot does shuffle poor Toby Daye from one desperate situation to another, but McGuire does it well enough for it not to seem too contrived, and to keep you turning the pages.

If I were an editor, I would have bought this book.

I read this book on the way over to California. There’s not a lot of obvious science fiction being published these days – much of what is published gets disguised as fantasy, for example Ken Scholes’ books. Colin Harvey, however, is not afraid to write SF, and Angry Robot is not afraid to publish it.

The book tells the tale of Karl Allman, who crash lands on an uncharted planet and discovers the remnants of a colony of what might be called viking re-enactors. The locals don’t think much of him, and he doesn’t think much of their society. His only hope is to brave an unforgiving geography in search of the fabled ancient starship, Winter Song.

There’s nothing excitingly new here, but Colin does a good job telling the story. I’m delighted that there’s still a market for books like this.

Oh, and I really love the ending, though other people may hate it.

There’s something faintly ridiculous about publishing a “Top 10 of 2009” when November has only just started, but lots of people are doing so. Amazon’s list is particularly interesting. The editors’ picks list is full of books that I really enjoyed, or very much want to read. Here are a few thoughts.

I’m delighted for Cat Valente and Caitlin R Kiernan. Palimpsest and The Red Tree are both excellent books. I’m also very pleased to see Yellow Blue Tibia get on the list.

I am, of course, mystified by the absence of The City & The City.

I’m less mystified by the absence of Finch. I suspect that Jeff VanderMeer contributed to compiling the list, which would have made it difficult to include one of his books.

I note that the list of top selling books bears no relationship whatsoever to the list of editors’ picks. Kudos to Patty Briggs for getting two books in the best seller list.

Two of the editors’ picks books are from small presses, but none of the best sellers are.

I can see why people have been getting excited about this book. It zips along nicely. It is far-future, post-collapse SF dressed up as fantasy, so it will appeal nicely to SF readers. And Scholes appears to write romance rather better than most male authors. But I’m afraid for me it will be a while before any fantasy series manages to get past the “it isn’t Daniel Abraham” barrier. When you have seen something done so brilliantly it is hard to read a similar work that is merely quite good.

I’ve been trying to write a review of this book for some time, and failing dismally. There are things about it that are very good. Banks is an experienced writer. He knows what he is doing with words. But there are parts that are just awful. And it seems to me that mostly they are a result of trying to present SF ideas to an audience that you assume is made of up of people who won’t understand them and are mainly after a sex, drugs and murders story. Still, I guess it will go down in history for having the chutzpah to dress up an “As you know, Bob” section as a sex scene. Not Mr. Banks’ finest hour, I’m afraid.

Michael Dirda has reviewed The Year of the Flood for The Washington Post. He’s quite positive about it. Guess I’d better buy that one then.

Avilion, is, at least according to Amazon, the 7th book in the Mythago Wood series. This one returns us to the tale of the Huxley family, and looks to provide some sort of closure for the stories of Steven and Christian, if not for the series as a whole.

Rob Holdstock’s writing is a glorious as ever, but this book suffered from being read at the same time as I was also reading Charles Butler’s excellent Four British Fantasists. In that Charlie was making very interesting arguments about fantasy, history, time travel, predestination and the like. This brings home very clearly the fact that if most of your characters are mythagos with pre-destined life stories there isn’t actually much tension to the narrative, or indeed any necessity for the author to provide a plot that pushes the characters in the right direction in a believable way.

Catching up on my weekend reading, I find that Patrick Ness is unimpressed with the new Iain Banks novel, Transition. I’m half way through it myself, and thus far I am inclined to agree with Ness.

I read Chris Roberson’s latest, The Book of Secrets from Angry Robot, on the train to and from FantasyCon. It is a fascinating idea: a secret history revealed through pastiches of stories from old pulp magazines and the like. The plot lost me around page 250 and went downhill from there. However, Dan Brown can make a fortune writing secret history books that some people think are complete drivel so I don’t see why Chris can’t make money selling books that are a bit silly in places. Marco tells me the book is selling very well.

Sometimes when I write a review it is hard to do so without making reference to important parts of the plot. If you haven’t read Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and plan on doing so you should not read my review. On the other hand, if you have been following the debate about the book that is taking place around teh intarwebs over the past few days, this may be of interest.

I have come to the end of Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet. It is still one of my favorite fantasy series. It probably always will be. There is a review here.

Mark von Schlegell is one of the most individual and distinctive voices working in SF today. He doesn’t publish much, but I very much liked his debut novel, Venusia, and now the new book, Mercury Station, is due out. Jeff VanderMeer has a review up at BookForum.

Slowly but surely my writing is catching up with my reading. Some thoughts on Liz Williams’ The Shadow Pavilion can be found here. That I am enthusiastic about a new Inspector Chen novel should not come as a great surprise.

It appears to be open season on literary fiction. First today we have Iain Banks writing science fiction in his literary persona, then Jay Lake pointed me at this article by Lev Grossman in the Wall Street Journal.

Grossman is talking here about the supposed characteristics of quality literature (much as Le Guin did yesterday when making fun of Atwood), but while Le Guin focused on the primacy of character, Grossman talks about the disdain for plot. A proper literary novel, he says, should not have a plot, because real life doesn’t have a plot. It is in many ways a compelling argument, and there are certainly SF writers who have taken it to heart. The world might be a better place if people didn’t think it was possible for politicians to wave a magic wand and make everything better.

As an argument about literature, however, it was always silly. Grossman talks about the historical origins of the Modernist movement, and why they wanted to do away with plot, but to do so completely they would have had to disavow almost everything that came before them. There was no chance that they were ever going to manage to label the likes of Austen and Dickens as “bad” writers because their novels had plots.

And actually, of course, few literary critics are daft enough to take so simplistic a line. I have certainly heard people use it. I’ve also heard people make silly comments about how having alien squid as characters is a hallmark of a bad book. But I also know some very sensible literary critics such as Matt Cheney whose understanding of the issues is much more nuanced and who are not impressed with Grossman’s article.

Where Grossman is undoubtedly right is on the subject of sales. Readers actually like plots. Give them a good yarn and they’ll be happy. All the quality stuff can come later. And in a publishing business that is struggling to stay afloat more “difficult” literature are going to have to take a back seat. Because, you know, you can write a darn good book and still have a gripping plot. Ms. Austen and Mr. Dickens were good at that. And so…

This is the future of fiction. The novel is finally waking up from its 100-year carbonite nap. Old hierarchies of taste are collapsing. Genres are hybridizing. The balance of power is swinging from the writer back to the reader, and compromises with the public taste are being struck all over the place. Lyricism is on the wane, and suspense and humor and pacing are shedding their stigmas and taking their place as the core literary technologies of the 21st century.

And who are the writers that Grossman believes are leading the charge. Well, there’s Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price and Kate Atkinson, but he also mentions Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke.

Got that? An article in the Wall Street Journal says that Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke are in the forefront of modern literature. Whatever is the world coming to?

Update: “i” restored to “Iain”. Very sorry Mr. Banks.