This contemporary fantasy novel is about a file clerk suddenly thrust into the middle of a life-or-death battle over the future of Great Britain.

Henry Lamb is the sort of average person who exemplifies the term "civil servant." One day, he is taken to the giant ferris wheel called the London Eye, where he meets a humanoid being named Dedlock living in a tank of amniotic fluid. Henry is forcefully recruited into The Directorate, one of those super-secret organizations that doesn’t officially exist.

For the past century and a half, The Directorate has been fighting an all-out war against the British Monarchy. Queen Victoria agreed to a "deal with the devil"; she signed over London and all its inhabitants to a multi-limbed being called Leviathan. Dedlock, who was one of the Queen’s advisors, vowed to use any means at his disposal to stop it. Now the bill is coming due.

Henry was recruited because his grandfather, now hospitalized in a deep coma, was a former high-ranking member of The Directorate. All Henry has to do is to find a woman named Estrella, who is the key to everything, in time to keep Leviathan from rising out of the Thames, and destroying London.

In a cellar of 10 Downing Street, in an ultra-secure prison cell, are the Domino Men, the most feared serial killers in British history. They are two young men, who dress like British schoolboys, and who think nothing of killing large numbers of people, giggling the whole time. They seem to instantly know a person’s deepest fears and insecurities, and enjoy exploiting the heck out of them. The Domino Men say that they know where Estrella is, and are taken out under very heavy police guard. They don’t stay in custody for very long. Can Henry find Estrella and stop Leviathan before it turns London into a giant insane asylum?

Here is a wonderful piece of writing. It’s nice and strange without being too strange, it does very well as a thriller and it will certainly keep the reader’s interest.

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Tessia is a healer’s apprentice in the land of Kyralia. It is a place where the only "career" for women is to become a wife and mother, so becoming a healer, on her own, is not an option. One day, in a moment of stress, Tessia shows an amazing natural talent for magic. She becomes a magician’s apprentice under Lord Dakon. She joins Jayan, an older male apprentice, with whom she has a difficult relationship. Before Tessia can get used to her new life, war comes to Kyralia.

Three centuries previously, Kyralia gained its independence from the land of Sachaka. A group of rogue Sachakan magicians vows to do something about that. When they attack a Kyralian village, they suck all the magic out of the residents, then brutally kill everyone, including Tessia’s parents. Takado, the leader of the Sachakan magicians, is banking on the Sachakan emperor being forced into approving the invasion, now that it is already in process. When the two armies meet, there are major pitched battles, using magic only. Slowly but surely, the war starts to go Kyralia’s way. When the Sachakans are pushed back to the border, do the Kyralians stay there? On the other hand, do the Kyralians continue to the Sachakan capital, to wipe out Sachaka once and for all? If they don’t, they know that, one day, Sachaka will attack Kyralia, and finish it, once and for all.

This is a big book, but it’s a really good one. It’s a tale full of loyalty, conflict and finding your place in the world when your world has been turned upside down. It is well worth the reader’s time.

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Space travel and industrialization just has not paid off the way humanity had hoped. The search for intelligent life has been disappointing. On Earth, there is a growing call to cut the space exploration budget, and focus on domestic issues, like global warming. In a last-ditch effort, the Academy puts together a mission to investigate moonriders, once and for all. The modern equivalent of UFOs, they have been seen by many, but no one has gotten a close look at them.

The mission takes on added urgency when an asteroid misses Earth by a whisker (in astronomical terms), and no one knew it was coming. A luxury hotel under construction orbiting a nearby planet is destroyed by another asteroid. Both incidents are blamed on moonriders. The mission, including the journalist leading the campaign to cut the space fleet, discovers that the incidents blamed on moonriders have a much more Earthly origin. They also see, up close and personal, that the moonriders are not to be trifled with, when they attack a supercollider, thousands of kilometers long, under construction many light years away.

Here is another gem of a story from McDevitt. It’s an intelligent piece of space opera, it does a good job of combining ideas and action, and it is recommended.

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Will is having a very hard time making it as a poet in London. He is not just a "struggling" poet, he is, literally, a starving poet. Will makes the acquaintance of Christopher Marlowe, the current favorite poet of Elizabeth I. Christopher has attracted the attention of the authorities, a sure route to a short life span. Back in his university days, evidently he was not diligent enough in reporting a classmate who made an unpleasant remark about the monarchy. Therefore, he has to be a sympathizer. Facing lots of torture on the rack, Christopher spins a tale about this huge conspiracy he has uncovered. He has to give the authorities somebody, so he plans on implicating Shakespeare. There is no conspiracy, and even if there was, Shakespeare is the last person who would be involved in it.

Both men received their poetry gifts through exposure to the world of faerie. An elf named Sylvanus has "gone bad" and is heading to London to create havoc. The King of faerie, Quicksilver, has no choice but to go after him. He changes into his alter ego, a beautiful woman named Silver, with whom Shakespeare has already cheated on his wife (she is back home in Stratford). Meantime, back in faerie, it is as if all of the magical energy is disappearing; elves and fairies are dying by the hundreds. Ariel, the Queen of Faerie, has no choice but to go to London and look for her husband. Also, Sylvanus takes over Marlowe’s body; at night, he becomes a sort of humanoid beast who likes to disembowel people. Does Shakespeare stay out of the hands of the authorities? Does faerie get all of its magical energy removed?

This is an interesting speculation about the life of William Shakespeare before he became a Famous Person. Of course, Shakespeare fans will love it, and so will fantasy fans. It’s worth reading.

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Robert Silverberg looks at a far-future human society that no longer believes in myths, so a great machine is built to bring to life mythical figures from throughout human history. Among those recreated were Adam and Eve, Odysseus, Shiva, Dionysus, Thor, St. George and St. Jude. It also recreated more modern figures who became mythical, like Galileo, Newton, Freud, Einstein and John Kennedy. After fifty years, humanity gets bored with them, so all of them are sent back into the machine. Then the invaders come and enslave humanity.

There is an excerpt from a longer piece written in 1895 by Robert W. Chambers. It explores 1930s New York City in a parallel reality, and is about the opening of the first public suicide chamber. A story from 1901 is about a man found insane and uncommunicative in an isolated area. Later, a diary is found that describes him abruptly quitting his job, living in the isolated area, becoming sick of all human contact, and convincing himself that he is a god. Elvis Presley returns to America from the Army to bear witness to a weird and jumbled timeline of death. There is a portion of a play from early 1900s German Expressionism. Included in this volume are tales by Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood and Guy de Maupassant.

This is what they mean when they talk about "great imaginative literature." These authors helped to create the fantasy and science fiction genres. There is something here for everyone, and it is highly recommended.

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Gaea (Mother Earth) has had it with mankind’s wanton destruction of her resources, including plants and animals. After being physically attacked by a man, and left in a ditch, Gaea is ready to wipe mankind off the map. Quant, now in the form of a humanoid seraph, takes Gaea to visit God, the Lord of All (the Big Boss). God allows Gaea to warn mankind, or otherwise kick him in the rear end, but if there is any vengeance or smiting to be done, He will do it (and no one else). The pair gather a few friends, including Briareos (with fifty heads and one hundred arms), Cerberus, the three-headed Hell Hound, Demeter, Zeus and Triton, to see if they can change mankind’s thinking.

Meantime, the brothers at a rural friary are entering the world of green living on the orders of their leader, Brother Polycarp. Their initial reaction is reluctant, at best, but they soon get into the spirit of starting a vegetable garden, baking with fruit from their own orchard, and occasionally walking instead of always taking the car. Quant uses them as an example to Gaea that some humans are trying to live the right way.

When those giant factory fishing vessels, with the nets that destroy the ocean floor, are at sea and about to deploy their nets, they are suddenly best by huge storms that come out of nowhere. They speed back to port to try again tomorrow. The same thing happens time after time; clear skies instantly turn stormy. The sonar systems on all submarines suddenly and permanently malfunction, for no apparent reason. Large parts of the world experience bizarre weather patterns, like dust storms and snow in summer, while those that are living in harmony with nature, like the friary, experience beautiful weather. Does mankind start to get the idea? Does he realize that using the resources of Earth in moderation is actually a good idea?

This is a really well-done novel with a strong, but not overdone, environmental message. The next time you litter or waste resources, just think, Gaea is watching.

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In the 21st century, Vampires are people, too (so to speak). They go on Oprah, they have teenage daughters (with a unique set of problems in school) and they run for public office. They are jazz and blues musicians, and they have to deal with the fathers of some of the women they have killed. Their bodies can filter out a major blood disease that is ravaging mankind. They breed humans for their flesh, and siphon their blood. When they are born, they need to feed on human flesh, usually the mother’s.

They go to clubs, looking for victims, and sometimes run into bored young people who think that being bitten by a vampire will turn them into a vampire, which is not the case. They construct sets of mirrors that allow them to be exposed to the sun, and actually get a tan, without worrying about burning up. Sometimes, they have to deal with demon-hunters, complete with wooden stakes (an occupational hazard for a vampire), who don’t always know what they are doing. Occasionally, they appear to bored city workers on public transit (no one else can see them) and convince them that, to become a vampire, they have to murder someone and drink their blood, which is also not the case. There are also vampire vigilantes, who help out people in trouble at night, but who have their own ulterior motives.

Here is a first-rate bunch of stories. I am not much of a horror reader, so I was glad to see that the horror part of these tales was not overwhelming. This is very much worth reading.

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Kat O’Malley is not your average recluse. Several hundred years ago, O’Malley, then named Josefina, and her brother, Julio, received a gift, or curse, from their mother just before she was killed for being a witch. They were given nine lives, and made part cat. Kat is now on her fifth life. Her other lives did not end well. She was drowned for being a witch, stoned to death for being "too well liked" by cats, and she died in childbirth after giving birth to 13 daughters (not all at the same time).

Today, O’Malley has a justifiable fear of the outside world. She is happy to live with 50 cats, with whom she communicates telepathically. One day, a man named Angelo DiVita arrives at her door; it is actually Julio, her brother, from 400 years ago. He is now headmaster at a local commune/alternative high school. She reluctantly accepts his invitation to teach a history course at the school two days a week. Her only conditions are that she does it her way, and that there are no visitors to the class.

As at any other school, there are those on the Board of Directors who just have to stick their noses where they are not welcome, including one who thinks of herself as some New Age goddess. As the semester goes on, Kat exposes her students to the sort of history that won’t be found in any textbook. Her refusal to allow visitors to her class leads to resentment and prejudice on the part of the Board (she won’t allow visitors, so, therefore, she must be filling their heads with something evil). Kat has seen this before. When tragedy strikes near the end of the semester, what will become of Kat?

This tale easily reaches the level of Wow. It’s very contemporary, with just a little bit of weirdness. The author does a wonderful job throughout, and this is very much recommended.

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Anne Frank emigrates to America, just ahead of the Nazis, and eventually becomes a famous movie star. She falls in love with Mickey Rooney, and later marries him. Anne divorces him after a few years, citing physical abuse. While a plague is ravaging the Northern Hemisphere, a man attempts to re-create Wings Over the World (from "Things to Come" by H.G. Wells) with help from a few surviving pilots in southern Africa. There is a tale about Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and the 1945 Trinity atomic bomb test.

In a Hamburg bar in the middle of World War III, a soldier listens to a very strange story. An average-looking man tells of a world destroyed by nuclear weapons in an all-out war. He happens to find a time machine and takes a one-way trip back to the early 20th century. Pretending to be a reporter, he systematically, and discreetly, kills any scientist involved in atomic physics, from Einstein to Oppenheimer. The atomic bombing of Japan is replaced by the American invasion of Japan, with heavy American casualties. The man realizes, to his dismay, that he may have taken nuclear weapons off the table, but he has done nothing about the forces that periodically push humanity to war.

A young Native American writer travels to 1930s New York City to meet the editor of a famous science fiction magazine, Joseph Campbell. In post-war America, a handful of people are sent on a private rocket ship to the Moon. Told that the Nazi High Command is there plotting a comeback, when they arrive, they don’t find any Nazis. Then they are informed (by President Robert Heinlein) the real reason they are there.

Here are some memorable and imaginative stories. They are well-done and interesting from start to finish, and will give the reader plenty to think about.

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Elaine Barnaby, a London-based forensic accountant, is sent to Edinburgh to audit the bank from the inside. The unspoken part is that, if anything goes wrong, her firm will plead ignorance, and her neck will be on the chopping block. She is provided with a guide through the world of online gaming named Jack Reed, who, coincidentally (or not so coincidentally) became unemployed the week before.

Very Important People in newly independent Scotland are interested in the case, including the Scottish equivalent of the FBI. Brussels (the home of the European Union) gets involved in the case. There are Chinese hackers involved, who may or may not be assisted by Chinese State Security. Copspace, a sort of private VR database system for the police, which is supposedly secure, gets hacked. It is a world where everyone has access to the Internet through their eyeglasses. There is even a zombie flash mob.

I understood very little of the technical parts, because I know nothing about online gaming, but I loved reading this book. It is very cool and cutting edge, and works quite well as a straight thriller. If I could, I would give this book three thumbs up.

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Sleeping in a rural guesthouse, a man wakes up in the middle of the night to find a dinner-plate sized spider on the ceiling directly above him. An academic buys a rural house so he can work on his magnum opus, a multi-volume work on superstitions. Some unknown force is writing messages in the dust on a shelf, including one with his name in it.

A well-known physicist, as rational and scientific a person as you will ever meet, is tormented by a strange dream while he sleeps. It is as if he is watching a movie inside his head, for the dream progresses a few minutes each night. In the dream, he is washed up on shore somewhere in the East, and many hundreds of years ago. He sees a great city a mile away, where his lady love awaits. Between him and the city are a band of horsemen riding toward him, brandishing huge swords. Each night, they get closer and closer. The physicist checks himself into an isolated mental hospital, for "observation." The swordsmen in the dream can’t hurt him in reality, can they?

An isolated hamlet in the Alps is attacked by some sort of monster which is only heard, but never seen. In another rural house, a man becomes the private secretary to a man with a rather extreme interest in obituaries and chronicling people’s deaths.

Copper is a veteran of the macabre literature field, and it shows here. The horror part of these stories is implied, but never thrown all over the page. If you can find a copy, this is really worth reading.

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Lady Talarrie Eircelly has a well-known gift for healing in their small country village. Whether the malady is physical or emotional, she is The Person To See. Her husband, Lord Emkay Eircelly, is known as a fair ruler of the village. They have several children, including teenage twins, Tirza and Tracell. Life is pretty good in the village, until a messenger arrives from the king with news of war.

Lord Emkay rides off to war, along with every able-bodied man in the village, leaving Lady Talarrie in charge. The entire village goes into crisis mode. Flowers are pulled up, and vegetables are planted. Hunters scour the forest for any old or lame animals that would have died during the upcoming winter, and cull them earlier than expected. Nothing is more important than getting ready for the upcoming winter.

The war comes to the village, destroying most of the houses. This forces the whole village to move into the manor house for the winter. It’s tight, but with lots of improvising, they survive the winter. When spring comes, the first priority is to start rebuilding the village. After a winter crammed into close quarters, people’s tempers are almost gone.

An important part of growing up is receiving a present from your parents on your 16th birthday. Tirza’s gift is all set, a special crystal from her mother to wear around her neck. Tracell, her brother, has always wanted a horse of his own; not just any horse, but a Cirgassian war horse. The war has not only taken all the able-bodied men, it has also taken all the able-bodied horses. Tracell’s gift is hardly a sure thing.

This story is less than 100 pages, but it’s pretty good. It’s a very quick read, and it’s worth the reader’s time.

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In a 24-hour, instant communication world the need for sleep is the only thing that hasn’t changed. The world is splintering into tribes based on time zones; those in other time zones will be at lunch or sleeping when you need them. Only those in your own time zone can be depended upon.

Art lives in London, and he works for a European telecommunications mega-corporation. His "real job" is to make life as difficult as possible for those in the Greenwich Mean Tribe by inserting user-hostile software wherever he can. Of course, other tribes are doing the same thing to Art’s "home tribe," the Eastern Standard Tribe.

Art is also working on managing data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. Most cars have some sort of onboard computer on which songs are stored, sometimes tens of thousands of songs. Art comes up with a system for wireless transfer of songs between cars, while they are driving on the Mass Pike. Art’s business partner, Fede, sends him to Boston to sign an agreement selling the system to a local company. After several days of being told to wait, while “details” are being finalized, Art realizes that he is being screwed by Fede, and Art’s girlfriend, Linda. The two met when Art hit her with his car in London. That is how Art finds himself on the roof of a forty-floor insane asylum near Boston; Fede and Linda had him committed there.

As with any Doctorow novel, this book is full of interesting ideas. It’s easy to read, very plausible and very much recommended.

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The world has been ravaged by a very contagious disease that destroys undeveloped frontal lobes of the brain, thereby turning all children, whose brains are not yet fully developed, into brainless automatons. In one family, the father is ready to commit suicide out of despair; at this point, the parents are expected to take their affected children with them. The wife refuses to give up hope that someone, somewhere is working on a cure.

A former stockbroker suffers from a debilitating disease which looks like ALS on the outside, but it isn’t. It is as if his body is slowing down, almost to the point of stopping, and he is always cold, even in the middle of summer. A group of children are held prisoner by a man who, by playing his flute, can make them do anything, even throw themselves off a cliff. A woman has to deal with her dead ex-husband living in her house, eating pizza and using the shower. An elderly man, living alone in the woods, is asked about the disappearance of a member of another family also living in the woods.

A woman is in the process of giving birth to quintuplets, at home. The doctor is old enough to remember the Dionne quintuplets, who grew up as media darlings and were not allowed to live regular lives. He has a very difficult decision to make when two of the babies develop severe breathing problems. Having just returned from her husband’s funeral, a woman does battle with a bluejay that got into her house, and will not leave her alone.

These are all first-rate stories. They are weird and spooky without going overboard. They will keep the reader entertained, and they are well worth reading.

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