The Miniature Wife

I was lucky enough to get a copy of The Miniature Wife and Other Stories by Manuel Gonzalez from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. With my love of bizarro fiction, I figured that a collection of more mainstream weird fiction would be right up my alley. I was right. It does have less gore and sex than a typical bizarro story collection, but I think bizarro fans might enjoy it, too.

This is a good bunch of stories, with some weird twists. The titular story, for instance, is about a man who works in miniaturization whose wife gets mysteriously miniaturized and starts a war against her husband. There are also stories about a hijacking that lasts for decades, a man who talks through his ears, and life in what seems to be a video game. Some of the stories also involve more traditional fantasy and horror creatures like zombies, werewolves, and unicorns.

There are a few minor things I didn't like about the stories. Too many of the stories take the form of mini-biographies or memoirs instead of the more usual types of fictional narrative, although since they are interesting biographies/memoirs, this isn't much of a complaint. However, some of them, most notably, "The Artist's Voice"--that's the one about the man who talks through his ears--do drag a little bit. Even so, this is a really nice bunch of stories

Stardust: The Gift Edition

I first read Stardust years ago in a cheap, paperback edition, and it is a great story. A few months ago, I was offered the opportunity to get a review copy of Stardust: The Gift Edition, which is a brand new hardcover edition of Neil Gaiman's classic tale. Naturally, I jumped on the opportunity as you can probably tell since I'm reviewing it.

For those who aren't familiar with the story, Stardust is a fairy tale for adults. The story starts off with the tale of Dunstan Thorn and how he fell in love with an imprisoned fairy princess and had a child named Tristran with her. Many years later, this child, now a young man, heads off into Fairy to find a fallen star after making a foolish promise to a young woman. While there, he has a bunch of adventures that would take far too long to explain in detail. It's a cool story that's well worth reading.

You may wonder what it is about the Gift Edition that's so special. Well, like I already said, it a hardcover. In fact, it's a very nice looking hardcover. The cover looks a lot like the sort of covers they had back before the invention of dust jackets. It's just the image of a falling star with the title and the author's name that has been (I assume) stamped on with some sort of goldish-looking foil. It's very classy, and if you want a nice looking copy to sit on your shelf, this is the one for you.

Besides that, it has some cool extras. There's a new introduction by Gaiman. There's an excerpt of an unfinished novel that Stardust was originally going to be a sort of prequel to. There are also some new illustrations by Charles Vess. All of this makes it a great book to by if you love Stardust, don't have the original heavily-illustrated DC comics version, and want an illustrated copy (or want to read the extras).

Sailor Twain

Mark Siegel's Sailor Twain has some nice artwork. It's not very often that you see a graphic novel, told entirely in charcoal. This makes for a nice change. There is one problem though; the story is very slow to get moving.

The book tells the story of a steamboat captain who finds a wounded mermaid in the Hudson. It takes four chapters before this actually happens. Then we spend about 200 pages where the captain falls in love with the mermaid at the expense of his marriage, the ships owner sleeps with every woman he can find, and we learn a lot about the mythology of mermaids thanks to a writer named C. G. Beaverton. After that we finally get a reasonably climactic conclusion.

Even the big chunk where nothing is really happening is kind of interesting. The parts detailing mermaid mythology were entertaining. The owner's budding relationship with C. G. Beaverton was cool. Even with that, this large hunk of story is kind of a drag.

It's not a bad book, but I do think it could have been better.