Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Belated...

Mini-reviews of new books by Friends- of- Q- Blog, with apologies for now- constant tardiness.

Moro Rogers first published book is a graphic novel, City in the Desert . Moro may be trained as an animator, but she has a subtle mind and a deadly sense of humor, and, as one reviewer notes, there is a lot going on here beyond the tale of a human monster hunter and his (human?) female partner, who has a tail, in a decaying desert civilization. Her graphic style is loose and breezy and to my mind more kinetic (and amusing) than many I have seen, and is enhanced by her life- long studies of animals of every kind. Her storytelling instincts are a novelist's. Beware only in that this is the first of three volumes, and stops rather abruptly.

Karen Myers' King of the May is the latest in her VERY original take on-- call it Elfland,  but with some twists, volume three in The Hounds of Annwn (not a typo). Karen has blended the traditional English lore of a spooky adult- style elfland-- think Tam Lin, the Wild Hunt, perhaps a bit of the solemn Elves of Tolkien-- with Virginia Hunt country and hound lore and a bit of alternate Universe theory (no Pleistocene extinction on this line, though this is subtle). Good adventure and intrigue in a beautifully detailed, well- constructed world,  starting (in To Carry the Horn ) when her protagonist George Traherne, a master of hounds, passes from his own Blue Ridge hunt into the midst of a different one...



4 comments:

Chas S. Clifton said...

Once again, here I am at the public library, and you have listed a writer who is not in their catalog. :(

But I remembered how once I was visiting M's brother, who lives in the "hunt country" outside Charlottesville, Va.

I was outdoors with his wife, and she said, "Listen, they're hunting." Now it was December, and I had heard occasional gunshots, but there had been none just then.

But off in the distance, "toot-TOOO." First time I had heard hunting horns blown outside of movies, etc.

I felt a little out of place.

Steve Bodio said...

You can get them directly from Karen,as a book or ebook I think (I don't do much on anything but paper) or David Zincavage could tell you. I have her email but don't like to put email in Comments.

I used to call the sighthounds with a horn-- should start again as it cuts through the wind.

Moro Rogers said...

Hehe...Yeah, sorry about the abrupt ending. Vol. 2 should be out next year sometime. (I'm hoping that eventually there can be an omnibus edition, that's kind of how I intended it to be read from the beginning.)

Karen Myers said...

Thanks, Steve!

Hi, Chas. Believe me, if I could get into the library feeders, I would (working on it).

My books are out in both paper and ebook. Please feel free to contact me: KarenMyers@PerkunasPress.com .

Charlottesvills is well-ensconced in Virginia Hunt Country.