I have a great love of visionary fantasy fiction, metaphysical mystery thrillers, and fiction that doesn’t conform to generic norms, be it novels or film, as well as music and the arts. I’m also passionate about exploring the unknown, the mysteries of the mind, consciousness, and our existence in this unfathomable universe. In that regard, I love to travel. Some of my most recent escapades have included journeys deep into the Peruvian Amazon, Brazil, the Andes, and Mexico, meeting local indigenous folk wherever possible, and participating in shamanic ceremonies and tribal rituals. And lastly, I’m an ardent Formula One fan – something that has not yet featured in my fiction, though it may.
I love the vivid characterisation and rich, intricate prose. In the crumbling, stultifying world of Gormenghast castle obscure rituals, unchanged for centuries, are reenacted at times on a daily basis, though no one seems to quite know why. There dwells Lord Sepulchrave, melancholy and mad; the formidable, self-indulgent Lady Gertrude with birds nesting in her hair; their sulky, impulsive daughter, Fuchsia. Then there’s Abathia Swelter, the loathsome chef with a taste for cruelty; his arch-foe, the skeletal Flay. Steerpike, an ambitious, manipulative kitchen boy who escapes his world of drudgery, seeking influence and power in the world of Gormenghast. And so many more…
And finally there is Titus, the baby whose birth will change everything.
Titus Groan is magnificent. For me, a fantasy of a wholly different species.
The first volume of the GORMENGHAST trilogy of fantasy novels. Titus Groan is born the heir to Gormenghast castle, and finds himself in a world predetermined by complex rituals that have been made obscure by the passage of time. Along the corridors of the castle, the child encounters some of the dark characters who will shape his life.
I was instantly transported by this epic saga of high fantasy steeped in legend and myth. The beautiful descriptions of the rugged, dreamlike, and sometimes sinister lands and fabulous otherworld dimensions of the Elder Isles, make Lyonesse an incomparable read. I love Vance’s stunning prose style, his razor-sharp dry humour, and the complexity of his characters. It is boundary-defying fantasy, mercifully devoid of elves, dwarves, and dragons but brimful with intrigues and subplots, unexpected twists, sudden violence, acts of heroism, and scenes of tragedy, love, strangeness, and betrayal. Lyonesse is magic from beginning to end.
The Lyonesse sequence evokes the Elder Isles, is a baroque land of pre-Arthurian myth now lost beneath the Atlantic, where powerful sorcerers, aloof faeries, stalwart champions, and nobles eccentric, magnanimous, and cruel pursue intrigue among their separate worlds . . .
Prince Aillas of Troicinet is betrayed on his first diplomatic voyage and cast into the sea. Before he redeems his birthright, he must pass the breadth of Hybras Isle as prisoner, vagabond, and slave, an acquaintance of faeries, wizards, and errant knights, and lover to a sad and beautiful girl whose fate sets his bitter rivalry with the tyrant…
Inimitable, surreal, nonsensical, logic-defying, disorienting, and absolutely wonder-filled. I love the craziness of the characters. They talk in riddles or nonsense, some are playful or possibly wise, some are ill-mannered, some despotic and cruel. Time, space, and identity cease to have meaning in any conventional sense. The child Alice, boundlessly curious, drops down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world that makes no sense at all and yet somehow mirrors our own world. With John Tenniel’s original illustrations, it delighted me as a child and continues to do so as an adult.
When Alice sees the White Rabbit running by on the river bank, she follows him, tumbling down a Rabbit Hole into a magical world where nothing is ever as it seems...
Lewis Carroll's classic story has delighted children since 1865. One hundred and fifty years since its first publication, Hodder celebrates in style with this sumptuous new edition, illustrated by Rebecca Dautremer, whose dreamlike illustrations bring vibrant new life to Carroll's beloved characters. The original text appears complete and unabridged.
Rebecca Dautremer is the celebrated illustrator of The Secret Lives of Princesses.
Gothic horror and prototypical science fiction rather than fantasy, but a masterpiece of the genre, written by Shelley when she was just eighteen. Ambitious young scientist Victor Frankenstein, in his quest to discover the secret of life and death, creates a sapient ‘monster.’ Horrified by his creation, he abandons it. The creature escapes…
“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
What appeals to me, apart from the wonderful storytelling and tension is the way Shelley deftly and wisely explores the complexity and depth of human emotions, the consequences of overreaching ambition and our attempts to play god and corrupt nature, how we respond to the ‘Other,’ the awesome yet restorative power of Nature itself…
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times
Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third…
"One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking from troubling dreams, he discovered he had been changed into a monstrous verminous insect."
What an opening sentence! In my teens I was captivated by the strangeness, the absurdity, the sense of sacrifice, and the surreal, deeply unsettling nature of this tale, and re-reading it again now, I still am. Gregor loathes his dull job – something so many of us can relate to – but is bound to support his debt-ridden family. Transformed into something monstrous, he is freed of family obligations but has now become a burden.
Despite his metamorphosis, Gregor’s thoughts remain on somehow getting to work and the difficulties his absence will create. His relatives largely respond as if he is ill, with a mix of sympathy and revulsion but no great sense of shock or surprise.
“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”
With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century…
Enchantment’s Reach is a land torn apart by internal and external conflict. Secrets from the past resurface, religious factions and fanatical cults revive ancient feuds. An unfathomable non-human warrior race musters at the border. A mysterious, powerful being materializes from somewhere deep within the Reach and an enigmatic child seems to hold the key to an extraordinary mystery.
Via intrigues and desperate quests, Issul and Leth, rulers of Enchantment’s Reach, discover their world is not as they had perceived it. Journeying deep within mysterious Enchantment, where no human has ever been, they begin to uncover the true nature of the awakening universe into which they have been born. Mystery and magic, conflict, intrigue, love, and suspense, all woven into a spellbinding fantasy saga. This book is Volume 1 of 6.
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, and her life changed forever. As her fame grew, she dared to challenge the diabolical Archbishop once too often, and he threw her in front of the Inquisition, where she stood, alone.
Sor Juana's work is studied still today, and justifiably so. Scholars study her months on end; mystics…
This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that, and more.
One day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in…
