I am fascinated with mythology in all its shapes and forms. It fascinates me how cultures the world over have similar pantheons, for example, without any cultural cross-pollination. What I like to do in my fiction is blend various myths to create something new. And sometimes I create my own myths. It takes a curious, imaginative mind to come up with these myths, and most importantly a child-like sense of wonder, which, sadly, is extinguished by society as one is forced to “grow up”. I don’t ever want to lose that sense of wonder—to observe the world and see beauty and possibilities at every corner—so I preserve and interrogate it in my fiction.
I love Neil Gaiman; he’s a true storyteller, one who doesn’t shy away from the dark.
He takes old, well-known stories of Norse gods and presents them in a refreshing and quite clever manner. At the end of the book, I felt like I knew how Thor and Odin, and other petty gods would react to any given situation.
The icing on the cake is the tongue-in-cheek, witty narrative voice which really brings this book to life. Reading this book feels like having a gifted storyteller narrate the events to you and your friends as you lounge around the fire. Good stuff!
Neil Gaiman, long inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction, presents a bravura rendition of the Norse gods and their world from their origin though their upheaval in Ragnarok.
In Norse Mythology, Gaiman stays true to the myths in envisioning the major Norse pantheon: Odin, the highest of the high, wise, daring, and cunning; Thor, Odin's son, incredibly strong yet not the wisest of gods; and Loki-son of a giant-blood brother to Odin and a trickster and unsurpassable manipulator.
Gaiman fashions these primeval stories into a novelistic arc that begins with the genesis of the…
I was living in Russia when I read this, and was instantly captivated by the lush narrative. It echoed my feelings of being a stranger in a country so far removed from home—I would eventually write a story about Russia in my book to further explore this feeling of alienation through a fantastic lens.
I love this book particularly because it blends several different Russian fairytales to create something new. (Something I do quite a lot in my own book!) This book is the first in a trilogy, the entirety of which is a must read.)
_____________________________ Beware the evil in the woods...
In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, an elderly servant tells stories of sorcery, folklore and the Winter King to the children of the family, tales of old magic frowned upon by the church.
But for the young, wild Vasya these are far more than just stories. She alone can see the house spirits that guard her home, and sense the growing forces of dark magic in the woods. . .
I would say I came late to Bradbury’s work, but it’s never too late to discover a brilliant author.
This was my first foray into Bradbury’s oeuvre and I was captivated by his electric prose. You can always tell when an author had fun writing something, and Bradbury’s excitement bled through the page as to be outright infectious. The story itself is a straightforward good vs evil tale: a sinister carnival (and its proprietor Mr. Dark) that comes into the town, bringing death and corruption with it; the townspeople battle against the forces of evil.
Highly atmospheric and chockful of early 20th-century circus nostalgia, it is also replete with tender and philosophical moments. But regardless of the darkness, Bradbury, like Gaiman, allows room for hope. Hope in the face of overwhelming darkness, hope found in simple things; in the community and relationships, be they familial or other. I enjoyed every moment of this book.
One of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes, now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre.
For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all…
The world of The Changeling is strange and exhilarating. At first we are presented with what seems like a mundane NYC, but then the edges start to bleed as a more fantastical, deliciously disturbing world seeps into and disrupts the ordinary.
At the core of the story is a family and the lengths they go to protect each other. There are so many reasons this book resonated with me, but particularly for this reason—the idea that if only you pay close attention, you will see that a more fantastical world dwells at the edge of our own.
This is an idea I tackle in my own book, where myths and legends, and fairytales come to life. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it. Everyone who reads The Changeling will be… changed.
When Apollo Kagwa was just a child, his father disappeared, leaving him with recurring nightmares and a box labelled 'Improbabilia'. Now a successful book dealer, Kagwa has a family of his own after meeting and falling in love with Emma, a librarian. The two marry and have a baby: so far so happy-ever-after.
However, as the pair settle into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Emma's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, until one day she commits an unthinkable act, setting Apollo on a wild and fantastical quest through a suddenly otherworldly New York, in…
This book is a phantasmagorical trip. This was one of the first, if not the first, African novel to be written in English.
The language, told in a broken English that is nonetheless poetic, (Tutuola’s education was incomplete) adds to the surreal nature of the story. I like it because it is the kind of story I grew up listening to: tales of people venturing into the forest and the wondrous adventures they have therein.
The basic premise goes thus: When war comes to a Nigerian village, a young boy and his brother flee into the forest and begin a surreal journey through the realm of ghosts.Folktales and legends abound in the pages of this book.
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Amos Tutuola's second novel, was first published in 1954. It tells the tale of a small boy who wanders into the heart of a fantastical African forest, the dwelling place of innumerable wild, grotesque and terrifying beings. He is captured by ghosts, buried alive and wrapped up in spider webs, but after several years he marries and accepts his new existence. With the appearance of the television-handed ghostess, however, comes a possible route of escape.
'Tutuola ... has the immediate intuition of a creative artist working by spell and incantation.' V. S. Pritchett,…
From Shirley Jackson award-nominated author Tobi Ogundiran, comes a highly anticipated debut collection of stories full of magic and wonder, and breathtaking imagination!
In "The Lady of the Yellow-Painted Library" – featured in Levar Burton Reads – a hapless salesman flees the otherworldly librarian hell-bent on retrieving her lost library book. "The Goatkeeper's Harvest" contains echoes of Lovecraft, where a young mother living on a farm finds that goats have broken into her barn and are devouring all her tubers. As she chases them off with a rake, a woman appears claiming the goats are her children, and that the young woman has killed one of them and must pay the price: a goat for a goat. These and other tales of the dark and fantastic await.
I have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd of elephant making their annual migration.
Stumbling onto an elephant poaching, the team become embroiled in true financing of terrorism for al Shabaab –ivory sales–and are determined to stop the slaughter at any cost. Ivory trade financing terrorism involves UN refugee camps with two hundred thousand displaced Somali persons, powerful…
A documentary team hiking through East Africa collides with a gang of deadly poachers, in this gripping adventure by the author of Kidnapped on Safari.
Years of filming, extreme dangers, and daring rescues have taken their toll on documentary producer Pero Baltazar and his team. To relax and reconnect with the East African wildlife they love, Pero organizes a walking safari for him, his camerawoman Nancy Breiton, and their elite guide Mbuno Waliangulu. Still, Pero has trouble truly disconnecting from work. When the team comes across a herd of elephants making their annual migration north of Lake Rudolf, Pero decides…
