Reviews!

The new issue of True Review has just been posted. In this one, they’ve reviewed two Fantastic Books titles: one six years old, the other still two months from being published.

Of Susan Casper’s The Red Carnival , reviewer Andrew Andrews writes “I love Casper’s style. It is truly gritty, edgy, compelling, dark and emotional. In this case, there is a stark and sinister force at this carny in the town of Somerset that makes all the festival lights turn red. There is a ride that appears out of nowhere, not attested to by the carny operators, called ‘Golgotha, Place of Skulls,’ and there comes a frenzy of violence by the carnygo’ers and carny staff. There is an impulsivity to this narrative that is disturbing, yet almost amusing.”

That’s a good review of a very good book, and I don’t want to take anything away from it.

But of far more personal import is his review of my forthcoming collection, Wandering Through Time . He writes: “Ian Randal Strock is the Harry Turtledove of short-short SF. His alternate-history stories have punch. The take on a geographically divided America in the time of the Civil War rings strongly in ‘Shall Not Perish from the Earth.’ I think it’s Strock’s best tale. In ‘The Necessary Enemy,’ it’s always wars, it seems, that drive humankind’s progress and destiny. ‘Rockefeller on the Rocks’ proves that unique tales, true or not, of U.S. vice presidents could perhaps work, with sufficiently advanced technology. Why can’t we replace veeps with robots? Who would know?”

I’m thrilled, honored, and a humbled to be compared to Harry Turtledove. My book is being released on December 3.

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