Princess Alethea’s Magical Elixir

New reviews are up at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show!

Title: Rejiggering the Thingamajig
Author: Eric James Stone
EAN: 0979534992

I absolutely loved reading this book. For me, Rejiggering the Thingamajig wasn’t just a collection of brilliant stories by an author so funny and clever it makes me angry sometimes, it was a trip down memory lane. I’ve been a fan of Eric James Stone’s since Day One, literally. As you’ll discover in his afterword to “Betrayer of Trees,” I sat across from Eric during Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp when he presented his first draft of this story . . . and okay, I did threaten to slap his characters. But what everyone likes to forget is that I began my critique with, “This was about magic and trees, so you had me at hello.” And then came the infamous “But . . .”

However, ladies and gentlemen, please let the record show that Eric James Stone had me at hello. (Read more…)

 

Title: The Kitchen Daughter
Author: Jael McHenry
EAN: 9781439191699

I found The Kitchen Daughter by chance, on a shelf in the bookstore. I was scanning the fiction section as opposed to the sci-fi & fantasy corner, since I was in the mood for something a little more mainstream, a little more . . . magical realism. I honestly had no idea what was out there, but this book, face out, caught my eye after only about thirty seconds of looking. I had just ordered a book for a man’s wife that morning called The Kitchen House, and the coincidence of the title made me pick this one up. When I read the inside dust jacket, I knew it was exactly the book for me.

The best way to describe Jael McHenry’s debut novel is that it’s a cross between Sarah Addison Allen’s subtle magic fiction and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time(Read more…)