Archives: Book Reviews

review by Keith Stevenson
What can one say about this third collection of the best Australian SF and Fantasy for the year? Selected by Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquardt, who have the unenviable task of reading EVERYTHING published by Australian authors, they’ve put together a very strong representative selection that we can all feel good about. There’s a lot of great writing out there and, as they say, if you only read one anthology this year, then… A quick round up: Kaaron Warren’s ‘Dead Sea Fruit’ is an unsettling modern fairy tale told in Kaaron’s assured and original style, Margo Lanagan’s ‘Hero Vale’ a beautiful melding of schoolboy coming of age and otherworldly weirdness, and Kim Westwood’s ‘Terning tha Weel’ is a singularly Australian tale told with a great deal of humour and heart. Add to that strong showings from Terry Dowling, Ben Peek, Simon Brown, Geoffrey Maloney, Deborah Biancotti, Lee Battersby, Chris Lawson and Alastair Ong, and I guarantee you will not be disappointed. Get it from MirrorDanse (www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse) or your local specialty store and look forward to volume four.