For the next two weeks, Pornokitsch will be handed over entirely to The Kitschies. Anne and Jared will be reviewing the finalists for the Red and Golden Tentacles, while the Inky team will be taking turns going through all the shortlisted covers. These reviews aren't reflective of the judges' collective stance or final determination, but they are open, honest and (hopefully) a little bit provocative.
Agree? Disagree? Love or hate a book or its cover? Please join in. This is our favorite part of the whole process, and we hope you enjoy it as well. Either leave your thoughts in the comments or share your own reviews and include the links. To help you plan your own reading, reviewing and arguing in advance, here's the schedule:
- Monday (16 Jan): The Enterprise of Death - Jessie Bullington (Red)
- Tuesday (17 Jan - am): The Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch (Inky)
- Tuesday (17 Jan - pm): Among Thieves - Douglas Hulick (Golden)
- Wednesday (18 Jan): Embassytown - China Miéville (Red)
- Thursday (19 Jan - am): The Last Werewolf - Glen Duncan (Inky)
- Thursday (19 Jan - pm): God's War - Kameron Hurley (Golden)
- Friday (20 Jan): A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness & Siobhan Dowd (Red)
- Monday (23 Jan - am): The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco (Inky)
- Monday (23 Jan - pm): The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (Golden)
- Tuesday (24 Jan): The Testament of Jessie Lamb - Jane Rogers (Red)
- Wednesday (25 Jan - am): Equations of Life - Simon Morden (Inky)
- Wednesday (25 Jan - pm): Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs (Golden)
- Thursday (26 Jan): Osama: A Novel - Lavie Tidhar (Red)
- Friday (27 Jan - am): A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness & Siobhan Dowd (Inky)
- Friday (27 Jan - pm): The Samaritan - Fred Venturini (Golden)
All these books can be found on Better World Books, at your local independent retailer and through our partner, Blackwell's (see below).
The winners (including the delightfully enigmatic Black Tentacle) will be announced at the SFX Weekender on 3 February. The awards ceremony is included in the convention pass and will be held at 7 pm on Friday night.
We've also confirmed the date for our next themed evening at Blackwell's Charing Cross. On Thursday, 8 March, we'll be celebrating The Gothic with a handful of selected guests from literature, art, comics and film. Tickets are not required, but we do appreciate RSVPs as they allow us to calculate things like display space and bottles of delicious The Kraken Rum.
And, since we haven't done this in a while, a quick recap of our recent reviews & features:
- 13: Tales of Dark Fiction (2011) (and the bad, the horrible and the wonderfully ugly)
- Conflicts (2010) and Further Conflicts (2011) (and space opera, post-space opera and post-post space opera)
- Geof Banyard's Steampunk Literary Review (2011) (and the lighter side of airships)
- Myke Cole's Shadow Ops: Control Point (2012) (and war and inner peace)
- Warren Ellis' Supergod (2011), Garth Ennis' The Boys (2011) and Denise Mina's Hellblazer (2006 - 2007) (and examining the superhuman condition)
- Douglas Hill's Exiles of ColSec (1984) (and confidence in YA) (and psychic trees)
- Joe Lansdale's Edge of Dark Water (2012) (and the deep waters of Americana)
- Ian Sales' "A Light in the Darkness" from Alt History 3 (2011) (and the light touch of the speculative)
Our Monsters and Mullets series kicked off 2012 at the zoo with Beastmaster (1982).
On the features side, we also cobbled together a list of 10 recommendations for your shiny new e-reader, pulled together a (rather self-indulgent) look at 2011 by the numbers and interviewed Jonny Porkpie (Hard Case Crime author and the Burlesque Mayor of New York) and the delightfully bonkers crew behind The Girls' Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse.
Finally, today is the last day of the John Martin: Apocalypse exhibition at Tate Britain. We're going to miss his (very large, lurid, impactful) work. Thankfully, it has been immortalised in fiction. For updates on anything from Pandemonium Fiction (including the latest news on Stories of the Smoke), please see www.pandemonium-fiction.com. There's a mailing list and everything.
