Reviews – Page 2 – Peter M. Ball

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Horn Review at Coolshite

Another review of Horn is live, this time courtesy Coolshite.net and the mildly notorious Dirk Flinthart. This excerpt, incidentally, may be my favourite thing anyone is ever going to say about my writing, ever: Peter M. Ball has got it right. This book is smart, funny, nasty, and wicked as hell. He gets the noir-ish tone spot on, delivers with action a-plenty, kick-ass characters, intelligent plotting, and good, clean evocative writing. Best of all, he takes a turgidly overused fantasy trope out behind the backyard toilet and puts a dum-dum bullet through its brain, after which he whips out his tackle and pisses all over the steaming corpse.

PeterMBall 19/06/2009

Works in Progress

Horn Review

It appears we have the first review of Horn live on the internets, courtesy of awritergoesonajourney.com. Meanwhile I’m peeling myself off the couch after three straight days of Veronica Mars DVDs and trying to figure out how to get back to work. My current to-do list: Black Candy draft, Clawredraft, third Miriam Aster novella draft (since I now have a plot for it), short story redrafting, marking of student assignments. I suspect what I really need to do is the latter, since it’s going to have the most psychic drag associated with it, but I do so hate the marking process…

PeterMBall 16/06/2009

Works in Progress

Black Dragon, White Dragon Review

I have been an unproductive sloth since finishing classes on Monday, so there’s little to report but the review of Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology over on The Fix. I give you the excerpt in which its all about me: Peter M. Ball’s “The Dragonkeeper’s Wife” is ostensibly about the dragon, but it is really the story of two people pulled apart by their beliefs. Anyone who has ever dated or been married to someone diametrically opposed to them philosophically or politically will feel the import of this tale. “The Dragonkeeper’s Wife” is sad, but it ends on a note of hope, and is well-wrought in a Gene Wolfe, Peter Beagle fashion. No, I’m not sure why Gene Wolf’s name is highlighted and Peter Beagle’s isn’t. I just nod and link and mention once again that the books available now in print and e-book. I would post more, but I slept through yesterday and that means I need to get

PeterMBall 11/03/2009

Works in Progress

28 Days of Thesis Updates: Day Twelve

Minimal writing yesterday (50 or so words), but that was intentional. While I’m still behind, I now feel like a rational human being who lives in a nice flat in which things are clean, rather than an angst-written PhD student who lives in a hovel in which dishes pile up in the sink. Some random stuff, not really thesis-related, from the last few days: – New review of Dreaming Again in Locus (Jan ’09), courtesy of Gardner Dozois; I actually scored a short mention among the discussion: Straightforward fantasy (as opposed to horror, although sometimes the line is hard to draw) is best represented by “Twilight in Caeli-Amur” by Rjurik Davidson, “The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga” by Peter A. Ball (another zombie story, but a considerably more subtle and elegant one), and “Manannan’s Children” By Russel Blackford… – The Fantasy Magazine best story of 2008 poll/comment contest is still running – have you voted yet? They’ve named the top five stories in the

PeterMBall 16/01/2009

Works in Progress

More Last Short Story

Another mention from Last Short Story today, this time from GirlieJones: “The strongest story for me in Fantasy this year was Peter M Ball’s “On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves”, which was also when I perked up my ears and hopped on the Peter M Ball train. It’s tender and odd and sad and bittersweet. And beautifully beautifully written. I’m looking forward to reading what Ball does next. “

PeterMBall 30/11/2008

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Last Short Story

If you’re a fan of the speculative fiction short story, you really do owe it to yourself to be following the Last Short Story blog. It’s maintained by a small group of dedicated readers committed to reading every short story published in the field over the course of a year and making note of their favourites. I was a big fan during the blogs first year, 2007, when it directed me towards some outstanding anthologies I would have otherwise missed – New Space Opera & Interfictions – and directed me towards what would become one of my favourite stories of the year, Garth Nix’s Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go To War Again. Being such a fan of the blog, it’s been kind of neat to watch some of the nice things they’ve said about two pieces of my fiction over the last couple of months. About The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga in Dreaming Again – BenPayne: “… tells

PeterMBall 29/11/2008

Tag: Reviews

Horn Review at Coolshite

Horn Review

Black Dragon, White Dragon Review

28 Days of Thesis Updates: Day Twelve

More Last Short Story

Last Short Story

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