Sometimes, the heart of the oldest stories can speak to the modern reader more clearly after a bit of cleaning and polishing. In Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik has taken the most basic aspect of the Rumpelstilskin myth, the idea of spinning straw into gold, crossed it with the history of Jewish moneylenders in central Europe, and added in a frosty Elf lord in a supernatural struggle for the soul of a Kingdom.
The New Weird
Fantasy? Science Fiction? Horror? Jeff VanderMeer’s works are hard to classify. They are set in a world like our own, but not quite the same. Amazing and horrible things happen that can … almost … be explained. The line between science and magic is blurry, and might not exist at all. In the eyes of his human protagonists, it is entirely irrelevant. They are not trying to understand what is going on as much as survive it.
Sometimes, the heart of the oldest stories can speak to the modern reader more clearly after a bit of cleaning and polishing. In Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik has taken the most basic aspect of the Rumpelstilskin myth, the idea of spinning straw into gold, crossed it with the history of Jewish moneylenders in central Europe, and added in a frosty Elf lord in a supernatural struggle for the soul of a Kingdom.
The New Weird
Fantasy? Science Fiction? Horror? Jeff VanderMeer’s works are hard to classify. They are set in a world like our own, but not quite the same. Amazing and horrible things happen that can … almost … be explained. The line between science and magic is blurry, and might not exist at all. In the eyes of his human protagonists, it is entirely irrelevant. They are not trying to understand what is going on as much as survive it.