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Science fiction and fantasy books
April 3, 2011
Michael Berry
SFGate

Three new fantasy novels set in the British Isles feature a wide range of magical creatures, from vampires to the denizens of Faerie, from demons to witches.

In her debut novel, Of Blood and Honey (Nightshade Books; 304 pages; $14.99; paperback), Stina Leicht mixes Celtic folklore with the Irish-English conflicts of the 1970s. It's a rich combination of history and mythology, featuring a milieu that is both novel and apt.

Young Liam Kelly has the bad luck to be swept up in a violent Northern Ireland protest and sent to Long Kesh Internment Camp. There he is tormented by a sadistic guard and, in trying to protect himself, discovers he possesses shape-shifting abilities. Once released, he tries to pick up a semblance of a normal life with his fiancee, but he has inherited a dark legacy from his mother's long-ago illicit lover. Because of his connection to Bran, his true father and a member of the magical Fey, Liam becomes a pawn in the war between the Fey and the demonic Fallen.

Leicht does an admirable job of portraying life in a nation divided, as Liam and his compatriots are persecuted by the Loyalists and the British and then commit bloody acts in return. The faerie lore is less convincing, perhaps because so much of the magical politics occur offstage. It's not clear exactly what is at stake between Bran and the Fallen, or what the outcome of their struggle might mean for the mortal denizens of the Emerald Isle. Perhaps Leicht plans to address that issue in future volumes, but its absence leaves an unsettling hole at the center of an otherwise enjoyable and accomplished first novel.

Richard Matheson, author of "I Am Legend," "Hell House" and dozens of classic science fiction, fantasy and horror short stories, returns with a new novel, Other Kingdoms (Tor; 316 pages; $24.99). Set in a remote part of England during World War I, this book mixes elements of the psychological thriller with outright fantasy.

Eighteen-year-old Alex White enlists as an American doughboy to escape the tyranny of his abusive father, but he finds terror of a different kind in the trenches on the European front. He makes a promise to a dying friend, and when mustered out with a crippling injury, Alex heads to Gateford, the other boy's village.

Odd episodes begin almost immediately. The gold nugget Alex brings with him turns into dust once it's sold to the local jeweler. The roofer of his cottage warns Alex away from the woods and especially from venturing off the path. Alex meets the beautiful widow Magda Variel and falls into an affair with her. The village consider Magda a witch, but Alex can't believe that she has anything but his best interests at heart.

In such works as "Duel," "The Incredible Shrinking Man" and "Prey," Matheson proved himself a master of paranoia, and he does a fine job of pushing poor Alex to the extreme, to the point where he doesn't know whom to trust, not even himself. What's odd about "Other Kingdoms," however, is how it's narrated by an elderly horror fiction writer looking back at his days as a terribly callow youth. By adopting the persona of a far less capable prose stylist than himself, Matheson further distances the reader from a protagonist who is already annoyingly naive. "Other Kingdoms" has its rewards, but one wonders whether it would not have benefited from a more straightforward structure.

Matheson was one of the first popular writers to relocate horror from deteriorating castles on the moors to the picket-fenced lawns of the suburbs. In The Radleys (Free Press; 374 pages; $25), Matt Haig, author of "The Dead Fathers Club" and "The Possession of Mr. Cave," likewise introduces readers to a middle-class, suburban British family trying to cope with the supernatural, in this case their repressed need to drink human blood.

After their formerly vegan daughter Clara reacts to an attempted assault by exsanguinating the drunk jock who accosts her, the adult Radleys realize that years of abstinence aren't enough to protect their children from their blood lust. After disposing of the corpse at sea, Paul and Helen sit down with their daughter and their son Rowan to explain the rules of modern-day vampirism. Alternately terrified, disgusted and fascinated, the children struggle to assimilate this shocking news, and Paul and Helen must come up with a plan to keep them safe and the police at bay.

In a torrent of horror fiction full of angsty teens, it's refreshing to find a vampire novel that instead addresses middle-aged malaise. Both Peter and Helen know that the mojo has faded from their marriage, but neither can address the issue until they acknowledge their untamed sides, she by settling unfinished romantic business with her no-holds-barred vampire brother-in-law, he by following up a flirtation with an attractive human neighbor.

The novel's backstory about secret vampire societies and their reluctant allies on the police force isn't completely convincing. But when Haig keeps the focus squarely on the Radleys' nuclear family, the results are smartly funny and genuinely suspenseful.