Cirrus@Austlit

'Judyth Emanuel’s Yeh Hell Ow (Adelaide Books, 2019) is a work of suburban (high) modernism, a successor to Joyce, or Woolf and worthy contemporary of Eimear McBride and Claire Louise Bennett, transplanted into tropical suburbs and surgically given a new tongue. It is a novel that plays on the unsteady, even drunken relationship between sound and meaning (and colour: yeh hell ow…), and the equally unstable relationship between what we think and what we say.' (Introduction)

'The sorcerous cabal has been sundered and Lady Tapalar has finally been avenged. The Hero's Rest is raking in more money than ever before. Everything should be perfect; Rawk, the last of the great Heroes, should be able to put his feet up, eat pastries and listen to some music.

'But the city still needs a Hero. Somehow, the magical portals continue to open, filling Katamood with deadly creatures from other realms. And then there's Prince Weaver, stirring up problems of a more mundane nature as he sends out the City Guard to curb the tensions rising in the south of the city. So Rawk and Silver Lark don't have time to rest. They are trawling through the back alleys of Katamood and through the pages of ancient books, looking for signs of a spence, a mythical hoarder of magic, while the city falls apart around them.

'Rawk doesn't have time to think about the good old days; he just wants to make it through the week.'  (Publication summary)

'Katamood is the center of the world once more.

'Magical creatures are crossing from other worlds and Rawk is hunting them through the streets of the city, like the good old days. But Rawk, the last of the great Heroes, can't keep up. Even with Heroes returning to the city to help and claim their rewards, innocent people are dying every day.

'But when Prince Weaver decides that sorcerers are opening portals to let the creatures through, Rawk and Silver Lark-- healer, sorcerer, arch-nemesis from the past-- find themselves in a race against time to find those responsible. If the prince had his way every sorcerer in the city would be locked up, but Rawk can't let that happen because he knows only too well how hard it is to find a good healer.

'Add an actual grown-up relationship plus a new business venture into the mix and Rawk is busier in retirement than he has ever been.'  (Publication summary)

'In Amanda Lohrey’s ‘Primates’, the first story in the collection Reading Madame Bovary, the unnamed corporation for which the first-person narrator works is undergoing a dreaded ‘restructure’. Her manager, Winton, is attempting to introduce Theory Z, the Japanese business equivalent of a Danish lifestyle trend. It promises to get rid of ‘hierarchies’ and bureaucracies’ in favour of a ‘clan’ mentality with ‘a high state of consistency in their internal culture’. The Theory Z idea turns colleagues into ‘intimates’ and sparks debate between adherents – ‘give them total loyalty, and they find a place for you’ – and opponents – ‘But they own you. It’s all about creating the corporate personality. You become an automaton.’' (Introduction)

'Reading ‘nonfiction’ can be like staring into a dark hole dug in the side of reality with just a penlight. The writer has excavated reality’s detail and arranged it neatly into words for our examination. Reading fiction, on the other hand, can be like staring at the stars for signs of the future: luminous and beautiful but not particularly illuminating, unless you’re an astronomer.' (Introduction)

'The hurgon might be aliens, but they are just a different type of people and, with contracts ready to sign, Kim can see an end to the war with them. But the Multeese are a different matter. They are the real enemy, hanging over all her plans like a battleship over a Combi van. They seem all powerful and completely lacking in anything like mercy.

'Kim doesn’t know how to beat them, she hasn't got a clue, but if she doesn’t work it out soon then all the contracts and treaties in the world aren’t going to help.

'And just when she thinks she’s bought herself some time, the multeese bring the fight to her. And this time, there won’t be any running away.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Just as Kim’s plans are falling into place (well, there wasn’t a lot of planning involved) things start unraveling quicker than she can pull them back together. And when you have to ask the enemy to save you it isn’t always obvious if they'll view ‘helping’ in exactly the same way. For the hurgon if it isn’t written down and signed in triplicate it's all just meaningless babble anyway. Kim doesn’t agree.

'In the middle of a civil war she helped start, Kim and the crew of the Hakahei are forced to search for allies amidst the sprawling, concrete jungle of the hurgon home world. Working out what the sides are is hard enough, working out who's on which one might be impossible.

'The price for finding allies might be too high, but she'll worry about that when the time comes.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Hordes of aliens are attacking Earth in their sentient space ships, but that doesn't worry Kim McLean all that much because there is an enemy out there who is far worse than the hurgon. There's just one, but that's more than enough.

'Kim knows she needs help. She needs help running her own ship, the Hakahei, and she needs people who can fight by their side. But finding a crew in the middle of a war, from planets spread around the galaxy, won't be easy. Finding a way to get the Americans into space won't be easy either. Of course, it would help if she knew what the hell she was doing. It would help if she didn't keep making things more difficult.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Aliens. They always attack when you least expect it. Although if we knew our history we would've expected these ones. But the truth about human history has been long forgotten, dismissed as mere myth and legend.

'Not that Kim McLean really cares about the details. All she knows is that one minute she was wondering what a medieval hot dog might have been filled with, and the next she was beating aliens over the head with a mace. Now it's up to her alone to end this war. Well, just her, an elf, a crazy dwarf and a Wonderbra.

'The Space Between draws on the myths and legends of ancient Earth, weaving a tale that moves from Sherwood Forest to distant worlds and outer space. It involves, amongst other things, magical gateways, Area 51, Sherwood Forest, sentient spacecraft, a 50 thousand year old intergalactic war, Machu Picchu and strong coffee.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Rawk is one of the great Heroes. He has travelled the world for forty years, hunting exotic creatures, battling magic and fighting evil wherever he found it. But he has been fighting mostly mundane battles since Prince Weaver outlawed magic. And with no great deeds left to be done, Rawk is afraid he’ll soon be the old man in the corner of the tavern, dreaming of the good old days and telling tales for anyone who will buy him a drink.

'But when a huge wolden wolf is spied from the walls of Katamood for the first time in a decade, Rawk is the man the city looks to once more. He’ll save them. He always has.

'Rawk will fight to ensure the Age of Heroes doesn’t slip away into history, but what if the good old days aren’t quite as good as he remembers?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Skyway Men have ruled the underworld of the skylands for centuries – killing, stealing and doing whatever else it takes to increase their wealth and power. Guns, money and fear are their weapons of choice. After a decade exiled to a small piece of farmland that flies the quietest windlanes, Kade is thrust back into the world of death, corruption, shady deals and dirty deeds. But it's just like old times. He doesn't know who to trust. He doesn't know who's on which side. He doesn't even know which side he's on any more. All Kade knows for sure is that murder and mayhem aren't what they used to be. ' (Publication summary)

'You can avoid your dark places, or you can face them. But are you willing to let someone else see?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When you are used to having an ideal, government-approved self plugged in behind your ear, thoughts of freedom don't enter your mind.'

8Source:* Publisher's blurb.