Academic Exercises
(By K.J. Parker)
Read Ebook | Size | 26 MB (26,085 KB) |
|---|---|
| Format | |
| Downloaded | 654 times |
| Last checked | 13 Hour ago! |
| Author | K.J. Parker |
The collection opens with the World Fantasy Award-winning “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong”, a story of music and murder set against a complex mentor/pupil relationship, and closes with the superb novella “Blue & Gold”, which features what may be the most beguiling opening lines in recent memory. In between, Parker has assembled a treasure house of narrative pleasures. In “A Rich, Full Week”, an itinerant “wizard” undergoes a transformative encounter with a member of the “restless dead.” “Purple & Black”, the longest story in the book, is an epistolary tale about a man who inherits the most hazardous position imaginable: Emperor. “Amor Vincit Omnia” recounts a confrontation with a mass murderer who may have mastered an impossible form of magic.
Rounding out the volume — and enriching it enormously — are three fascinating and illuminating essays that bear direct relevance to Parker’s unique brand of fiction: “On Sieges”, “Cutting Edge Technology”, and “Rich Men’s Skins”.
Taken singly, each of these thirteen pieces is a lovingly crafted gem. Together, they constitute a major and enduring achievement. Rich, varied, and constantly absorbing, Academic Exercises is, without a doubt, the fantasy collection of the year.
Contents:
- A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong (2011)
- A Rich, Full Week (2010)
- Amor Vincit Omnia (2010)
- On Sieges (2009)
- Let Maps to Others (2012)
- A Room with a View (2011)
- Cutting Edge Technology (2011)
- Illuminated (2012)
- Purple and Black (2009)
- Rich Men’s Skins; A Social History of Armour (2013)
- The Sun and I (2013)
- One Little Room an Everywhere (2012)
- Blue and Gold (2010)
Cover illustration by Vincent Chong
”
