|
BOOK
REVIEWS
THE MAGICIAN AND THE FOOL
"Brilliantly drawn characters draw you into this magical mystery tour-de-force, and take you on a magic
carpet ride into the strange and wondrous cult of the Tarot. Barth Anderson's grasp of the darkness and light of human nature
will astound and astonish." – Ann Benson, author of The Plague Tales
"Those willing to surrender themselves to this talented author's compelling vision will find a fevered
dream universe where understanding in the normal sense is probably not possible, nor even necessary."
- Publishers Weekly
"Anderson sets you up to expect a certain type of narrative and plot and then proceeds to drop you
down the rabbit hole with hardly any clues as to what's happening but so intrigued you can't stop reading…I couldn't
give it up. I had to know where the story was leading and what would happen…If you like crisp dialogue, well-developed
characters, some laugh-out-loud scenes, allusions to things barely or only subconsciously remembered stories -- the ones that
raise the hairs on the back of your neck, and a nonlinear story line -- this is a book you need to read. And if you happen
to know anything about tarot it will just add to the underlying feelings of déjà vu."
- Gumshoe
"A clever spin on the antique game of tarot and its esoteric origins."
--Booklist
"[A] mesmerizing journey…[B]eautifully elegant prose, wonderfully drawn characters & dialogue,
and pacing that causes the pages to fly by…[T]he kind of book that wins awards, is taught in college courses, and will
be one of the best releases of the year…"
--FantasyBookCritic.com
THE PATRON SAINT OF PLAGUES
"Anderson has some serious writing chops, and he delivers a page turner that is at once a medical thriller,
cyberpunk romp and provocative tease...a novel about race and class, science and faith." – Salon.com
"A cinematic, futuristic techno-thriller with smarts and heart…This cleverly managed skein of
cliffhangers and revelations begs to be filmed…. A year from now, when science-fictionistas draw up shortlists for the
2006 Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards, "The Patron Saint of Plagues" will be in that mix, or I'll eat my shorts. Don't let that stop you from
reading it." – San Diego Union-Tribune
"Very neat, impossible to put down, and I hope a book that gets nominated for some awards." –
Philadelphia Weekly Press
"This is Barth Anderson’s debut novel, and it’s a stunner…A book of high verisimilitude
and exacting precision. Anderson has taken the monitory example of John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up, a Cassandra mode
too long left moldering, and combined it with a typical bio-thriller such as Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain to
produce a hybrid that is both scientifically and science-fictionally robust and still propulsively suspenseful." – Sci
Fi Weekly, Grade A
"An exciting journey full of surprises." – The Dallas Morning News
"The topic is timely (viruses and pandemics are hot), and the just-around-the-corner world is very
well realized, full of smart extrapolations from today's technologies and social conventions." – Booklist
"Destined to find [a] highly appreciative audience…Anderson successfully joins with Greg Bear,
Paul McAuley, and a few others in wedding genuinely SFnal speculation with the template of the formula thriller. There’s
a genuinely thoughtful SF mind at work in THE PATRON SAINT OF PLAGUES." – Locus
"A well-constructed, politically aware techno-thriller with an intriguing plot…when ‘best
first novel’ lists get discussed next January this book will be one of the first suggested." – Emerald City
"Tense, plausible and twisty enough to keep you breathless and guessing." – The Agony Column
"An apocalyptic prophesy masquerading as a near-future pandemic revenge thriller...riveting reading."
– Strange Horizons
"A smart, entertaining, imminently readable book." – Maureen McHugh, author of Mothers &
Other Monsters
"Barth Anderson’s inventive viral emergency may be set in a speculative near future of saints
and cyborgs, but it has a persuasive real-world urgency. He nails the gritty essence of disease detection: frustration, exhaustion,
obsession." – Maryn McKenna, author of Beating Back the Devil: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of
the Epidemic Intelligence Service
"THE PATRON SAINT OF PLAGUES is one of the best books of a futuristic and medical thriller genre that
I've ever read. I hope the writer has many more such creations in him. I'll be there to read them all." – ReviewingTheEvidence.com
"It's part medical thriller, part speculative fiction, and part apocalyptic prophecy." –SFSite.com
SHORT
STORIES
"['Sand
Dollars and Apple Halves''] imagery is multi-dimensional and its sentences feel more hewn than written. It is an intriguing
story at first, the tale of a man compelled to build a wall, but as the situation develops and the characters gain complexity,
the whole builds toward real emotional power, concluding in a way that, were the story's elements not so perfectly modulated,
could have been saccharine, but is, instead, profound. " - Matthew Cheney, Sf Site
"['Into Something Rich and Strange'] has many levels, each appealing to a different piece of my heart. The love between the old man
and his punk prodigy is tender one moment and violent the next. Their witchly power is ancient yet newborn. The punk opera
is funky but classic. The neighborhood is decaying elegantly one minute, then rejuvenated to soullessness the next. This story
puffs forth a breath of fresh air. - Suzanne Church, Tangent Online
"Another strong story, Barth Anderson's
"Lark till Dawn, Princess," was both riveting and amusing in its use of the underground drag culture. Honey Deux's search
for identity when youth and beauty have left her behind, and her ascension of courage in memory of her mother figure Magnifica,
was tremendously uplifting. In Anderson's tale, magic comes in the form of a favorite brand of lipstick, and the right dress."
- Rob Gates, Strange Horizons
"Strange Horizons' fiction
offering for the week of April 24th is "Alone in the House of Mims" by Barth Anderson. The story reflects hope and desire,
traces the twists and bends of humor, chagrin, anger, despair, joy, and lust, only to illuminate sorrow and mirror-shattering
awareness at the end. Shakespeare would be jealous at how neatly Mr. Anderson hits the human elements." Marsha Sisolak, Tangent Online
"'Scrapbook
for an Epidemic' combines satire of American culture with a pure linguistic romp. It goes on a little too long, but each of
the individual entries in this log of an attempt to defeat a plague of aphasia is barbed and witty." - Greg Beatty, Firebrand
Fiction Reviews
In "Lark Till Dawn, Princess," Barth Anderson takes
us on a rollicking journey through the world of Honey Deux, a reigning drag queen who owes her panache and charm to a midnight
crossroads pledge to Papa Legma, the shape-changing god (and goddess) of New Orleans mojo. This trek through a world of Carman
Miranda dresses, Mercury-Red lipstick, hormone injections and neon strut manages to be hip, funny and eerie as Honey parleys
her way through Miss Fire Island, Miss Boston Uncommon and a room full of drag ball trophies. - Gary Carden, Smoky Mountain News
"Anderson's style here is amusingly erratic, and
while I found the action a bit of a challenge to follow, I enjoyed visiting this gonzo scenario and left it imagining bizarre
hidden magic underneath reality's mundane surface. - Tangent Online, review of "Apocalypse According to Olaf" in Asimov's,
May 2003
"Newer writer Barth Anderson weighs in with surely
the strangest tale here, in "Lark till Dawn, Princess," about a drag queen who made a deal with the trickster god Legba and
now has to face the consequences. It is a beautiful story, tenderly and lovingly told, about the price of transformation
and the strength of friendship. - Locus, review of "Lark till Dawn, Princess" in Mojo: Conjure Stories (Warner Aspect,
Nalo Hopkinson, Ed.)
"You'll never look at your immune system
in the same way again after reading "Big Galahad". Score one for the good guys." - Project Pulp, review of "The Pslam of Big
Galahad" in Rabid Transit: New Fiction from the Ratbastards
"This story has fantasy and science fiction elements,
combined with both lyric and hard-edged language, giving us interesting characters and plot twists." - Gaylaxicon review of
"Big Galahad"
"Barth Anderson does a creditable impression of the
fantasies of Tim Powers" - Locus review of "Apocalypse According to Olaf"
"'Landlocked' by Barth Anderson reverses
the mermaid myth in a clever way but also suffered from being too brief." - Tangent Online review of "Landlocked" in Talebones
#18
"I struggled with “The Psalm of Big Galahad,”
because it was written with use of a jargon I found amateurish, clunky and exhausting. " - Xerography Debt
"Weird, delightful, and strangely hopeful." Tangent
Online review of "Show Me Where the Mudmen Go" on On Spec, Summer 2002
"Cross-dressing and cabaret blend seamlessly with
mojo as a performer attempts a promised homage to the mentor who saved her from the crossroads in Barth Anderson’s fun
and entertaining 'Lark till Dawn, Princess.'" - sffworld.com
"A ribofunky quest tale that brings to mind the
works of Norman Spinrad." - Paul di Filippo's review of "Big Galahad"
"It's a bit of a surprise -- but to my taste a very
pleasant one -- to find something like this in Asimov's. 'The Apocalypse According to Olaf' is a contemporary fantasy very
much in the tradition of Tim Powers." - bluejack.com
"Barth Anderson's "Lot 12A: Feast of the Dead Manuscript"
is an excellent piece of metafiction. Anderson, almost always a good writer, is outstanding here." - Project Pulp
"I think it's safe to say that you've never read another
story quite like 'Bringweather and the Portal of Giving and Taking' by Barth Anderson, and I mean that as high praise . .
. Wildly inventive and relentlessly paced, this is a juggernaut of a story." - Tangent Online review of "Bringweather and
the Portal of Giving and Taking" in Strange Horizons, May 2002
| 
