Monkey ShinesA review by Gerry DonaghyJane Charlotte works for The Department of Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, a division of a nameless organization dedicated to fighting evil. The nickname for her division is Bad Monkeys, and at the beginning of Matt Ruff's novel of the same name, J...
Within a week of finishing this book, I had loaned my copy to a friend and bought a copy for my brother. This is exactly the kind of inspired, ambitious fiction that I want to read, and I would occasionally start to mourn or panic when I would be hit by some reminder that, at some point, I was g...
This is a contemporary fantasy story that isn't derivative of Tolkien, which in and of itself merits at least three stars. Beyond that quirk, though, this is a terrific story. I was introduced to Matt Ruff through The Mirage: A Novel, which I loved, and I wanted to try his first novel to see if...
It took a while for the news to get to her, and there were times in the months that followed when she wished it had never reached her at all. That she was in school in Washington state was due, she knew, to the Society. Of course Mouse’s mother had wanted her to “attend university”—as all fine yo...
He was lying on a four-poster bed with an embroidered canopy. Samir was a snoring lump on a second bed to his left, and to his right was a massive oak chest of drawers. A sign atop the chest, just legible in the faint glow of a nightlight, claimed that all three pieces of furniture were the oneti...