The Barricade

The Barricade by Nina Allan

Reviewed by Jenny Barber

Found in the Dark Currents anthology, The Barricade is a peculiar tale, running slow as it carefully builds up to the faltering of a marriage due to apathy and the discoveries of escaping wife Christine during a visit to the coastal town of her birth.

The catalyst for eveything is the painting Christine finds in a gallery while holidaying with her stolid husband.  Her growing fascination with it, and the memories triggered by locals who keep claiming to know her lead her to certain realisations about the state of her marriage while also reawakening things about herself she'd thought she'd forgotten.

The soon-to-be ex-husband is a thoroughly unlikeable chap, and one wonders why Christine took so long to ditch him, or at the very least, let him get away with so much without argument, and it's in such in-depth characterisation that Allan excels. Each carefully constructed layer builds until you're left with a fully encompassing story that wraps you up in the mundane details and makes the dénouement satisfying with the hints of things to come.  The elements of the fantastic are subtle to the point of barely noticeable, and can be seen from a mile off but Allan has crafted a beautiful tale that, while not a new twist on selkie mythology, is a solid addition to the genre.

More about Nina Allan can be found here, and more on Dark Currents (edited by Ian Whates) can be found on the Newcon website here.

Coming Soon: Saving for a Sunny Day

Another NewCon Press title being released at Eastercon this year is Ian Watson's new collection - Saving for a Sunny Day.

Available in both paperback and special signed limited hardback editions from the NewCon Press website here, the collection brings together fifteen previously uncollected stories with comments on their inspiration, plus an introduction from Adam Roberts..

Eastercon attendees can drop by the official launch on Friday 6th April to buy a copy and get it signed live by the author - which sounds like a good deal to us. :-)

Coming Soon: Dark Currents

Launching at Eastercon this year is Dark Currents from NewCon Press.

With fiction from: Adrian Tchaikovsky, Adam Nevill, Tricia Sullivan, Rod Rees, Nina Allan, Andrew Hook, Finn Clarke, Lavie Tidhar, Jan Edwards, Emma Coleman, Rebecca J Payne, Sophia McDougall, Una McCormack, Neil Williamson, Aliette de Bodard and V.C. Linde; the Dark Currents blurb says:

... an exciting blend of science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy and horror; a set of stories that traverses genre boundaries, linked only by their common source of inspiration. Contributors were given just those two words: ‘Dark Currents’ and then asked to write whatever story the phrase inspired. The result is a dazzling blend of exciting fictions, from haunted seascapes to distant starscapes, from reality-hopping soldiers in a surreal war to naval battles in the ether, from the deeply poignant to breathless excitement and back again, delving into the very undercurrents of life…

Looks funky! We're hoping to get our hands on a copy soon... It'll be available in paperback and limited signed hardback editions and can be purchased from the NewCon Press website here.