Magic For Beginners by Kelly Link comes highly recommended, and I’d been looking forward to picking up a copy for a while. Happily, it’s in a current 3 For 2 at Waterstones, so I’ve been reading Link’s stories over the last few days.
Her tales are very magical realism, and I really enjoyed them – some more than others. The title story is the best with an incredibly detailed view of a TV show featuring some strange characters. You’d just love a show like The Library to exist in reality. The Hortlak, set in a convenience store, was also great, with Zombies living nearby. I think overall, I preferred the longer stories to the shorter ones. But I love the throw away detail that constantly pops up through these tales.
Curiously, the book definitely falls into the SF/Fantasy genre, yet someone at Harper Perennial believes that this is a “breakout” book and consequently you have to search the fiction shelves and tables in Waterstones and Borders to find this title. Indeed it’s noticeable that while crime fiction and new fiction are regularly featured in 3 For 2 offers, science fiction isn’t, aside from a few breakout Terry Pratchett and Iain M Banks novels. Are SF readers more likely to pay full price?