Fantasy

I'm mulling over a few preliminary thoughts for a piece I'm going to write about a forthcoming novel alluded to below. General plan: write an interesting, thoughtful and also amusing essay that maps out the current state of "historical" fantasy.

A friend of mine just e-mailed me about the Time magazine review (coincidentally written by my friend Lev Grossman, author of Codex) of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which predicts that "Fantasy may be the greatest comeback story of the past 10 years." I wholeheartedly agree.

You really know times have changed when the New York Review of Books (of all places) publishes a five-and-a-half-thousand-word piece by Michael Chabon on Philip Pullman,
Dust & Daemons. Don't get me wrong: this is the piece I most want to read, and surely many other readers are delighted not to face another long essay on politics in the Middle East!