Malarkoi

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A piece of advice: if you have a pistol and intend to use it, do so without delay. If assassins appear in your doorway don’t shake and shiver and try to bargain them away with threats. Just shoot them. Having received new instructions from the Master via Sirius’s magical organ, Anaximander rescues the children. When she awoke, it was Dashini who was sleeping, her cheeks red with her satisfaction, her belly round.

Anaximander, who can talk, threatens the children with death, and Sirius eats the faces from Joes, whose one body has become two bodies. Dashini wouldn’t stop crying, so even if there were things that spoke against it, Portia brought this place into the Pyramid.Also the geography of the world and realms found therein is starting to come together and it paints a surprisingly recognisable - although somewhat still obscured - picture. The Mother of Mordew The embodiment of a place, and an avatar of a god are not the same thing, but the Mother of Mordew is both. Patron deity of assassins, she both works in their interests and, in a very fundamental sense, owns their lives. What a goddess does with her acolytes is her business. If she puts them here, where she wants them to be, or there, where they might become sacrifices, that is her prerogative. No one has the right to question her: not them, nor you. Gods will be gods, so the saying goes, and another saying says that gods move in mysterious ways their wonders to perform. The Mother of Mordew proves both these dictums correct. I enjoy fantasy normally, however Malarkoi is Weird with a capital W, and seems rather indulgent on the all knowing narrator, info dumping convenient “Weft” magic to any situation the characters find themselves in. Iolanthe‘Not here,’ is the answer (see above), and Iolanthe, used to being the bully herself, is unlikely to leave off bullying Giles for long. ‘Get these horrible types out of my sight,’ is what Iolanthe is thinking, and she’s preparing to express the thought verbally the absolute moment this story begins, though we won’t be around to hear her. Waterstone's Tottenham Court Road, Londnr, May 2016 – discussion panel re. academic study as a means of developing writing careers

There is also a group of assassins, a talking book, naval POVs, ghosts, the very literal face of God, and a truly wonderful and intriguing set up for the final book in the trilogy, which is, without a doubt, my now most anticipated release. I know it's a way off, but my lord I am hooked. The gang go to the Fetch and threaten him with murder if he doesn’t take them up the Glass Road to the Master. Bath Spa masters course visit, April 2016 - readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings for Creative Writing Masters students

Professor Alex Pheby

Padge takes Nathan to the house of a pharmacist, and the two extort medicine from him with menaces. Creative Conversations, University of Greenwich, February 2016 – industry roundtable on establishing and maintaining audiences. Nathan kills the Mistress and lets out an unrestrained burst of Spark energy that scours Malarkoi for miles around. Bold... immersive... compassionate... [In Playthings], we are made to see a logic to Schreber's psychosis and an illogicality and madness in the actions of the doctors and people around him... It is this humanizing aspect of the novel which is most valuable; we are reminded of the immense tragedy of his experiences of illness, experiences that are too often removed from the context of life.”– The Times Literary Supplement

Creating something out of this nothing is not an easy task but with this most unusual novel, the author has succeeded in doing just that.”–The Irish Times The Master denies the murder of Nathan’s father and forces Mr Padge, Prissy, and Gam to admit that they were part of a plot against Nathan instigated by the Mistress of Malarkoi, the enemy ruler of a neighbouring city.Madness, toy soldiers and tapeworms. Alex Pheby is not only a whizz at finding the tortured connections that underpin the Twentieth Century, its wars and its art, but his compassion for Lucia Joyce has an extraordinary effect: it speaks up for girls and women everywhere. Bravo.”– Lucy Ellmann BellowsBoys often become men, the progress of time leading them usually in that direction, but Bellows is an unusual kind of thing. Made in the vats of the Master, his adulthood was brought on magically, and by magic it has been reverted, recreating from a metamorphosed butterfly its previous caterpillar. What effect this has on a person’s mood and character is anyone’s guess, but intuition suggests that it will not be universally positive.

Not often does a book remind one of both Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and Ellis’ American Psycho, but here we are: immersed in compelling minutiae. Alex Pheby’s Playthings is simultaneously unsettling and fascinating, tragic and hilarious, the sort of novel with an easily-summarized story but a nearly impossible to summarize experience.”– 519 Magazine Despite these being the slower portions of the book, the science and magic and the sheer amount we learn from it all kept me strapped in the whole time. One, Anaximander, can talk/vocalise and has the ability to think and act rationally, philosophise as well as use reason to determine the best course of action. NATHAN TREEVES is dead, murdered by the Master of Mordew, his remains used to create the powerful occult weapon known as the Tinderbox. He had given them the contract to sign, and they would sign it in blood, as was customary. The quiet, pretty assassin was called Sharli – on that day at least – and she cleared her throat to reply to Anatole. ‘We must honour our pledges since our livelihoods depend on them.’

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Winnipeg International Writers Festival, September 2018 – McNally Robinson – readings, discussion, and Q A re. Playthings I told you it was weird! But heed me when I say; this is but the tiniest glimpse of the sheer face that is Pheby's creative and imaginative ability. There is no predicting where we'll go next when we put ourselves in his oh-so-capable hands.