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WOLFBORN

by Sue Bursztynski

Woolshed Press, 2010

ISBN 9781864718256

Reviewed by Edwina Harvey

This Young Adult fantasy novel is the story of Geraint, a noble Lord of the Kingdom of Armorique, as told through the eyes of Ettienne, his new page.

While fair and just, Ettienne notices his lord has an unusual habit of disappearing into the night at least once a week. Ettienne soon discovers his lord is
Bisclavret
, or one who is born a werewolf. These shape-shifters are well-regarded as mercenaries, and are more or less tolerated among the normal folk just so long as they don’t start killing the livestock. But when the local lord is a werewolf, he wants to keep such knowledge secret from his people.

Geraint’s young wife is bored with her husband, and she follows the new religion, while the lord adheres to the old customs, donning the horns of the old god to perform the rituals for his people. Will she be successful in her plot to overthrow him?

Sue Bursztynski has studied history, and is particularly interested in medieval times. She drew her inspiration for
Wolfborn
from a 12th century collection of short stories gathered by Marie de France, and has obviously enjoyed weaving her story with folklore, historical fact, an element of whimsy, a smattering of romance and gentle humour. I especially liked a cameo regarding Armand, a senior page and Ettienne’s friend, and a unicorn when he is discovered in the Underworld.

About the contributors...

Anatoly Belilovsky
was born in what is now Ukraine, emigrated to the US with his family in 1976, and learned English from Star Trek reruns. He worked his way through a US college by teaching Russian while majoring in chemistry, and has, for the past 25 years, been a paediatrician in New York, in a practice where English is the fourth most commonly spoken language. He has been published in
Nature
,
Kasma
,
Ideomancer
, the
Immersion Book of Steampunk
and other markets, and is a SFWA member since 2011.

Sue Bursztynski
is a writer, teacher-librarian and reviewer who lives in Melbourne, without a cat. She has written ten books and many articles and short stories. Her short fiction has been published by
ASIM
, Ford Street, Fablecroft and Specusphere. Her YA novel
Wolfborn
, published in 2010, is a Notable Book in the Australian Children’s Book Council’s annual awards. ‘Midwinter Night’ is set in the universe of
Wolfborn
. Sue’s blog is at
http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com

Zen Cho
is a Malaysian writer living in London . Her fiction has been featured in various publications including
Strange Horizons
,
GigaNotoSaurus
,
PodCastle
,
Fantastique Unfettered
and
Steam-Powered II: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories
. She is a Selangor Young Talent Awards finalist and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Nothing stirs budding writer,
Belinda Crawford
, more than a fast horse, a new computer or a good book. A Melbourne based IT Graduate, Crawford has expanded her passion for reading to creative writing as well. Currently she’s studying Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT. Somewhere between uni, karate training, learning the Argentine tango and work, Crawford finds time to write a full-length novel. ‘Lex Talionis’ is the first of what she hopes will be many published works.

Tamlyn Dreaver
has been writing since her primary school report card said she couldn’t. Growing up in rural WA and now living in Melbourne, she’s never had a secret basement or a dragon nesting in the backyard or anything nearly as interesting, so she makes up stories about them instead.

Jacob Edwards
was born in Brisbane in 1976. He was comfortably ensconcing himself in academia until marriage and parenthood inspired him to seek a real job stacking deckchairs for
Andromeda Spaceways
. Jacob still writes articles, fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction, but is now on creative probation, having broken into
Andromeda
’s printing press and illicitly run off #45 of the
Inflight Magazine.
Though denying any wrongdoing vis-a-vis this print run, Jacob does admit to harbouring latent lexiphanic tendencies. He lives in Brisbane with his wife and son, and may be found online at
www.jacobedwards.id.au

Dirk Flinthart
lives in Tasmania and writes … stuff . He’s made the Aurealis finals more often than he can remember, and shared a Ditmar with Margo Lanagan, which he thought was pretty cool . He’s at work on an MA, two novels, a novella, a bunch of short stories, his second dan grading in ju-jitsu, raising three children, and preparing for the coming Zombie Apocalypse . This isn’t exactly his first appearance in
ASIM
—and he’d like to assure everyone who has hassled him that yes, the Red Priest will be back.

Sarah Frost
lives in Kansas and puts scientific journals on the internet for a living. She dreams about space ships in her free time.

Edwina Harvey
says of her story ‘H G’: Three months after my mother died, my father had a stroke from which he made a good recovery. I was fascinated with how his mind worked—especially in the early days—finding detours within itself so that he could say what he wanted to say, or at least get the idea across when he couldn’t. It was an often frustrating task for him, and I had no idea I was funnelling away observations I would later use in a story. Funny how this shrapnel of the soul has worked its way out of my creative skin.

C A L
lives in an old boatshed on the Central Coast of NSW with two children, three house rabbits, three mice, and a (necessarily single) fighting fish. She spends her days as a research administrator at Macquarie University, writes in (very) rare moments of spare time and photographs astronomical and meteorological phenomena in others. She has short stories published in
Interzone
and
Borderlands
, and has some pieces of published poetry scattered in a few various, conveniently forgotten places.

David Luntz
lives in the U.S. His short stories and poems have appeared in many online and print publications.

Lewis Morley
has been associated with Australian Science Fiction Fandom since attending his first convention in 1979 (where he met fellow artist Marilyn Pride).

Originally remembered for his complex masquerade costumes, Lewis nowadays limits his creative output to sculpture and illustration (he has enjoyed providing internal illustrations and covers for several previous
ASIM
s, but this is his first complete issue).

Beyond fandom’s immediate sphere, he continues to (slowly) write and illustrate his Fantasy/SF comic series ‘Peregrine Besset’ about a time-travelling Ancient Egyptian dwarf.

His ‘day job’ working as a designer and prop maker in the Australian Film Industry is currently at the mercy of the vicissitudes of Hollywood bean counters. He has been surviving by lecturing at the Australian Film TV & Radio School and University of Technology Sydney, teaching the next hapless generation about ‘how we used to do things in the old days …’

He has recently published a catalogue of his fake tin-toy sculptures from his first exibition of SF themed art work:
http://www.blurb.com/books/2996692

Lewis lives with artist Marilyn Pride in a fairy-tale cottage deep in the forests of the Blue Mountains.

Robert Porteous
lives in Canberra, Australia with his wife and two teenage children. He thinks himself fortunate to have careered through a curriculum of interesting jobs, including stints as a speechwriter and a research physicist. He has only started writing in the last year or so and is still teaching himself the trade by writing each story in a different genre. This is his first fantasy quest story.

Kent Purvis
’s previous short story in
ASIM
, ‘Pieces of Eight’ received an Honourable Mention for the
Best Horror of 2008
by Ellen Datlow. He has also written a number of other articles and stories for other publications he is too embarrassed to disclose here. He generally describes his output as ‘sporadic’ and ‘selective’, rather than lazy.

Alter S Reiss
is a scientific editor and field archaeologist. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Naomi and their son Uriel, and enjoys good books, bad movies, and old time radio shows. Alter’s work has appeared in
Daily Science Fiction
,
Abyss & Apex
,
Ideomancer
, and elsewhere.

Nike Sulway
lives in Brisbane, Queensland. Her latest novel is
Rupetta
, which will be released by Tartarus Press later this year.

Robert P Switzer
’s story ‘Deciphering the Quantum Foam’ appeared in
ASIM
#50. His fiction has also been published in
Tales of the Unanticipated
,
Neo-Opsis
, and
On Spec
. Robert lives in London, Ontario, Canada.

Nicole M Taylor
is a writer and performer of miscellaneous tasks, based in Los Angeles. Her fiction has appeared, or is upcoming, in
Brain Harvest
,
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
,
Shimmer Magazine
and elsewhere. She enjoys consuming caffeinated beverages and those dogs that look like they have really bushy eyebrows. She bloggerates here:
www.nicolemtaylor.com

Scott Virtes
has had almost 600 stories & poems published since 1986. His works have appeared in
Nature
,
Analog
,
Space & Time
,
Dreams & Nightmares
,
Star*Line
,
Illumen
, and many more. He has two story collections and 5 poetry chapbooks available. In 2009 he was editor for
The Book of Tentacles
, see
http://tentaclepower.com
. You can watch him die in “Master and Commander”, but he’s okay now.

M Darusha Wehm
is the two-time Parsec Award shortlisted author of the novels
Beautiful Red
,
Self Made
and Act of Will
. The third book in her Andersson Dexter series of SF detective novels,
The Beauty of Our Weapons
, was released in March.

She is from Canada, but currently lives on her sailboat in New Zealand after spending the past three years traveling at sea. For more information and to read some of her other short fiction, visit
http://darusha.ca

Acknowledgements:

We would like to express our sincerest thanks to the following contributors:

Proof Readers:

Patty Jansen, David Kernot

Slush Readers:

Adam Henderson, Amy Gordon, Andrew Barton, Cat Sheely, Chris Bobridge, Dan Golding, Debbie Moorhouse, Devin Jeyathurai, Dirk Flinthart, Doug A Van Belle, Edwina Harvey, Glenn Davies, Hayley Baxter, Ian Nichols, Jacob Edwards, Kelly Hart, Laura Bailey, Lea Greenaway, Lucy Zinkiewicz, Mary Pearl, Narelle Bailey, Natalie Maddalena, Nicole Murphy, Nikky Lee, Patty Jansen, Phil Suggars, Rebecca Newton, Robert Dawson, Robin Shortt, Sally Beasley, Satima Flavell Neist, Shane Dowling, Stephanie Gunn, Sue Bursztynski, Tom Dullemond, Tom Wells

Narelle Bailey, Hayley Baxter, Chris Bobridge, Sue Bursztynski, Tom Dullemond, Jacob Edwards, Mark Farrugia, Dirk Flinthart, Edwina Harvey, Adam Henderson, Patty Jansen, David Kernot, Robbie Matthews (Editor-in-Chief), Ian Nichols, Simon Petrie, Robert Phillips, Lucy Zinkiewicz

Issue 54
:

Editor Simon Petrie

Editor-in-chief Robbie Matthews

Advertising Edwina Harvey

Art Director Sue Bursztynski

Layout Simon Petrie

Poetry Editor Edwina Harvey

Reviews / Nonfiction Editor Patty Jansen

Slushwrangling Lucy Zinkiewicz

Subscriptions David Kernot

Website David Kernot

Cover Art Lewis Morley