Quartet: Four Tales from the Crossroads - Hardcover

Martin, George R. R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1886778310 ISBN 13: 9781886778313

Publisher: Nesfa Pr, 2001

Synopsis

This trade paperback reprint of the Boskone 38 Book contains a sampling of Bokone 38 Guest of Honor, George R.R. Martin: three stories and one teleplay. Introduction by Melisssa Snodgrass. Dustjacket art by Charles Vess.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Two novellas, a screenplay and a novel fragment the last two previously unpublished showcase the range of multiple Hugo and Nebula winner Martin (the Song of Fire and Ice trilogy). Black and White and Red All Over, the first 100 or so pages of an ambitious novel, follows three journalists in New York in the early 1890s as they cover a big crime story: the murder of the prostitute known as Old Shakespeare. Meticulously researched, sprawling and based on a real murder, it stunningly evokes place and time, but its leisurely pace means all too little happens. In "Skin Trade," it's up to asthmatic lycanthrope Willie and his pal Randi to find out who's killing werewolves and removing their skins, but plots within plots collide, leading to a bloody and confusing ending. In StarPort, a never-produced, laugh-out-loud funny sci-fi police procedural, stolen weapons, a dead alien dignitary and an insane alien conspire to keep the cops in a futuristic Chicago busy. The closing fantasy novella, "Blood of the Dragon," the best of the four, tells a taut and moving coming-of-age story about a young princess sold by her brother into marriage to a warlord. Although different in tone, content and genre, all the stories have in common an unerring eye for the human condition and the kind of grand scope and large-scale world-building that make for compulsive page turning.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Although none of the four pieces in this book is new or has been previously published, all are good reading, and they provide valuable insight into what Martin was doing during the years when he apparently disappeared into the black hole of Hollywood. (He emerged at length and also in triumph with the fantasy saga Song of Ice and Fire.) "Black and White and Red All Over" is a take on the Jack the Ripper theme. "Skin Trade" is a werewolf story that draws on Martin's experience as a writer for the TV show The Beauty and the Beast. "StarPort" is a candidate for the Best Unproduced SF Pilot Script Award if ever there was one. Finally, "Blood of the Dragon" is a modest introduction to Song of Ice and Fire's formidable Princess Dany. Add an introduction by Melinda Snodgrass that attributes no virtues to Martin that the stories don't prove he has in full measure, and readers will be informed as well as entertained. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Nesfa Pr
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1886778310
• ISBN 13: 9781886778313
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Carpenito Christine