Encore quelques lectures pour le plaisir.

Veronica Schanoes, Burning Girls (Tor.com Original). This is one of the best things I have read in years. I am not exagerating. I am not kidding. This is how Urban Fantasy should be. Jewish women, immigrants in New York, demons and witches, and labour unrest in the 1920s. So good. You'll cry at the end. This novella is free on Kindle. Go read.

Derek Landy. The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage (Doctor Who Digital, Puffin). The Tenth Doctor and Martha land on a planet than didn't exist before and somehow find themselves in the middle of one of Martha's favourite childhood book, a riff on The Famous Five series called The Troublemakers. Trouble ensues. Since this series of novellas were written by children's writers, it made sense, somewhat, that one of them would play up on the children's books theme, but it makes the story very simplistic, as simplistic as the Famous Five novels were. I remember those; I read a bunch of them in French as Le Club des Cinq and I watched the tv series.

Charles Carpentier. Une ville souterraine. Histoire merveilleuse (collection ArchéoSF, Publie.net). Un historien amateur (un "antiquaire"), se promenant dans la campagne du Département de la Manche, découvre qu'une ville romaine habitée existe sous un plateau près de d’Avranches. Le texte est didactique et descriptif, l'action se passe presque entièrement hors champs et la belle meurt à la fin. Publié à l'origine en 1885, ce court roman du genre "civilisation perdue" est, franchement, très ennuyant. Je ne le recommanderais qu'à ceux qui, comme moi, étudient les littératures de l'imaginaire du 19e siècle et de l'Âge de Radium de la SFF (1900-1939).