Super Relaxed Fantasy Club - March 12th 2019

Sangu starts the first reading

I thought it was about time there was some record on the WWW of SRFC. So here is a brief write up of the evening. Please feel free to drop me a line if I have got something wrong or missed any thing. If you have better pictures do share.

This evening was our first event at The Star of Kings and it went very well. Finding a new space for a regular event had not proven to be easy. The Star offered a compromise between cost and space. On announcing the event the take up was quite large. On the night we had 35 attendees, 3 readers a few guests and Kristina, Magnus and I. It was a bit of a squeeze, but with a few of us standing at the back we were all accommodated.

Kristina took the role of host for the evening. Our guest speakers were Sangu Mandanna, Tasha Suri and Natasha Ngan. To have three women for the evening was great, to have three women of colour was amazing. During their time talking with us they shared their backgrounds as Indian, settled in Britain, British Indian and Chinese Malaysian respectively. I summarise some of the discussion below, but there was a huge range of subjects discussed, including women's issues.

We opened the evening with a reading from Sangu from her book A Spark of White Fire . A science fiction novel. the first in a trilogy, where gods walk among men. Sangu explained she had based this writing around her fascination with the Mahabharata. This epic tale of war is the longest poem ever written  arising in the 9th or 8th century BCE. I have never read the original, but suspect Sangu has her work cut out. Her novelisation sounded very intriguing, labelled YA, this is one I have added to my TBR. A Spark of White Fire  is out in hardback from Sky Pony Press now and available later in the year as a paperback.

Tasha Suri Reading

Tasha Suri was next up with a reading from Empire of Sand, again first in a trilogy. Tasha introduced her work as being set in a medieval India that was inspired by the Murghal Empire. I really enjoyed the reading and became fascinated as Tasha said her magical system was based on ritualistic movement and dance. I had already bought a copy of this one and Tasha kindly inscribed it for me. Empire of Sand is out now in Paperback from Orbit

Natasha Ngan closed the evening with a reading from Girls of Paper and Fire. After a short reading Natasha answered questions and talked a fair bit about the themes in the book: being a prisoner, small rebellions in a closed world, losing one's you love and also sexual assault. Natasha was very forthright and said that she was a sexual abuse survivor and had included this aspect with care and thought.  In a book about people taken hostage as concubines it was not there to deliberately shock, but it was important to her. Girls of paper and Fire is out now In Hardback from Hodder, with paperback due in July 2019.

Kristina (K.K.) Perez and Natasha Ngan

A great evening, three very different authors who bought new ideas, themes and understandings of history and personal experience to their books. Usually SRFC is fun, but tonight it was excellent. It highlighted how much more is out there untapped and waiting to be written by new authors. I think the future of speculative fiction is looking good.