Academic Exercises: Book summary and reviews of Academic Exercises by K. J. Parker

Book Summary

Academic Exercises is the first collection of shorter work by master novelist K.J. Parker, and it is a stunner. Weighing in at over 500 pages, this generous volume gathers together thirteen highly distinctive stories, essays, and novellas, including the recent World Fantasy Award-Winner, 'Let Maps to Others'. The result is a significant publishing event, a book that belongs on the shelf of every serious reader of imaginative fiction.

The collection opens with the World Fantasy Award-winning 'A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong,' a story of music and murder set against a complex mentor/pupil relationship, and closes with the superb novella 'Blue & Gold,' which features what may be the most beguiling opening lines in recent memory. In between, Parker has assembled a treasure house of narrative pleasures. In 'A Rich, Full Week,' an itinerant 'wizard' undergoes a transformative encounter with a member of the 'restless dead.' 'Purple & Black,' the longest story in the book, is an epistolary tale about a man who inherits the most hazardous position imaginable: Emperor. 'Amor Vincit Omnia' recounts a confrontation with a mass murderer who may have mastered an impossible form of magic.

Rounding out the volume - and enriching it enormously - are three fascinating and illuminating essays that bear direct relevance to Parker's unique brand of fiction: 'On Sieges,' 'Cutting Edge Technology,' and 'Rich Men s Skins.'

Taken singly, each of these thirteen pieces is a lovingly crafted gem. Together, they constitute a major and enduring achievement. Rich, varied, and constantly absorbing, Academic Exercises is, without a doubt, the fantasy collection of the year.