Aspects

Written by John M. Ford and Neil Gaiman

Narrated by Steven Crossley

At last, the final work of John M. Ford—one of the greatest SF and fantasy authors of his time.

Enter the halls of Parliament with Varic, Coron of the Corvaric Coast.Visit Strange House with the Archimage Birch.

Explore the mountains of Lady Longlight alongside the Palion Silvern, sorcerer.In the years before his unexpected death, John M. Ford wrote a novel of fantasy and magic unlike any other. Politics and abdicated kings, swords and sorcerous machine guns, divination and ancient empires—finally, Aspects is here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781705047354

John M. Ford

John M. Ford (1957–2006) was a science fiction and fantasy author, game designer, and poet. Some of his books include the Star Trek tie-in novels, How Much for Just the Planet? and The Final Reflection. 

Reviews for Aspects

[Emma Kalizang'oma · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Intricate dialogue, fascinating culture and characters that reveal slowly as you work your way through! The tough thing is how we are now left hanging, without an ending. But a wonderful work for John M. Ford to make his own ending on.

[macha_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

495 finished pages of a wonderfully original world built from scratch by a master of science fiction and fantasy who died in 2006 before he finished it. a great loss - it greatly rewards the reader as it is, though, and should be required reading in the field all the same. it traffics in magic that might be performed by engineers, if only engineers had been invented yet, and trains that might be steampunk if magic had not come first. in this fantasy of manners the characters are marvellously complex and tumultuous in their thinking, till they engage the heart. plus, Neil Gaiman has written a fine introduction.

[ladycato · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received an advance copy courtesy of NetGalley.This is a book unlike any other I've read: it is being published in unfinished form, as the author died in 2006. An introduction to the work is written by Neil Gaiman. I felt leery as I began to read--how rough was this book? Would the lack of an ending leave me unsatisfied? Within the first page, however, I was hooked. The action begins with an artfully-described duel, then goes immediately to a tense parliamentary vote. The pace remains steady from there.This is what I would as cozy fantasy. There is no major threat. There are no villains. The tension never escalates in the way of most books. I felt like I had the opportunity to hang out with some brilliant, incredibly complex people in one of the great literary salons of a past era, and I simply enjoyed lingering and listening.The prose is eloquent in a way that made me gasp aloud more than once. ("Only mediocre conversations could be brought to an easy end. The intolerable and the important always found momentum to roll on." "The owls knew me from the other mice." "Society's not just a pyramid, it's a range of mountains; it takes time to level them.") The worldbuilding is deep and intricate; there were some things I never really understood, but I was immersed and didn't mind that much. The setting is a secondary world inspired by 19th-century Earth, though with none of the trappings of steampunk. There are trains and telegrams, and there is magic that is brilliant and unique. The ending of the book is abrupt, as expected from the warnings at the start, but I can't say that I was left unsatisfied. No, I was left sad. Aspects is incredible even in its unfinished state. We'll never know how it was meant to be revised or to end, or how the series could have developed. What a tragic loss for us all, when this storyteller was silenced far too soon.