Publishers Weekly hails Zoran's Steps Through the Mist...
The New York Times Book Review calls Zoran a possible "new Borges"...
The Summer Isles makes the GLBT Spectrum Award's list of recommended novels...
Zoran takes on radio! Listen to his interview with an Iowa bookstore owner...
Zoran is named EuroCon 2007 Guest of Honor...
Seven Touches of Music wins an 11-state design award...
Praise is still coming in for Dana Copithorne's debut novel...
The Library Journal:
"Copithorne's first novel creates a world of subtle intrigue and fragile shifts of power... Lyrical in style, with a fairy-tale atmosphere enhanced by the author's delicate line drawings, this fantasy of love and transformation belongs in both adult and young adult fantasy collections."
"The Steam Magnate's strengths lie in the pictures it creates in the reader’s head filled with brooding undertows and the haunting impression of lives trapped in amber. The featured line drawings enhance the effect. I sometimes paused to study an illustration until I felt satisfied and then reread the scene it described before continuing with the next chapter.
"... In one sense, The Steam Magnate is a book about how we succeed and fail to connect with each other as spiritual beings with hopes, secrets and aspirations, but its unique charm is in the interplay between these and the settings in which they take place. Place and personality interact in the search for identity. Anyone nimble-minded enough to appreciate the bleed of spirit between character and setting, history and present, will find The Steam Magnate an interesting meditation."
"Dana Copithorne's 'The Steam Magnate' asks the question of what a world with no fossil fuels would be like. Although the title may lead us to expect nineteenth-century technology, the steam in question comes from underground springs, and powers most of Copithorne's world... This is no green utopia, however. Copithorne surmises (correctly, in my opinion) that in a world powered by local, renewable energy sources, those who control the resources have great economic (and hence social and political) power. This is why Eson, one of the main characters, is a steam magnate...
"In this world, contracts have an almost magical power: people are bound psychically as well as financially by the contract, and much of Eson's power comes through the collection of contracts he has built up over the years.
"Copithorne's world is intriguing and her characters, particularly the enigmatic Eson, are distinctive and well-drawn. The plot proceeds at a leisurely place, and there is almost no 'action' (in the sense of people killing each other), but this suits the nature of the characters and their society: the emphasis is on plotting and planning for social and economic leverage, not revolution or galactic conquest. All of these factors make The Steam Magnate an enjoyable, original story, and a promising first novel."
"...I have to say I'm impressed this was a debut novel. Copithorne has a gift for prose and characterization, and I enjoyed the slow approach she takes, as well as the almost dream-like feel of various parts of the story. An excellent debut; the hinted-at sequel certainly has a hard act to follow.
"Eson is the heir to his family's legacy of steam power and possessed of almost sorcerous abilities with paper and ink that have granted him power over others in business dealings. Yet despite all that he has, Eson is lonely and unlucky in love.
"Kyra has been sent to the enchanting Broken Glass City to find Eson.... [P]retending to be someone else to win her way into his confidence, she gradually falls under his influence and struggles with her affection for him and her knowledge of his unethical use of power. In time, she draws others into his orbit, setting off a chain of events that will change all of their lives."
"...Distinctive and intriguing. Electrical and mechanical technology with a whiff of magic underneath it all... but not strictly modern, or medieval, or even steampunk. It reminds me, of all things (though I'm sure it's unintentional), of the techno-magical worlds found in games like Myst... And I got a strong sense (created not just through Copithorne's words, but also her wonderful illustrations, and even the design of the book itself) of cleanliness, which contrasts sharply with the muck and grime of many of today's urban fantasies. This persisted even when the author was describing things that certainly weren't clean—which just goes to show what a powerful atmosphere she creates. ...Have no doubt that Copithorne is a welcome and promising new voice in the field."
Phantastik-Couch (German online magazine focusing on fantastic literature):
"Abseits der großen und breiten Ströme in der Science Fiction und Fantasy-Verlagslandschaft gibt es kleine und quirlige Flussläufe." For those whose German is unfortunately very rusty (or nonexistent), here's a summary of the review, courtesy of reviewer and editor-in-chief Frank Dudley, who blew us away by giving the book the second highest rating of the dozens of books he has reviewed for the publication:
"Dana Copithorne's first book has to stand up her publisher's ambitious creed. She abducts her readers to a world full of subtle magic. Like Paul Auster and Haruki Murakami, she sends her protagonists on a quest for identity and meaning. Her language is rhythmical and descriptive; the story is dominated by almost meditative depictions, [while] the text's structure is remarkably clear. The Steam Magnate is fantasy with high aspirations, yet it is easily accessible. The triangle between Jado, Eson and Kyra is subtle, lyrical and intensive; it unfolds a pull hard to resist."
"Ms. Copithorne's novel has a very literary feel... [T]he language is beautifully styled, the descriptions are wonderful and the settings are truly unique. The Broken Glass City is full of interesting imagery, including the glass mosaics that give the city its name, but Jado's ethnic community comes alive the most. The history of his people is woven into their daily life and come through in Jado.
"The Steam Magnate by Dana Copithorne is delightful both in terms of imagery and story. With its wonderful imagery and myths, this book is a treat for speculative fiction readers looking for something out of the ordinary."
"...Strongest and most inventive is the ghetto in which Jado and his people, live, a distinct ethnic minority reminiscent of Jews in early twentieth century Europe, various physical structures which have numerous meanings, for example: Sunlight Appears Only At Dusk was at first a ghost tale, a place where one must be fearful of his soul when walking past. Later, Jado learned it was a place where some of his past relatives had been arrested and taken away on false grounds a hundred years earlier.
"Most impressive is the walls of Glass Spells a Name, a long wall made of bits of glass spelling out the names of saints, but also a wall along which troubled men and women walk seeking answers in the patterns of glass. While neither the Western Wall nor the Vietnam memorial, it has the logic and solidity of both and yet remains a distinct invention of Ms. Copithorne, not merely a pale copy.
"Also of note are the lovely sketches Ms. Copithorne has drawn of various locales in the city."
"Copithorne's world is one of the most striking features of this novel. [The] Broken Glass City is a crisp, intricate place of stone and glass, made real by a meaningful and historically rounded culture. The plot returns often to the city's architecture, a unique approach that enchants the reader with buildings and monuments and constructs a rich portrait of translucent pastels and angular modernity.
"...Despite thick layers of secrecy, there is a curious interdependency between the characters. The plot itself is not without drama, yet even the most crucial confrontations are subdued; deadly but civil. Coupled with the oppressive, clean beauty of the city and the author's explanatory, precise voice, this intriguing style engenders the book with an idiosyncratic atmosphere that is at its best in the richly visual scenes on which the story hangs."
"A literary fantasy, this story is about power, both environmental, magical, and interpersonal. A young woman is sent to make trouble for a scion of a wealthy electrical power-based dynasty. She ends up aligning herself with him and his endeavors and is almost destroyed in the process.
"The author has created an unusual world of forces both elemental and societal. The story is subtle and well-crafted—a truly literary work. Its complexities of relationships and politics make for an interesting read. We applaud the publisher for taking on a delicate work of this nature, providing a platform for a new and deserving talent."
"'Kyra arrived late at night, on a crowded, rattling steam engine, at an ancient place they called the 'City of Mirrors' or the 'Broken Glass City,' depending upon the language used. The City earns these names from stained glass that has been superimposed onto the exteriors of the walls and walkways, as though glass were shattered and thrown about into patterns, some random, others deliberate.' "And so begins the poetic story of Eson and the world that surrounds him, which we later find to be so very much like its name. Eson is a fortunate man ... [but] a lonesome one surrounded by a world in which he wants nothing except for love.
"...A relationship [begins] in which he communicates more through his notes and drawings than through spoken words. His notes following his disappearances lead Kyra and the reader into a part of his world that is both magical and mystical in nature. It seems Eson has inherited a bottle of ink that can literally launch him into the vision he desires it to be. But it seems his drawings are not without a price; the same price his ancestors paid in generations past.
"The author does an extraordinary job of illustrating the world of Eson and Kyra in both language and simple line drawings throughout the book. I would highly recommend this book for readers of all ages, from teens through adult. While The Steam Magnate has an engaging, somewhat wistful storyline that many would appreciate, it also gives pause for other readers who find within the story many aspects of their own lives as well... and it is such books that can draw the reader from their world into that of the characters; books that are to be both read and treasured."
"...'The Steam Magnate' follows three characters in the 'Broken Glass City' through some, well, tough times. Tough times in a sort of Dickensian surreal landscape, informed, so the author tells us, by Iris Murdoch. Not the usual choice for the speculative fiction author, but the kind of choice that I personally would like to see become much more common."
"The publishers of The Steam Magnate list it as a fantasy. The world is not the typical medieval fantasy realm but a mix of technologies where phone calls and trains are common but some futuristic technology is available from the 'old world' or cobbled together by tinkerers.
"Although a first novel, it reads more like an experienced author's experiment; its flaws are not the usual flaws of an unsure novice author. Dana Copithorne does not follow the usual formulas for science fiction or fantasy, but instead goes in new directions. Those who have a taste for the unconventional... may find The Steam Magnate worth a chance."
Eileen Kernaghan, author of The Alchemist's Daughter
"A confident, distinctive new voice in speculative fiction... Inventively conceived and richly textured, Dana Copithorne's ageless City of Glass is at once exotic, surreal, and tantalizingly familiar. Like M. John Harrison's Virconium or the frozen dreamscape of Anna Kavan's Ice, it haunts the imagination after the last page is turned."
Zoran Zivkovic, author of Seven Touches of Music and The Library
"Don't miss Dana Copithorne's novel The Steam Magnate... From its exuberant narrative inventiveness, subtle style, and rich, profound characterization, you'd never guess it's a debut novel."
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