Publishers Weekly leads us off with its starred review (a coveted honor) of Steps Through the Mist, but it's followed by publications and reviewers who are no slouches themselves!

(Click on the publication title n to be taken to the full review on their site. Not all reviews are posted online, but we include links whenever they're available.)

Publishers Weekly:

"...Zivkovic's latest novel to be released in the U.S. (after 2006's Seven Touches of Music) isn't so much a literary work to be read as it is one to be reveled in. Like a great work of abstract art, this surrealistic novel—about five women who contend with fate in very different ways—is layered with subtle symbolism and nuance, and should be savored slowly so that the profound, and sometimes disturbing, existential underpinnings can be duly discerned. [T]his montage of stories is as enlightening as it is entrancing."

Fantasy Book Spot:

"There are fantasists and there are master fantasists... Steps Through the Mist, the latest of Serbian Zoran Zivkovic's novels to be published in the USA... confirms Zivkovic's status as a master. The book's chief flaw is that there is simply not enough of it, leaving us wanting more.

"Like the previous American release, Steps Through the Mist is an exquisite slim black volume from Aio Publishing; like that earlier volume, Steps Through the Mist is a mosaic novel, a story suite of short fabulations linked both literally and in thematic concern. Here Zivkovic's concerns are predestination, fate and the future; in the five stories that make up his mosaic he builds a multifaceted view into how modern people might relate to having, knowing and choosing their own fates—and those of others.

"...Zivkovic has woven complex layers of meaning that linger in the mind long after reading."

Fantastic Reviews:

"Steps Through the Mist is the second of Aio Publishing's gorgeous North American editions of mosaic novels by literary fantasist Zoran Zivkovic, fluidly translated from the original Serbian by Alice Copple-Tosic. I recommended the first, Seven Touches of Music, largely for Zoran Zivkovic's elegant prose. Steps Through the Mist displays the same skillful writing, and I enjoyed it even a bit more than Seven Touches of Music because the individual stories combine into such a fascinating pattern.

"My favorite of the five is the opening tale, "Disorder in the Head", in which a narrow-minded teacher is confronted with a student who claims to be able to visit other people's dreams as they sleep, a story premise rendered most chilling by Zivkovic's understated style. The teacher's understandable disbelief slowly evaporates as the student accurately describes three classmates' dreams and finally the teacher's dream. These dreams delightfully end up paralleling the next four stories in the book."

Salem Press:

"In this book of five loosely interlocking stories, Zivkovic explores the nature of the future: how it is perceived by his characters and how it determines their behavior in the present.

"The main characters ... range in progressive ages from a school girl of sixteen to an elderly woman close to death.

"... The intricacy of Zoran's detailed delineation of each story's overlapping facets contrasts greatly with the matter-of-fact tone and the laconic style of his prose. This bold contrast makes for an intriguing tension completely sustained in each story. The novel ends on a more lyric, compassionate note than was provided in the earlier stories. ...[In] each story the mysterious mist envelops a character at some point. The feeling of entering into a mist is an experience this author provides his reader as well."

The Seacoast:

"Zivkovic's stories are deceptively simple and beautifully written, touching on the connections between age, character, wisdom, experience, free will and fate while posing some very strange circumstances, ranging from fanciful to nightmarish.

"This is the last mosaic novel in Zivkovic's "Impossible Stories" cycle and new readers will be likely to look for them all."

Ideomancer:

"I find it difficult to express the reasons for my delight with Zoran Zivkovic's writing. His ideas are very old—"Geese in the Mist" has at its core an idea I recall from the original "Twilight Zone"—and the actual sentences (at least those in translation) are fairly short, direct, and without noticeable flair: he does not seem to expect his readers to delight solely in the original fires of his imagination (which has unfortunately forgiven many wooden dialogues and cardboard characters) nor to be (cliché alert!) dazzled by his literary pyrotechnics.

"... Instead, the strength of his stories is the slow accretion of details, which lead to a profound, emotional, if sometimes inexplicable, conclusion.

"... Each story by itself is a masterpiece in short fiction but the whole, ah the whole! The whole confronts, literarily, nothing less than the notions of fate and free will."

The New York Review of Science Fiction:

"Simply stated, Zoran Zivkovic is one of the most visionary and talented speculative fiction novelists in the world. Among his European contemporaries, his work stands as true literature and holds up to any challenger."

Bookselling this Week:
(Steps Through the Mist appeared as part of an article for booksellers)

"Keri Holmes, owner of The Kaleidoscope bookstore in Hampton, Iowa, feels very strongly about Zoran Zivkovic's Steps Through the Mist (Aio Publishing), a book that is BISAC-coded as fantasy. The problem is, she said, the book is perfect for readers who prefer literary fiction, many of whom would never deign to darken the shelves of her store's fantasy section.

"Holmes loves Zivkovic's book so much that she decided to write the book's publisher, Aio Publishing, to first, compliment the small publisher on the book's content and design and second, to discuss her fears that this tremendous title could easily get lost in the so-called 'fantasy ghetto' of bookstores across the country.

"Noting that 'fantasy novel' often 'connotes trivial plots, pure entertainment, buxom women, dueling muscular heroes, and adolescent readers,' Holmes prefers to categorize Zivkovic's work as speculative fiction. 'This is literary fiction,' she told the publisher. 'I want... to help my customers see what the fantasy fog may be obscuring, in this case a luminescent literary gem. I will be handselling Steps Through the Mist.'"

(Note: the always delightful Keri Holmes did contact us; the article accurately reports her initial email to us. A small part of us wishes the article's writer had also reported our response explaining why the book is thus coded, but this is a trivial concern. We enjoyed the article!)

The Kaleidoscope:

"You may remember that back in January I waxed poetic about a beautiful little book by Serbian author Zoran Zivkovic called Seven Touches of Music. Winner of multiple awards, Seven Touches of Music is truly extraordinary, and, one would think, a tough act to follow. Zivkovic's new book from Aio Publishing, Steps Through the Mist, is wonderful in two ways: design and content. ...

"Seven Touches of Music was breathtaking because the subtle design was unexpected. Its companion volume, Steps Through the Mist, is also subtle, and reminiscent of Brassai's famous photo Brouillard, Avenue de l'Observatoire, 1934. These books cry out to be held and cherished. ...

"[I]f you give it a chance, Zoran Zivkovic's hauntingly lyrical prose will get into your mind. Steps Through the Mist is another treasure, and Zivkovic is a master of the Mosaic form. Again his stories range from beautiful to distressing; from realistic to fantastic, at once satisfying - but somehow addictive, leaving us demanding more. It's seldom that I finish a book and want to immediately get a cup of tea and start reading it again. Steps Through the Mist is one of those rare reads."

San Francisco Bay Guardian:

"Unfolding in crisp scenes that emerge from a foggy landscape, the five stories in Serbian fantasy-oriented author Zoran Zivkovic's "mosaic novel" depict people whose fates are being decided before their eyes, their tales linked by an initially obscuring but ultimately redemptive mist that is brought to an almost visceral life in Alice Copple-Tosic's attentive translation from the Serbian.

"Although dreamlike, the mist seems charged with a purpose: to bring each female protagonist ... face to face with her own strong view of fate and chance. Each woman encounters another individual ... who triggers her insecurity about the future and taps into her obsessionw with how things ought to be."

The Agony Column:

"Zivkovic's prose and compositional skill make the words on these pages ethereal and intelligent. Aio Publishing prints a piece of book hardware that is flat-out gorgeous. And, at $23.95, the whole shebang is a bargain no reader of this column should pass up.

"Zivkovic writes fables that have a universal appeal, novels that slot together fables in delicate layers and books that subtly re-define reality ... Zivkovic's prose, as peerlessly translated by Alice Copple-Tosic, has the kind of transparency and beauty that makes one think not of other writers, but of other art. You read Zivkovic and see crystalline sculptures and austere, minimalist paintings in galleries whose name is just beyond your grasp.

"... The books epitomize graceful design, with black-edged pages, generous print size, everything to make the journey of the words into your mind a pleasure. The beauty of the writing is matched in every sense by the beauty of the presentation."

        Locus Magazine:

"Zivkovic's characteristic empathetic surrealism works with a special elegance here, summarizing beautifully the existential redemption fantasy can afford."

        The Alien Online:

"Another collection of great depth and vision from Serbia's favourite literary son... Once again [Steps Through the Mist] definitely serves to demonstrate that Zoran Zivkovic is a writer of great talent and vision, a man for whom the mists are perhaps a little clearer than for the rest of us."

Click here to go to Zoran Zivkovic's page...