Happy news!!!  The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] was the #1 paperback bestseller at both Mysterious Galaxy and Uncle Hugo’s–two wonderful and well-known SF/F bookstores–for the month of October!

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I just finished reading The Enchantment Emporium [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] the latest novel by Tanya Huff.  I consider myself a pretty big fan of Huff’s work.  She was doing awesome urban vampires when Stephenie Meyer was still learning to type. I love her Keeper series, her military SF … yeah, I’m a fan.

In many ways, The Enchantment Emporium feels like a typical Huff book.  You’ve got the strong female protagonist, Allie Gale, a witch who inherits her grandmother’s shop when grandmother disappears.  You’ve got fun, interesting secondary characters popping up.  You’ve got the snappy dialogue, the humor, the Canadian setting, and all of the little touches that make a good story even more fun to read (I loved the yo-yos!)  Allie is away from her family for the first time, trying to find out what happened to her grandmother while dealing with an immanent dragon invasion and worse.

Warning — minor spoilers follow!

I’m still thinking about this one, and would love to hear from anyone else who’s read the book.  I think my biggest hesitation comes from the intertwining of sexuality and magic, and the way that’s written.  The Gale family of witches is … let’s call them highly liberal.  Like the royals of old, there’s a lot of inbreeding, mostly to keep the magic strong within the family.  I’m okay with that part of the story.  It makes sense, and it’s hinted several times that the Gales aren’t 100% human.  Different species, different taboos, right?

But then you have scenes of group spellcasting, where the males go rather staglike from so much power, and have to be brought back down, sexually.  I.e., “That was a big ritual.  I’d better do Bob to keep him from exploding.”

Like I said, I’m still thinking about it.  The characters are all written to be open and comfortable with the situation.  So what happens between consenting adult mostly-human witches shouldn’t be a problem, right?  But I guess the fact that magic essentially forced them into sex troubles me, and I wish Huff had gone a little deeper into that.

I’ve heard complaints that there isn’t enough explanation or exposition about the magic system, other dimensions, and so on, but I didn’t have that problem.  I think most experienced fantasy readers will be okay, but newcomers to the genre might be better off starting with one of Huff’s other works.

So if you’ve read the book, what did you think?  If you haven’t but read the whole post anyway, I still want to know what you think

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

I picked up a copy of Kelly McCullough’s Cybermancy [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], in the dealer’s room this weekend and read it on the plane ride home.  I reviewed WebMage [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], earlier this year, and Cybermancy was even better (which is how it should be).

Basically, if you liked the first book, you should definitely pick up the second.  Cybermancy brings back magical hacker Raven/Ravirn and his webgoblin companion and throws them into even more trouble than last time. It’s got the same fast pacing, the same humor, but McCullough also shows a more serious side, taking an unflinching look at the story of Persephone.  I really appreciated his take on that one. Ravirn’s relationship angst felt a little too predictable, but nowhere near as bad as your average sitcom, and overall I really liked this one.  Book three is already on my wish list

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Other new books to check out:

Bitter Night [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Diana P Francis.  Book one of the Horngate Witches Books.

Indigo Springs [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by A.M. Dellamonica. Read the first chapter here.

By the Mountain Bound [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Elizabeth Bear. This is the prequel to All the Windwracked Stars.

So, anyone have any thoughts or comments on these?  If not, what else is out there that we should all be reading?

  

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

So I finished reading Twilight [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].  It was a better book than I expected, though I certainly wasn’t blown away.

In brief, Twilight is the story of Bella Swan, a high school girl who falls in love with a vampire.  Then about 80% of the way through the book, some other stuff happens.

That structure was odd.  For 400 pages, this is a fairly typical teenage romance, except the boy happens to be a vampire.  Suddenly we have evil vampires chasing Bella and everyone’s fleeing and scheming and hunting and fighting.  It didn’t throw me out of the story, but I think the book could have been more effective had we seen how dangerous vampires could be a lot sooner.  Edward spends a lot of time trying to persuade Bella that he’s dangerous and she’s better off without him, but like Bella, I never really believed him. 

I mentioned in Twilight, Part I that it was a fast-paced read.  Don’t want to rehash that, except to say it holds true for the rest of the book.  Whatever strengths and weaknesses the book has, I kept turning the pages, and I finished it within a few days.

I was intrigued by what Meyer did with vampires, eliminating many of the traditional weaknesses.  Holy symbols?  Edward’s dad keeps a 300-year-old cross on the wall.  Sunlight?  Yay, sparklies!  Edward explains that the only real way to destroy a vampire is to rip it apart and burn the pieces.

Think about that.  Buffy would be out of luck in this world.  There’s no way a human being is going to be able to fight a vampire; the only one who can is another vampire.  (Or another equally powerful supernatural creature.)  Humans?  Helpless as insects.  The implications are powerful, but I didn’t feel like there was any follow through.  Maybe it gets brought up in later books.  But heck, if vampires are this indestructible, why  bother to hide at all?

As for Bella and Edward … yeah.  This is the part you’ve been waiting for me to rant about, right?  But I’m having a hard time judging Edward’s behavior the way I would a normal abuser.  Controlling?  Absolutely.  Creepy?  Oh hell yes.  Breaking into a teenage girl’s room every night to listen to her talking in her sleep?  The dude puts stalkers to shame.

But he’s not human.  He is, as the book stresses again and again, better and beyond human in so many ways.  He’s a century old, powerful and beautiful and unstoppable.  Why should he treat a human with any more respect than you or I treat a pet cat?  I like my cats, but I don’t consider it abusive to toss one off the counter.

This isn’t where Meyer was going with the book.  Edward’s behavior is glossed over as part of our whirlwind teen romance.  He’s treated as a normal human teenager, except when he’s not.  As a normal human, he’s an abusive, controlling creep.

Having been young myself, I can certainly understand Bella’s infatuation and obsession.  Been there, done that (though I cringe to think about it now).  I just wish Meyer had been more conscious of the dynamics she was writing.

There’s so much going on here, and the book seems blissfully unaware of it.  It ignores the implications of Meyer’s changes to vampire lore.  It glosses over the unbalanced nature of Bella’s relationship with Edward until the very end, when Bella decides she wants to be a vampire too.  (And why not?  There’s no downside!)  It shows us a jealous, controlling stalker and treats the whole thing as dreamy and romantic.  This is where I think the book fails.

Don’t know if I’ll read book two or not.  But in the meantime, please feel free to jump in with your thoughts and comments.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

One nice thing about surgeries — they give you lots of time to read.  I finished up The Soldier King on Thursday and started in on Twilight, as promised.

I started by checking the front matter.  This book is in its 47th printing in paperback (19th in hardcover).  Dang.  And I thought I was doing well when Goblin Quest went back for a 4th printing….

I’m about 25% through Twilight, and so far, the book is surprisingly readable.  It’s not great, but I haven’t tried to gouge out my eyes with a spork yet either.

It reminds me of Harry Potter: it’s a quick, easy read; our young protagonist leaves one life and enters another, more magical one where they’re amazingly popular; it has lots and lots of pages…

Several people commented that Bella Swan is very much a Mary Sue, and I can see that.  She complains about how she’s so unpopular, and in the meantime she’s go no less than four–maybe five by now?–boys sniffing after her.  There’s a wish fulfillment feel to the story, which I imagine is a lot of the appeal–just like in Harry Potter.

We’re only beginning to get into the Edward revelations, but I can already see where the dynamics of Edward/Bella are troubling, to say the least.  So far, we’ve already seen some radical mood swings from Edward, as well as seriously controlling behavior (physically dragging Bella into his car being the most blatant so far).  Pulling her away from her friends to sit alone with him at lunch isn’t by itself a pattern of isolating behavior, but I’ll be curious how many more warning signs we’ll see from Edward.

Mostly, Twilight does what a lot of successful SF/F books seem to be doing these days: it makes the fantastic more accessible.  Like Harry Potter, it starts in our own world and grounds the reader before bringing in the fantastic elements.  It reaches beyond the hardcore SF/F readers, to whom the first 125 pages will be not only familiar but even a bit boring.  Yes, we get that he’s a vampire, and we’ve read this “discovery” process a hundred times before.  We’ve read it, but folks unfamiliar to the genre haven’t, which might explain why this is the book reaching a larger audience.

One final thought: this book looks like it was designed to be a quick read.  Larger typeface, big pages with larger margins, more spacing between the lines … physically, these pages were laid out in such a way that it makes you turn the pages faster.  I find that interesting.

375 pages to go.  More thoughts later I’m sure.  For now, have a Harry Potter pic, ’cause it amused me.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

I picked up James Van Pelt’s first short fiction collection, Strangers and Beggars, way back in 2002 at World Fantasy Con in Minneapolis.  Even then I was impressed at how much power he could pack into a few thousand words.  His latest collection, The Radio Magician and Other Stories [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], is even better.

It’s easy for fiction to become formulaic: Protagonist wants X.  Protagonist tries to achieve X by doing Y.  S/he fails, tries again, fails again, tries a third time, and either wins or loses it all in the climax of the story.  It’s a perfectly serviceable formula, one which produces perfectly serviceable fiction.

Van Pelt does so much more.  In “Where Did You Come From, Where Did You Go?” our protagonist and her friend don’t stop the bad guy.  They’re not active characters at all, being mere observers to the SFnal drama unfolding in their classroom.  Yet it’s still a tense, gripping story.  And the ending, in which they learn the truth and are left with one terrifying and unanswerable question, has more impact than many full-length novels ever achieve.

“The Inn at Mount Either” packs a similar punch, making the SF idea more central to the story as our protagonist explores a resort situated at the intersection of parallel universes.  Van Pelt doesn’t give us the easy ending another author might have written; he adds one more page, turning an interesting story into a full-strength gut punch.

He’s also playing with fascinating ideas.  What if artificial intelligence was not only possible, but became so cheap that everything could have AI chips?  What if space exploration could be outsourced, not to private companies, but through children’s collectible toys?  (Gotta find ‘em all!) What if the universe were ending, and all that remained were two sentient machines orbiting a star?

Like any collection, some stories worked better for me than others.  I wasn’t as fond of “Of Late I’ve Dreamt of Venus,” mostly because I didn’t feel as connected to the characters.  “One Day, in the Middle of the Night” was an interesting premise, but I felt like Van Pelt was working too hard to fit the gimmick of the story.

But these were the exceptions, and even with these stories, I was still impressed by the ambition, the purpose and power of Van Pelt’s writing.  Let me put it this way: reading this book made me completely rethink the potential of the short story, and the things I want to accomplish the next time I sit down to write one.

The notes on my ARC say the book comes out in September, though Amazon lists it as already available.  I definitely recommend this one, both as a reader and a writer.  And while you’re at it, check out James Van Pelt’s home page, or go visit him on LiveJournal at jimvanpelt.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

It was early 2004.  I had just signed a deal with Five Star to publish Goblin Quest.  This would be my first published fantasy novel, hopefully bringing me one step closer to actually Making It As A Writer.  With Five Star being a small specialty press, I was on my own when it came to blurbs.  So I e-mailed a few people I knew.  On a whim, after reading one of Wheaton’s blog columns about gaming, I wrote him a quick e-mail.

Six hours later, I bounded away from the computer, grabbed my wife by the arms, and said, “Holy @#$%, Wil Wheaton said he’d read my book!”

Not only did he read it, he provided my favorite blurb ever, calling Goblin Quest “Too f***ing cool for words!”  He also hooked me up with John Kovalic, who went on to provide another blurb.

It’s hard to put into words how much that meant.  I was a nobody in the writing world. I had friends signing deals with major publishers, and I was with a press that might sell 500 copies if I was lucky.  I felt like a fraud, and I was terrified people were going to find out.

Having Wil Wheaton agree to read the book, and his follow-up e-mails saying how much he enjoyed it … well, it didn’t make the crazy go away, but it helped.  It helped a lot.

So now it’s five years later, and I finally got my hands on Wil’s book Just a Geek [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], a collection of blog posts and original material chronicling Wil’s decision to leave Star Trek, his efforts to find work in Hollywood, the struggle to balance career and family, and his eventual decision to give this writing thing a try. 

I’ve read his blog for years, so I knew he was a good writer, and I fully expected to enjoy the book.  What I didn’t expect was how much I would relate to the stories he shared.  How many of you writers out there can connect to this:

The hundreds of adoring fans I’d hoped to see did show up . . . when people like Kevin Smith and the cast of the short-lived Witchblade took up temporary residence at tables near mine.

Yep.  That could be me at one of several group booksignings I’ve done next to folks like John Scalzi or Mike Resnick.  Or how about:

I would often be one of the final two or three actors to be considered.  But consistently coming in second or third was actually worse than not making it past the first round of meetings.  It was like scaling Mount Everest, only to die within sight of the summit . . . over and over again.

I think every writer goes through this stage, where we’re getting “Almost, but not quite” rejections and going bugnut insane trying to figure out why we can’t make the cut when we’re so freaking close.

There were other pieces that jumped out at me.  Wil mentions legal battles with his stepsons’ father, and the overwhelming lawyer bills that come with them.  (Been there, done that.)  He writes about choosing bewteen going with his family on a vacation or staying home in order to make it to auditions.  (Some of you might remember when I missed half of my family vacation in order to make the deadline on Mermaid.)

The point is, it’s an aptly-named book.  There’s a blunt honestly to the writing.  You don’t feel like you’re reading about a celebrity; you’re reading about a guy who, like most of the folks reading this review, is just a geek (albeit one with 10,000 times as many Twitter followers as most of us).  If writing is about creating a connection between author and reader, then Wheaton is a damn good writer.

If you’ve read his blog, you know Wil Wheaton can write.  Just a Geek shows he can do it at book-length, tying individual stories and blog entries together into a larger story, one which starts with Wil Wheaton trying to Prove to Everyone That Quitting Star Trek Wasn’t A Mistake, and ending with Wil Wheaton, Author.

The book comes out in paperback at the end of this week.  Check it out.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

I started reading Rob St. Martin’s Truthseekers: Welcome to Blackriver [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy]  on the drive back from vacation.  I finished it fairly quickly, and immediately jumped back into revision madness, so it’s taken me almost a month to actually post a review.  Bad Jim.

This first Truthseekers volume is a collection of intertwined short stories centering around fifteen-year-old Ashley Bennett.  When Ashley’s parents are murdered, she has to leave Toronto and move to the small town of Blackriver to live with her older cousin Mark.  Over the course of the book, Ashley begins to uncover secrets about her parents, her cousin, and herself.

I joked with Rob that the book reminded me of Buffy, only without the angst of the last few seasons.  Imagine Sunnydale as a backwater Canadian town, and you’ll start to get a sense of the book’s vibe.  Blackriver is located on the junction of several ley lines, so naturally all sorts of supernatural trouble ensues.  Ashley and friends go up against vampires, witches, ghosts, secret societies, and cow tippers.  Evil cow tippers.  Not to mention the thing that killed her parents…

It’s a fun, easy read aimed at a YA audience.  (I enjoyed it too, but there are those who’ll argue whether I qualify as a grown-up.)  Ashley’s secret is a fascinating one.  I saw it coming, but that doesn’t matter; I still like the implications about what she is and what she can do.

I liked the format overall.  It was nice to be able to read in bite-sized chunks, advancing through the larger story one self-contained adventure at a time.  Though there were a few times I’d start in on the next story and think to myself, Wait, why aren’t you guys doing more about X from the last story?

I only had two complaints.  The first was that some of the stories started slowly.  There’s a pattern of following Ashley through some of the mundane aspects of her life before we get into the weirdness.  I can appreciate the contrast, but after a few stories, I found myself wanting to skip the first few pages and jump ahead.

The second issue was with the ending.  I didn’t expect the book to wrap up every single loose thread, but I find it ironic that while the individual stories are self-contained, the book as a whole leaves you hanging. Though perhaps that’s a good reason to mention that Truthseekers 2: Birthright [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] is also available?

Every time I try to figure out how to wrap up this review, I keep coming back to the fact that it’s a fun read.  Likeable characters, a good balance between the serious and the not-so-much, and an overall arc that has me curious about book two.

Rob is also on LiveJournal as Talyesin, and has posted the first chapter of the book at http://talyesin.livejournal.com/501876.html  Check it out.

ETA: Looks like the link is friends-locked. I'll update when and if I find a public excerpt.

ETA2: And Rob has unlocked the link, so the preview should work now.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Amy and I snuck out yesterday to see Transformers 2 while the kids were at their cousins’ place.  (Please note - this was Amy’s suggestion, not mine.  Because my wife is that cool.)  Currently, the movie is getting trashed in the reviews.  21% at Rotten Tomatoes as of this morning.

But you know what?  I liked it.  It’s silly, over-the-top, with problems ranging from a cartoon plot to Prime’s face fetish, but like the first movie, that’s not the point.  You go in with low expectations, turn off your brain, and enjoy the spectacle of giant robots pounding the crap out of each other.  I thought some things worked better this time around.  It was nice to actually get some personality from Starscream.  On the other hand, sometimes Michael Bay’s idea of “personality” is problematic in the extreme.

Next up: the spoilers, including points that worked and didn’t, and a deeper look at Mudflap and Skids.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

The Sleeping God [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Violette Malan is a nifty book.

As heroic fantasy goes, this book has a fair amount going for it.  Well-built world and mythology that fits together rather well, badass mercenary protagonists who are more than just caricatures, a sprinkling of secrets and intrigue, and of course, a sleeping god.  Our heroes are mercenary brothers* Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane, who take a job escorting a young girl back to her noble house but soon find themselves targeted by an ancient menace.

This is not the nifty I want to talk about.

What I loved about this book is the portrayal of Dhulyn and Parno’s relationship.  This is a partnership in every sense of the word, built around a core of love and trust.  As mercenary brothers, the two of them are bound to one another in a relationship as sacred as marriage.

Most fiction tends to show us the beginning of relationships, the eagerness and the passion and the fumbling and clumsiness as people learn more about one another.  All too often, this leads to fairly predictable tension and conflict, misunderstandings and mistrust.  The Sleeping God brings us a more mature relationship, and one of the healthiest relationships I’ve encountered in fiction.  They talk to each other.  They trust one another.  They’ve got each other’s backs.  They’re romantically involved, but the romance isn’t a neverending font of angst and drama.

I asked Malan about Dhulyn and Parno, and she responded:

“So often relationships, especially in fiction though not limited to that, seem to be based on the people not telling each other things.  This is so often the basis of the relationship in romance novels and soap operas, for example (and consequently on the part of living people who think that’s how they’re supposed to act). My idea was to have two people who simply told each other what was on their minds instead of making a hullaballo about hiding things from each other. Of course, it did mean that the tension and the conflict had to come from elsewhere, but I think the story was the better for it.”

Don’t misunderstand.  Malan doesn’t spend the whole book preaching about healthy relationships.  What she does is show us the advantage of Dhulyn and Parno’s partnership.  Individually, each of these fighters is pretty bad-ass.  But put them together and they’ll whoop anything you care to throw at them.

I also liked that the characters go beyond being “just” fighters.  Dhulyn is also a scholar, hunting for new books and theorizing about the evolution of children’s songs.  Parno is … well, that would be telling.  Suffice it to say, he’s also more than he first appears.

It took me a chapter or two to really get into the book, and the plot itself may be familiar to long-time fantasy fans. Mercenaries and ancient gods, dark priesthoods and scheming rulers … there’s almost an old-school fantasy feel to the book.  But then, I enjoy old-school fantasy ;-)  I’ll definitely be grabbing a copy of book two, The Soldier King [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].

For those of you who’ve read Malan’s work, I’d love to hear your thoughts.  To the rest, what do you think about relationships in fiction?  What are you tired of, and what would you like to see more of?

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*Brothers is used as a gender-neutral term.  Dhulyn is female, while Parno is male.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

A while back I finished reading Nightmare [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Steven Harper. This is the second book in Harper’s Silent Empire series, in which certain individuals known as Silent have the ability to enter The Dream, a kind of telepathic linking of sentient minds.  The Dream provides instant communication between the stars, and as a result the Silent are highly valued.

It’s been a while since I read Dreamer, the first book in the series.  So it threw me a little to realize this book jumped backward chronologically, exploring the backstory of Kendi Weaver.

It’s not a nice backstory. Kendi’s family is captured by slavers and separated. Kendi is discovered to be silent, which makes him far more valuable. Kendi is eventually freed, and finds himself drawn into a mystery surrounding a killer who murders people within the Dream.

There’s a lot going on in this book. The murder mystery is well done, though the ending has a strong element of coincidence to it regarding the whereabouts of our killer. (Is that vague enough?) The story of Kendi’s enslavement felt … hm. It didn’t feel like a slave narrative. I could empathize with Kendi’s pain, but at the same time, a part of me was thinking “This isn’t anywhere near as bad as it could be.” Whether or not that’s a good thing depends on how painful you want your slave stories, I guess. I thought it worked well for the story, since the book is about Kendi’s growth rather than any particular phase of his life.

I also liked the way Harper handled Kendi’s sexuality. It’s hard enough coming to terms with those adolescent drives and feelings. Try being a gay slave trying to sort it all out. Kendi’s crushes and his struggles to accept himself worked well. Not preachy, and not the core of the story, but a part of his life that most readers will be able to relate to.

As for the Dream, that’s just nifty. Communal telepathic reality. How cool is that? I loved watching Kendi and his friends learning to explore the Dream, as well as the history of the Children of Irfan (a Silent group), and all the different implications of Silent communication.

All in all, I’d definitely be interested in reading book three in the series to see where Harper goes with it.

So, anyone else read this book or the series? What did you think?

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Let me make this clear up front: I enjoyed the latest Trek movie. It was a fun little SF romp. I didn't love it the way a lot of folks seem to, but I did like it. Karl Urban as McCoy was my favorite, but I found myself liking most of the newly reinvented characters. I'm also impressed at how well the movie accomplishes precisely what it's supposed to: rebooting the series and clearing the way for new stories. A parallel universe storyline allows all of the old Trek histories and movies to stand unchanged while our young actors go forth to tell the Trek stories of this universe.

With that said, can we please get an actual writer to help with the next one? Maybe a scientist too, while we're at it. I know Star Trek has not been known for its rigorous adherence to scientific fact, and some of the stories get a little silly in terms of plotting. People are already telling me "Just ignore the silliness and enjoy it!" But there's just too much. It got me thinking about what must have gone on during the writing and rewriting process....

Warning: there be spoilers ahead.

( Scenes from the writing room with JJ Abrams )

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In the end, I liked the movie, but I really wanted to love it. I just wish I didn't have to lobotomize myself to get past all the gaping cracks in the story. It was fun SF action, but it didn't really feel like Star Trek to me. It's not just the different actors, either. World Enough and Time felt like Trek, despite the new cast. This didn't.

But I'll definitely go see the next one.

Okay, first thing's first. If you're going to read Once a Princess [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], you'll probably want to pick up Twice a Prince [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] as well, since the end of book one leaves a fair amount unresolved.

There's a lot to like about Once a Princess. From the product description, "Warning: This title contains a kick-butt mother-daughter team, a wicked king, a witty pirate with an unfortunate taste for neon colors, inept resistance fighters, a dreamy prince who gallops earnestly hither and yon, and a kick-butt princess in waiting." I hear kick-butt princesses are all the rage these days :-)

Sasha and her mother Sun fled from the world of Sartorias-deles when Sasha's father was driven into hiding when Canardan Merindar usurped the throne. Sasha is living in LA when men from her former world come looking for her. She soon returns to Sartorias-deles and is swept up in the resistance as the ally? prisoner? of the sexy but fashion-challenged pirate Zathdar. Sun follows, looking for her daughter, and ends up in the hands of Merindar. Politics, intrigue, fighting, and romance all ensue.

Sherwood Smith's books blow my mind for the sheer world-building that goes into them. Check out the Sartorias-deles wiki. I'm awed by the amount of time and work Smith has spent developing this world and its history, the races and the individual characters, the magic and the cosmology. It's Tolkienesque in scale, but written in a more accessible voice.

This has advantages and disadvantages both. On the one hand, there were times I felt like I was missing some of the larger picture. On the other, Smith has created a world you can dive into as deeply as you choose, and stay there as long as you'd like. As I read, I kept coming back to how ambitious her work feels, each book adding another piece to her overall body of work to build this world. The story works wonderfully on its own, but it feels more ... solid than most. Smith has been developing this world since she was eight years old. It feels like you could go into any building, look behind any tree, and the author knows exactly what's there. (As opposed to some books, where you see the Hollywood-style facade if you stop to look at anything too closely.)

Back to this particular book, it's a fun read. Sasha and Zathdar were my favorites, with plenty of good banter and tension between them. Prince Jehan, son of Merindar, is a fun character as well, once you start to learn more about him. I didn't get as much of a sense as Sun, but she's as strong and determined as her daughter, just in a different arena. (Politics and intrigue as opposed to fighting and running about.) Actually, there's a nice range of strong female characters in this one.

Once a Princess comes out in paperback next week. (It's already available from Samhain as an e-book, though.) The paperback of book two follows in early May. So I'm not sure how many folks will have read these yet, but I know Smith has a good number of fans, so I'd love to hear what people think of her work in general.

Smith has a blog at sartorias which is also worth reading, with some of the most thoughtful posts and discussions you'll find on LJ.

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Friday night, a friend and I went out to see Watchmen.

Let me get this out of the way up front so you can crucify me and get it over with. I've never read the graphic novel. I do live in a world of SF/F geekdom, so I know a fair amount of the story anyway. (Yes, I know about the squid.) But my thoughts here are based on the movie alone.

( Click for the poll, if nothing else )

Deader Still [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Anton Strout (antonstrout) comes out on Tuesday the 24th, but should already be showing up in bookstores. I was fortunate enough to get an early copy, because apparently someone at Penguin likes me.

Note: Anton works at Penguin. I think this is coincidence. Anton doesn't like anyone. Except maybe Amber Benson, who also said nice things about Deader Still. Gr ... Anton has Amber Benson, Pat Rothfuss has Felicia Day ... when do I get a famous Hollywood actress saying nice things about my book?

Ahem. Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, Deader Still. Fun, but comes up lacking in the werejaguar department. Deader Still is the sequel to Dead to Me [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], which I reviewed back in August. This time, Simon Canderous of New York's Dept. of Extraordinary Affairs is up against another batch of supernatural baddies, including a possible vampire invasion. Of course, the DEA is a government agency, so he also gets to fight red tape and budget troubles. And then there's tension with his girlfriend, ex-cultist Jane, not to mention some leadership troubles with his partner Conner...

Simon's a fun character. His psychometry gives him the ability to see an object's history by touching it, and his retractable bat gives him the ability to see a zombie's insides by whacking it. These two tools, along with a steady barrage of pop culture references, are pretty much what see him through the story.

This is a fun read that doesn't take itself too seriously, and never pretends to be anything but what it is. The pace moves right along, running poor Simon a little ragged in the process, but providing plenty of action. If you liked Dead to Me, it's a safe bet you'll like this one even more. We pick up some threads from the first book, and we also see Simon growing a bit. He knows how to control his powers better now -- well enough to maintain an actual relationship for the first time in his life. (Hard to keep a relationship going when you're accidentally reading your lover's secrets from everything you touch.) Of course, since this is Simon's first relationship, he gets to make all the fumbling mistakes most of us made as teenagers, which is a little painful at times, but understandable.

No book is perfect. Like I said before, this one has a deplorable lack of werejaguars (inside joke*). If you want deep, serious, intense urban fantasy, this might not be the book for you. But the only real complaint I had was a minor quibble, that the Buffy jokes started to get repetitive. Hopefully Simon can expand his pop culture references a little more for book three.

The last page gives us the hook for the next book, but since the major conflicts of this book are all resolved, I won't complain too much about being left hanging on this new crisis ... assuming Anton hurries up and gets the next book out soon.

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*Disclosure: I know Anton. We've hung out, and I consider him one of my writer buds. That said, if his book sucked, I'd either tell you so or (more likely) I just wouldn't review it.

My brother-in-law drew my name for the gift swap this Christmas, and turned to my Amazon wish list for inspiration. As a result, I ended up with Dr. Horrible, another season of The Tick, and WebMage [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Kelly McCullough.

After I read it, I was glancing at the GoodReads entry for the sequel, Cybermancy. Most of the reviews were good, but what fascinated me were several of the negative reviews (we all get them), which said things like, "it doesn't delve into deeper issues", "it doesn't introduce any great new ideas to literature", and "it could be a decent read if you read it for what it is: fantasy pulp."

Right. What's with these crazy fantasy authors writing fun, lighthearted reads rather than worrying about the development of western literature? Besides, we already know Americans can't write literature anyway.

Naturally, I loved this book.

And not just because the main character, Ravirn, has a magical webgoblin named Melchior who changes into a laptop. (Though goblins do make everything better.) The book blends Greek mythology and modern-day computer hacking. The gods have learned to manipulate the magic of the universe through computers and programming code. Ravirn, a descendent of the Fates, is a skilled hacker and spellcoder. So skilled that he's brought in to assist with one of Atropos' pet projects, a spell to eliminate free will. Ravirn takes exception to this, a decision which puts him in direct opposition to the aspect of fate responsible for cutting the threads of life. Not good. He spends the rest of the book trying to stay alive, and learning that this conflict goes far deeper than he ever imagined.

The tech-heavy nature of magic and spellcasting was hard to get into at first, but only for the first few pages. I'm still not completely clear on the whole magic system, but it's a heck of a lot more sensible than spouting random pseudo-Latin and waving your wands around. I'll also say that the cover art for the series threw me off. There's an urban fantasy feel to the cover that made me think I was opening up a more serious book. Maybe it's just me. But the closest we get to "urban" is Ravirn's time on his college campus.

Is it a work that applies the shock paddles to the heart of American literature? Maybe not. (But hey, neither are mine.) So what? Some of us also read for pure enjoyment. What this book is, is a fun read. There's a love story that has just the right amount of tension. The secondary characters are entertaining, and some are far more complex than they first appear. And watching the relationship between Ravirn and Melchior evolve over the book was great. Melchior steals a few scenes, actually.

The ending came kind of quickly. Almost too quickly. I had to re-read a little bit to figure out what just happened. Overall though, I found it a light, irreverent, and entertaining book.

As always, I'd love to hear what others thought of this one.

Back when I was collecting books for my annual DV shelter book drive, stillnotbored was kind enough to throw in a book for me to read. I had been talking about and reviewing tie-ins, and she was curious what I would think of Heaven's Bones [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Samantha Henderson.

To start with, if not for the Wizards of the Coast logo, I never would have realized this was a tie-in. Heaven's Bones is a Ravenloft title, putting this into the dark/horror side of the gaming world. I've only played one Ravenloft campaign, but as I was reading, a few details did start to come back ... mostly the mists. Henderson puts the evil mists of Ravenloft to good use, setting much of the book in 19th century England, where impenetrable, putrid smog is just part of the London scenery. (Although 19th century Whitechapel is a bit of a giveaway about what's coming. There are no direct Jack the Ripper references, though.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself, mostly because I'm not sure how to sum this one up. There are a number of different storylines which all come together by the end of the book. The primary storylines are those of Dr. Sebastian Robarts, and the Vistani called Trueblood. Trueblood was born with the gift of cursing. While this doesn't make him evil, he chose a dark path, and was punished by his people. He survived, but his name was stripped from him, and he found himself living in the mists.

Dr. Robarts is a tragic figure, a skilled surgeon who loses his wife and child in childbirth. Trueblood reaches out to Robarts, driving him mad. Robarts begins kidnapping women, using a combination of his surgical skills and Trueblood's magic to reshape them in horrible ways, with the goal of creating angels of humans, gifts for his lost wife and child.

Other characters and storylines include Artemis, the inspector who uses his gift of Sight to investigate these crimes; Sophie, one of the first female doctors in England; and the girl Fanny and her family, who inhabit Riverbend. I was a little disoriented at first -- Henderson introduces one set of characters, and as I'm getting into their story, we jump to another. But one of the pleasures of the book is starting to see how these storylines all begin to intersect and inform one another across multiple worlds and times. It's an ambitious book, one Henderson pulls off quite well, for the most part. (I didn't feel like Fanny's story fit as tightly as the rest, though the very end does justify their inclusion.)

Heaven's Bones is a disturbing read at times, which is to be expected from a Ravenloft novel. I think the most disturbing aspect is how well Henderson brings us into Robarts' mindset, his fascination with reshaping these women. In reality, Robarts is a fearsome creature, torturing and enslaving his victims. Yet as we follow his work, using magic and scalpel to cut away organs and flesh, rebuilding bone and trying time and again to craft wings capable of flight ... on some level, a part of me wanted to see him succeed. Every once in a while, for a paragraph or a page, I shared his madness ... seeing past the horror to the ultimate goal, something that transcends humanity and becomes beautiful. Becomes angelic.

And that's disturbing as hell, as well as a testament to Henderson's skill.

The book is full of horribly fascinating ideas. The "angel" from the cover art is a particularly twisted example. Seriah, the recording angel, is a brilliant character. There is no gore for the sake of gore, no cheap thrills. It's a dark novel, but the darkness is there for a reason.

My only complaints would be that Fanny's storyline seemed less connected, and as I read her parts I found myself getting impatient to return to the other storyline. And our heroes Sophie and Artemis never felt quite as... developed? engaging? ...as their foils Robarts and Trueblood. Neither of these are serious concerns.

Overall, this is an impressive book. Not one I'd recommend to everyone, but if you like a darker, more complex story, I'd definitely recommend picking this one up.

I know at least some of the folks on my list have read this one. What did you think?

I picked up Way of the Wolf [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] by E. E. Knight (eeknight) while I was at WindyCon last month. This book has the distinction of being the first in a long time to work its way into my dreams. Given the subject matter, they weren't fun dreams. Thanks a lot, Knight!

Way of the Wolf is subtitled "Book One of The Vampire Earth", and comes with a nice little tag phrase. Welcome to the year 2065. Earth is under new management.

"Vampire Earth" is potentially a little misleading. Earth has been conquered by the alien Kurians, who feed on our life essences. In order to feed, they created the Reapers: nightmare creatures who tear open our throats and insert long, serpentine tongues directly into our hearts to feed on our blood while transmitting our vital essence back to their Kurian masters. In other words, if you're expecting traditional vampires and wooden stakes and garlic and quipping blonde teenagers, you're reading the wrong book.

In the humans' corner, we have the Lifeweavers, kin to the Kurians. The Lifeweavers don't fight directly, but they use their powers to change human warriors, to make them better, stronger, faster. These changed humans fall into three categories: Cats (scouts and loners), Bears (bad-ass warriors) and Wolves (the guerilla fighters). This first book introduces us to the world of 2065 through the eyes of the young wolf David Valentine.

The first half of the book is completely episodic. Each chapter is a chapter of Valentine's life, showing us his past, his training, and his missions as a Wolf. There's plenty of tension and a lot of action, but little in the way of overall plot tying it all together. That changes in the second half, when Valentine and one of his men take refuge on a human farm. Here we see more of the day-to-day life of normal humans under Kurian rule. Valentine falls in love, and then has to save his protectors from both Reapers and Quislings (human traitors who have chosen to serve the Kurians).

The early chapters accomplish what they set out to do. Each one adds to the reader's understanding of this world, and the self-contained stories of Valentine's life certainly keep you turning the pages. But I started to wonder where this was going, and whether there was an actual destination for the book, or if this was intended simply to show us this conquered world. The second half helped, but this is still a book where the worldbuilding comes first. Book two, Choice of the Cat [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], looks like it brings more balance, giving Valentine a clearer mission. (One which picks up on hints from the first book which are never fully explored.)

Knight has created a dark world, and he doesn't flinch from some of the nastiness that comes with it. I did enjoy the book, despite the dreams of that first night. But I couldn't help feeling like I was missing the larger story, that Valentine's POV limited me to the trees when I wanted to see more forest. I suspect I'll be picking up book two to see where the story goes from here.

So, anyone else read this one? What did you think of it?

A while back I talked about the dangers of switching series. As a case in point, check out a few of the Amazon reviews of Midnight Never Come [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], by Marie Brennan (swan_tower). With her latest book, Brennan has moved from more traditional sword & sorcery to intricate historical fantasy, and anyone wanting or expecting more of the same might be disappointed.

I was not. I read and reviewed Brennan's earlier books, and enjoyed them both. This one was different: richer in historical detail and description, but less action-oriented than the earlier books. This is also a far more ambitious story.

Set in the late 16th century, Midnight Never Comes opens with a pact between two women who will soon become the most powerful rulers in England: Elizabeth the Virgin Queen, and Invidiana, faerie ruler of the Onyx Court below London. The Onyx Court is a dark shadow of the city above, a secret place of cruelty and deception. One member of Invidiana's court, a faerie named Lune, struggles to regain the favor of her queen by spying on events above. Lune's counterpart is the human courtier Michael Deven, who has been tasked by spymaster Francis Walsingham with finding the hidden player influencing Queen Elizabeth. As Lune and Deven discover the secrets behind Invidiana's power and the true nature of the faerie queen's pacts, they must choose whether to work together, risking everything to try to break Invidiana's rule.

Lune was a more appealing character to me, in part I think because her stakes were higher. Whereas Deven starts out trying to secure a position in Elizabeth's court, Lune serves a more temperamental and dangerous ruler in a court that makes human politics look as simplistic and straightforward as the squabbling of preschoolers. Watching Lune navigate that court, seeing her fall and struggle to rise again, leaves Deven feeling a little bland by comparison.

I confess to being a poor historian, but even to my eye it's clear Brennan has done a great deal of research for this book. Every detail is meticulous and precise, evoking not a generic English fantasy setting but a very real and concrete place and time. Brennan then blends historical detail with the fantastic so smoothly I barely noticed the seams.

This is a book that invites you to slow down and savor. Broken into five acts, each act builds more tension, moving from a relatively leisurely introduction toward a much more focused struggle in the final act. Let me put it this way. While reading the first half of the book, I enjoyed the story, but it was easy for me to set the book down, knowing I'd be back the next night to read more. Toward the end, I had a much harder time closing the book, and lost quite a bit of sleep as things came to a climax.

If you're looking for nonstop action and excitement, this may not be the book for you. But if you want rich worldbuilding and a story you can truly immerse yourself in, I'd recommend picking this one up. For writers, it's also an excellent example of interweaving the historical and the fantastic.

(Oh, and as a random tidbit, this is a book which was at least partly inspired by a role-playing game. To anyone who bashes RPGs and gaming-inspired fiction as simplistic or somehow inferior, I wave this book at you with a hearty pbbt!)

It's been a rough few days, so when I swung by the library, I looked for some good old-fashioned escapism. I came away with Shatterpoint [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] by Matthew Stover.

I'm a bit over halfway through, and it wasn't what I expected. A page-turner to be sure, with lots of fighting and action and light-sabery goodness. But there's something much deeper going on here.

Shatterpoint is set after Attack of the Clones. Mace Windu receives a troubling message from his former Padawan Depa Billaba. Now Mace must travel to the jungle world of Haruun Kal to find Depa and either save her or destroy her.

The thing that both impresses and disturbs me about the book is how it addresses one of the flaws of the whole Star Wars universe. In these movies, we see a galaxy at war. Over a million worlds. And yet the war is clean. Sterile. Ships popping out of existence in flashy explosions. Anonymous stormtroopers falling with bloodless blaster wounds. Even lightsabers leave cauterized, clean wounds. The horrors are there, but you never see them. An entire world blows up, and Obi Wan Kenobi gets a headache. That's it.

Stover shows us a world devastated by war. Depa Billaba was sent to help drive the separatists from Haruun Kal, and she's done so, but at what cost? The planet's people are divided, slaughtering one another in the jungles even after the galactic conflict has moved on.

Stover hammers the theme home. War is not a heroic band fighting their way past faceless enemies to blow up the Death Star and save the galaxy. It's watching your friends die of parasites and diseases, because you have no way of getting the basic medical treatment that could have saved them. It's a child stabbing a wounded soldier again and again, because that child has never known anything but war and hate. It's mutilating your enemies' bodies because you no longer see them as human. For Mace Windu, it's struggling to find the right path, the Jedi path, when all of your choices lead to darkness and death.

It's a powerful book. A little heavy-handed at times, perhaps. But I have a lot of respect for Stover for going beyond the flash-bang special effects and the relatively clean imagery of the movies and reminding readers that it ain't so.

Based on what I've read so far, I don't expect a neat or happy ending. But then, I suspect that's the whole point.

Space zombies. Floating cities. And Pepper leaping out of a spaceship and riding a heatshield down, sans parachute. What else do I really need to say about this one?

Sly Mongoose [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], is Tobias Buckell's third novel, set in the same universe as Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, but Pepper is the only character from the earlier books. As with Ragamuffin, this isn't a direct sequel, though it does continue the larger story Buckell is creating about humans struggling to survive and find their place as they discover just how dangerous a place this universe can be.

Sly Mongoose is set primarily on the planet of Chilo, a loosely Venus-like planet with crushing gravity, a corrosive atmosphere ... generally not a pleasant place to live. The inhabitants live in floating cities, descending to the surface to maintain the outdated and unreliable mining equipment. It's a hard life, and when Pepper drops in, it gets a lot harder. The Swarm (space zombies!) is coming, searching for a secret hidden on Chilo's surface, and they're prepared to kill anyone and everyone in their way.

Buckell does a lot of cool things in this book. For starters, Chilo's inhabitants are the descendants of the Azteca from Crystal Rain. One of my comments on Crystal Rain was that the Aztecs came across as fairly straightforward villains without as much depth as I wanted to see. Sly Mongoose develops them into fully fleshed out people, still struggling to live down the shame of their ancestors' actions back on New Anegada. He also follows through on a lot of his ideas. How do you prepare for a siege in a floating city, for instance? In the final battle, the Swarm use a tactic I hadn't seen coming, one which still made perfect sense and created a wonderful "Holy crap!" moment.

I'm curious where he's going with this series. He's setting up a very dangerous and violent universe, one in which humanity will either need to unite and work together, or face extinction. Behind every villain, human and alien, waits a larger threat. It reminds me a little of Q from Star Trek when he introduces the crew to the Borg. "You think those Romulans are scary? You ain't seen nothing, yet."

The young miner Timas is a good character, but Pepper steals the book. The character of Pepper is a highly practical, survival-oriented warrior. He's an interesting one ... long-lived, and having survived enough wars to warp any man. There are times he seems to be running on automatic, more machine than human, and throughout the book you see Timas and others trying to break through to that kernel of humanity. Sometimes they seem to reach him. Other times, Pepper just lets them think so, because it suits Pepper's plans at that particular moment. Definitely not a nice man, but a fascinating one, and a useful guy to have around in a war.

Overall, I'd say this is the best of the three books, and it leaves me eager to read number four.

ETA: If you're curious, you can get more info, including links to the first few chapters, at Buckell's web site.