Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 128

What is Silkpunk?

This is a Book Riot post, which, sorry, is always going to make me wonder if the author of the post is going to pick Watership Down as one of the quintessential examples of Silkpunk.

I am just never going to forget that Urban Fantasy post. Never.

However, this particular post about Silkpunk starts off by declaring that not every Asia-themed fantasy is Silkpunk, which seems uncontroversial. I mean, “punk” implies a very specific … something. What does “punk” imply to you?

Because Steampunk was the first subgenre that used “punk” this way, I think of everything with “punk” in the title as having a sort of 19th Century aesthetic tone, probably a rather gritty 19th Century tone. I think of steam powered mechanisms, even if the “punk” term is transferred to a different prefix, as in Silkpunk. That is, I think of fantasy novels in any sort of —-punk as being heavy on mechanical stuff in the setting. Big, clunky mechanical stuff, with gears. I’m not surprised by guns and railroads either. That’s quite different from a medieval setting with nothing higher tech than swords and wagon wheels.

So how about Silkpunk? I think my vague feeling was: Steampunk in an Asian-flavored setting, eg, Kristoff’s Stormdancer, which, I regret to say, I personally found unreadable despite the very promising inclusion of a griffin. But it’s Silkpunk, or it’s what I think of as Silkpunk.

So what does this Book Riot post say is Silkpunk? (Let’s assume: probably not Watership Down.)

Book Cover of  The Grace of Kings

In the long history of speculative and SFF genres, silkpunk is pretty new. It was invented by Ken Liu to describe his 2015 novel The Grace of Kings. Liu coined the term, and  to delve into its definition. Liu’s post begins with: “No, [silkpunk is] not “Asian-flavored steampunk.” No, it’s not “Asian-influenced fantasy.” No, it’s not…

Oh! Okay, well, I’m willing to accept that, but then I do think “Silkpunk” is a rather unfortunate choice of descriptor. I don’t think it’s quite reasonable to call a book by that term and then expect anything other than a guess that the book is in fact Asian-flavored steampunk. Let me click over and see what Ken Liu says Silkpunk actually is …

The vocabulary of the technology language relies on materials of historical importance to the people of East Asia and the Pacific islands: bamboo, shells, coral, paper, silk, feathers, sinew, etc. The grammar of the language puts more emphasis on biomimetics–the airships regulate their lift by analogy with the swim bladders of fish, and the submarines move like whales through the water. The engineers are celebrated as great artists who transform the existing language and evolve it toward ever more beautiful forms. … the “-punk” suffix in this case is functional. The silkpunk novels are about rebellion, resistance, re-appropriation and rejuvenation of tradition, and defiance of authority, key “punk” aesthetic pillars.

Ah! I like this idea a lot. Steampunk = a strong technological aesthetic based on 19th Century Europe; Silkpunk = a strong technological aesthetic based on a different, non-European, technological heritage. I think I’m inclined to withdraw my objection and agree that this is a pretty neat definition of a sub-sub-genre called Silkpunk.

I will note, with regret, that I also found The Grace of Kings unreadable. I liked the idea of it, but, hmm, let me see. Oh, yes, I remember why this book didn’t work for me. The story starts with two characters, boys or young men: the brave, physically competent jock and the wimpy, non-physically-competent non-jock. These two protagonists are presented in such simplistic ways that I lost interest after a chapter and a half. I realize a lot of readers loved this novel. I just couldn’t get into it, and well, there are a lot of other books out there, so I didn’t keep plugging away at this one.

Let’s go back to the Book Riot post … Oh! This is very interesting:

Celestial Matters is a book in which Aristotelian physics and Chinese qi theory are both factual descriptions of metaphysics in their respective parts of the world. It’s not a character-centered book, but it’s really interesting and fun for the worldbuilding. I should re-read it.

A few other books are mentioned at the linked post, so click through if you’re interested. Personally, I think I probably prefer Asian-inspired fantasy that is NOT Silkpunk. For example.

Under Heaven is hard to beat. I don’t think it’s flawless — I thought it needed another hundred pages at the end rather than a long epilogue, and one plot thread disappeared, which was disappointing, as I was interested in that thread. But it’s utterly beautiful. Unlike in The Grace of Kings, I found the characters deeply engaging from the first moments; unlike Stormdancer, I found the world immersive and real.

I’ve loved a lot of Asian-set fantasy novels. It would be easy to do a top ten list of my favorites. Maybe I’ll do that shortly.

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Knowing your narrator

Interesting post at Writer Unboxed: Knowing Your Invisible Narrator

So we’ve got this whole “third-person narration” thing. You know it already. It’s that “he/she/they” thing instead of the “I/me/we” thing. The narrator isn’t the protagonist or (usually) any of the playing characters, and so the narrator is kind of floating above everybody’s heads, nonexistent, as lives are lived. …

I would argue, vehemently, that in a close third-person narrative, you can indeed consider the protagonist the narrator. In that style of third-person, the reader is aware of the emotional reactions of the protagonist, sees and reacts to the world from the protagonist’s perspective, is limited to what the protagonist knows about the world, and so on. This is all exactly like a first-person narrative.

In close third person, we read paragraphs like:

Turned out, getting shot and then having a huge hole torn through your guts was a great way to get just soaked with blood. Even after the mogui took the injuries, the blood was still there, saturating the rags of Tommy’s shirt, his jeans, even his shoes, somehow. Blood was okay, great even, if it was somebody else’s blood, and if it didn’t make too much of a mess. This was definitely a mess. No wonder these other black dogs didn’t want him in their clean car. It was a nice car. Upholstered seats. Gray upholstery that’d show blood real well. Tommy kept his head bowed because Ethan was glowering at him. Probably thinking that if he just killed Tommy after all, he could leave the body right here and not get any kind of mess in that nice car.

The other two black dogs would do whatever Ethan wanted. That was obvious. Don was stronger than Ethan; Rip was close, but a little stronger; Tommy could feel that, or his mogui could feel it. Didn’t matter, though. Ethan was for sure the one calling the shots. Because he was Grayson Lanning’s nephew and Grayson Lanning was Master of Dimilioc, yeah. Tommy got how that worked. He wasn’t going to make a single move that might make Ethan mad, not if he could avoid it. He bowed his head a little lower.

This is the opening of Tommy’s story for the new Black Dog collection coming out this fall. (I presume it’s coming out then, even if, no, not every story is written for it yet.) Anyway, this story is finished, though I expect I’ll wind up fiddling with it a bit. The point is, this is close third and so the reader is right with Tommy, and will be through the whole story.

In distant third person, I guess one might consider the narrator to be some invisible person who isn’t the protagonist. This is the style where the author writes, “Tommy thought that … it occurred to Tommy … it seemed to Tommy that …” and so on

In the real world, this is more complicated than the above distinction makes it seem, because as a rule, an author moves from close to more distant and back again depending on the scene. Not all the time, though. CJ Cherryh generally writes in close third all the way through her books. Perhaps there are some exceptions, but that’s the rule for CJC.

A writer who starts a book as the Instructor Bruno mystery starts may be sticking to more distant third most of the time. I mean, let’s look again at the opening paragraph:

On a bright May morning, so early that the last of the mist was still lingering low over a bend in the Vézère River, a white van drew to a halt on the ridge that overlooked the small French town. A man climbed out, strode to the edge of the road and stretched mightily as he admired the familiar view of St. Denis. The town emerged from the lush green of the trees and meadows like a tumbled heap of treasure; the golden stone of the buildings, the ruby red tiles of the rooftops and the silver curve of the river running through it. The houses clustered down the slope and around the main square of the Hôtel de Ville where the council chamber, its Mairie, and the office of the town’s own policeman perched above the thick stone columns that framed the covered market. The grime of three centuries only lately scrubbed away, its honey-colored stone glowed richly in the morning sun.

“A man climbed out.” That’s as distant as you can get. The reader is most definitely not sharing this person’s perspective at all. You could consider the narrator an invisible person standing back from this scene, describing it to the reader.

I don’t, as a rule.

The linked post about invisible narrators goes on:

You, as the author, need to make sure you know who your narrator is and what they’re up to.

Since I’ve never thought about who my invisible narrator is, I don’t agree. Usually I stay in fairly close third most of the time — more so in more recent novels of mine, I think — and perhaps that is why the above assertion seems so odd to me. But it does seem odd.

Ask yourself:

Who is your narrator? (e.g. age, identity, experiences, likes and dislikes, personality)?How are they related to the book? (Do they have any personal stakes here? Some sort of emotional connection? Why or why not?)Why are they the one telling the story? (What is their authority, wisdom, or right to do so?)

And so on. The author is supposed to figure out this stuff in order to handle the narrator as a separate entity from the protagonist. I mean, seriously, this seems SO WEIRD. I have never pondered these questions. Never.

To me, it seems as though the post is confusing third with omniscient. Or something.

I will add that for me personally, this sort of question is much more relevant for FIRST person, not third. Yes, of course, in first person, the protagonist is telling the story. But when? And to whom? And why? For ME, getting those questions sorted out is much more important than thinking about some non-protagonist narrator in third-person narratives.

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I’m thinking about the cover for Keraunani

Okay, so, I sent the story to the very first of first readers, which is (a) exciting! and (b) a bit nerve-wracking. Hopefully it will essentially work for them. Then I will fiddle with it, then a couple more of you will see it.

No rush, because I will probably aim for, say, January of next year to bring this out. That’s ample time. However, I can ask the artist to start working on the cover art any time. Except — hmm.

Tuyo — a white tiger

Ryo mentioned white tigers and occasionally someone or other referred to white tigers and white tigers are spectacular and eye-catching, so this was easy.

Nikoles — a wolf

No wolves appeared in the story, but after all, tension with the Ugaro was the main problem, and Ugaro, wolves, it seemed reasonable.

Tarashana — a white eagle

I actually wrote the eagle into the story after asking for the cover to include a white falcon or golden eagle or something of the sort. Then I adjusted the story to make the white eagle more important after the cover was finalized.

Keraunai — what?

Well, what should it be? No animals are referred to in the story. After I decide on the cover image, I may go back and add a couple references to whatever animal. In fact, that’s quite likely. As the story is basically a romance, I’m thinking two animals. But what would suit a story from Esau’s point of view? You’ve all met Esau, though you’ll get to know him a lot better in this novel. Still, since you’ve met him, does anything come to mind?

So far I’m musing upon: two crows, or perhaps two foxes. Not red foxes. The summer country is not as much like Europe as people may have guessed from what we saw in Tuyo. The borderlands are relatively cool and get a good deal of rain, but as you move farther south, that is not the case. I don’t want to use an animal that is obviously European or American. I’d rather use a much less familiar fox species. Swift foxes and kit foxes don’t look at all like wolves and don’t look a lot like coyotes, so perhaps those. But either could be mistaken for a jackal, and I was thinking of a jackal for Tasmakat, for obvious reasons. But I could use a fox or even a jackal for Keraunani and then might use something else for that one; perhaps a cheetah. If I decided to do that, I could put cheetahs into the story, which might be fun.

Or perhaps something else. Crows, foxes, and jackals are all clever, but none of them are, you know, brawlers. But then what? The only thing that actually comes to mind is a molosser breed of dog, such as a cane corso. Which I could put into the story. Not by that name, obviously. But there could perfectly well be unexaggerated mastiff types of dogs all over the place as guard dogs and I just haven’t mentioned them before because they’re more common farther south in the summer country, or something.

If anybody has any ideas about the cover animal for Keraunani, I’d love to hear it.

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Don’t worry about finding your voice (?)

Interesting post over at Jane Friedman’s blog: Find Your Topic, Not Your Voice

In setting out to become a writer, you must strive, above all, to discover your unique voice. At least, that’s become the conventional wisdom, taught in MFA programs as well as in more casual settings, from writers group meetings at Starbucks to free classes taught in the stuffy backroom of your local library. Yet there is so much wrong with this advice that, if you spend even one full minute giving it serious thought, your eyes will roll heaven-ward all on their own like Where even to begin? …

…All over the world, people’s drawers bulge with unpublishable novels, essays collections and memoirs in which there’s plenty of voice, yet no story, no real through-line, no sense of one’s audience beyond the assumption that they’re there. …

… Most readers don’t give a crap about fancy prose—it’s far from their foremost concern. … So, topic over voice, friend! Content > tone! Subject ahead of approach!

Besides, when you get your topic right, all your obsessive weirdness comes to the fore, starting to work for you for once. You enter flow, and suddenly, the awful pain of writing drops away. You fly, weightless, freed for a GD moment from the grind, and the prose pours out of you, your voice just showing up on the page like some welcome, expected guest, or like a free dessert. It’s freaking magic. Or at least worth trying, anyway.

Okay, this was an intriguing post, but I believe I disagree with it. Or I disagree with most of it. You may want to click through and read the whole thing and see what you think. I was sort of on board until this author started to equate “voice” with “fancy prose.” Or, no, really, I think I was sort of okay with this argument except that the emphasis on topic implies that research on a topic should come first, and then the author of this post — let me see, her name is Catherine Baab-Muguira — anyway, she says that explicitly.

Pick a topic that fascinates you, or learn about a topic until it fascinates you.Lead with research. Google your subject to see what’s out there. Begin to gain a sense of whether an audience already exists.Bring that topic to the world.

That’s what she says! I think that sounds like a peculiar way to write a novel, though a fine way to write about the evolutionary history of canids or whatever. But in the latter case, you should be aiming for a PhD and then a tenure track position and a career in the field. As a general rule, people don’t just research a topic like that and then sit down a write a book about it. A blog, maybe. There was a guy in the UK somewhere writing great posts about parakeet color genetics a long time ago. I’ve lost that url and don’t remember his name, but those were fantastic posts. I don’t see that site turning up immediately via google, unfortunately.

Anyway, my point is, starting with research first and then writing a novel sounds like a great way to fall down the research rabbit hole and never get to the novel. Maybe Baab-Muguira doesn’t write fiction? Or maybe she writes historicals or something very research-heavy?

But!

I don’t completely disagree with the idea of backing off from this emphasis on voice.

When I say that, I’m thinking of “voice” as “writing style plus consistent themes,” which may not be what everyone considers to be “voice.” An author’s style is so likely to change considerably from one book to another that there’s no way to just go voice=style, though you do see that definition. I think “style plus consistent themes” is closer.

So, then, I think it’s worth considering whether anybody, or at least whether many people, can or will develop a unique writing style by thinking about voice and poking at voice and wondering “Is this my voice?” I would say, forget about your voice and just write the story. You’ll write it the best way you can, and that will necessarily include writing in your own voice, and there you go. Your style may change and develop and you may shift toward or away from certain themes as you continue to write novels, but regardless, you’ll still be writing in your very own voice because that’s the only way you can write. You don’t have to worry about that at all.

The above may not apply if you’ve got the amazing talent to fall into someone else’s voice and write books in their style with, perhaps, their characters, as withthe best Star Trek novels. I can’t do that at all, so I tend to forget that might be possible and then I remember and go, right, yeah, some writers may actually be able to do that. In that case, I guess I’d say, you should still forget about developing your unique voice and concentrate on developing your unique characters and setting and plot. Go right ahead and write in a style and with themes similar to someone else. That’s fine. You may shift, probably will shift, toward a different style and different themes as you go along and that’s fine too.

Regardless, I would hardly suggest starting with a topic. What does that even mean? Does that mean you decide you want to write about alcoholism, so you decide to write a novel set during Prohibition, and then you come up with a plot about making moonshine, and then characters, and then you write the story? That seems so utterly backward!

I’d suggest starting with characters and a scene. Because of course I would. That’s how I start. But that means I think that’s a fine way of starting a novel, a way that can work.

The real advice for real people would probably be more like this: start wherever works for you and write the novel in whatever way works for you. Put a lot of words in a row and get the story written. If you want to write fiction, definitely don’t focus so much on research that you don’t get around to writing the novel. Get that sucker written and then write three more books and by that time, I bet you will have developed a voice that is uniquely yours.

Or at least you’ll have learned not to worry as much about it.

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Killing Pets: Yes or No

For me, of course, the question of whether the author should kill a pet during the story is a no-brainer. No.

One really big plus of the frame story in Kingfisher’s The Twisted Ones is that we know the coonhound survives because of the way the story is introduced. That’s not just me. I noticed lots of comments on Twitter saying, Well, Ursula would never kill the dog, so I’m fine with reading the story.

I thought everyone knew better than to kill pets in their stories, but I guess some authors like to be edgy.

So that’s why this post at Kill Zone Blog caught my attention: Book Blurbs and Pets

She asked if I would read one of her debut author’s upcoming releases and provide a one-or-two-sentence “blurb.” She said it was a romantic suspense, which is a genre I’m familiar and comfortable with. …

But then … about ¾ of the way through the book … The protagonist, who by now had received threatening emails and phone calls, came home to find a box on her doorstep. Upon opening it, she discovered the mutilated body of a cat. Not just any cat, but a stray she’d semi-adopted.

Ugh. Three-quarters of the way through, too, so the reader is perhaps either less inclined to throw the book away or madder because she put more time into reading it and now is turned off.

At this point, I asked a couple of my best-selling authors of romance and romantic suspense friends what they thought. I knew my editor wanted my quote to appear in the soon-to-be-published book, but I was very uncomfortable putting my name on a book that would likely anger readers.

That’s a new take on the problem — would you be comfortable putting a laudatory quote on the cover of a book if you knew readers would be mad about some element of the plot? For me: maybe. If you knew readers would be mad because the author killed a pet? For me: probably not.

But here’s a comment at the post that strikes me as a bit odd:

Won’t read a book if I know an animal dies – won’t watch a movie with it. Kill a million people? I’m in. Just don’t hurt the innocent.

Uh, a lot of those million people are also innocent, right? I mean … right? So I don’t think that’s the right way to put it.

I don’t even think that this is a person/pet dichotomy as such. When a million people die in a novel, those people are faceless hordes. Everyone gets killed in a zombie apocalypse, well, nearly all of them are faceless extras in the story. A pet is different. If someone kills a dog, that’s up close in the scene. It feels much more personal.

But that’s not exactly it either, because secondary human characters can die without hitting the “I can’t believe she KILLED A DOG!” emotion.

On the other hand, triggering the “I can’t believe she KILLED THAT CHARACTER!” reaction can also be very strong. I think — not just a personal reaction, but what I think is objective judgment — that it was a mistake for Suzanne Collins to kill Prim at the end of The Hunger Games. I realize this cannot have been a spur-of-the-moment decision. I know she must have thought it out six ways from Sunday. Regardless, after due consideration, I think that death was gratuitous and offensive and did not fill a need of the plot. That was one of two elements that bothered me about the ending.

Okay! For me:

Do not kill a dog, ever.Right, also, while we’re on the subject, don’t kill a cat either.Think twice before killing a child, unless you’re writing a murder mystery.Writing a murder mystery is not sufficient reason to kill a dog. Just don’t do that.Secondary characters should not be killed gratuitously.But sure, kill teeming millions, that’s fine. Not very emotionally affecting unless you set it up properly, either, so don’t think that just dropping a bomb on a population center will make your readers care.

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One Puppy is a Piece of Cake

Naamah is really happy we kept a puppy. (Morgan’s pretty okay with that too, but not as happy about it as Naamah).

Naamah’s expression may seem serious, but don’t believe that. She’s having a great time.

In some ways, Saffron is a certain amount of trouble. She did become less devilish and a bit more timid from six to eight week, which I’ve seen before, so I’m having to concentrate on socialization more than I’d hoped. She’s fine with people, which is good; she’s not reactive, which is good; but she’s a bit uncertain in new places. Pretty submissive too. This is all fine, it just means I’ll have to handle her carefully to bring her along and build her confidence.

However, in other ways, wow. This whole litter was very (very) easy to start with housetraining. Saffron herself has never had an accident. Eventually she’ll have to, so that I can tell her no and get that clear. But she is amazingly reliable for her age. I can say with authority that, if you raise puppies of the same breed, that are related, in the same home, with the same person handling training, then they’ll all become reliably housetrained between four and eleven months of age. The huge range reflects just plain individual variation. Sex of the puppy doesn’t matter. Season doesn’t matter, though you’d think it would. Nope. Just sheer individual variation. It’s great to have a litter that is all on the very easy end of this normal curve.

I brought Saffron downstairs to the bedroom to join the rest of us the same night the last of her siblings left us — I never leave a puppy alone in the puppy room. She was nine and a half weeks. She fussed just a bit (uneasy in new places, sigh), so I put her on the bed with me for half an hour. After she fell asleep, I settled her in a big crate with Naamah and she slept through the night. Now she’s comfortable downstairs with Naamah from the time we go down to the bedroom. She’s never woken me up at night.

I’ve started her on follow-me training and on leash training — I do both, separately. She’s doing fine with that, though she feels a leash is a strange and suspicious implement. She’s pretty much of the opinion that liver brownies are a good idea and make leashes more okay.

Anyway, very easy puppy, smoothly moving from early puppyhood into full integration into my family.

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Finished!

Okay, so, at the cost of letting other things slide a bit … but honestly not too much, considering long deadlines for other things I haven’t been working on … there’s plenty of time to get all this other stuff done … anyway:

I’ve finished the first draft of Keraunani, the next Tuyo series book. So, yay!

I shifted my attention to this because Tuyo series books are easier for me to work on than anything else when I’m distracted. Puppies were distracting. So I turned to Keraunani to kick myself back into a more productive mode, and that worked. That’s satisfying and it does make me feel like the year is under control as far as writing goes. It’s nice to think I hadn’t started this one at the beginning of the year and now it’s finished. That’s a real sense of accomplishment, even if I still need to do a certain amount of work to smooth this manuscript out before I send it to beta readers.

So, about Keraunani:

Yes, this is an offset book in the third person. It’s from Esau’s pov all the way through.

Keraunani, you may recall — or possibly you have forgotten — anyway, Keraunani is the woman about whom Esau casually said, sure, he’d marry her to get her out of trouble. He didn’t see why that would be any particular bother.

You may be unsurprised to find out that this decision created a certain amount of bother after all.

Like Nikoles, the other offset book, Keraunani is shorter than the main-series books. It’s going to be longer than Nikoles, though. That one was about 74,000 words, or novel-length if you pretend to believe that anything over 40,000 words is a novel, which is ridiculous in the real world. Or novel-length if you look at MG and YA novels. Or novel-length if you consider romances. (Short romances.) But it’s still very short. Keraunani is going to come out longer than that. This draft is pushing 90,000 words. I feel no particular need to trim it for the sake of trimming it, so it may lose a little length, but unless beta readers say No no, this section is boring, it’s probably going to keep most of the length it has right now. So this is a novel, not a novella, no matter how you define “novel.”

Nikoles is really two stories, as signified by putting Part I in front of the first 2/3 and Part II in front of the latter 1/3. I know that some readers didn’t like that, but honestly, I thought both moments were important to Nikoles — the initial part where he enters Lord Aras’ service and the second part where he confirms that decision after finding out that Aras is a sorcerer. I wanted to show both moments, so I butted them together within a quite brief period of time.

Keraunani is also two stories, but this time I handled that very differently. The first story is concurrent with Tarashana. The second story takes place eight or so years previously and involves other things, particularly Lalani’s early history with the talon, but from Esau’s point of view. I took both stories apart and braided them together, so chapters alternate. At the moment, I haven’t got the two different stories labeled; the chapters just alternate and there are cues in the first paragraphs to remind the reader which narrative we’re in at the moment. I might handle that some other way in the end; not sure. Anyway, the narrative with Lalani is not a romance and the narrative with Keraunani is. I’m really interested in the responses of first readers to all this. I like it myself. I think the two narratives support each other right now, and after I do a bit of fiddling, hopefully they will support each other even better.

It’s remarkable, by the way, how much of the ending of Keraunani’s narrative developed only within the last week and a half, two weeks. That always seems to happen — almost always — but it’s weird, as that stuff is really important, but I didn’t have any idea about it until I got to it.

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Novel openings: seven recent-ish fantasy novels

 Okay, one more look at the TBR shelves before I move on.

Now, these are different from the previous set. They’re all fantasy novels – pretty sure about that much – but these have all been published pretty recently, mostly in the past five years or so. The majority, I think I picked up at a World Fantasy Convention. The others – three – I picked up deliberately for one reason or another. I’ll sort them out in, oh, alphabetically by author this time. So:

1. Breath of Earth by Beth Cato, 2016

Ingrid hated her shoes with the same unholy passion she hated corsets, chewing tobacco, and men who clipped their fingernails in public. It wasn’t that her shoes were ugly or didn’t fit; it was the fact that she had to wear them at all.

In the meeting chambers of the Earth Wardens Cordilleran Auxiliary, she was the only woman, and the only one in shoes.

The men seated at the table wore fine black suits, most tailored to precision, and a few downright natty. If she glanced beneath the table, though, she would see two rows of white-socked feet.

Cloth fibers conducted the earth’s currents best; thick leather or rubberized soles dampened the effect. The wood floor was an excellent conductor, though plain ground was the best of all. Nearby double doors opened to the back garden. In the event of an earthquake, it would take a mere fifteen seconds for the mob of middle-aged and elderly men to bound outside for direct contact with the soil. Ingrid knew. She had timed the exercise more than once. As personal secretary to Warden Sakaguchi, she performed many vital functions for all five wardens – four in attendance today. A dozen senior adepts occupied the rest of the table.

Intriguing! Lively! This is very nice. Also, the cover is lovely.

2. Mystic by Jason Denzel, 2015

On the island of Moth, under a swollen moon, Pomella AnDone stormed out of her house, slamming the door behind her. She hurried, expecting Fathir’s yell to sound behind her. It was like waiting for thunder after a flash of lightning.

“You’re not a jagged noble!” he finally screamed from behind the door. “Cut your hair and know your place!”

Pomella knocked aside a half-made barrel and strode away from the house, not looking back. She snatched up a wicker basket and carried it under one arm past her flourishing garden. The hateful man could choke on gunkroot for all she cared. She’d grow her hair whatever length she wanted.

All around her, the villagers of Oakspring prepared for tonight’s Springrise festival. A cluster of men fed a young bonfire to push back the darkening night. A swarm of children chased one another, leaving behind frazzled mhathirs trying to bundle them up. Pomella ignored everyone and headed toward the forest.

The bustle of village activity faded as she hiked to a nearby hill on the edge of the Mystwood. Comforting silence greeted her as she passed the tree line. The rushing flow of the Creekwaters sang to her from the far side of the hill, down in the thicket.

Not as good, in my opinion. Not as intriguing a setting, not as lively a voice – this is a good contrast between a lively voice in the first sample, versus lively action here. This woman is doing stuff – at least, striding along energetically rather than sitting at a table – but her individual voice doesn’t come through nearly as strongly. I’m not interested in her. There’s practically nothing of the world here either, whereas the worldbuilding was intriguing right from the start in the first selection. The sentences also aren’t as nicely put together in this one. Nothing’s incorrect, but it’s not a particularly appealing writing style.

3. Journey Across the Hidden Isles by Sarah Beth Durst, 2017

Don’t fall, don’t fall, oh no, I’m going to fall …

Crouching, Ji-Lin raised her sword over her head. She counted to thirty and then straightened to standing, without falling. Slowly, she lifted one foot to her knee. Her other foot was planted on the top of a pole, on the roof of the Temple of the Sun, at the top of a mountain.

Sweat tickled the back of her neck under her braid. She was supposed to be calm, like a bird on a breeze or a leaf in summer or some other very calm nature image she could never quite remember. But she felt too jittery, as if all her muscles were vibrating.

If she passed this test, she’d be one step closer to being like the heroes of the tales she loved.

She’s also be one step closer to her sister.

Tomorrow was her and her twin’s twelfth birthday, and if she passed this test, then maybe, maybe she’d be allowed to spend the day with her. They could steal a lucky orange from the palace kitchen and climb the spires and watch the gondoliers steer through the canals …

I have to be in the right mood for a MG story. This child reads very young. She’s going to fail the test, I just know it. Storms of tears, then she’ll do something, probably something stupid. Trouble will ensue, and the story will proceed from there. (This is all a guess; I haven’t flipped ahead.)

On the other hand, this is actually a quite good novel opening. Some other very calm nature image she could never quite remember. That’s funny! Does that line read a little old for this girl? Even if it does, it’s a fun line. I love it. Plus I already know I like many of Durst’s books. Not all of them, and it’s hard for me to pin down why some of hers work for me and some don’t. But I’m usually willing to give anything of hers a try. Plus the flying lion on the cover looks wonderful. When I read this story, I’ll be waiting impatiently for the lion to show up.

4.  Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley, 2015

My history is hospitals.

This is what I tell people when I’m in a mood to be combination funny and stressful, which is a lot of the time.

It’s easier to have a line ready than to be forced into a conversation with someone whose face is showing “fake nice,” “fake worry,” or “fake interest.” My preferred method is as follows: make a joke, make a half-apologetic/half-freaky face, and be out of the discussion in five seconds flat.

Aza: “Nothing is really majorly wrong with me. Don’t worry. I just have a history of hospitals.”

Person in Question, “Er. Um. Oh. I’m so sorry to hear that. Or, wait, glad. You just said nothing’s really wrong with you! Glad!”

Aza (freaky face intensifying): “It’s incredibly nice of you to ask.”

Subtext: It isn’t. Leave it.

People don’t usually ask anything after that.

Very strong voice. This is the only first-person narrative in this selection of novels. It’s very engaging, though I’m not at all sure I like the protagonist. But maybe I will soon! She sounds very cynical, which is not necessarily a criticism, by the way. This is very easy to read. I’d definitely turn pages.

Also, that is a stunning cover. Just lovely.

5. The Tiger’s Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera, 2017

Empress Yui wrestles with her broken zither. She’d rather deal with the tiger again. Or the demons. Or her uncle. Anything short of going north, anything short of war. But a snapped string? One cannot reason with a snapped string, nor can one chop it in half and be rid of the problem.

When she stops to think on it – chopping things in half is part of why she’s alone with this stupid instrument to begin with. Did she not say she’d stop dueling? What was she thinking accepting Rayama-tun’s challenge? He is only a boy.

And now he’ll be the boy who dueled One-Stroke Shizuka, the boy whose sword she cut in half before he managed to draw it. That story will haunt him for the rest of his life.

The Phoenix Empress, Daughter of Heaven, The Light of Hokkaro, Celestial Flame – no, she is alone, let her wear her own name – O-Shizuka pinches her scarred nose. When was the last day she behaved the way an Empress should?

I sort of like this and I sort of don’t. I like the first paragraph, but I have to say, I’m not immediately sympathetic to the poor, poor empress who is apparently also an amazing duelist and has such terrible troubles. I could find her more likeable depending on how this story develops, but my initial reaction is kind of: Get a grip. And also: Don’t be mean to that kid who challenged you.

Well, we’ll see. I feel like I saw comments about this title everywhere a few years ago when it came out. If any of you have read it, I’d be very interested in your reactions. That goes for all of these books, of course, but I think this one might have been higher profile than some of the others.

6. Dreamdark Blackbringer by Laini Taylor, 2007

The wolf tasted the babe’s face with the tip of his tongue and pronounced her sweet, and the fox licked the back of her head to see if it was so. For the rest of her life, when this child grew into a faerie with bright eyes and a laugh as loud and unladylike as a crow’s, that spot on her hair would never lie flat. And though she wouldn’t remember the night the creatures had gathered round to look at her and taste and smell her, she would call those unruly hairs her foxlick, without knowing why.

The branches overhead thrummed with birds. They would wait their turn but they wouldn’t be quiet about it. No matter. The creatures weren’t worried about being interrupted by faeries. The imp had smuggled the babe far from home, floating her down Misky Creek on a linden leaf so that this unusual starlight gathering would draw no unwanted notice. The creatures had her for the night, and by morning she would be back snug in her cradle with no one the wiser.

Oh, this is nice. Laini Taylor is an excellent writer. I really enjoyed her Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, even though it’s loaded with angst. This looks good. This beginning is just as good as the one by Charles de Lint in the earlier selection of older titles, even though it’s quite different.

I haven’t yet read Taylor’s Strange the Dreamer either. I really want to read that someday.

7. Heartstone by Elle Katherine White, 2016

I’d never seen an angry hobgoblin before.

If this one weren’t my friend, it might’ve been funny. Tobble was red in the face before I noticed him in the grass by the garden wall, and since hobgoblins have green skin, that in itself was quite a feat.

“Tobble, what’s wrong?” I asked in Low Gnomic, or what could’ve passed as Gnomic if I hadn’t butchered it with my Arlean accent. The earthy words used by hobgoblins and other garden creatures sounded heavy and awkward on my human tongue, and Tobble had often despaired of my pronunciation. Today, however, he was too distraught to notice.

“Lord Merybourne has hired Riders, Aliza. Five of them! Do you know what that means?” He said. His head, which was round and homely as a potato, came halfway up my shin and he clutched handfuls of his mossy hair as I knelt next to him. “We’re doomed! Doomed, I say!”

A bit tongue-in-cheek, don’t you think? That’s certainly my impression. If I remember correctly, I think this is supposed to be rather Jane-Austen-ish, but with dragons. And hobgoblins, apparently. I don’t get drawn in instantly, I’m not super interested in why everyone is doomed, doomed! But I’d turn the page, sure. This is nicely written, just not as immediately compelling as some of the others.

Out of this selection … hmm. I think I’m most likely to leave Magonia upstairs to hopefully read soon. That’s not exactly because of the beginning. I’ve just wanted to get to that book for quite a while.

I’ll probably read the first chapter of Mystic first, though, in order to move it to the give-away pile promptly if I decide I don’t really like it enough to read it.

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Creating villains

A post at Fantasy Faction: HOW TO CREATE FANTASY VILLAINS

Fantasy villains. Either you love them or you hate them, but good villains are memorable either way. However, writing good villains is hard! I know. I’ve written two fantasy books out through Desert Palm Press and the whole time I was writing, I kept going back to the villains. Why was the big bad, the big bad? What were their motivations, and did they make sense? I struggled with it, honestly, and I feel like every fantasy writer has similar questions. Hence, this post!

…A villain can be anyone—the leader of a rival magical cult, a super smart dragon trying to stop your main character from getting to their destination, or an opposing character trying to destroy that specific magical artifact. It’s your job as the writer to make them interesting and unique. Make them believable. Your readers don’t necessarily need to like the villain, but you want the readers to understand them. 

This is interesting to me because:

a) I don’t usually find villains interesting.

b) I don’t generally focus on understanding the villain or getting my readers to understand the villain.

c) Yep, sometimes a review dings one of my books because the reviewer didn’t find the villain interesting either.

However, despite (c), I think it’s perfectly fine to go for a villain who is mysterious and creepy, like Lilianne in The City in the Lake. Anybody can see she’s after power, but mostly she’s just creepy. I think that works fine for her.

Also, sometimes I don’t really see the antagonists as villains. That can actually work a lot better for me, as when I set up the griffins as antagonists to humans in the second Griffin Mage book. Well, kind of in the whole trilogy. Not that the reader necessarily understands the griffins. They’re not human, after all. But when the king of Casmantium tries to annex a chunk of another country, everyone can understand that. I don’t exactly think of him as a villain. An antagonist, yes.

Anyway, as a reader, I … still mostly don’t care about the villains. That’s why I tend to skim through villain pov scenes and chapters. I don’t particularly want to know all about the villain’s backstory and motivations. Especially if those motivations are petty, selfish, and just generally unpleasant to read about. I don’t want to know all about the villain’s machinations either. I’m fine with being surprised, along with the protagonist, when a trap closes.

When I was reading some of the early Game of Thrones novels, I skimmed over Cercei’s pov chapters. Later, I began skipping Jamie’s pov chapters. After that I quit reading the books. I don’t know whether that’s because everyone started looking like a villain, but you know what, that could be why.

Let me see. All right, I’m going to use Kate Elliot’s (excellent) Spiritwalker trilogy to sum up how I feel about villains versus antagonists:

We have four antagonists in this trilogy. I mean, four main antagonists.

Camjiata, who thinks he would make an excellent emperor.The master of the wild hunt, who is a scary, scary entity. Inhuman and casually cruel.The mansa of Four Moons House, who is certain that nobility, such as himself, are important, while the trivial needs of peasants need not be considered.James Drake, who is self-centered — actually just plain selfish to the nth degree. Cruel in petty ways. Outrageously unpleasant in a normal way.

Although Camjiata is important to the plot, we seldom see him and he leaves relatively little impression. I guess we might have found out something about his backstory, but I don’t remember it.

The Master of the wild hunt is like a force of nature more than a villain. There’s just no point talking about his motivations and backstory and all of that. That would be like talking about the motivations and backstory of a storm or supervolcano.

The mansa of Four Moons House is actually almost sorta kinda sympathetic. I mean, by the end. I liked him a lot. We don’t know a lot about his backstory; nor do we need to. He’s a great character who’s sketched into the story in economical strokes that let us understand him as a person without necessarily applauding his attitudes. I’d have been fine with more of him in the story. I didn’t mind spending time with him.

James Drake repelled me more strongly every time he stepped on stage. HE is the kind of villain I least want to spend time with. He didn’t get pov scenes — the whole thing is from Cat’s point of view. I would have skipped any scenes from Drake’s pov, that’s for sure. Ugh. Maybe Kate Elliot knows a lot about his backstory, but either she didn’t share that with the reader or she did but I skipped over it because I didn’t care. Regardless, you don’t need to know much about Drake other than what he’s doing and saying during the story. That’s plenty to know what kind of person he is. UGH.

For someone interested in creating villains, this would be a good trilogy to read because of how very different each of the four main antagonists is from all the others.

Also, the troodons. Those are really cool.

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Making Book Recommendations

Here’s a post at Book Riot that caught my eye:

I DON’T KNOW YOU: DON’T ASK ME FOR BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

That seems harsh. I mean, realistic, but still harsh. Let’s look at the context:

… small talk plus a reading hobby equals the inevitable question, “got any book recommendations for me?” or “read anything good lately?” And it’s meant well. It’s a natural progression of the topic of conversation. But, I can’t be the only one who dreads questions like that, can I?

Well, “dread” seems like a strong word. This looks to me like an invitation to continue the small-talk-getting-acquainted thing by saying, “Well, I don’t know, what do you like?” or “I read mostly fantasy and mysteries and romances, do you read any of those?” or, “Sure, I’ve got ten thousand recommendations — what’s a book you recently loved?”

If the person turns out to like fantasy and romances, there you go, recommend Sharon Shinn or whoever leaps to mind for that sort of story. If the person turns out to like only nonfiction, maybe you also like that nonfiction topic and can spend the next hour talking about, I don’t know, the Indus River civilization or whatever.

The worst that can happen is that the person tells you in detail about the plot of a book you hated, but whatever, this is small talk, just nod and smile and murmur politely and after a decent interval, shift the topic to work or hobbies or (generally my choice when possible) pets. Practically everyone with a pet is happy to talk about the pet.

Anyway, this post then goes on:

First, I’m one of those “bad” readers who can’t remember books after I finish them. Like, seriously! In my brain and immediately out. I can remember titles, usually, but there are countless books on my Goodreads that I can’t remember a single detail from. On many occasions, I read a book for a second time without realizing I had already read it. 

And I skidded to a halt.

Okay. Does anyone here have that happen? I mean, not a book you read 30 years ago and now you don’t remember anything except a vague impression that the protagonist was a thief and that the cover was blue. I mean, books you read, say, this past July. In your brain and immediately out. No memory of the book. Yes?

Because, no. This is one of those areas of human experience that I trip over and think, Seriously?

I stalled out at this point in the linked post and just thought about being an avid reader / who does not remember anything at all about a book immediately after having read it. I’m having trouble believing in this. Not that I don’t believe the author of this post. I’m just having trouble believing in it.

Anyway, that stopped me.

As far as book recommendations go, that does happen on Quora. Can you recommend a good book? What books do you recommend? Lots of people answer those questions. While it’s fine to talk up a book you love to random strangers, it does seem more practical to ask in return, What books do you already know you like?

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