Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 148

A book review podcast

So, just pointing out this podcast, called A Good Story is Hard to Find. Long, thoughtful book reviews of a wide variety of books and movies, about an hour in length. Nice, calm podcast to listen to while walking the dogs.

Also, as you may have suspected, the podcasters (is that the term?), Scott and Julie, happened to have reviewed TUYO for their first podcast of the year. It’s a great review. You can bet I immediately downloaded various other episodes — including one that reviews Paladin of Souls and one that reviews Watership Down.

I’m particularly interested in listening to or reading good reviews of books I have already read and love — does anybody else feel that way? — But once I trust that a reviewer’s taste is more or less compatible with mine, I do go on to read reviews of books that I haven’t read. Or in this case, listen.

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Top Five List for 2020

I really, honestly read very few new-to-me books in 2020. I’m not sure exactly how few, because I didn’t keep track. If I were guessing, I would say I might have read as few as fifty books last year. That may be overstating how few, but way, way down from an ordinary year, no question about that. Since I read fewer than half as many books as I ordinarily would, I’m doing half of a Top Ten List for 2020; thus, a Top Five List.

As you know, when I did read new-to-me books, I was largely interested in stories where nothing terrible happened. That may bias the following list to some degree, but honestly, not too much. These are stories I would have loved in any year. I’m listing them in chronological order by when I read them.

1) One Night in Boukos.

The riotous Psobion festival is about to begin in the city of Boukos, and the ambassador from the straightlaced kingdom of Zash has gone missing. Ex-soldier Marzana, captain of the embassy guard, and the ambassador’s secretary, the shrewd and urbane eunuch Bedar, are the only two who know.

Here’s my review of this lighthearted story with a serious undertone. As an added note, nothing terrible happens in this story.

2) Pyramids of London.

In a world where lightning sustained the Roman Empire, and Egypt’s vampiric god-kings spread their influence through medicine and good weather, tiny Prytennia’s fortunes are rising with the ships that have made her undisputed ruler of the air.

Here’s my review of this complicated murder mystery with the most incredibly baroque setting imaginable.

3. Network Effect.

When Murderbot’s human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.

Drastic action it is, then.

Here’s my very, very short review of this wonderful Murderbot novel.

4. From All False Doctrine.

Toronto, 1925: An ancient manuscript and a modern cult promise the secret to personal metamorphosis. An atheist graduate student falls in love with a priest. A shiftless musician jilts his fiancée and disappears. From All False Doctrine is a metaphysical mystery wrapped in a 1920s comedy of manners.

Here’s my review of this wonderful novel in which, by the way, nothing really terrible happens (at least not permanently). This is, as you may know, by the same author as the #1 entry above, though under a different name. I absolutely loved this book and read it straight through twice in quick succession. I didn’t care for the sequel as much, but I did enjoy that as well.

5. The Hands of the Emperor.

One day Cliopher invites the Sun-on-Earth home to the proverbially remote Vangavaye-ve for a holiday.

The mere invitation could have seen Cliopher executed for blasphemy.
The acceptance upends the world.

Here’s my short review of this novel, which was equally as wonderful as #4 (though very different) and which I also read straight through twice in succession. I know a lot of you have read this one recently and also loved it, and I hear the author is writing a direct sequel right now, so we’ll all want to keep an eye out for that!

So this Top Five list includes two long-time favorite authors — Andrea K Host and Martha Wells — but also two new-to-me authors. That’s fantastic. Nothing I love more than adding another name to my list of favorite authors! I discovered both Alice Degan and Victoria Goddard through commenters on this blog. Thank you so much for recommending them to me, and if any of you reads a book this year and thinks, “You know, this is just the kind of thing I bet Rachel would love,” by all means drop me a line about it! You all have the BEST taste in books!

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Finished!

So, today I finished what I will call the first draft of TARASHANA — meaning the first complete draft that I’m willing to show other people. I’ll be asking a few of you to take a look now and others later, after a round of comments and revision. Meanwhile, questions you might consider asking and anyway I feel like answering:

1) Is this a direct sequel to TUYO?

Yes. The story opens about a year and a half after TUYO closes.

2) Is TARASHANA as long as TUYO?

It’s even longer. I did quite a bit of trimming, after which it’s still 40,000 words longer.

3) Did you write it as fast as TUYO?

No. I doubt very much that I will ever again write a book as fast as I wrote TUYO. However, it was pretty fast, relatively speaking. Everything in this world is fast to write — so far — a trend that I certainly hope continues!

4) Does this story feature the same characters as TUYO?

Yes. To a remarkable degree. I managed to find fairly important roles for a bunch of characters I particularly like, although, I should add, by no means all of them. In fact, character proliferation presented a real challenge and I went to considerable trouble to reduce the number of characters as well. For example, in this draft, Esau moves entirely offstage after the first couple of scenes, largely to reduce the number of important characters.

5) But I like Esau! How could you?

I like Esau too. At this point, I’m planning a short, offset, third-person Book 4 that will show everyone some of Esau’s backstory and also what he’s up to during the events in TARASHANA. I can’t guarantee that’ll happen because every now and then I try to write a story that goes nowhere, but I am pretty sure I will write this one.

6) Are there important new characters?

Yes. I hope you like them.

7) Do we see a lot of Etta?

That depends on what you mean by “a lot.” It’s really hard to make every character central. You can basically take almost any secondary character from TUYO, put their name in here, and this will be the same answer.

8) Do terrible things happen to Ryo and Aras?

Yes. Sorry.

9) Do they get over it?

Um . . . yes? Let’s say there’s still a certain amount of room for “getting over it” at the end.

10) But they don’t, like, die or anything?

Amazingly enough, no, even though we do get to tour a certain part of the land of the shades.

11) Will there be another direct sequel?

Yes. In that one, we will go far south and see both the summer country in a lot more detail and the country south of the summer country. I’m not sure what the border on that side looks like. A river of fire? Of molten glass? A volcanic chasm? Feel free to offer ideas if any occur to you, because I haven’t really thought of anything that seems perfect yet. Definitely Sahara-style sand dunes on the other side — with really ENORMOUS oases.

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Is your writer’s block actually indecision?

From Jane Friedman’s blog: Is Your Writer’s Block Really Writer’s Indecision?

My instant reaction: Absolutely.

I’ve been stuck at 80,000 words or so for a particular SF novel for, I don’t know, it seems like practically forever and is certainly more than a year. Two years, maybe. I’ve written five to ten thousands more words several times, then deleted them. I have … six? … different versions that go in those different ways, all of which are wrong. I know they are wrong because I kept getting stuck. I’m not sure what the heck to do. This is the definition of “indecision.”

I do plan to get unstuck eventually because it’s driving me mad to have this much of a manuscript and then lock up and not finish it. I will most likely try to do that by leaping forward and writing a cool scene or three from the ending and then coming up with anything at all that will let me connect the the ending with the middle, then smoothing it out after I have SOMETHING. This would be easier if I knew what the ending was supposed to be in anything but the very broadest, vaguest terms.

A good many things are opaque to me, unfortunately, including not only the specifics of the ending but also the details of the secret plan of the pov protagonist AND the details of the secret plan of the other protagonist. I do know everybody has a secret plan; that part is quite definitely true.

Wow, am I stuck.

Anyway, let me see what this post says …

Now I am convinced that two things can hold me back (for years on some projects) and they are:

–not knowing the answers to crucial questions, and

–not knowing which questions were which in the first place.

Yep, this is sounding familiar. Lotta crucial questions I need to answer. Pretty sure I know which questions these are in my case. Like: What is he actually trying to achieve, and why? And, What are they trying to achieve, and why? Those are obviously pretty crucial questions.

Unless I can answer this, I can’t make progress. This question is like a wall I can’t get over without a ladder. If you are similarly stuck with your manuscript, attempt to identify these unanswered crucial questions.

Good advice for sure! I totally need to do that!

Okay, back to the linked post. Lots of different kinds of questions are delineated:

Crucial questions — I would say these are the ones that have to do with big motivations and intentions and conflicts.

Questions about consistency — “These questions shouldn’t hold you back because you can sort it out in the revision” — quite true, and that is why I boldface for continuity as I get close to the end of a manuscript. I don’t want to pause and do any checking or fixing; at that point, my whole attention is on finishing the draft as quickly as possible, after which I will scan back through for boldfaced words and phrases and fix this sort of thing.

Decisions disguised as questions — “Should I use Character B’s point of view in this scene? This translates into: I want to write some scenes from Character B’s point of view so I need to look again at my plan with this in mind, but it’s going to take me several days and I’d rather avoid it.”

Oh yeah, I’m very familiar with that one as well. “Should I replace this minor character with this other minor character?” Yes, but it’s going to be a pain and I’d rather avoid it.

Yes, this is very common. I nearly always leave this sort of thing until after the first draft is finished, but sometimes a particular thing I KNOW I need to fix bugs me so much I quit with forward progress and fix it.

Indecision masquerading as decisions — things like, whose viewpoint should this scene be in? Or where should this scene be set? This post says “just decide already.” I think that’s true. If you make a mistake, you can fix it later, but it’s probably better to risk making a mistake than let yourself get bogged down.

Problem questions — she means, how to get the plot to work out the way you want it to work out. I outline for this purpose. “Outline” is probably not the right term. I brainstorm/outline for this purpose. I rapidly type notes about “He does this because of that, and then this other thing, or maybe he does this because of that other reason.” Generally (not always) a couple paragraphs of this will help me sort out a minor plotting question. Big plotting questions are harder.

Sometimes I take the dogs for a walk, barring terrible weather. An hour of walking dogs while thinking about plotting problems usually helps. I worked out how to do the battle near the end of Tuyo while walking the dogs. I remember that because I was quite stuck when I started walking them and then I knew pretty much how to handle that scene by the time I finished walking the last set of dogs. I actually had no idea what any of the twists in that battle scene were going to be until I got there.

A couple other kinds of questions, plus more discussion, at the link. Click through if you’re interested! It’s quite a good post, though I really did pretty much know exactly why I was stuck on that one SF novel already. USUALLY all that big-scale stuff about plans and intentions and motivations is clear to me long before I get to this point. I think the real problem is that everybody’s plans are in fact secret and no one is talking about them, so I could put off figuring that out way, way too successfully.

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Recent reading: The Hands of the Emperor

Okay, so, this one is definitely going on my Top Two for 2020 list. In fact, I should take a stab at compiling a top ten list for 2020, just to see if that is possible. I read so few new-to-me books this year, it might be tricky. If I do a Top Whatever list at all, though, this book will certainly be on it. I read this as a reward for finishing the draft of Tarashana, and I am slowly re-reading it now.

900 pages, wow. And yet, I kept feeling mildly disappointed when the story skipped lightly over a couple years here or there. Definitely not too long. The pacing didn’t even seem slow, although actually I suppose it was.

Things to know about this story:

A) Nothing terrible happens. The story does become intense at times. Almost all the intensity has to do with relationships that are fundamentally becoming more solid over time.

B) The setting is superb. Want a story with a non-European setting? Here you go. Also, Goddard is magnificent with description.

C) No romance. Lots of friendships and lots (and lots) of family. Also, culture clash adds considerable complexity, another feature that is beautifully handled.

D) A fantastic main character. Cliopher is a genuine Great Man, who re-shapes the world over the course of the book. Unassailable integrity, diplomatic genius, vision, empathy, plus enough sheer nerve to invite the Sun-on-Earth to his home for a vacation.

E) A slowly unfolding backstory. A whole lot happened before this story opens. Cliopher is not a young man. We gradually hear more about his earlier life as we move forward in the main story. Goddard works all that backstory in so smoothly that it does not interfere with — in fact, enhances — the main storyline.

Overall conclusion: People, listen you have got to read this book.

Oh, fine, let me see. All right: if you love the Foreigner series, you have to try this. That’s the closest I can come. Except this one has fewer crises where anyone is shooting at anyone else.

Quibbles:

Suspension of disbelief gets a trifle strained here and there. In particular, Cliopher’s immediate family and closest friends remain unaware that he is the second most powerful man in the empire, even after:

The emperor personally says, in their hearing, that Cliopher is the most important figure in the government.Cliopher’s nephew starts working for him, and knows with total clarity that Cliopher is this important. Even after that, the nephew’s mother, Cliopher’s sister, does not realize this.Halfway through the book, that sister and Cliopher’s mother and others are visiting and the sister says, in dawning comprehension, “Cliopher! Are you RUNNING THE GOVERNMENT?” And a friend whoops with laughter and says, “Are you just now realizing that?” Yet,Years later, Cliopher’s best friends back home still don’t have any idea he is important.

At that point, you just have to let this important, central, crucial relationship-building plot point go because there’s no way to believe it. A fig leaf is offered to explain this. That doesn’t make the situation actually believable (at all) but it helps a little.

Despite that quibble, this is definitely a wonderful book. After I finish re-reading it, I will certainly go on with others of Goddard’s books. In fact, I can’t wait.

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Giving Octavia E Butler the covers she deserves

A post at Literary Hub: How to Give Octavia Butler the Covers She Deserves

Then there were challenges specific to Octavia E. Butler’s Patternist series. I’ve already mentioned the staggering scope of the series’ content, but there was also the difficulty of positioning. …

And the author of this post then discusses that, but I will sum it up briefly with what I personally think is the accurate description of the difficulty of positioning Butler’s work: she was, at the time of her death, moving from science fiction toward literary. This makes it hard for readers to know quite how to approach her earlier books, which were absolutely science fiction, especially if those readers kind of think literary is “better.”

There are multiple versions of the new covers at the linked post. It’s quite interesting to see how the concepts evolved from version to version. Here are the final versions.

I think these are really quite good! Very literary, yet holding on to something evocative of the stories. I like the cover for Wild Seed the best of these, but actually I think they are all good.

It’s been quite a while since I re-read anything of Butler’s. I know Fledgling kept coming up in posts here not that long ago, so really, I do want to re-read that one of these days. Of these four … hmm. Wild Seed is far and away my favorite. Patternmaster is far an away the weakest — you can really tell Butler wrote it early in her career. My actual favorites of Butler’s are the Oankali series, what is that actually called? The Lilith series? Oh, Lilith’s Brood series. Anyway, amazing books. The short story “Bloodchild” is one I’ve always loved and always remembered, too.

I’ve always been glad I picked up Survivor when it was first published. I know Butler wasn’t happy with it, but I’m glad to have read it and glad I can re-read it and it’s nearly impossible to get anymore. Used copies on Amazon start at well over $200 and go way up from there.

I’m sure you’ve all read all of Butler’s work, right? What was your favorite? Or least favorite?

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Managing multiple points of view

Here’s a post at Jane Friedman’s blog: How to Effectively Manage Multiple Narrators in Your Novel

This caught my eye because I generally have multiple point-of-view protagonists, but I don’t really think too much about managing this, it’s just how I (tend to) write. Let me see …

Winter of Ice and Iron has a bunch — more than usual. But actually, the much simpler City in the Lake also had more than two. So does House of Shadows.

Black Dog just has two, I’m pretty sure. After that, I think every Black Dog novel has more than two.

Each of the Griffin Mage novels has two. Or more. Two main pov protagonists, but I believe each of them may in fact have one or two minor pov characters as well.

The Mountain of Kept Memory has just two pov protagonists, I think. I’m pretty sure. The Floating Islands has just two.

What does that leave? I think only three:

The Keeper of the Mist has only one protagonist all the way through. I think. The White Road of the Moon definitely only has one protagonist.And, of course, Tuyo only has one protagonist.

That’s it. Three out of however many. My overall default is most definitely to switch from one character to another while building the early chapters and then braid their stories together until I get to the end. Obviously there are big advantages to having multiple pov protagonists. In particular, you can directly show the reader more stuff without having to invent far-seeing magic. I suppose there are disadvantages, in that the reader may not like switching from one character’s head to another or may actively dislike one of the characters, of find one of them boring. But I don’t really think multiple pov protagonists are hard to manage, as such.

Let’s see what the author of this post thinks:

This particular book, you see, was entirely first-person narration (“I did this, I did that, I thought this,” etc.) with a crucial tweak: multiple narrators. … But here’s the thing that kept bugging me: all the narrators sounded pretty identical. They didn’t have enough flavor to distinguish themselves, so I found myself continually flipping back to the beginning of the chapter to ensure I was imagining the right person telling the story in my head. That lack of distinct “voice” caused the multiple narrators to mix together.

Oh! Yes, that is indeed a problem. This can actually be a problem in third-person narratives too, if multiple pov protagonists use the same pronouns. It’s rather rare that someone actually calls someone else by name — actually, if you pay attention, you’ll see that this is surprisingly rare in real life in many normal social interactions, so making it happen in fictional dialogue often sounds strained. But I grant that this is (yet another) reason why first person narratives may present additional challenges.

I’ve read books where I had to flip back in the same way, and yes, I don’t like that either.

This post continues:

Everyone speaks a little differently—use this. For example, I say “ain’t” all the time at home, but not at work. I don’t have a huge vocabulary; I get by on a thesaurus way more than any professional writer should. On the other hand, my wife uses a lot more big words (she read a dictionary for fun once, so she’s got me beat there!). 

Again, this is true for third-person narratives just as much as first-person narratives. Very much so. It’s not just the protagonists who ought to sound distinctive; it’s everybody. Can you imagine a dialogue where you couldn’t tell whether it was Grayson speaking versus Thaddeus, even if there were zero dialogue tags? No. No, you can’t. Their speaking styles are tremendously different.

You know what this is making me think of, though? Not exactly a first-person narrative, but kind of. It’s making me think of Freedom and Necessity by Stephen Brust and Emma Bull. This is an epistolary novel with four different narrators, and the speaking (writing, whatever) style of each character is quite distinctive. I’d say this is a good example of do this. Also, it’s a really great book in a lot of ways, if you want a whole lot of historical context and a tiny, tiny bit of fantasy.

Okay, the post continues:

As if planning out chapters wasn’t hard enough to begin with! Now, you have to make an even more crucial decision: who tells this part of the story? A single mistake here can come back to bite you during revisions, potentially throwing off the entire novel! So what do you do?

And that made me laugh a bit, because what you do is: write the chapter. And then, every now and then, rewrite it from someone else’s pov. And then, hopefully even less often, sometimes rewrite it again in yet another character’s pov. Wow, can that get tiresome. I think I swapped one scene in Copper Mountain four times, which may be a record, but there were several pov characters present in that scene, so it could go one way or another.

This post finishes up in a way I appreciate: with five examples of novels that do a great job handling different voices. This is the one that I particularly noticed:

The Shadows — Alex North switches between third and first-person narration at crucial points. While it may feel jarring at first, this is becoming a more commonly accepted form of narration, so it’s worth studying from the best.

I noticed that because I’ve started a big, complex, fantasy novel in which I do this, and I’m glad to hear that this is becoming more accepted, because I was pretty tentative about trying it. I hope I will have time to pick up this particular project in the coming year.

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Belief in Santa Claus

At Crime Reads, this post:

On December 20th, 1935, the sixty-one-year old novelist and big-time Catholic G.K. Chesterton published an open letter in The Commonweal, an English liberal Catholic magazine. His article, which ran for just two columns, was entitled “Santa Claus and Science.” It begins with a lament, a ruing that many young children fall into disillusionment following the discovery of the non-existence of Santa Claus, and it works its way to a surprising thesis statement, that Chesterton himself did veritably believe in Santa Claus. …

The natural belief that children readily possess should not be snuffed out, he posits, but encouraged and developed. He concluded his essay with the following demand: “Cannot the child pass from a child’s natural fancy to a man’s normal faith in Holy Nicholas of the Children, without enduring that bitter break and abrupt disappointment which no wmarks [sic] the passage of a child from a land of make-believe to a world of no belief?”

Here’s a link to Chesterton’s full article, and Merry Christmas!

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Favorite Christmas dessert by state

Here is one of those fun posts that surveys people in different states and gives each state a favorite whatever. In this case, it’s the favorite Christmas dessert or other sweet.

Some I simply do not believe, but wait for it. First:

The overall favorite, taking first place at a whopping nine states: cheesecake. Very sensible! Very appropriate! Cheesecake is not really a Christmas thing for me. It’s an all-occasion thing. I made a cheesecake for my mother’s birthday earlier this month, with a brownie base, a cheesecake layer, and a raspberry topping. Luckily I guessed exactly right about baking times and both the brownie part and the cheesecake part were perfect. I was pretty much making up the recipe, so that was a relief.

Meanwhile, second place, red velvet cake, in three southern states.

I do have some quibbles:

Worst phrasing for an entry: “pudding.” I mean, really, “pudding?” Do they mean chocolate pudding or bread pudding or what? “Pudding” should not be poured together in one amorphous category like this. Shame on the people who put this survey together.

Also, some very inappropriate choices that absolutely do not belong on this kind of survey: hot chocolate, eggnog. It doesn’t matter what people like or how seasonal a drink may be, if you drink it out of a mug, it is not a dessert. The survey does say “treats,” but I still feel it is just wrong to put drinks on a map that is really more for desserts.

Now: The Entry I Do Not Believe —

Missouri: Vegan Christmas Cookies.

COME ON. YOU MUST BE JOKING. THERE IS NO WAY.

Who exactly filled out this survey in Missouri? There are zero states where this would make sense. I wouldn’t believe this of California, far less Missouri.

I don’t believe Washington State either. That’s not a Christmas treat at all! Take a minute to guess what this might be. Then click through and take a look. You will be wrong. Not a single person in the universe would ever guess this item, even though from reading this paragraph you will already know it is not a Christmas-related dessert.

Now, if your family makes special sweets or desserts for Christmas, what are your favorites?

Mine: super fancy cookies I spend a month making.

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Finished!

Finally!

I finished the draft of Tarashana last night. Then I looked at it this morning, fiddled a lot with the last bit and the parts that lead up to the last bit, and called it good.

Will the ending evolve a little further? Probably. Will it basically stay as it is? Probably — hopefully!

Lots of revision before anyone sees it. But whew! Completing a draft is a huge big deal, even the draft of a much shorter work, and this one is ridiculously long.

The only question is: revise at once or work on something else first? Not sure. I guess I will find out as early as this afternoon.

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