Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 201

50 must-read books about unicorns

As you may have guessed by the over-the-top length of the list, this post is from Book Riot: 50 must-read books about unicorns.

But I clicked through anyway because: Unicorns! While it’s true that dragons have a special place in my heart, and that I am especially fond of griffins, I do happen to have a great fondness for really well-done unicorns as well.

Peter S Beagle’s The Last Unicorn ought to be first — unless titles are listed by publication date and then who knows. For literary importance, this is the title I’d put first. I think. I haven’t looked at the list yet, so maybe I’ll be surprised by recognizing something else that I would actually put before that one. [Update: nope, given all the books listed, this is still the one that strikes me as deserving the no. one spot in the Unicorn category.

Here’s a book with unicorns that I suspect the Book Riot post probably will not include:

I love this book, but I don’t believe it’s well known. Also, it’s not technically “about unicorns.” Unicorns are in the story, but not central. Centaurs are more important — and of course O’Donohoe’s truly wonderful griffin. So I do think the Book Riot post will be justified in not including it, though for mythological creatures, it’s top-notch. [Update: yep, not included.]

Okay, now let’s see what the Book Riot Post includes. This time I am almost completely certain Watership Down will not make an appearance. But no doubt many excellent unicorns will! I’m curious to see how many I’ve read and how many sound like something I must read asap.

Good heavens, the first twenty — twenty — are picture books! Does anyone else think that’s cheating? Because my initial reaction is: Come on, that’s cheating! But of course I might feel differently if I happened to have children the right age to enjoy picture books.

Eleven MG books about unicorns.

Pip Bartlett’s Guide to Unicorn Training by — get this — Maggie Stiefvater (and Jackson Pearce). I didn’t know Stiefvater had done MG books. This one sounds fun.

Nine YA books about unicorns.

I see that The Last Unicorn is included here. Hmm. I am failing to understand why that is considered a YA novel. Because teens like it? Because … I can’t think why else it would be. Seems like a peculiar categorization to me.

Birth of the Firebringer by Meredith Pierce, of course. I am perhaps alone in not finding that one particularly noteworthy. I disliked the protagonist.

And finally ten adult novels about unicorns.

Oh! There’s Ariel by Steven Boyett. Yes, I should have thought of that one. I liked it quite a bit. You know, this one is actually is a LOT more YA than The Last Unicorn. If it were published today, I’m sure it would be categorized as YA. Young protagonist, coming of age, dystopian background — definitely YA, no question.

One more I recognize:Touched by Magic by Duranna Durgin. I do recall liking the book. I fear I don’t remember much about it other than the initial setup. I should re-read it.

And one last one that I recognize: the new one by Beagle, The Unicorn Sonata. Haven’t read it. It’s on my radar, where no doubt it will sit for the next decade. Have any of you read it? What did you think? If any of you rave about it, perhaps it will move up closer to the top of the TBR pile.

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Time capsule

Wow:

It sounds like something from Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind and his The Cemetery of Forgotten Books: a huge volume containing thousands of summaries of books from 500 years ago, many of which no longer exist. But the real deal has been found in Copenhagen, where it has lain untouched for more than 350 years.

The Libro de los Epítomes manuscript, which is more than a foot thick, contains more than 2,000 pages and summaries from  the library of Hernando Colón , the illegitimate son of Christopher Columbus who made it his life’s work to create the biggest library the world had ever known in the early part of the 16th century. Running to around 15,000 volumes, the library was put together during Colón’s extensive travels. Today, only around a quarter of the books in the collection survive and have been housed in Seville Cathedral since 1552.

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The Prometheus Award

I haven’t been very aware of the Prometheus Award, but James Nicholl has an interesting post about it at tor.com:

The Prometheus Award is an interesting case. Founded by L. Neil Smith in 1979, the panel selected F. Paul Wilson’s Wheels Within Wheels as its inaugural winner. Then silence fell. 1980 and 1981 went by. It seemed that the first Prometheus Award would be the last. In 1982, Libertarian Futurist Society took up the job of administering the award, and the Prometheus was given once more, to Smith’s The Probability Broach. Since then, the award has been granted once per year (with the notable exception of 1985, when no book was deemed worthy of the prize). Four decades is an impressive achievement.

I didn’t know any of that, not even that it was administered by the Libertarian Futurist Society. Which, in fact, I don’t believe I ever specifically knew existed until now. Let me see. It says the Prometheus Award is supposed to:

… dramatize the perennial conflict between Liberty and Power, favor private social cooperation over legalized coercion, expose abuses and excesses of obtrusive or oppressive government, critique or satirize authoritarian ideas, or champion individual rights and freedoms as the mutually respectful foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance and civilization itself.

Interesting.

Nicholl lists all the winners of this award. I read Wheels Within Wheels … I liked it, as I recall. It did stand out at the time as very different from other SF I’d read, I remember that. Let me look over the other winners — I’ve read a couple of these — they all seem very different from one another, I must say.

Oh, this is interesting: Pratchett’s Night Watch won in 2003! Well, that’s notable. It’s my personal favorite of all Pratchett’s books.

Oh, again, there’s Seveneves. You may recall I really liked it and enjoyed arguing about it with others who read it the year it was up for the Hugo.

Well, as I say, the handful I’ve read seem pretty different from one another. But! This is especially eyecatching:

The Murderbot novellas are inclusively up for this award. Very interesting choice! I can see it. The awful, intrusive company and its ilk definitely fit the “obtrusive, oppressive government” criterion.

Other nominees, none of which I’ve read:

Causes of Separation, by Travis Corcoran. This is the sequel to a previous winner.

Kingdom of the Wicked  by Helen Dale

State Tectonics , by Malka Older

The Fractal Man, by J. Neil Schulman. This author has previously won this award.

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Transience

This week I had reason to think, as we all occasionally do, about the transience of life and how we just never know what might happen.

——-

We are here in a wood of little beeches:
And the leaves are like black lace 
Against a sky of nacre. 

One bough of clear promise 
Across the moon. 

It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me. 
He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh, 
Stilling it in an eternal peace, 
Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands 
Toward him, 
And is eased of its hunger. 

And I know that this passes: 
This implacable fury and torment of men, 
As a thing insensate and vain: 
And the stillness hath said unto me, 
Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame, 
Out of the terrible beauty of wrath, 
I alone am eternal. 

One bough of clear promise 
Across the moon

― Frederic Manning

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Winners of The Tolkien Society Awards 2019

Click through to view all the winning artwork.

You’ll need to click on the links.

The winning artwork, Durin’s Crown and the Mirrormere, is definitely a worthy winner. Beautiful piece by Ted Naismith.

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Amazon’s bundled ratings

Listen to this:

Badly translated versions of classic books and critically panned remakes of Hollywood films appear to have glowing endorsements on  Amazon  thanks to the website’s policy of bundling together reviews of different products.

Analysis by the Guardian shows products that have actually been given one-star ratings appear alongside rave reviews of better quality items, making it impossible for consumers to judge the true value of what they are about to buy.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Because I depend on those ratings when making buying decisions! I had no idea! Listen:

The same is true of a  Kindle version of the Dickens classic, selling for 91p. Far from meeting the great expectations the 4.5-star review might imply, a glance inside suggests the rave reviews do not apply to this version….

A review from a reader, which appears to be about this edition, gives it just one star and describes it as terrible.

“Each page has a dozen errors. It reads as if it has been translated from a foreign language. ‘Dog’ in the original is ‘canine’ in this version; ‘file’ in the original has become ‘document’; ‘tremendous’ has become ‘maximum incredible’; ‘man’ has become ‘guy’.

Unbelievable!

Shakespeare’s plays suffer the same fate as Austen’s work, so anyone wondering whether to buy or not to buy a paperback copy of Hamlet will find it shares reviews with Kindle versions of Othello and Macbeth that turned out to be in German.

Most of the reviews do not mention which play or edition is being appraised, making them meaningless to consumers attempting to pick between different options.

UNBELIEVABLE!

Well, to be fair, I almost always or always do skim through some of the actual comments before buying anything at all pricey. With clothing, I search carefully for reviews by people who state their height and weight so I can estimate whether the item would actually work for me. For appliances, I want to know what kinds of things people like and dislike.

For books, I’m mostly not buying a specific edition of a classic. But if I wanted a beautiful edition of Lord of the Rings, I would be extremely miffed if I discovered I had accidentally ordered a much worse edition … or an edition rife with errors … or one that had been translated into German.

And if I see a basic 4.5 star rating for a specific edition, I would sure prefer that the rating apply to that edition!

Humph.

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For love of the comma

I found this article via a link from Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog:

For Love of the Comma

What I’ve learned 18 books later is that, while other punctuation has a distinct and undebatable purpose, the comma remains ambiguous. A period signals a stop. A question mark demands an answer. An exclamation point should be used sparingly and never in threes. …

The comma is an enigma. Loved and loathed. Bound by personal taste rather than rigid rule books.

In a social media–saturated world where everybody is screaming the loudest that they’re right and you’re wrong, the comma lives in gray areas of uncertainty. It asks us to take a breath, reflect, and listen. It reminds us to consider words and meaning. For a small piece of punctuation, that’s a profound gift.

Entertaining essay! Fine, okay, sure, I agree the comma is ambiguous in the sense that the overall rule is: Use them for clarity first, follow rules second. Some of the rules offer less wiggle room than others, however. Comma rules that are unbreakable:

a) commas must be used in a series of more than two items.

b) commas must be used to set off parenthetical phrases (unless you’re using something else to set off those phrases).

c) commas must be used to set off transitional expressions such as “however” and “moreover.”

d) commas MUST be used appropriately to begin or end dialogue. Nothing looks worse than incorrect periods in dialogue.

But there are a whole bunch of places I think require artistic judgment, because it’s surprising how often you want to break the rules:

e) commas should not be used between two complete sentences, unless you want to introduce a rushed feel to dialogue or thoughts, and then you might use comma splices to achieve that.

f-a) commas should be used in front of conjunctions that introduce independent clauses, unless the clauses are very short

f-b) ditto, unless the sentence is really complicated and has a lot of truly crucial commas in it already. In the latter case, rather than taking the sentence apart, you may choose to omit a usually required comma, and this particular kind of comma may be a good choice.

f-b) ditto, unless you want to promote that comma to a semicolon. This is sure to be queried by a copy editor (as is most of this stuff, I guess), but if you decide you really do want that semicolon there, then you can do that. It’ll produce a slightly exaggerated pause and emphasize both the clause before and especially the clause after the semicolon. I got this technique from CJ Cherryh and think of her when I stet a semicolon of this kind during copy edits.

g) commas should be used between adjectives unless you choose not to put them there. Either choice will produce a distinctive feel to the prose. I’ve done it both ways, most dramatically in The City in the Lake, where I omitted most of those commas because I liked the more poetic feel this gave the prose.

h) commas can be used to set off conversational tags, unless you choose to omit them. In general, I think it looks better to say “Now, now, Bob. Don’t lose your cool.” than to omit the tag commas. I think it looks MUCH better to say “Yes, sir.” than omit the comma. But certainly I’ve seen writers choose to omit it.

i) commas can be omitted after short introductory clauses, and how short is short is up to the writer.

Which leads into this comment from Kristine Kathryn Rusch about the linked article. The author of the comma essay, Kate Dyer-Seeley, says:

Copy editors have differing and unwavering beliefs how best to use the comma. When my first manuscript went through copy edits, every introductory comma was removed. I made note and intentionally didn’t use a single introductory comma in the next manuscript. 

And KKR responds:

She tried to learn what her editors “wanted” when it came to the comma, rather than telling the original editors that she believed in the introductory comma, at least for the piece she had written for those editors. Dyer-Seeley’s subconscious had believed the introductory comma needed to be there, so she had put it there. And then meekly removed it when asked by someone who “was in charge” or “knew better.”

I have three responses to this conundrum:

First: The copy editor does know the correct punctuation rules, or should. The author should cherish the opportunity to think carefully about breaking those rules and may very well decide that the nonstandard punctuation originally chosen may in fact distract the reader or otherwise not be worth pursuing.

Second: Sometimes the author is right about the artistic effect and in that case KKR is correct: the author should defend her own usage by profligate use of “stet.”

Third: Sometimes, however, the punctuation in question is actually pretty trivial and the author need not feel committed to defending it. It’s okay to use or not use commas after some or most introductory clauses. That’s all right either way, as long as the author doesn’t think it matters all that much.

There have definitely been times I have let a suggested change go forward because I just felt, Well, whatever, this is fine either way. That isn’t even rare! It happens dozens of times during copy edits. I’ve had editors email me about some last-minute sentence level thing and I have literally emailed back, Either way is fine with me, whichever you prefer.

My last copy editor took out a good many introductory commas and I thought that was perfectly okay. I liked the sentences fine the way she preferred, let her take out most of those commas, and decreased my use of commas after introductory clauses not because I let my artistic judgment get overruled by the copy editor, but because I let my judgment get influenced by the copy editor. Which is fine! Everyone’s judgment gets influenced by all kinds of things! The important thing is to make a deliberate decision based on how the change feels to you artistically, not cling like grim death to the way you’ve done it in the past because you just don’t want to consider alternatives when those are suggested.

… So, anyway, both KKR’s post and the original post about commas are worth reading. And if you now find you pay a lot more attention to commas in the next book you read, sorry! I’m sure punctuation will once again fade into the “feel” and “sound” of the prose shortly and become much less visible.

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Nora Robert’s writing process

I found this post interesting. Two responses leap to my mind:

1) Wow

2) This sounds like an ideal life

Oh, wait, three responses:

3) It would sound just a tiny bit more ideal if I weren’t just a little stuck right now on both WIPs. But that’s all right! Getting mildly stuck is pretty much part of MY process, it’s just TUYO spoiled me for that part by whooshing at very nearly top speed from beginning to end.

Anyway, here’s Nora:

I’m able to produce a lot of books because I work every day. Because I don’t go out to lunch or dinner, or to events, go shopping, have hobbies or socialize all that much. I don’t want to.

I like home. I like my space. I have plenty of people living in my head for company.

Exactly! That sounds pretty much completely ideal.

She writes four books a year. (!)

This is her post explaining why that pace of writing happens to suit her.

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Book covers that catch the eye

I just happened to see this book cover at Janet Reid’s website:

I just like it, so I’m sharing it with you even though it’s not fantasy or SF.

Here’s what Amazon says:

The mystery of the body in motion. The surprise of seeing what seems impossible. And the pure, joyful optimism of it all. Dancers Among Us presents one thrilling photograph after another of dancers leaping, spinning, lifting, kicking—but in the midst of daily life: on the beach, at a construction site, in a library, a restaurant, a park. With each image the reader feels buoyed up, eager to see the next bit of magic.

Photographer Jordan Matter started his Dancers Among Us Project by asking a member of the Paul Taylor Dance Company to dance for him in a place where dance is unexpected. So, dressed in a commuter’s suit and tie, the dancer flew across a Times Square subway platform. And in that image Matter found what he’d been searching for: a way to express the feeling of being fully alive in the moment, unself-conscious, present.

A coffee table book of photos — not what I expected! But how delightful.

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Recent Reading: Arkad’s World by James Cambias

Okay, this is Cambias’ third novel, and I’ve read all of them, and they are all very different, far more so than any other author’s first three novels, so far as I can recollect. Let’s briefly reprise:

A Darkling Sea: This novel features two fantastic alien species, especially the Ilmatarans, who, as you may recollect if you’ve read the book, are the aliens who evolved beneath the thick ice on a planet much like Triton. Much of the story is told from the point of Broadtail, an Ilmataran. This is the best part. We also have the Sholen, a different alien species obviously based, albeit loosely, on bonobos. And then we have the human pov characters, who are fine, but frankly not as engaging as Broadtail. I really should re-read this book, which honestly does feature one of the very best alien species in all of SFF.

Corsair: a near-future SF tale featuring space piracy, and in particular featuring a specific space pirate who gets in a bit over his head with much nastier bad guys. It’s a fairy exciting story, especially as the action picks up in the second half. This time no aliens, but plenty of more complicated and interesting human characters.

And now Arkad’s World, which in fact reads to me a bit more like a first novel, so I’m guessing – and this is purely a guess and could easily be wrong – that Cambias might actually have written it before the other two. Heaven knows books are frequently published out of the order in which an author wrote them. It’s just about as different from the other two as they are different from each other. In this one, we get an alien world on which half a dozen different species mingle, relatively peacefully. Most of them are just trying to get by – they’re ordinary people, by alien standards, not heroes or villains or whatever. There’s just one human kid on this world, and of course we find out something about how he got there and the backstory during the course of the novel. The backstory includes the conquest of Earth, and this story starts with three people coming to Arkad’s world to find the ship that originally brought his parents there, for various reasons that make perfect sense in context.

So that’s the set-up. Arkad, three newly-arrived humans, and a bunch of aliens of various species. My favorite worldbuilding element, no question about it, is the Itooti language, in which there is always an adjective in front of every single noun. Here, for example, is a brief section of a conversation between Arkad and his friend Tiatatoo. I’m leaving out everything but the dialogue.

“Lonely Tiatatoo
suggests gentle Arkad come view the adorable babies.”

“Curious Arkad wonders
if the healthy babies have personal names.”

“Sensible Tatoota has
not given the feeble new babies individual names yet. When the strong children
learn to fly, proud Tatoota will give them impressive names.”

“Anxious Arkad hopes
affectionate Tiatatoo doesn’t hurt his tiny brother.”

“The vigorous little
male will seduce many adoring females if the annoying infant survives.”

This is a wonderful language, and as you may gather just from this snippet, the Itooti don’t have instincts that are all that similar to human instincts. In particular, males are pretty hostile to each other – Arkad is genuinely concerned that his friend might injure his infant male brother. Writing aliens who are alien is something that Cambias did extremely well in A Darkling Sea, so it’s not at all surprising we find great aliens all over the place in Arkad’s World.

The story itself is extremely simple: Arkad and his new
friends go on a quest to find that ship. There you go, that’s the story. They
do, of course, encounter one or two complications along the way. And the three
humans who’ve come to this world are not necessarily what they seem, although
an astute reader . . . or in fact even a reader who is not very astute at all .
. . will probably rapidly come to three important conclusions: Jacob is in fact
exactly what he seems. Baichi is not entirely human. And Ree is a traitor.

I thought about not mentioning that last point on the grounds that it could constitute a spoiler, for a sufficiently non-astute reader. I went back and forth on the issue and finally decided that the reader just cannot miss this EXTREMELY OBVIOUS fact, so, what the heck, I could put it in. And I wanted to mention it, because it is BY FAR this story’s greatest failing. I don’t want to encourage any of you to read this book and then let this flaw smack you in the face as though I somehow didn’t notice it was going to.

From the exact moment Ree’s personal backstory is described, it’s just screamingly obvious that’s she’s a plant. Many further hints follow, if the word “hints” can be used to stand in for “major cluebats.”

Now, it’s completely fine that Arkad doesn’t realize this at first because what does he know? He’s a kid who grew up on his own with no contact with his own species. Baichi, well, who knows, one would think she’d have twigged, but she’s kind of strange, so maybe not. But I cannot begin to describe how extraordinarily dense Jacob had to be not to realize it. There is no justification in the story for his failure here. Moreover, as the story goes on, Arkad seems almost to be in deliberate denial about this extremely important facet of Ree’s character. It’s just . . . words fail me. I’m trying, and failing, to come up with any plot point in any other book ever that is (a) this important, and (b) this obvious, and (c) realized by the protagonist so very, very late in the story, even though he is hammered over the head with it for much of the book.

There is also a very significant deus ex plot element, so given that I’m providing warnings, there you go, this is the second most important failing. It was not as omnipresent an element, so it didn’t bother me a bit.

Despite all this, and despite the death of a character I was really quite fond of, FINE, I liked the book anyway. I’d be happy to read a sequel. Though this story is self-contained, it could indeed take a sequel. Especially if Earth got liberated, because hey, that would be a nice thing to happen. Another alien species ought to be liberated too; I feel bad for them and liberating them would be a fine thing if it could be managed. Lots of room for improvement in this galaxy, to be honest. However, a specific element of the ending makes me feel like a sequel is not super likely to happen. Plus so far Cambias has stuck strictly to standalones, though of course that’s hardly conclusive.

Overall: The aliens are great. The world is fun. Arkad is a fine protagonist. If you decide to read this book, hopefully being prepared for the obvious inevitability of the Big Plot Twist of Ree’s treachery will help you brace yourself for that so you can enjoy this story’s strengths. If you’re into SF With Aliens, by all means, pick this one up.

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