Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 215

What fairy tale should you read next?

Over at Book Riot, not normally a place I look for book recommendations, a moderately appealing list from Margaret Kingsbury: What should be your next fairy tale read?

This is actually an internet quiz! I enjoy silly internet quizzes, so sure, let’s just see what title gets tossed up for me:

Ah, looks like The Fox’s Tower by Yoon Ha Lee. Well, I don’t know. Foxes, check, fairy tales check, but this is a short story collection and I don’t generally l get very excited about short stories, except those connected to a universe I’m already into. I mean, I liked Patricia Briggs’ story collection that are all in the Mercy Thompson universe.

On the other hand, fairy tales might actually appeal to me in in shorter formats. I liked Robin McKinley’s short fairy tales. I wonder just how short Lee’s stories are … oh, they’re flash fiction. Well, probably not, then. Let’s try this quiz again. This time I’m going to aim to get The Girls at the Kingfisher Club. 

Yep, got it.

Okay, normally I’m all about shortening up a list — not fifty items, but ten. Not one hundred — for God’s sake, that’s way too many — but twenty. But for a quiz that’s meant to kick up a result that will appeal to you, I do think there aren’t enough choices here.  I think if you put in “historical fiction,” you’ll get The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, which is fine, but it would be significantly more fine if there were other options in “historical fairy tales” so that the rest of the quiz questions could have some influence on sifting through the crowd and selecting a book that would appeal to you.

Also, a quiz where you can check off multiple categories — SF, fantasy, historical, but not graphic novels or horror (for example). That would work better, probably.

Here are some other fairy tales that could be included to make this quiz work better:

Fairy tales that are also historicals:

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by G Valentine

The Wild Swans by P Kerr

Strands of Bronze and Gold by J Nickerson

Fairy tales that are contemporaries:

Roses and Rot by K Howard

Fairy tales that are nearly straight retellings:

Beauty by R McKinley

A Curse as Dark as Gold by E Bunce

Daughter of the Forest by J Marillier

Fairy tales that are less straight retellings:

The Princess Curse by M Haskell

Castle Behind Thorns by M Haskell

Fire and Hemlock by DWJ

Fairy tales that are SF

Jenna Starborn by S Shinn — granted this is not a fairy tale retelling; it’s a Jane Eyre retelling. But it’s a retelling and I’m including it because I dislike all the SF fairy tale retellings I’ve read so far.

Of Beast and Beauty by S Jay — which I haven’t read, but I wanted a second choice under “SF fairy tales.”

Fairy Tale retellings that actually deconstruct the whole concept: 

Ash and Bramble by Sarah Prineas

“Into the Woods,” which is of course a play, but I wanted another entry under this category as well and couldn’t think of another book.

Fairy tales that are original, not retellings:

Uprooted by N Novik

The Changeling Sea by P McKillip

The City in the Lake by R Neumeier

Of course there are zillions more. Especially relatively straight retellings that stick pretty much to the actual fairy tale — many, many of those.

I couldn’t think of another fairy tale with a contemporary setting, but there must be some.

Likewise for SF settings. I know, I know, Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, but I disliked those. I couldn’t finish the third book and can’t recommend the series.

I had trouble thinking of others that deconstructed fairy tales to the extent that Prineas’ novels do. Not sure there are any. 

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Nothing is taboo if you do it right

At Kill Zone Blog, a post by PJ Parrish: Is anything really taboo in today’s crime fiction?

Which is, of course, a question that applies equally to all fiction.

We often hear there are some things you should never do in mysteries and thrillers. … Here’s just a few of the no-no’s I know:

Don’t deal with abused children because readers can’t take it.
Don’t write about religion because it’s too personal.
Don’t write about politics because it’s too divisive and partisan.
Steer clear of graphic violence and sex.
And never, ever, kill an animal.

I still remember how amused I was in the movie “Up” when all the dogs got parachutes — something that the human bad guy did not get. Mind you, I agree with this taboo, basically. If an author kills a dog or other pet, I’m not likely to become a big fan, even if I finish that book.

However, the conclusion Parrish comes to is this: there are no taboos, but for heaven’s sake do not let your Message overwhelm your story. Parrish says:

I read a crime novel recently by an Edgar-winning writer. The writing was elegant, the plot set-up tantalyzing. I really liked the protag. But about halfway through, I found myself getting irritated. Why? Because the writer started shouting about the devastation of the environment and it was drowning out the story. … you have to deal with a touchy subject always with the idea that it must organically support the story. [emphasis mine].

Yes yes yes! That’s the important thing.

But even though I agree there’s no absolute taboos in fiction, including no absolute taboo against killing pets … honestly. Don’t do that.

Out of curiosity, is there death-of-a-pet in fiction that worked for you and did not turn you off? I can’t think of any examples for me. 

When the pet dies, but not really, that’s different. When Kathleen thinks Sirius is dead in Dogsbody, that’s sad, but Sirius was never actually a dog and does not actually die. Personally, that’s the closest I can come.

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Door Into Light

Pete commented that I posted the first scene of Door Into Light some time ago. True! But it was a while ago, so here again are the first five pages, for those of you who may not recall. This has changed just a little, but the fundamental scene is still the same.

Three weeks before the spring
solstice, one week after the door to Kalches had first appeared in this whimsical,
unpredictable, willful house where he had lived for the past month and more,
Taudde stood before that door, his hand on the knob, recruiting his nerve to
open it.

The door to Kalches, land of music
and sorcery and the high winds that both cut like knives and sang like harps, stood
in the long hallway of the house, between two high, narrow windows. Brilliant
sunlight blazed through the nearer of the two; silver moonlight glimmered
through the other. Between day and dark stood this door: solid, weathered, and
ordinary, exactly as though it was a normal door and had always waited there
for a hand to fling it wide. Though it did not match any other door in the
house, somehow it did not look out of place. Its frame had been hewn roughly
out of granite. The door itself was of common pine, the wood neither stained
nor painted nor carved with any decorative figures nor even planed entirely smooth.
When Taudde opened that door . . . when he opened it, he knew exactly the wind,
fragrant with pine forests and the cold, clean scent of lingering winter, that
would skirl out of the distant mountains and into this house.

He did not mean to step through the
door, not yet. But this afternoon, weather permitting, he would finally step
from this house into Kalches, crossing all the intervening miles in an instant.

He was not looking forward to that
at all. Or he was, of course, in a way. He had been so long away; no matter how
bitterly he would miss Lonne and the sea, he couldn’t help but anticipate his
return to the stark, cold country that was his home. But his homecoming would
certainly be . . . fraught. Taudde did not at all relish the thought of facing
his grandfather and explaining everything that had happened. Or, really, anything
that had happened.

Still, he dared not leave his
return too late. Three weeks was little enough time.

He had asked leave from the prince
of Lirionne to step through that door and into Kalches. Tepres had granted it,
of course, exactly as he had promised. At noon today, Taudde would formally ask
leave from the king of Lirionne himself, Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes. The
king would also grant it. Taudde had very little doubt of that. Then he would
open this door for the third time, and step through, from the spring of Lonne,
the Pearl of the West, into the high, stark winter of Kalches.

With Leilis, so that was something,
at least; no matter how little Taudde expected to enjoy his own interview with
his grandfather, he did expect to
enjoy witnessing the meeting between that stiff old man and Seathrift of
Cloisonné House, which was the name Leilis went by when she put on the robes
and manners of a keiso. He wanted to watch the old man try the edge of his
tongue against her wit and unshakable composure. She would render his
grandfather absolutely speechless, which was not something many people could
do, but Taudde had no doubt she would do it. He looked forward to that very
much.

But though he was resolved to go
through, he thought he had better see how the weather lay on the other side of
this door. This door opened into the mountains above the town of Kedres, not
into the town itself, and storms were common in those mountains as winter
turned to early spring. If the weather looked too difficult, well, that would
be reason enough to put off his homecoming at least another day.

“Well? Will you open it, or do you
merely mean to admire it as it stands?” inquired a light, quick voice at his
shoulder. It was a voice that, to Taudde, was unmistakably underlain with an
echo of the dragon’s voice. When ordinary men called Prince Tepres the Dragon’s
heir, they were generally thinking merely of the king, the infamous Dragon of
Lirionne. But ordinary men did not know of the true dragon beneath the
mountain, and ordinary men did not possess Taudde’s trained ear.

Karah, Moonflower of Cloisonné
House, the newest and youngest keiso in all of Lonne, stood beside the prince,
her fingers twined with his. Though she had come to this house this morning
ostensibly to visit her younger sister, Taudde’s student Nemienne, the romance
between Prince Tepres and the beautiful young keiso was a very, very open
secret throughout Lonne. Karah was far too honest to hide her feelings for the
prince, and as his father did not disapprove, Prince Tepres also openly
acknowledged his infatuation with her. Everyone looked forward to an eventual
flower wedding. This gave the city a charming, pretty subject for speculation
and gossip and helped take everyone’s mind off the coming solstice. Taudde was
perfectly certain the king had thought of that, and would not have been
surprised to discover that Prince Tepres was deliberately making certain public
gestures of favor for the same reason.

Jeres Geliadde, the prince’s
companion and bodyguard, stood behind them both. Nemienne hovered to one side,
most of her attention on the door. She had long since accepted her sister’s
romance with the prince and wasn’t much concerned with that; she was much more
interested in doors and windows and the whims of the house. And in Kalches.
Taudde had not yet decided whether he would permit her to accompany him to his
home. He was almost certain it would be safe enough for her to come, but . . .
he wasn’t entirely certain. None of them could be entirely certain about anything of the kind until the solstice came
and went and did not give way to a summer of iron and blood and fire.

Prince Tepres said drily, “If you
are not inclined to open it, Taudde, I might lay my hand to it.”

Jeres Geliadde cleared his throat.

“Or, then, perhaps not,” the prince
conceded, tilting a straw-pale eyebrow at Jeres. He did not touch the door, but
half turned to give his bodyguard an ironic look. The prince’s thin, arrogant
mouth seemed made for irony. He bent that look on Taudde. “Someone needs to,
however.”

Taudde eyed Prince Tepres with
resignation.

“Of course my father will give you
leave to go, Taudde. Surely you don’t doubt it.”

Taudde steadied himself with an effort of will. “No. I don’t doubt your father’s generosity.”

“Your own grandfather’s, then?” the
prince asked, more gently than was his habit.

A sudden hammering on the door interrupted
Taudde’s attempt to frame an acceptable answer.

It wasn’t the door to Kalches; that
would have been far beyond merely
startling. This was merely the ordinary door that simply opened out onto the
Lane of Shadows. Men did come to that door from time to time: mages who came to
study bardic sorcery or the occasional tradesman daring enough to seek custom
among the mages who lived along this lane. Prince Tepres, of course, or one or
another of the young men who were his companions. Now and again, on a few
memorable occasions, the king himself.

None of them had a knock quite of this
sort. There was a disconcerting urgency to it.

Prince Tepres, quirking a pale
eyebrow at the intrusion, stepped forward to answer that hammering. It was not
his place to do so, but he might have meant to reprimand whomever was there for
so rude a summons. Certainly whoever pounded roughly on the door would be
embarrassed to find he had disturbed not a mere foreigner but the Dragon’s own
heir.

Taudde, moved by an alarm he did
not entirely understand, said sharply, “Wait!” just as the prince reached the
door.

The prince, startled, turned his
head, to look back at Taudde.

Jeres Geliadde, responding perhaps
to the alarm in Taudde’s voice, thrust himself past Karah and Nemienne and strode
suddenly forward, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword.

The prince’s hand fell on the latch.
The latch dropped and turned under the pressure of that touch.

The door slammed open.

For a heartbeat, that was all. There
were men there, poised on the weathered gray stone of the porch, a crowd of
men: a few in the black of the King’s Own and a handful in the flat red and
gray of the army; two men in the black and white robes of mages, and, most
fraught of all, three men wearing robes embroidered at cuffs and collar with
the saffron-gold that no one in Lonne but those of royal blood had any right to
wear. The one in the forefront was a man nearing middle years, heavyset and
hard-featured, powerful and angry. The man a step behind was younger and more
elegant, with a narrow mouth and small chin; his angular eyes cold with bitter
triumph. The third was a younger man, well back, surrounded by soliders.

Taudde had never met the left-hand
princes of Lirionne, but he knew at once who they must be: the youngest must be
Prince Geradde, of whom he knew nothing but the name. The cold, elegant man
must be Prince Telis, whom the folk of Lonne called Sa-Telis, the serpent, even
to his face. He had a serpent’s look to him: a cold look. He was said to be
mage-gifted and clever and dangerous to cross.

And the one in front had to be Prince
Sehonnes, eldest of the king’s sons, but keiso-born and thus not his father’s
heir.

Not the king’s heir so long as
Prince Tepres lived.

Taudde’s flute, recently carved of
driftwood he had gathered himself from the broken shore below the Laodd, was in
his hand. It had come there as automatically as Jeres Geliadde had drawn his
own sword. But it was not the same as his old flute, which Taudde missed
suddenly and acutely.

But for a long, reverberating
moment, no one moved or spoke. Jeres would have leaped forward, he had his hand
on his prince’s arm, ready to snatch him back from danger. But Prince Tepres had
flung up a hand to check him and by that seemed to check them all, so the
moment drew out, tension singing in the air until it became all but audible.

Prince Sehonnes, too, held up his
hand. He, as Tepres, might have meant to restrain his men. But there was
something else in the gesture. Something ostentatious, something that was meant
for display: Look at me, like a vain
boy showing off a new and expensive bauble to his friends.

Prince Tepres was staring at Sehonnes,
at his hand . . . at the ring he wore: a heavy iron ring in the shape of a dragon,
with twin rubies for eyes. Their father’s ring. The ring of the Dragon of
Lirionne. Tepres had paled. His thin mouth set hard and stern, and he put his
shoulders back and stood very straight. He looked, in that moment, very like
his father.

“Brother,” said Prince Sehonnes,
grimly, and Sa-Telis added, sharp and urgent, “I want the sorcerer alive!”

Tepres tried to swing the door
closed. The heavy gauntleted hand of one of the soldiers caught it, a booted
foot came down to brace it open, a sword went up . . . Jeres jerked his prince
back and caught that descending blade with his own shorter sword, closing with
the other man to counteract the soldier’s advantage of reach, shoving the man
back out onto the porch with his weight and the sheer force of his will. But
Jeres was only one man, and the door was still open.

Tepres, unarmed, reached after a
sword he did not have.

Taudde lifted his flute, meaning to
get those men off his porch and sweep the left-hand princes after them –
perhaps he would fling them all into the dark under the mountain; he thought he
could and was frightened and angry enough to try. But the mages blocked him, Sa-Telis
stepping to the side to get a clear view of Taudde. Of course the mage-prince
and his allies had known Taudde would be here. Both those mages had actually
studied with him – he recognized them now – they knew very little sorcery and pretended
to scorn what little they knew, but they knew him a little, and they had
plainly come prepared to counter his sorcery.

And Taudde, who had devoted
considerable thought during the past winter to ways in which a bardic sorcerer
might avoid being caught in a magecrafted net of silence, found himself, in the
moment in which it mattered, unprepared to meet them. He had more or less
trusted the Dragon of Lirionne; he had
not expected the door of this house to open onto enemies and sudden battle.

So he was not quick enough to answer
the attack when the mageworking set itself against him, binding him into
silence so that his flute uttered no sound, so that his shout of frustration
fell into silence and was utterly lost. Taudde found himself unable to unravel that
mageworking as fast and as powerfully as the two mages set it.

Out on the porch men struggled, but
Taudde, caught by a web of magecrafted silence, could not hear them. Jeres had
killed one man. Another of his attackers, slashed across the belly, folded
slowly down over his terrible wound. The man’s mouth was open, but if he was
screaming, Taudde could not hear him, either. Prince Sehonnes’ mouth was open
as well, but he seemed to be shouting rather than screaming. He was pressing straight
forward through the melee, toward Prince Tepres. One soldier had gotten around
Jeres – there were too many men, far too many, they were getting in each
other’s way, but that wouldn’t last and anyone could see how this particular
battle must end.

Tepres, unarmed save for a short
belt knife, gestured urgently for Karah and Nemienne to get back and himself
stepped forward to face his attackers. Nemienne was trying to pull her sister
away, but Karah was clearly refusing to go without Tepres – the girl wasn’t
actually wrong, the prince absolutely could not be allowed to sacrifice himself
– Taudde started forward, meaning to grab the prince’s arm and haul him bodily
back farther into the house, which after all was not an ordinary house – there
was no need, even now, for heroic last stands, but with the silence on him he
could not even say so.

Jeres Geliadde faced two more armed
men, but another man, behind him, kicked him behind the knee, and Jeres
collapsed to one knee. The man drew back his sword for a killing thrust . . .
and Jeres, his face blank, lunged upward and sideways and whirled his sword
around in a short, vicious arc. Prince Sehonnes’ hand leaped away from his arm,
seemingly of its own accord, blood spraying across the gray stone. The
left-hand prince staggered, his expression one of disbelief and anger rather
than pain. At the same time, the man behind Jeres completed his thrust, and
Jeres, his body fully extended in his own smooth attack, could not even attempt
to counter that blow. He did not counter it, and the sword slid into him,
stabbing from back to front so that several inches of the blade emerged from his
chest.

Despite that terrible blow, Jeres,
in a smooth continuation of his own movements, as though stepping through the
choreographed movements of a dance, caught Sehonnes’ amputated hand as it
descended and flung it with deadly accuracy past half a dozen startled soldiers
and through the door of the house. Where Prince Tepres, as though the move had
been practiced in advance, put up his own hand and caught it.

For a moment that seemed frozen in
time, everyone stopped.  Prince Sehonnes,
face twisted, clutched at his maimed arm. Even the serpent-prince hesitated,
his dark eyes narrowed, to all appearances unmoved, but his attention
momentarily fixed on his stricken brother.

Taudde, feeling as though he had
been somehow caught in a play, was seized now by a wild desire to laugh. He seized
Tepres’ arm in a hard grip and pulled him, resist though he would, back down
the hall, sweeping the girls with them, and the pause shattered. In perfect
silence their enemies came after them, rushing forward – too many and too well
armed and nothing to laugh at, so that Prince Tepres yielded at last and backed
up willingly, shoving Karah behind him, but it was impossible, anyone could see
they would not be able to get clear. The soldiers rushed forward, and in that
instant, without thought, Taudde seized the knob he found ready under his hand,
flung open the door, and snatched Prince Tepres and Karah sideways out of the
house and out of Lonne entirely, into sudden dazzling cold. The mage-prince strode
forward, his mouth open in an inaudible shout, but Taudde slammed the door shut
between them, staggering with the force of that motion and with footing gone
suddenly uncertain.

Prince Tepres, staggering also,
jerked himself free of Taudde’s grip, shoved Karah away toward safety, and
whirled back toward the door to face his brothers, lifting Sehonnes’ amputated
hand as though he might fling it at their faces in a macabre gesture of
defiance.

Only the door was not there. Where
it should have stood was only brilliant light pouring down a steep knife-edged
ridge and into the empty gulf beyond, light glittering off an equally steep
cliff rising on the other side: light and naked stone, empty air and blowing snow,
here in the heights where snow would linger all through the short northern
summer.

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Chrestomanci

If you follow me on Facebook, you might have seen this yesterday, but this is why posting has been light so far this week. The picture below was taken just a few months ago. 

I will add, since most of you no doubt recognize the name, that when he was younger, whenever you called his name, a few minutes later he would stroll up as though by purest chance. Probably he was in fact a sorcerer in disguise. He always had kind of that look.

Chrestomanci, ??-??-2000 — 10-23-2018

Eighteen years ago, Chrestomanci strolled out of the woods and moved into my home. He was completely unfazed by the dogs. He spent his whole life being completely unfazed by everything.

Except the vet. He had “bad cat” in red ink on his chart — with four exclamation points. Fortunately he never got sick or injured.

Naturally he wasn’t a “bad cat” at home! I could always pick him up or pull him out from under furniture or lift him out of whatever cabinet he’d opened — he could open all the cabinets. When I was gardening, he’d ride around in the wheelbarrow or sometimes on my shoulder.

Chrestomanci always had great patience with all my dogs. He never once swatted a rude puppy with his claws out. He would tease puppies to chase him, then go up a tree — or if a tree wasn’t handy, he’d just stop and sit down, letting all the dogs skid to a halt around him.

When Chrestomanci was on the stairs, none of the dogs could go up or down. They’d stand and bark for me to make him move. When he occupied the giant dog bed, sometimes a brave dog would creep onto the edge of the bed and share, but mostly the dogs would bark to try to get me to move him so they could have the bed.

Once when the dogs found a black snake in the yard, they all barked hysterically and lunged forward and leaped back. Chrestomanci sat on a tree stump nearby with his back turned to the whole circus, embarrassed to even watch their hysteria.

He was a young cat for 17 years. But this year he started showing his age and gradually losing weight. Recently he started failing in some indefinable way, and last week I realized he had gone blind. On the morning of 10-23-2018, I lifted him onto his favorite windowsill so he could enjoy the sunshine. Then I went out and dug a grave in the woods, not far from the place where he appeared eighteen years ago.

RIP

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Finished, more or less

So, this weekend, among other things, I did the final (or possibly semi-final) revision to the sequel to House of Shadows, which is as you perhaps recall going to be called Door Into Light. I am still going to request at least one more beta read, but I don’t expect major changes.

We have five pov characters this time. You remember from House of Shadows, Nemienne and Leilis and Taudde. And also Karah, who for some reason was perceived by a surprising number of readers as a pov character, though in fact she never carried the pov. 

This time all three of those characters are retained as pov protagonists, but also Karah gets a few pov chapters and so does a third sister, Enelle. So, five. That’s a lot, but the action is spread out. We start in Lonne, but almost immediately some characters wind up in Kalches. Then the action is divided between the two locations.  It seemed necessary to include more pov characters in order to let the reader see more of the things that are happening. Even at that, some of the stuff that’s going on offstage is important and provides one or two plot twists. 

Let me see . . . looks like Taudde gets 7 1/2 chapters (many longish), Leilis gets 8 chapters (some longish), Nemienne gets 6 chapters (the first couple short, then longer as her part of the story gets more important) (also she is the only character who gets two consecutive chapters; that’s odd; but I guess I thought that one chapter was getting too long and broke it).

Then Karah gets 1 1/2 chapters and Enelle gets 4 chapters. Enelle in particular gets to show some important stuff toward the end, but as you can see, they’re both secondary protagonists relative to the other three.

It’s 441 pages long, it turns out, according to the KDP template I just put it into. That’s the actual novel, not counting end materials and whatever. It’s about 150,000 words, give or take. Now comes the hard part: Back cover copy. I have no idea. This is so hard. How about:

——-

Life has hardly had time to settle down since the events of House of Shadows.

Leilis, now heir to Cloisonne House, is still finding her balance as an important keiso in Lonne’s flower world.

Nemienne, now Taudde’s apprentice, is still finding her balance between magecraft and sorcery.

Taudde himself, with the solstice — and possible war — fast approaching, is soon going to have no choice but to make his peace with his grandfather, the king of Kalches.

Then a coup in Lonne sends all three scrambling to save themselves, those they love, and two kingdoms from disaster.

———

I can’t say that I like that very much. I would welcome suggestions. I do think House of Shadows has been out so long that a brief reference to past events and to the important pov characters is important to remind readers of what’s come before. Possibly this is even too brief for that purpose.

As you see, I only spent one sentence on a vague description of what actually happens in Door Into Light. Frankly, I don’t think it needs much more than that. What do you all think?

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Earth is where I keep all my stuff

And I hate packing, so if a terrible catastrophe is imminent, of course I’d rather move the planet itself rather than trying to decide what would fit onto a spaceship ark.

James Davis Nicholl has a post on tor.com about that: (Semi)-plausible strategies for moving a whole damn planet.

You’re living on a perfectly good planet in orbit around a perfectly acceptable star—and then suddenly, the neighbourhood goes to crap and you have to move. For a lot of people, this means marching onto space arks.

Recapitulating Noah on a cosmic scale is such a pain, though. All that packing. All that choosing who to take and who to leave behind. And no matter how carefully you plan things, it always seems to come down to a race between launch day and doomsday.

Why not, therefore, just take the whole darned planet with you?

Fun topic! I had not realized there were so many (or any at all) books in which this happened. Amazingly, I just happened not to read any of the books Nicholl refers to.

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25 Best Space Operas

From Book Riot: 25 of the Best Space Operas. Okay, sure, I’ll bite. Let’s see if my picks are on here:

Nine Fox Gambit is the first book on the list. You know, I really do need to read this one of these days.

Dawn, by Octavia E Butler. And I’m immediately unimpressed with this list. Are you kidding me? In what possible sense is Dawn a space opera?

Let me back up and see what criteria were used to select works for this list … ah, look, there are no actual criteria listed. This is as close as the post comes: 

Space opera novels are so full of luscious world-building, all-around action, and very interesting characters.

That may be so, but as a way of delineating space opera, no way. Good lord above, historical novels could just as well fit these criteria! What a — sorry — totally lazy way to build a list of 25 best anything: don’t bother actually considering what defines the subgenre you named, just throw any SF novel that suits you right on in there. That’s ridiculous.

Here’s the definition that immediately comes to mind for me:

Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that  emphasizes action and adventure, set mainly or entirely in space, usually involving space ships and weaponry on about the level of Star Trek’s Enterprise. It blurs at one edge into military SF and at the other into epic SF.

Here’s a tor.com column about space opera. Here’s their definition:

“Colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.”

Sure, I could see that. I don’t think “competently and often beautifully written” is at all necessary as part of the definition; that’s a defensive reaction to the knee-jerk assumption that space opera is usually badly written. The emphasis on a sympathetic, heroic central character is probably common, but I don’t think it’s necessary. The plot action is necessary. The optimistic tone, yes, I could agree with that. I’d include that in my definition. “Relatively distant future,” no. The level of technology is a lot more important than the timing. Get too far into hyper-advanced tech and you lose the space opera feel, no matter how close or distant the setting is supposed to be.

There are a handful of selections from the Book Riot post I’d select for a list of space operas:

The Vorkosigan books and related novels by LMB

The Ky Vatta series by Elizabeth Moon, though starting with Cold Welcome is, not to put too fine a point on it, crazy.

Barbary Station by RE Stearns. I haven’t read it, but at least it sure looks like space opera.

The rest of theirs, I know nothing about or I don’t think are remotely space opera. Here are some others that I think are clearly space operas:

The Lensman series by EE Doc Smith

Agent of Change and other Tree-and-Dragon novels by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and others by Becky Chambers

And a zillion others, no doubt, that either I’m not thinking of right this minute or that are arguable. For example, Ancillary Justice. Yes or no for that series? I lean toward no, call that one epic, but I could absolutely be persuaded otherwise. 

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Tsundoku: a word English needs

All those books you’ve bought but haven’t yet read? There’s a word for that.

English is full to the brim with loan words. Let’s steal this one next. 

I don’t really like Taleb’s term “antilibrary.” A library is a collection of books, many of which remain unread for long periods of time. I don’t see how that differs from an antilibrary. A better term for what he’s talking about might be tsundoku, a Japanese word for a stack of books that you have purchased but not yet read. My personal library is about one-tenth books I have read and nine-tenths tsundoku….

The linked article is not really about renaming the TBR pile, though that would be fine with me because “tsundoku” is an attractive, evocative sort of word. Unlike the author of the article — Kevin Mims, writing in the NYT — I don’t have much of a “third category” of “partially read books” in my personal library. Very few. Poetry, mainly. Compilations of Shakespeare’s plays.

Mostly what I have are books I’ve read, plus a smaller number of books I haven’t read. I’d guess maybe 3000 books I’ve read and I know it’s around 400 or 500 books I haven’t read. Let’s say about a 7:1 ratio. Sounds like the author has his ratio the other way around, so he has a proportionally much bigger tsundoku than I do.

Mims ends his article:

The sight of a book you’ve read can remind you of the many things you’ve already learned. The sight of a book you haven’t read can remind you that there are many things you’ve yet to learn. And the sight of a partially read book can remind you that reading is an activity that you hope never to come to the end of.

Perhaps the Japanese have a word for that.

If there’s no word for that in Japanese, I bet there is in some other language. You remember this fun list of words with no English equivalent.

My favorite here is:

Greng-jai (Thai)
That feeling you get when you don’t want someone to do something for you because it would be a pain for them.

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Here’s a headline you don’t see every day:

What it’s like to fall 31 miles to Earth after your rocket fails.

The vehicle carrying Hague and Ovchinin had just taken off from Kazakhstan at 4:40AM ET (2:40PM local time). Just two and a half minutes into flight, the vehicle began to break apart. …

As soon as the failure occurred, the Soyuz capsule carrying Hague and Ovchinin switched into abort mode and separated away from the failing rocket. The astronauts experienced a brief moment of weightlessness while the capsule soared through the air. Then gravity soon took hold, and the vehicle started to fall back the 31 miles down to Earth. The crew members had begun what is known as a ballistic descent. “It’s like tossing a ball high into the air,” said Hague. “At some point gravity takes over and starts bringing it back down.”

It took 34 minutes for the capsule to land. Poor Hague. I mean, glad he and 
Ovchinin are okay, so no need for too much sympathy, but who knows when, or even if, Hague will actually make it to space. I bet competition for slots is pretty fierce.

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We’re living in an SF universe

This is the coolest headline of the day:

NASA’s brilliant plan for a cloud city of airships in the atmosphere of Venus.

Onward with that! 

Such a mission is actually possible, right now, with current technology. The plan is to use airships which can stay aloft in the upper atmosphere for extended periods of time.

As surprising as it may seem, the upper atmosphere of Venus is the most Earth-like location in the solar system.

If we got to the stage of actually building a cloud city of airships, I vote for naming one after Kim Stanley Robinson, since this is certainly consistent with the future he’s shown us in his books.

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