Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 349

Nominating for the Hugos Part II

Or is that “Nominating for the Hugos Part III? Or IV? Because it’s come up now and then for a while, I know.

Nevertheless, with just a couple weeks to go, here’s my updated list(s):

Novels:

1. The Goblin Emperor, obviously.

2. A Darkling Sea

3. Ancillary Sword, maybe

4. The Tropic of Serpents, maybe

5. Cuckoo Song, maybe. I haven’t read it yet (it hasn’t arrived yet, but you all sound so enthusiastic).

Definitely not:

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett. This one just did not grab me, though I can’t put my finger on why not. That’s why I stopped in the middle to read other things. I will think about it and see if I can figure out why I didn’t find this title more engaging.

The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey. This one absolutely did grab me. I read it fast and enjoyed it very much. But.

(a) The plot is extremely predictable. Almost from the first, I was all: Well, it’ll either wind up this way or that way. From the early middle, I was almost entirely certain where it was going. The moment those sporangia were discovered, in the late middle, there was no doubt left at all. By that time, I had also correctly predicted the role every single major character was going to play and who was going to live and die. I still enjoyed the book very much, because for me it’s all about the journey, not the end. But, well, yeah, that degree of predictability is a definite flaw.

(b) I liked how Carey handled the Sergeant. Sergeant Parks started off as a caricature of The Jackbooted Military Man, but that’s not how he wound up. But in *general*, the characters were quite stereotyped. The Caring Teacher. The Mad Vivisectionist. Mind you, they were well-drawn stereotypes, but still.

(c) Good Lord, isn’t it possible to have a whole book where there’s an important female character and an important male character and NOT have them fall into bed together? Carey laid some groundwork for that moment, but it was fundamentally unbelievable and also unnecessary. NOTE: Martha Wells pulled this off in City of Bones That’s almost the only case I can think of where an author did not force her protagonists into a sexual encounter just because one was a guy and one was a woman, no matter how unsuited to each other they might be. Can anybody else think of a story when an author declined to go there?

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. I made it through, oh, maybe four pages, and that was it for me. I simply cannot bear to read about physics instructors being tortured and humiliated because they taught evil capitalist Einsteinian physics. No matter what awards this is nominated for or how good it is, I am not going to be able to read this book.

The Bees by Laline Paull. I read about half the sample and . . . I could not perceive the characters as bees. I tried. I really did. But I just kept thinking, This is not how bees are. This is not how bees act. Bees don’t think like this. Bees don’t think. Bees don’t have more than a handful of neurons to rub together. They’re baking pastries? This is ridiculous.

So that was it for me.

Defenders by Will McIntosh. I’ve read about 25% of this book and, though I liked the beginning, I’m having a hard time going on with it. The first pov protagonist gets killed and we switch to someone else and that is jarring, or it was for me. Then we skip back and forth in time a good bit. When the Defenders are actually in battle, we don’t get close to that — we are held at a distance, watching from the perspective of distant observers. This, combined with a clear idea of where the plot is going — partly my fault; I shouldn’t have read all those reviews first — drains this early conflict of excitement and tension. Also, I thoroughly dislike one of the main pov protagonists. He seems both stupid and ineffectual and I can’t see why Any. Other. Person. Wouldn’t work as well as him at what he’s supposed to do (communicate with the alien). It appears to be able to talk to anybody it likes. What exactly makes this particular guy so special that he gets to be a high-level advisor? Has he ever actually offered useful advice? I don’t know if he’s going to improve, but at this point, I’m not interested enough to really care.

I still might try:

The Girl on the Road

Station Eleven

Lagoon

I probably will not try:

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club. If it is not really fantasy, but more a straight historical, then it’s out as far as I’m concerned.

Boy, Snow, Bird.

The Book of Strange New Things

Novellas:

“Trading Rosemary” by Octavia Cade. I will probably put this on the ballot, though it was too slow for me (that’s saying something, since I usually like a slow pace) and though I seriously disliked the pov character. Despite that, it’s clearly a good novella.

“Dream Houses” by Genevieve Valentine. I probably will NOT put this on the ballot. I disliked it *too* much, though anybody can see it’s also a good novella. A horribly claustrophobic story.

“Island in a Sea of Stars” by Kevin J Anderson. I haven’t read it yet.

“Where the Trains Turn” by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen. I haven’t read it yet.

Novelettes:

“The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys. I haven’t read it yet. (I haven’t read a single novelette yet.) But it is accessible via tor.com, so I will.

Then there’s set of novelettes that don’t seem to be available online, which I probably won’t read:

“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra.

“Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner

“Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart

“Marielena” by Nina Allen

“Steppin’ Razor” by Maurice Broaddus.

But I will also at least try to find any of the novelettes that are up for the Nebula, which I’m listing below. Tor.com has another of those, and I think some of the others may be available. Here’s that set again, though I’m not going to take the time to google each one and see if it’s easily available:

“Sleep Walking Now and Then,” Richard Bowes

“The Magician and Laplace’s Demon,” Tom Crosshill

“A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” Alaya Dawn Johnson. I already had this on my list, but since it’s not available online, I am very unlikely to read it prior to the close of the nominations. I’d kind of like to see it on the Hugo ballot, though, because I would like to read it.

“The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado

“We Are the Cloud,” Sam J. Miller

“The Devil in America,” Kai Ashante Wilson

Short stories:. A good handful of these are available online, though I haven’t searched for them all yet (links to some are in the previous post, as you no doubt rememeber). I will try to make time to read all the ones that are easy to get to.

“Mad Maudlin” by Marie Brennan. Definitely at the top of the ballot. An excellent story.

“How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps” by A. Merc Rustad. I liked it a lot. I may very well nominate it. Clever and touching, and I like the ending, which is not the horrible dark ending so popular in SFF stories today. Incidentally, this is a Message story where the author kept the Message in the background enough that, though noticeable, it didn’t come across as unbearably preachy. Authors who are determined to make the Message more important than the story should take a look at this to see how to manage both. Then they should back the Message off just a little bit more, imo. Still, not a bad job.

“Never the Same” by Polenth Blake. I may nominate this one.

“When It Ends, He Catches Her” by Eugie Foster. I may nominate this one.

“Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion” by Caroline Yoachim. Cleverly put together, but not really my thing.

“Tuesdays With Molakesh the Destroyer” by Megan Grey. I liked it, but I wouldn’t say it’s brilliant.

“Totaled” by Kary English. This turns out to be available on Amazon, so I read it. It’s a good, straightforward story, with, I warn you, echoes of “Flowers for Algernon.”

“On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli. It’s just okay for me.

“The Queen of the Tyrant Lizards” by John C Wright. Definitely not, though it’s well written.

“Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet. Haven’t read it.

“A Single Samurai” by Steve Diamond. Haven’t read it.

“The Breath of War” by Aliette de Bodard. Haven’t read it.

The Earth and Everything Under by K.M. Ferebee. Haven’t read it.

“We Are the Cloud” by Sam J. Miller. Haven’t read it.

“Hold Back the Waters” by Virginia M. Mohlere. Haven’t read it.

“The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye” by Matthew Kressel. Haven’t read it.

“The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” by Usman T. Malik. Haven’t read it.

“A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide” by Sarah Pinsker. Haven’t read it.

“Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon. Haven’t read it.

“The Fisher Queen” by Alyssa Wong. Haven’t read it.

I know that a couple of you are definitely nominating, too. Let me know what you think of shorter works, if you read them! Or if you find any that you are mad to get on the ballot, please let me know and I’ll prioritize them.

Writers as barbarian conquerers

This post by Marie Bilodeau at Black Gate is entertaining:

Writing a novel re-envisioned as barbarian conquest —

This is where you plunge in and WRITE! KILL! DESTROY! Your armies are in place. Your knights are totally rocking it! Your archers are shooting those little wooden arrows like they can’t run out AND THEY DON’T BECAUSE IT’S YOUR BOOK!

My favorite bit is this one:

Don’t trust the distractions. Off in the distance, there will be other Fortresses of Manuscript, with large open doors and inviting fields of green. There may be enticing scantily clad people on top, dancing their cultic dances with colorful veils and shiny ribbons. There will be candy and chocolate. And flowers. The other fortresses will show you some leg and make promises of success.

That is so true! In an entirely overdone metaphorical way. Thanks to commenter Robert for pointing this post out to me.

Ah, and here are the Nebula nominees –

Tor.com has just drawn my attention to the SFWA announcement of the Nebula nominees for 2015. Let’s take a look!

Best Novel

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Tor)

Trial by Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)

Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor)

Coming Home, Jack McDevitt (Ace)

Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals; Fourth Estate; HarperCollins Canada)

THERE, GOOD. Glad to see The Goblin Emperor is on the ballot.

Okay, looking at the rest of this, I can see I may want to prioritize The Three-Body Problem, just to see whether I like it — I expect it’s impressive, but that’s not the same thing as liking it. But I would vote for an impressive work I didn’t personally like if I thought it was the best book on the ballot. Speaking of impressive books that I hated, I really disliked Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch a few years ago, so there’s no way I’m touching Annihilation unless I hear something that makes me really willing to take a chance on it. Okay, and Jack McDevitt’s books just don’t appeal to me that much, though I know lots of people love his work. I’ve never read anything by Charles Gannon, but I see this is a second book in this series. Looks like gung-ho alien invasion SF. Here’s a review from Goodreads that makes me think maybe I ought to put the first book on my wishlist. In fact, I think I will do that right now before it slips my mind.

Best Novella

We Are All Completely Fine, Daryl Gregory (Tachyon)

Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)

“The Regular,” Ken Liu (Upgraded)

“The Mothers of Voorhisville,” Mary Rickert (Tor.com 4/30/14)

Calendrical Regression, Lawrence Schoen (NobleFusion)

“Grand Jeté (The Great Leap),” Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Summer ’14)

Hey, you know what, I actually have “Calendrical Regression” . . . somewhere around here . . . I think. Sure sounds very familiar anyway.

Best Novelette

“Sleep Walking Now and Then,” Richard Bowes (Tor.com 7/9/14)

“The Magician and Laplace’s Demon,” Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld 12/14)

“A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” Alaya Dawn Johnson (F&SF 7-8/14)

“The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado (Granta #129)

“We Are the Cloud,” Sam J. Miller (Lightspeed 9/14)

“The Devil in America,” Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com 4/2/14)

Best Short Story

“The Breath of War,” Aliette de Bodard (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/6/14)

“When It Ends, He Catches Her,” Eugie Foster (Daily Science Fiction 9/26/14)

“The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye,” Matthew Kressel (Clarkesworld 5/14)

“The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family,” Usman T. Malik (Qualia Nous)

“A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide,” Sarah Pinsker (F&SF 3-4/14)

“Jackalope Wives,” Ursula Vernon (Apex 1/7/14)

“The Fisher Queen,” Alyssa Wong (F&SF 5/14)

And for this shorter fiction, I guess we can all agree on the single best title, at least. Right? Right?

All together now:

“The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family”

Or is that just me?

Anyway, more short work to possibly check out quick before Hugo nominations close. I’m not taking time to look for links right now, but I expect some of them are available online.

Reading with Depression

A must-read post at Book Riot, on the experience of reading — and, I presume, life — while clinically depressed vs after effectively treating the depression.

Someone told me that there comes a grieving period when depression/anti-anxiety medication and/or therapy and/or other treatment starts to really work. It’s not grieving about losing who you are; it’s about how much you denied your past self. About how you didn’t give yourself the chance to function but listened to those painful messages your mind fed you.

I find that very believable. And very sad. If there is one thing I want in the (very) near future, it is to see a stake driven through the heart of the idea that clinical depression is a personal failing and that those affected should tough it out. I don’t think anything else could improve the quality of life for the coming century so much as a really effective treatment for clinical depression (and other emotional dysfunctions).

Thanks to Maureen for the link.

Top Ten Book Problems

So, I just noticed (late, as usual) this Top Ten meme suggested by The Broke and The Bookish.

TOP TEN BOOK PROBLEMS I HAVE

Usually I have trouble getting to ten, but not for this!

1. Too many books. I don’t mean that I’m out of space for physical books . . . space is tight, and in a few years this will be a concern, but just a couple of years ago my Dad built me another bank of shelves. And my Kindle now relieves a lot of the pressure for more physical space. So I’m good for now! No, the problem is, there are JUST SO MANY BOOKS. I know I would love literally thousands of books that I will never get a chance to read. Tens of thousands! Even if I live as long as Jeanne Calment and read 150 books a year for my whole life, I will STILL die without even scratching the surface of books I would have loved. Oh, the frustration!

2. Not knowing what to read next. Related to #1 above. With all those choices, how can I possibly decide what to read? Partly I’m a “mood” reader and I never, or almost never, join “challenges” because I don’t want to be constrained. Right now, it’s true, I’m selecting only new-to-me books from the Hugo possibilities, but not even that narrows the choices down as much as it might, because there are a lot more possibilities than I can read before March 10th.

3. Not nearly enough time to read. I’m not complaining, really. Really really. But I had a lot more time to read other people’s books before I started seriously writing. Now I go for a month, even multiple months at a time, without touching any new-to-me fiction. This is painful. (I do manage a lot of re-reading during those times, plus nonfiction.)

4. Never getting around to watching television shows. There are, I hear, many great TV shows out there. Lots of great movies, too. I’d probably love a lot of them, but I will never know, because when I’m forced to choose, I’d really rather read a book. And I’m always forced to choose, because, as above, lack of time.

5. I can’t eat a bit without a book to read. Holiday dinners are an exception, but basically I must pick up a book at mealtimes.

6. Having a lot of books adds a layer to puppy-proofing the house. Every puppy needs to learn not to touch electrical cords or books, even when both are easily accessible.

7. Having to break up a series into different formats. Sometimes I can’t wait for a paperback and so I get a new book as an ebook or a hardcover, even when I started the series in paperback. I really dislike having half of a series in one format and the other half in a different format, but sometimes it happens because I hate waiting for sequels even more.

8. Waiting for sequels. My God, people, can’t you write faster? What is wrong with you all? There should be a law.

9. Being unable to make people I know drop everything and read the books I want them to read. Doesn’t that just drive you crazy? I’m always like STOP WITH YOUR FAVORITE SERIES AND READ THIS BOOK INSTEAD. And do people listen?* Not nearly often enough. It’s terrible.

10. Being disappointed when people I know read books I love and . . . don’t love them. Isn’t that just the WORST? I’m all like, YOU MUST READ THIS, and then a friend is kind of like, Um, why did you like this exactly? How is that even possible? It’s as though people have varying taste or something.

*On the other hand, when I know I have turned a reader onto a favorite author of mine, that’s pretty snazzy.

Nominating for the 2015 Hugos

Okay, the deadline for nominations is March 10. I want to beat that deadline by at least a couple of days. That means I have a handful more books and novellas to at least try in the next few weeks. Just out of curiosity, I have been poking around on Google for several days, seeing what other people are suggesting for nomination this year. Below I have compiled a list of works that various people think are worthy of nomination. I certainly haven’t been obsessive about searching, so this is hardly a complete list, but in case you find it useful or are just interested, here it is.

I’m trying to read at least some of the shorter works that are easily available online, but I’m not going to go buy issues of Asimov’s and SF&F and whatnot in order to read everything. I mean, hardly. I don’t really like any form shorter than a novella anyway. On the other hand, I have included links below to the handful of works that are available free online. I haven’t read them all yet, though.

Plus, I’ve looked at Goodreads descriptions for the novels. Some sound intriguing enough to at least try samples, and if I love love love the sample, there *is* still time to read several more nominees right through, if barely.

Okay, so: here’s a list of the novels that either I or somebody else are nominating, with comments. I have not kept track of who recommended what. I’m all about judging stories strictly on their own merits, so I don’t actually want to know anything about who recommended them and I would just as soon not know much about the authors as people, either.

Anyway, after the novels, I’ve listed the novellas, novelettes, and short stories, with links where available. Even if the novels sound like I would hate them, if I haven’t read them, I’ve left them on the list, but I’ve been removing shorter fiction from the list as I read it and decided it wasn’t the kind of thing I would want to nominate.

Novels

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. I see a lot of people are going to nominate this, and that’s great! I think and hope it will make the ballot. Then I hope the publisher will ask “Katherine” for a sequel. That would be extra-fabulous.

A Darkling Sea by James Cambias. I have not seen this on a lot of sites, and that’s too bad. This is just the kind of beautifully developed SF story that ought to be on the ballot. I hope Jo Walton is pushing it; I know she loved it.

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie. I’m reading this now. I don’t particularly like seeing middle books on the list, and I don’t especially want Ann Leckie to win two years in a row, but I must admit, yes, it’s a worthy sequel. And it does pick up well, with no desperate need to re-read the first book.

The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan. I haven’t seen this on anybody else’s list. But I’m not sure why not, other than it, too, is a middle book in a series. It is a quieter story, true; you can see where it is part of a larger whole; but it is meticulously put together. This and Ancillary Sword are both still on my list of possible nominees. Also, the physical packaging of the book really, truly blows the competition out of the water.

Now for the extensive list of novels I haven’t read:

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge

The first things to shift were the doll’s eyes, the beautiful grey-green glass eyes. Slowly they swivelled, until their gaze was resting on Triss’s face. Then the tiny mouth moved, opened to speak.

‘What are you doing here?’ It was uttered in tones of outrage and surprise, and in a voice as cold and musical as the clinking of cups. ‘Who do you think you are? This is my family.’

When Triss wakes up after an accident, she knows that something is very wrong. She is insatiably hungry; her sister seems scared of her and her parents whisper behind closed doors. She looks through her diary to try to remember, but the pages have been ripped out.

Soon Triss discovers that what happened to her is more strange and terrible than she could ever have imagined, and that she is quite literally not herself. In a quest find the truth she must travel into the terrifying Underbelly of the city to meet a twisted architect who has dark designs on her family – before it’s too late…

I know a lot of people really love Hardinge, but this sounds pretty dark. If you’ve read it, thumb’s up or thumb’s down? Should I hurry up and read it before nominations close? As an added complication, this title doesn’t seem to be available on Kindle yet. (!!!). Not sure I’m willing to get it in paper unless I’m pretty sure to love it. What do you all say?

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Goodreads says: Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth.

This one, by a Chinese SF author and translated by Ken Liu, sounds extremely impressive, but a whole lot of the book apparently takes place during the Cultural Revolution. I’m not sure I’m up for that.

Here’s a good review: The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

And Here’s David Brin’s review.

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Goodreads says: Lagoon expertly juggles multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives with prose that is at once propulsive and poetic, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself. Um, a city consuming itself. Maybe not going to rush right out or this one.

The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey

I see that Heidi from Bunbury in the Stacks, whose taste I often agree with, says: Wow. You know, for someone who had zero interest in zombies a couple of years ago, some of the most thought provoking novels I’ve read since have indeed been zombie books, and The Girl With All the Gifts shines pretty brightly at the had of that category. This book challenges what we think of as humanity, right, and victory. I kind of loved it.

The Bees by Laline Paull

Goodreads says: Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. Bees. Hmmm. Reviews are very mixed.

Evidently sometimes the bees seem to be bees and sometimes they seem to be making a statement about human society. I’m not sure it’s possible to pull both off at the same time. The detail from the reviews that most makes me reluctant to look at this one is that apparently at one point the sanitation bees are using little tiny brooms and dustpans. The mind boggles, yes? Many reviews compare this book to Watership Down. Try for one moment to imagine the rabbits in Watership Down sweeping out their burrows with little brooms. That would be an entirely different book. In fact, it would be Wind in the Willows, a book I always hated because I want animals to act like animals.

Not only that, but bees are supposed to be the way they are: eusocial, with extreme division of labor and so on. If you try to force humans into that kind of social order, naturally that would be evil and wrong. Why pick on bees, which are perfectly okay the way they are, to make a statement about how bad horrible repressive societies would be for people? It offends me to have animals used that way in a story.

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

Goodreads says: A densely atmospheric and intrigue-filled fantasy novel of living spies, dead gods, buried histories, and a mysterious, ever-changing city. I’m seeing this title on a lot of lists and the people who love it really seem to love it. I’m going to at least try a sample. But I think it may be the kind of fantasy that grades over into horror. Not sure, though. Have any of you read this?

The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne

A commenter, RS Carter, at Goodreads says pithily: If M.C. Escher ever wrote a book, this would be it. I feel like I just read Escher’s Relativity lithograph, because The Girl in the Road is the book it would be if one could translate visual art into a novel. Okay, that sounds quite intriguing.

Defenders by Will McIntosh

Jared at Goodreads says, in one of the briefer reviews to ever catch my eye: The end of chapter 39 had me in tears. Like the best of Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Moon and Octavia Butler, this book gets under your skin and exposes the brutality of the universe with just a glimmer of hope. Any such reference to Octavia Butler catches my eye. Reviews at Goodreads mostly make this book seem like something I should at least try.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Goodreads says: Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic [this is evidently a postapocalyptic novel], this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

Hmm. Rife with beauty, thumb’s up. But it sounds like it may be too darkly literary for me. And, ooh, an evil prophet, I’ve never seen *that* trope before. So that’s a bit of a turn-off, though not a dealbreaker. Have any of you read this?

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine

Now, this one has been on my radar for a while. Here’s a brief description from Amazon: From award-winning author Genevieve Valentine, a “gorgeous and bewitching” (Scott Westerfeld) reimagining of the fairytale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses as flappers during the Roaring Twenties in Manhattan. As it happens, the Twelve Dancing Princesses is one of my favorite fairy tales. I’ve had a particular soft spot for it since reading McKillip’s novella of the same name. I’ve just picked up a sample, because I definitely want to try this one. Of all the novels here that I haven’t tried yet, this is perhaps the one I’m most likely to read before nominations close.

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Another and very different fairy tale retelling, Goodreads says: In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman….A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold.

Boy? Is a woman? Because, huh. I must say, a “tale of aesthetic obsession” does not sound like my thing.

Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

Goodreads says: It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. … . His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter’s teachings—his Bible is their “book of strange new things.” But Peter is rattled when Bea’s letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter. … Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us.

While that sounds intriguing . . . hmmm. Here is a good review. It gives me a much better idea about how the book might come together. I’m not sure I will put it at the top of my list, though.

Skin Game by Jim Butcher

Goodreads says: Mab has just traded Harry’s skills to pay off one of her debts. And now he must help a group of supernatural villains—led by one of Harry’s most dreaded and despised enemies, Nicodemus Archleone—to break into the highest-security vault in town so that they can then access the highest-security vault in the Nevernever. … It’s a smash-and-grab job to recover the literal Holy Grail from the vaults of the greatest treasure hoard in the supernatural world…

I know a lot of people love The Dresden Files, but I’ve never actually tried them. This is the fifteenth in the series. I hear it’s good. But a fifteen-book series? Even if it stands by itself, do I want to go there?

Okay, so that’s the novels. The ones I think I really must at least try: The Girl With All The Gifts, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, City of Stairs. Novels I would like to try: Cuckoo Song, The Girl in the Road, Defenders, The Three-Body Problem. Things I would try if I had six months instead of a couple of weeks: The rest of them. If any of you have comments that might move some of these up or down the must-try list, please do let me know.

Moving on:

Novellas: I actually bought four recommended novellas because they’re not very expensive and I was curious. For two of them so far, I didn’t think either was that good, I didn’t finish them, and I deleted them from this post before putting it up. I don’t remember what they were, sorry. Here are the ones I still need to try. As you can see, two other novellas are available online, both from tor.com, but I haven’t read them yet, either.

“Trading Rosemary” by Octavia Cade

“Dream Houses” by Genevieve Valentine

“Island in a Sea of Stars” by Kevin J Anderson

“Where the Trains Turn” by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen

Novelette: Only one of these is available free online, also from tor.com — thank you, tor.com — though I haven’t read it yet. I am just not going to go out of my way to track down non-free novelettes, because I don’t generally like novelettes that much as a form. Some of them *sound* interesting, though, especially “Steppin’ Razor” and “The Fruits of Hawai’i”.

“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra

“Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner

“Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart

“The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys

“Marielena” by Nina Allen

“Steppin’ Razor” by Maurice Broaddus. But the linked review indicates that this Jamaican steampunk story feels like it stops halfway through. What is up with that?

“A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i” by Alaya Dawn Johnson. This review says, “A strong story from Johnson, looking closely at relationships between humans and the vampires who have taken over the world.” I’ve heard good things about The Summer Prince, so I would read this story if it was easily available, but I haven’t ever actually read anything at all by this author. Or by any of the author novelette authors listed here, either.

Short Story: As you can see, lots of these are linked to stories you can read online for free. Despite this, I haven’t read any of them yet. I thought about waiting for this post until I had read all the ones that are available, but . . . not sure when that will be, exactly. Not till after I finish Ancillary Sword, for sure, and I do have a lot of my own work to do. So here’s the list, straight up, without comments because I know nothing about any of these stories except that someone or other listed them for a nomination list.

“Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet

“Tuesdays With Molakesh the Destroyer” by Megan Grey I like the first sentence, but the link itself is not actually working for me right now.

“Totaled” by Kary English

“On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli

“A Single Samurai” by Steve Diamond

“Mad Maudlin” — Marie Brennan

“The Queen of the Tyrant Lizards” by John C Wright

“Never the Same” by Polenth Blake

“The Breath of War” by Aliette de Bodard

“When It Ends, He Catches Her” by Eugie Foster

“Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion” by Caroline Yoachim

Also, the John W Campbell Award:

The rules here may allow Andy Weir to be nominated because his first professional publication was in 2014, though I don’t think The Martian is technically eligible since it was originally self-published a couple years ago. I’m inclined to nominate both Weir and Django Wexler. Wexler’s first book, The Thousand Names, was published in 2013. This makes him eligible, because anybody whose first novel was published in the past two years, not one year, is eligible. I didn’t love Wexler’s second book as much as his first, but on the other hand, I really liked it.

If anybody has a suggestion for an author who was first published in 2013 or 2014 and would thus be eligible for the JWC Award, by all means, let me know. I’m sure there are many great authors who are eligible, probably several of whom are on my TBR pile right his very minute.

Whew, all right, that’s it for now! As I read these, I’ll comment about them, but obviously there’s no chance I’ll get to all those novels before the deadline. If any of you read anything here, I’d appreciate hearing what you think of them.

How do people think of these things?

Here’s a choose-your-own-adventure story, using twitter accounts. I’ve already been had Them feast upon my mortal remains. I need to try again.

Ouch. Didn’t end well that time, either. My suggestion is, in this game, discretion may be the better part of valor.

I saw this link over at Harry Connelly’s blog, btw.

Recent Reading: Once Upon a Rose by Laura Florand

Words that have seldom if ever passed my lips in real life: Aww. He’s so cute when he’s drunk!

And yet, there it is. Aww. Matthieu Rosier is just so adorable when Layla first meets him, at his birthday party, at midnight, when everybody at the party is a bit smashed, Matthieu more than some. Her car broke down, see, and she walked across the rose fields to ask for help. This is how that goes:

He turned to the door and ran straight into a guest trying to slip inside the house. Her face smashed into his chest, and he looked down at a wild mass of bronze-tipped curls and then at a heart-shaped face tilting back to look up at him as she bounced backward.

“Well, hello,” he exclaimed, delighted, picking her straight up off the floor before she fell. Then he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her – maybe it had been a bit excessive, picking her up completely to stop her from falling? Still, he could hardly drop her now.

And then he can’t bring himself to admit he doesn’t know who she is, when he’s supposed to know everybody at his party. Right? And she’s so cute! He sure doesn’t want any of his male cousins making a move on her and cutting him out, so naturally he declares grandly to the first relative who asks that she’s his girlfriend . . .

Okay, now, look. I think this scene works so well because it’s from his point of view, and so we are in no doubt at all about how nice a guy he really is, even with all his inhibitions and most of his sane judgment smashed flat. He is so, so appalled when he wakes up – with a tremendous hangover – and realizes how he acted when this cute girl who was a complete stranger knocked on the door for help. And that’s the start of Laura Florand’s sweetest, warmest romance to date.

Matthieu is genuinely adorable. Layla is genuinely adorable. But there is a problem! For reasons too complicated to go into here, Matt’s great-aunt gave Layla a house that rests smack dab in the middle of the Rosier valley, and since Matt is heir to the Rosier family’s perfume business and responsible for every single thing in the valley, this strikes at the heart of his sense of identity. So there’s that. Especially since Layla accidentally springs this inheritance on him as a total surprise.

And yet . . . every single one of Matt’s cousins instantly sees what a genuinely adorable couple they would make and starts nudging them together. Oh, no, sorry, it’s so complicated to get to the village from here! I’m terrible with directions. You know, you should probably ask Matt.

Okay, stuff you can probably see coming, since this is a Laura Florand romance: Matt and Layla are beautifully suited to each other and it all works out at the end. Also, family is important and the relationships between Matt and his clutter of male cousins are great – competitive and supportive at the same time. Also, everyone’s backstory has historical depth and emotional scope. WWII is getting to be ancient history, hard though that is to believe, but not for the Rosier family.

Also, the scenery! I’ve never particularly wanted to visit France – the African savannah is more my thing – but honestly, now I long to visit Provence. In rose season. Although I must admit, it would be disappointing not to find the Rosier family right there in their valley, just as described in Once Upon A Rose. They feel like they ought to be there, every one of them, from old Jean-Jacques Rosier to Great-Aunt Colette right through the whole bunch of cousins.

Also, the fairy tales. I’m sure you remember that Laura Florand puts fairy tales in her romances, right? I knew there were supposed to be two in this one, and there were, but it took me an embarrassingly long time to get them, because I fell into the story and forgot to keep an eye out. They’re pretty obvious when you remember to look for them, though. It does add charm to have those fairy-tale-echoes worked into the story.

Overall, let me repeat, this is probably the sweetest, warmest story Florand has written to date. The setting supports the sweetness and warmth – the rose harvest is underway – but so does everything else about the story. Matt may blow up when he finds out that Layla owns that little house in the middle of his valley, but he’s just so charmed by her. Layla is shocked at his outrage, but she’s equally charmed by him, not to mention she’s just naturally generous and warm and playful. Their worst misunderstanding only takes a few paragraphs to resolve, because by that time they’ve already built quite a bit of trust into their relationship. This isn’t the kind of thing where, for a hundred pages of misunderstandings and hurt feelings, you shout in your head, But can’t you two just talk to one another? Because they do.

So, yeah, I’m looking forward to the next story in this series. My pick for male lead would be Damian, but fine, fine, I’ll take Tristan (there’s a note at the end that says the next book will focus on Tristan). I expect that one will come out next year, but fortunately Florand has another Chocolate romance coming out this year – Once a Hero – so that’ll be something to tide me over. Good thing she has two series going.

Pre-Rejection, Two Ways

Ah, when two points of view clash and yet both are correct! Always an interesting moment.

Here is Chuck at Terrible Minds:

You wrote something. Maybe you edited it. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe you didn’t even finish it. Then, you concoct a series of reasons inside your head why nobody will give a hot wet fuck about it. Nobody will wanna read it. Nobody will wanna buy it. You’ve got your reasons — maybe one reason, maybe a whole catalog full of them. And frankly? They all sound good. This isn’t the one, you tell yourself. It’s not yet right. And soon it becomes smart because, hey, you don’t want that thing you wrote out there. This is a sound business decision. This is a practical creative decision. Not everything you write is going to be aces. And so you open a drawer and you chuck this manuscript into it. It lands on top of five, ten, twenty others. A cloud of dust kicks up like an allergenic mushroom cloud — poof. And then you close the drawer.

That is pre-rejection.

You have killed the thing you created because you imagine its inevitable rejection.

I trust you get the gist of Chuck’s opinion from this snippet.*

Now, here is Joshua Bilmes of the JABberwocky Literary Agency, responding:

If I as an agent look at three or four bad books by an author, I am not likely to sign up to look at another. I’m not saying “never.” It’s possible to see that an author’s on a growth and learning curve which I want to encourage. But even for that to happen, the books do need to get to a point where they look interesting. It can’t be 60th percentile work or 20th percentile work. You need to be in the 80th or 90th or 95th percentile.

You can’t count on sending me everything you write, even the things that not even you think are good enough, and expect me to be around for long enough to get to the thing that’s finally good. . . . Sometimes, there is nothing I hate more than the OK first novel. There’s an ill-defined boundary between selling an OK first novel that is good enough to have people saying “this is only OK, but I’m really eager to see more” and “this was OK, but I was hoping for better.” In one of those scenarios, the OK first novel can launch a career which the first novel never comes to define. In the other scenario, the OK first novel can kill a career at birth.

So, dueling perspectives. I think both are right. What makes the difference, I guess, is self-awareness on the part of the writer — “Is this actually good?” — which requires objectivity and distance from your own work. I would suggest that shelving a novel for a year would not be too extreme.

Also, beta readers! Who are widely read in your genre, analytical, and willing to be honest. I don’t think the former two characteristics get enough attention, because I think both are very important indeed; but the “willing to be honest” may be even more difficult to find. I, for example, find it basically unbearable to tell someone that I don’t think their book works, even if I know why I think so, which I don’t always, because I am not a great editor. When friends or strangers ask, as occasionally they do, “Can you just look at this and tell me what you think?”, I do my best to say no, because I am a terrible choice.

Anyway, it’s good to see both these perspectives, I think.

* I should add, if you read through the comments at Chuck’s post, you see he does have a more nuanced opinion than the one implied in the post, and definitely believes in the beta-reader thing.

Preferences in fictional romances

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, from The Broke and the Bookish, is on preferences in fictional romances.

I could do a post on that, but I don’t have to, because Maureen did it for me! Her list covers exactly the points I would. #clones

What are some stories that offer romances that fit some or most of these points? Off the top of my head, I would pick, in no particular order:

FORTUNE AND FATE by Sharon Shinn

Of course Sharon Shinn mostly writes fantasy with a hefty dose or romance, or romances with fantasy settings, depending on how you look at it, I suppose. I also would suggest her TROUBLED WATERS and ARCHANGEL, both first books in series, but both stand alone, as Shinn’s books usually do.

The Sharing Knife quadrilogy by LMB. Oh, wait, also The Curse of Chalion series. And others — Maureen mentioned Miles and Ekaterin.

THE QUEEN OF ATTOLIA / THE KING OF ATTOLIA by MWT

The Touchstone Trilogy by AKH and in fact a bunch of things by AKH.

The romance in CJC’s FORTRESS IN THE EYE OF TIME checks a bunch of Maureen’s boxes, too — especially the “not central” box, since the romance does not involve the primary protagonist.

How many author’s names do you recognize when you see a set of three initials, btw? Have I about exhausted the supply? I think SO.

Oh, except I haven’t cited DWJ yet, but do any of her books involve actual on-screen romances? At the moment I’m drawing a blank, but she does have a heck of a lot of books, of course.

Let me see, let me see. Romances that are: slow burn, not the main focus of the story, depend on developing trust, subvert tropes, not based on faaate or super-hotness. What else hits the majority of those buttons (not necessarily every single button)?

Robin Hobb sometimes does a good job with this kind of thing. I particularly liked the romance between Captain Leftrin and Alise in DRAGONKEEPER.

Anybody got other ideas for this kind of romance in fantasy? Or SF?

Update: I see Brandy also has a preferences-in-romances post up! Not for fantasy-romances especially, but any romances. However, for snarky dialogue in fantasy romances, I actually can’t think of any better example than Lindsay Buroker’s The Emperor’s Edge series. It’s definitely the dialogue that makes that whole series.