Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 82
February 7, 2023
TANO enters final-final proofreading!
So, just entered the corrections for two final proofreaders for TANO.
This is somewhat tedious because I’m making identical corrections in the Kindle file, the paperback file, and the hardcover file — so I make the same change three times in three different documents. BUT, though this is tedious, there are now few enough corrections that it is less tedious to do it this way than to destroy the paperback and hardcover versions and recreate them from the corrected Kindle file.
What that means is, not a lot of corrections, yay! This only took, let me see, about half an hour.
By this time you won’t be surprised to hear this, but:
Cathie found 5 more quite dire typos that everyone else had missed.
Hanneke found an incredible 22 MORE obvious, egregious typos that EVERYONE ELSE HAD MISSED. That’s a record so far for unique obvious typos.
All those have now been corrected and I’m going to load the corrected paperback version to KDP and order ONE MORE proofing copy for me to read ONE MORE TIME.
And that’s it. We’re done. I need to fill in the acknowledgments sections and add the page numbers to the ToC for the paper editions and, come to think of it, add a clickable ToC to the ebook edition, because I don’t think I’ve done that yet.
But TANO is basically good to go, and from the time I picked it up to this moment was about two months, and that is ASTOUNDING. Everyone who helped with super-fast turnaround of comments and proofing, thank you so, so much.
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Free Books with Amazon Prime
You may know that Amazon offers a chance to pick up a free book every month if you’re a Prime member? Sometimes I add one of these to my already groaning TBR pile, sometimes I skip it, depending on whether any books look appealing.
Well, this month the potential free books are shown in the email SOLELY as covers. You can, of course, click through to read the description, but not even a single line of description is presented in the email. This is an interesting technique! Here are the covers. What do you think?
My reaction: AAAAH NO RUN AWAY
This looks absolutely horrific. That scissors! Juxtaposed with that title! In those red letters! No no no!
After clicking through, I can tell you that this is indeed “horror suspense.” Here is one line from the description: As the walls close in, the ghosts of Grace’s past collide with a new but familiar threat: Mom.
Yeah, I’d say my initial reaction was spot on. Okay, let’s look at the next:
What is this? I think maybe a Rom-Com? To me, that’s what those two sunbathers seem to imply. Clicking through … yes again. Is she willing to swap her lifelong dreams for a shot at healing her broken heart?
This one is much more difficult! “The Maid’s Diary,” what could that be? I have no idea. Let’s click through.
Kit Darling is a maid with a snooping problem. She’s the “invisible girl,” compelled to poke into her wealthy clients’ closely guarded lives. It’s a harmless hobby until Kit sees something she can’t unsee in the home of her brand-new clients: a secret so dark it could destroy the privileged couple expecting their first child. This makes Kit dangerous to the couple. In turn, it makes the couple—who might kill to keep their secret—dangerous to Kit.
Goodness. I’m not sure I would have expected that.
When homicide cop Mallory Van Alst is called to a scene at a luxury waterfront home known as the Glass House, she’s confronted with evidence of a violent attack so bloody it’s improbable the victim is alive. But there’s no body. The homeowners are gone. And their maid is missing. The only witness is the elderly woman next door, who woke to screams in the night. The neighbor was also the last person to see Kit Darling alive...
Oh ho, looks like Kit may not be the protagonist at all! Maybe she’s the murder victim, and we start off in her pov, but then she’s killed at the end of the first chapter. This says it’s “psychological suspense,” but to me, from this description, it sounds like it falls squarely into the murder mystery genre. Maybe not, there’s a line about an unexpected twist at the end.
All right, moving on:
Colors! So that’s good. But I’m guessing — this is a pure guess, and I think I’m being pulled toward this idea because it reminds me of Wild Awake, which I’ve never read but it’s one that has been on my radar for a good while — anyway, I’m thinking Wild, Beautiful and Free may be about a female protagonist with some sort of mental or emotional illness. Let me click through and see.
Born the daughter of an enslaved woman and a Louisiana plantation owner, Jeannette Bébinn is raised alongside her white half sister—until her father suddenly dies. His vindictive wife refuses twelve-year-old Jeannette her inheritance and sells her into slavery.
Nope, I was off base with that guess! Looks like Jeannette promptly escapes and her story goes on from there, by the way, which does make the story sound more appealing. But not enough for me to add it to my TBR pile. I already have at least one historical-ish fantasy mystery set during this period, and I’m much more likely to try that.
Suspense, horror, mystery? What do you think? Got a guess? The cover doesn’t scream HORROR the way the first book on this list does. Okay, let’s click through …
Twenty years ago, in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas, Annie Randall took her dog for a walk. The dog returned. Annie did not. When her body was found, cruelly broken and posed like a runner, there was only ever one suspect: Annie’s husband, Frank. Now he’s served his time and come home – but the locals won’t let him forget. Especially when there’s a new ‘running girl’ murder… Can [the detective] find the answers that could heal her broken family before the wind and the waves hide them forever?
So it’s a murder mystery! Doesn’t sound bad, but not super appealing either. Next:
Why is there a peacock on this cover? Why is there a peacock on the cover of a book titled “Hospital?” I’m having some trouble here. The title itself in combination with the dark color scheme suggests … what? Horror? To me, it suggests horror. But then … a peacock? Could the setting be historical and maybe Indian? Peacocks are mostly from India, though I think there’s a different species in Burma. That’s my guess: historical fiction set in India.
A complimentary bottle of mineral water from the hotel minibar results in sudden and debilitating stomach pain, followed by unconsciousness. … With no explanation, the hotel forcibly sends him to a hospital for examination. There, he receives no diagnosis, no discharge date… Armed with nothing but his own confusion, Yang Wei travels deeper into the inner workings of the hospital and the secrets it’s hiding from the patients. As he seeks escape and answers, one man’s illness takes him on a quest through a corrupt system and his own troubled mind.
I have no clue. I hereby declare this is literary because what the heck else could it be?
Oh! No, looking at the one review, I see this is actually SF! I did not figure that out from the description or the cover, so I think that’s an epic fail of presentation. Here’s what the review says: What if all other countries destroyed themselves during a world war, leaving India and Nepal to rule the world and space missions to go off in search of the Buddha? You know what, how about if you put THAT in the actual official description? Also, if “space missions” are a thing, perhaps you should indicate that.
Okay, next:
Well, this time it says “a thriller” right there on the cover, so that’s much easier. As small-town gossip weaves a harrowing web of jealousy, deceit, and betrayal, Kate and Alex discover that whether you’re in or out, the status quo can turn on you deadly fast. I don’t think this sounds like my cup of tea.
One more:
I don’t know … romance, maybe? I really can’t guess. Women’s fiction, whatever that means? I don’t know.
Well, in that case, I guess this may be a contemporary YA romance?
As Tara and Silas embark on the trip to remote pilgrimage sites from Punjab through the Himalayas, they each discover what it means to be a child in the Indian diaspora, the significance of karma, and the healing power of love.
Fine, yes, I’m calling this contemporary YA romance. The setting does sound interesting; the characters perhaps less so.
I don’t think I’m interested enough in any of these to pick up the book, but to me, Mother and Lovely Girls are the most successful in indicating, with nothing but cover and title, what category the book falls into. Hospital is BY FAR the least successful at indicating genre, and wow, it’s not close. I think what I’m taking away from this is that (A) sure, the cover is important, but (B) honestly, you really need to have genre expectations in mind when you do the cover and for heaven’s sake, you need to indicate genre in the description, how is that not obvious?
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February 6, 2023
Short spears
A fantastic, detailed survey of the uses of a sort of weapon that’s a short, heavy-bladed spear, sometimes called a partisan (this caused me to pause because that’s not the meaning of partisan with which I was familiar) or a spontoon (this caused me to pause because wow does my brain want to read that at “spitoon.”)
Anyway, this Quora answer was (of course!) written by Eric Lowe, who provides much commentary and many pictures, plus this:
Lastly, I should mention that spontoons as such are really short, heavy-bladed spears from the 18th and 19th centuries, long past the period in which such a weapon could be expected to be used with any sort of regularity. By then, the spontoon was really more a badge of office than anything else, and more likely to be used as a long stick to help its wielder dress the line of battle than to stab the enemy. … But just why this should be a badge of office is often kind of confusing to people. On the other hand, if you know that the short-ish, heavy-bladed spear was a weapon associated with the skirmishes and patrols that history forgets and of being ready to fight in a variety of situations at the drop of a hat, … the spontoon was just the sort of weapon that a hard-charging, ready-for-anything, if-it-was-good-enough-for-my-grandpappy-it’s-good-enough-for-me kind of noncom or platoon leader might want as a symbol.
And this shows yet again that Eric Lowe understands history and people in a way that is useful in story terms. If you want to include this sort of hard-charging character in a novel, well, this is the kind of weapon he might use as a badge of office, and the linked post explains why.
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Short spear sorts of weapons
A fantastic, detailed survey of the uses of a sort of weapon that’s a short, heavy-bladed spear, sometimes called a partisan (this caused me to pause because that’s not the meaning of partisan with which I was familiar) or a spontoon (this caused me to pause because wow does my brain want to read that at “spitoon.”)
Anyway, this Quora answer was (of course!) written by Eric Lowe, who provides much commentary and many pictures, plus this:
Lastly, I should mention that spontoons as such are really short, heavy-bladed spears from the 18th and 19th centuries, long past the period in which such a weapon could be expected to be used with any sort of regularity. By then, the spontoon was really more a badge of office than anything else, and more likely to be used as a long stick to help its wielder dress the line of battle than to stab the enemy. … But just why this should be a badge of office is often kind of confusing to people. On the other hand, if you know that the short-ish, heavy-bladed spear was a weapon associated with the skirmishes and patrols that history forgets and of being ready to fight in a variety of situations at the drop of a hat, … the spontoon was just the sort of weapon that a hard-charging, ready-for-anything, if-it-was-good-enough-for-my-grandpappy-it’s-good-enough-for-me kind of noncom or platoon leader might want as a symbol.
And this shows yet again that Eric Lowe understands history and people in a way that is useful in story terms. If you want to include this sort of hard-charging character in a novel, well, this is the kind of weapon he might use as a badge of office, and the linked post explains why.
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Well, that was a tedious weekend
So, last Thursday, I finally took my old laptop to the computer place for them to transfer everything to the new laptop. Because it didn’t all get finished prior to Friday evening, I spent my first weekend in probably YEARS without a laptop and therefore with no way to actually work on ANYTHING.
Did I weep with joy and read a lot of books?
No, I did not. I felt super deprived and annoyed, even though objectively speaking this was a good time to lose my laptop for a weekend. (That’s why I arranged to do it now and not earlier.) I remember dimly the years when I would take a months’ long break between writing projects, but right at the moment it’s just annoying to be forced to take a break. Hopefully I will get my new laptop this afternoon, but I will have to ask the IT guys to get Word working on the new laptop and whatever else, so the annoyance will continue for another day or so, probably.
However (1), TANO is out being proofread, so there’s nothing for me to do there. I expect the cover will be ready soon; I believe I should be seeing the first version this week. I hope I will be posting the cover later this week and also putting the book up for preorder hopefully this week, so that’s exciting! I feel like my personal year will start when my first release goes out into the world for 2023.
I think I will try to have something ready to go January 2024, get that year off to a fast start.
Meanwhile (2), NO FOREIGN SKY — I’ve got comments back from one reader, but not yet from everyone, so I’m feeling okay about putting off further revision, especially since I’m tired of messing with it. Not touching it this weekend is fine with me. Though you know what, I should also be seeing a draft of the cover maybe this week or next week, and that will be very cool. I think I forgot to mention to the artist that the turun look like giant troll-centaurs with four arms. I don’t believe that detail was included in the description I sent him originally. Well, we’ll see!
Meanwhile (3), TASMAKAT is in fine shape, but I do want to do the essential revision, hopefully it won’t be too much trouble, and THAT is why I miss my laptop so much. If you’re curious, a first reader suggested combining two characters and my initial reaction (oh no, I think that’s a good idea, aaagh) eventually turned into a more useful reaction (it’s definitely a good idea and also it’s not really going to be that much work). So, in keeping with the rule that everything in the Tuyo world is more fun for me, I would like to do that. But I can’t because I don’t have my laptop.
Meanwhile (4), the INVICTUS revision is just an intention on my horizon right now. Everything else comes first.
However (5), things about future books keep occurring to me and I can’t take real notes about any of them. I’m sending myself emails with those ideas, to be integrated into the appropriate files eventually. This is both the Lau novel where I have practically the whole outline in my head plus some detailed scenes I’m dying to write and also I now have maybe the first third or so of a prequel story about Sinowa and Marag getting together — a great opening scene and then a plot that unfolds from there, but I’m not sure where it goes after it reaches a certain point. But now that I’m this far with it, that’s looking promising. I may write the part I have clear and just see if the rest of the story cooperatively unfolds for me when I get to it.
So did I actually read ANY books?
Yes, including one I absolutely loved. I’ll write a review of that one to post later this week, and if any of you here feel like (a) dropping a book recommendation into the comments of any random post here, or (b) emailing me privately to tell me about a book you think I’d love, by all means do! Whichever is more convenient! That’s how I found out about this one.
I also went to my actual office so I could use the computer there to write some blog posts, which I have scheduled ahead, and schedule some book promotions, and work on a Newsletter to send right at the end of the month, and do various other things that are a pain in the neck or impossible to do from home.
Segue into comments about promotion:
The last book promotions I ran were in late August / early September 2022 and they were exceedingly disappointing compared to every other promotion I’ve ever run. As far as I can tell, Amazon either changed its algorithms in a way that hit me hard, or else I failed to space out new book releases properly and that means I got hit by some algorithm in a way that, again, was not good.
One possibility, and I mention this for anyone who self-publishes and may not have heard, but you know how you can put your book in up to ten categories? Amazon apparently started picking only three categories in which to show your book, no matter what, and not necessarily the three categories that suit it best. So some people are reporting that they are doing better by asking Amazon to remove all but the three or four best categories from their books. So I have tried that, and we will see how that goes.
Tip: You know what’s sensible? After you’ve gone to the trouble of figuring out the category strings that you may want to use for your book using this handy service, for heaven’s sake copy those into a Word or other document for future reference. If I ever want to add a lot more categories again (who knows, seems likely), then I will have the strings sitting there, ready to be used. What I mean by strings are these:
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult eBooks > Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction & Fantasy eBooks > Teen & Young Adult Fantasy eBooks > Teen & Young Adult Coming of Age Fantasy eBooks
And I’m showing one I took out, because if you’ve only got three categories, then I think TUYO is more adult than otherwise.
Upcoming promotions:
To see what happens, I’m running promos for everything in March. That will be about six months from the most recent promotion, so that may make a difference compared to doing promotions more frequently. Or Amazon may have changed its algorithms again in some way that turns out to be helpful to me personally. Plus doing a release right before starting promotions may make a big difference. Or all three. I think my current sales are at the lowest possible ebb right now, so whatever I see in March, April, and June should tell me something.
However, the practical note for you all is that almost everything will be on sale for some five-day period or other in March.
I will mention each sale here and on Twitter and Facebook when it actually takes place, plus I will send out a newsletter. I should be sending one every couple of months this year because there will be so many new releases. But here is the first mention of upcoming sales:
March will be a good time to keep an eye out if you would like to pick up anything of mine that you have previously read on KU or for some other reason haven’t purchased, but might want to.
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February 3, 2023
Recent Reading: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Wow, Spinning Silver is just perfectly put together. All of you who said you thought it was Novik’s best until Scholomance, yes, I agree, it’s just amazingly elegant.
I didn’t like it nearly as well, however.
At the beginning, Miryem is not remotely as appealing as El. When Spinning Silver opened, I sympathized with Miryem, I even agreed with her point of view and thought she was perfectly justified, but I didn’t like her at all. It took me a long, long time to like her. In contrast, I absolutely loved El from just about the first moment. I see why some of you said they’re kind of similar. They kind of are, in a sense. But El is (extremely) prickly, but oriented right from the beginning toward helping others. In contrast, Miryem is coldly willing to hurt others, and they may deserve it, but on the other hand, they may not. Wanda did not deserve to be treated the way Miryem thought she was treating her.
Then we shift to Wanda’s pov and instantly I was much, much more engaged. This is because we see that actually Miryem was literally an answer to Wanda’s prayers. It’s also because Wanda is a much, much nicer person and also (I’m getting ahead of myself here) watching Wanda develop a relationship with her brothers, the way they gradually came together into a family, that was great.
Anyway, after Wanda becomes a pov character, we shift to Irina’s pov and at first I found her both boring and also disconcertingly passive, so that was two out of three points of view that I didn’t much care for.
Then the Staryk king reluctantly marries Miryem and everything starts to click into place. Not only intellectually, all the emotionally important threads start to weave together as well. I started to like the story much better. I kept kind of thinking of questions Miryem might usefully ask the Staryk king, but fine, I really loved how she solved the problem of needing to turn three storerooms of silver coins into gold coins – I loved everything about that, including the way Miryem suddenly orients emotionally away from herself, toward that Staryk child. That wasn’t the first nice thing she did, but it was a much deeper emotional shift.
Irina turns out, rather unexpectedly, to be clever and determined, and determined not just to save herself but to save her country. Wanda and her brothers pull together under adversity. The Staryk king realizes he direly underestimated Miryem, though they aren’t anywhere near understanding each other. That splendid little cottage takes a central role that is amazingly cool in every possible way. The initial victory leads to terrible situations all around and we find out, not at all to the reader’s surprise, that Mirnatius, the tsar, is absolutely a victim in all this, in the very worst situation of them all.
Then that initial victory is undone and everything begins to click into place for the real victory, neat and inevitable as a puzzle toy clicking together, everyone trading the action back and forth, and almost everyone winds up just where they should be. A highly satisfying ending to a truly elegant story.
Further notes:
–I personally wouldn’t have minded another scene with Mirnatius, though I’m not sure where I would have put it, so I see why it’s not there, and anyway it’s clear he’s going to be fine.
–I was thoroughly pleased by how a couple of very minor secondary characters developed, especially Miryem’s grandfather and Irina’s father.
–This may have been the single book that has ever best pulled off a whole lot of pov characters. I mean, pulled that off for me personally. There are at least six pov characters and all of them worked for me, even Mirnatius.
–To me, the setting felt far, far more integral to the story than the setting in Uprooted. In that one, every single reference to Eastern European food or whatever made me blink in faint surprise: Oh, right, Eastern Europe. Not here. Here, the setting just saturated the story.
–I enjoyed the resonance with every fairy tale in creation. By no means a retelling of any fairy tale, there are nevertheless echoes of Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Hansel and Gretel – at least. Those are the ones I spotted, but I wouldn’t even be surprised if I missed a couple more.
—Spinning Silver worked for me a lot better than Uprooted, even though it took me a long time to like Miryem. I think this is a story that’s going to work best for me the second time I read it, not the first, when it was entirely the other way around for Uprooted.
However, there’s no way this one unseats the Scholomance trilogy in my heart. Absolutely not. Elegant as Spinning Silver may be, I think the Scholomance trilogy is very nearly as elegant, and El is going to be my very favorite unlikeable protagonist until the heat death of the universe.
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February 2, 2023
January reading
Okay, no promises, but I’m going to TRY to keep up better with what I’m reading this year. Since last year I didn’t make notes at all, I thought this year I’d take a stab at doing a brief monthly review. I kind of think I probably read some of these during December? But I don’t remember exactly, so whatever, I’m tossing them into this post.
Honey and Pepper — a cute story that’s not altogether cute. It’s a romance with pretty typical romance beats, but I didn’t see the reveal about Kallion coming. I really, really enjoyed that reveal. I was like, “Well, good for him, now *I* am in love with Kallion!” And of course I enjoyed the stuff about cooking. This is the story that starts with the octopus fritters. I posted the opening lines sometime or other. Oh, here’s that post. Anyway, I liked this novel a lot and I’m on board for whatever Demas writes next.
At the Feet of the Sun — comments here.
Four Kings — comments here.
The Path to Rome — comments here.
The Girl Who Fell Into Myth — Now, this was something rather different. This book isn’t quite out yet; it’s going to hit the shelves March 1. I haven’t posted a full review or extensive comments. Let me tell you a little about it. Here’s my personal stab at description:
In our world, Liesa thinks she’s almost a normal young woman, living almost a normal life. Snatched abruptly into her father’s realm of magic, surrounded on all sides by indifference and scorn, with enemies everywhere and very few allies, Liesa must become Yevliesza, discovering herself and the magic that is her birthright. But even her unusual magic may not offer enough protection for her, or for the world she has gradually come to regard as her home.
Anything leap out at you from the above? Yes? Here’s what would push me away from this story if I saw this line in the description: “surrounded on all sides by indifference and scorn.”
The writing was solid here, but this was a difficult story for me at times because I kept saying, “My God, please, is anybody EVER going to be nice to Liesa?” For the first third of the story, the answer was No, and for the second third, the answer was Hell, no, and fine, I’m exaggerating, but not all that much. Yevliesza does have (generally powerless) allies and (sometimes treacherous) friends and (perhaps overly secretive) allies, but she’s in one fairly horrible situation or another for a good long time.
She’s a good deal more forgiving of it all than I would be, too.
The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion — thoroughly charming. I enjoyed the first book a lot. I’m hesitating to go on with the series for two reasons: (A) I have a lot of other books at the top of my TBR pile, and (B) my goodness, these are pretty darned pricey for novellas. But, fine, yes, definitely tons of charm. In Emma’s place, I would poison my cousin, what’s his name, Archibald. I’m barely joking.
Spinning Silver — not at all charming. That is not remotely the right word. I will post an actual review of this one shortly.
Sovereign Night by JM Ney-Grimm
This is second Gael and Keir book, and so far this seems to be a duology, though there’s plenty of room for a third book. It took me a long time to read this one, for no actual reason. Except I started it when I was hip-deep in Tasmakat and was trying not to be distracted by other people’s fiction and therefore kept setting it aside. Then I’d get to some stopping point or take my car in for an oil change or whatever and pick up Sovereign Night again, so I finally finished it just under the wire to include it in this post.
Anyway! I liked The first Gael and Keir book, particularly after Keir’s first pov chapter because (as you probably know) I like the girl-disguised-as-a-boy trope and I definitely liked it in that one. My comments about the first book are here. Sovereign Night is a good addition to the story, but I wouldn’t say it pushes Gael OR Keir to a new level; actually the reverse, as they don’t have personal dilemmas in this one the way they did in the first book. I mean, problems, yes. But not dilemmas. In the first book, Gael is terribly torn between, basically, two different loyalties, and Keir too, though not as much so. In this second book, their priorities are clear: find the lodestone, steal the lodestone, move on. They don’t have any loyalty toward anyone in power nor any personal investment in this society. So for me, Sovereign Night lacked some of the emotional depth of The Tally-Master.
The mystery element was just so-so for me. Important parts of it were really obvious and one crucial element lacked plausibility. However, the mystery is seldom important to me even in murder mysteries, far less fantasies that are also mysteries. I’m more interested in the people and how they solve the mystery. That part was fine. But none of that was the story’s real strength. THAT was the setting. Because, wow, this was a great setting. Ney-Grimm is particularly good with setting, and she had a LOT more scope to show that in this book than in The Tally-Master. In that one, man, the stairs, I’m telling you. In Sovereign Night, it’s everything.
This is a Chinese-flavored setting in terms of architecture and construction materials, plants and foods – rice paper screens, waterlily pools, bamboo, teak trees – and also in terms of flowery terminology. Let me see. All right: The Rotunda of Serene Preparation. The Hall of Supreme Composure. The Gate of Purest Might. I love the names! I feel I’ve missed out by never creating a society that uses names like this. Someday I’ll have to do that. It made me think of The Benignity of the Compassionate Hand. Where was that? Was that one of Elizabeth Moon’s space opera series? Anyway, I should definitely keep this in mind.
My very favorite touch is that all the young male servants – they’re gofers, basically – that serve in the Glorious Citadel are called umfana, and all the girls are called inkehli. Gael points out to Keir that this effectively anonymizes the youngsters, since if one of them causes offense, the offended noble may well not be able to name the particular umfana to complain about him. This is a great worldbuilding detail.
So, for me, five stars for setting, four for everything else, and overall I prefer the first book. But this one was also fine, and I’d be happy to go on with the series.
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking — I got to 43% and had a serious facepalm moment and quit.
I realize this is a T Kingfisher title, and doesn’t that mean meant for YA? But I have to say, this story doesn’t read YA. It reads MG, and young MG at that. The protagonist, Mona, is a complete little idiot. She’s fourteen, which in theory suggests that the story may be aimed at readers age ten to twelve, and honestly that sounds about right. A rather sheltered ten-year-old reader might not think She’s doing WHAT? several times in the first half of the story. For me, her idiocy proved a bit hard to take, and by “a bit” I mean I stopped reading the book.
Maybe I’ll go back to it – I like the little gingerbread man and of course I like Bob – but Mona herself, good lord above.
The Peach Keeper — a re-read. So pretty. I just love Sarah Addison Allen.
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February 1, 2023
This is nice to see —
Robin McKinley’s blog is active — she’s posting several times a week.
On Jan 27: I am always even-more-seriously-than-usual a space cadet when I’m trying to finish a book. I mean, let me reiterate for anyone whose memory of the previous blog may have faded a bit, I am a space cadet ALL THE TIME. But it does get worse toward the end of a book, & it’s worse than usual this time for a variety of reasons, including that I’m out of practise.
So: YAY, if Robin McKinley is feeling up to blogging at all, but
DOUBLE YAY if she is working on new books, and actually moving toward finishing one.
And thanks to commenter TC for letting me know!
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Particularly great endings
Okay, so this kind of goes with the recent post in which I pointed to a Quora question about books with bad, unsatisfying endings.
Obviously I must have done posts on this topic before, but it’s so parallel with the recent post. Therefore: What are some books or series with particularly great endings? I have four candidates.
1) The Phoenix Feather quadrilogy by Sherwood Smith.
Here we have the phoenix feather itself, a plot element in the background through the whole quadrilogy. Who is destined to take the feather and be great? Mouse? Seems like it should be Mouse. Her older brother? That’s her assumption, but then Mouse herself obviously heads toward greatness. But maybe someone else?
No, it’s all of them! It’s everyone! That phoenix feather gets passed from hand to hand through the climactic chapters, everyone using its power to accomplish their own part of the action and then handing it on. This is BRILLIANT. It’s an enormously satisfying method of winding up four books’ worth of building the story.
I don’t think this is a flawless series — very good, but not flawless — but I do think it’s a practically flawless ending.
What other books or series do a particularly great job with the ending?
2) The Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik.
I raved about this one, as I’m sure you all remember. Wow, what a tremendously elegant and satisfying ending. All the pieces of the worldbuilding and plotting click into place AND we have a redemption subplot for the whole school, practically all the students rescued in that last scramble at the end of the second book, plus various other elements that seemed quite awful were suddenly reinterpreted, and it’s all perfectly believable.
That’s such a great ending. And in this case, the whole series is indeed practically flawless straight through from beginning to end.
3) The Ancillary Justice trilogy by Ann Leckie, and my goodness, who decided to put these new covers on the trilogy? Wow, not great.
What in the world? I mean, it’s Bright Red, so if that was what the publisher wanted, good job. But … what? Pointless geometric shapes? What?
Regardless, this is such a great series, and the ending is super neat, and one of the super neat things about it is this: In order to work, Breq must be unaware of her — its — own motivations and pretty much unaware of its own plans. This would NEVER have worked in most books, but in this trilogy, Breq is genuinely unaware of many of its own motivations right from the beginning. The READER is pretty clear on those motivations, but Breq, not so much, and so this important and strange element of the protagonist’s character leads directly to the ending. This is SO COOL.
I know this is putting myself in high-level company, but:
4) The Tuyo main trilogy: Tuyo, Tarashana, Tasmakat.
I was actually fairly intimidated by the idea of this book. I knew what I wanted to do with it, but I was worried I might not be able to pull it off. But once I moved forward with it, I didn’t find the most important elements nearly as difficult as I’d feared. It did take time to build to the climax, but that’s fine, I don’t think anyone will feel that the story drags significantly.
I’m very happy with how it came out, and genuinely confident that almost all readers are going to love those crucial plot elements, including the ending. I mean, there’s always variation and no doubt someone somewhere will dislike the ending, but that’s hard for me to actually imagine because I personally think the ending came out beautifully.
When I sent Tano to first readers, I was like, “Gosh, I hope everyone likes this story!” [Spoiler: they did.] But when I sent Tasmakat out to first readers, I was much more confident and in fact gleeful about it, like, “Oh, I can’t WAIT till they hit the part where ____.” Some elements concerned me, but not the ending.
Okay! If you’ve got a book or series — I notice all these are series — with a particularly well-done, successful, satisfying ending, please drop it in the comments!
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January 31, 2023
Why Do Americans Speak Medieval English?
A particularly funny Quora question and answer.
The question: Why … are Americans speaking Medieval English when the rest of the world moved on 400 years ago?
This question is merely silly rather than funny. The answer, from Ben Waggoner, is funny:
Ic wat not what thou sayst, thou cokkes-combe. We speketh the richt goode Englische tonge in America, thou jacke-foole, thou dodemused globbe, thou blont-werker, thou mobard mid shrunken coilons.
And this is why I follow Ben Waggoner on Quora.
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