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Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Translating the opening paragraphs

Elaine T. contributes this interesting set of translations of the opening paragraphs of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. I’m pulling that out of the comments and presenting the translations here so those of us who might be interested can compare them.

Translation 1: The Official translation from Seven Seas — this is the version I posted —

REJOICE, Wei Wuxian is dead!”

It hadn’t been a day since the Siege of the Burial Mound, and the news had already flown across the entire cultivation world as if it had sprouted wings. The speed was only comparable to how fast the flames of war had spread back then, if not faster.

Suddenly everyone, whether they were prominent clans or rogue cultivators, was discussing this operation of vanquishment that had been led by the four great clans and attended by hundreds of sects both big and small.

“Fantastic, fantastic indeed! Who was the hero who killed the Yiling Patriarch?”

“Who else could it be? Ain’t it his shidi, the little sect leader Jiang Cheng? The four major clans fronted the attack: the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng, the Jin Clan of Lanling, the Lan Clan of Gusu, and the Nie Clan of Qinghe. Crushing family for the greater good, they destroyed Wei Wuxian’s good ol’ lair, the Burial Mound.”

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Translation 2: The highly regarded unfinished Taming Wangxian translation, only available on the Wayback Machine. This one is notable for being the sole translation that keeps the author’s placement of the protaganist’s name. She wanted it to be the first word(s) readers saw in the novel.

“Wei Wuxian is dead! How gratifying is that!”

The siege at the Burial Mounds had just come to an end. Yet, before the second day, news had already taken flight across the cultivation world, spreading faster than the flames of war.

Suddenly, everyone, be it the aristocratic families or the wandering cultivators, were in unison in discussing the siege operation carried out by the coalition led by the Four Great Clans, with participation from the various smaller clans.

“This is a moment of jubilation! Which worthy hero held the blade that slayed the Yiling Laozu?”

“Who else could it be but his junior, the Young Clan Leader of the Jiang Clan, Jiang Cheng. Led by the four Great Clans – the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng, Jin Clan of Lanling, Lan Clan of Gusu, Nie Clan of Qinghe – Wei Wuxian’s den, the Burial Mounds, was razed to the ground in the name of justice.”

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Translation 3: The only complete fan translation, known as ‘Exiled Rebels’ as that was where it was posted.

“Great news! Wèi Wúxiàn has died!”

Less than a day has passed since the siege in the Burial Mounds, and the news spreads through the cultivation world as if it sprouted wings, surpassing even the speed of warfare.

For a while, from the most prominent clans to rogue cultivators, everyone is discussing the siege that was led by the Four Great Clans and followed by hundreds of smaller ones.

“The Yílíng Lǎozǔ has died? Who could have killed him?”

“Who other than his shidi, Jiāng Chéng, putting an end to his own relative for the greater good. Jiāng Chéng led the Four Clans of Yunmeng Jiāng, Lanling Jin, Gūsū Lán, and Qinghe Niè to destroy his den—the Burial Mounds.”

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Translation 4: Lastly, the one being done by the person going by Fan Yiyi

“Everyone rejoice, Wei Wuxian is dead!”

Only a day after the end of the siege of the Burial Mounds, news of Wei Wuxian’s demise had already sprouted wings and flown to every corner of the cultivation world, sweeping the land faster than the flames of war.

For a period afterwards, everyone, from wandering cultivators to those of the mightiest and most prestigious of sects, discussed how the Four Great Clans commanded thousands into the siege.

“Rejoice, rejoice! Say, which hero dealt the finishing blow to the Yiling Laozu?”

“Who else could it be? His disciple-brother, Chief Jiang Cheng of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect! He and the head clans of the other three Great Sects, the Lanling Jin Sect, the Gusu Lan Sect, and the Qinghe Nie Sect, led the charge. Sect Chief Jiang killed his own disciple-brother and destroyed his lair for the good of us all. The Burial Mounds are gone!”

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Personally, I favor Translation 2.

I like “Rejoice! Wei Wuxian is dead!” much better than “Wei Wuxian is dead! How gratifying is that!” I mean, A LOT better. But overall, I like Translation 2 the best.

Comparing line by line is especially interesting. I mean, look at this:

“Fantastic, fantastic indeed! Who was the hero who killed the Yiling Patriarch?”“This is a moment of jubilation! Which worthy hero held the blade that slayed the Yiling Laozu?”“The Yílíng Lǎozǔ has died? Who could have killed him?”“Rejoice, rejoice! Say, which hero dealt the finishing blow to the Yiling Laozu?”

Only #3 makes no attempt to capture the tone of the line. I mean, I’m assuming the line in the original conveys jubilation and rejoicing, since three of the four attempt to capture that tone. The third just doesn’t bother. I’d be inclined to write off that version immediately for that reason.

Here’s another with a huge tonal difference:

Who else could it be? Ain’t it his shidi, the little sect leader Jiang Cheng? Who else could it be but his junior, the Young Clan Leader of the Jiang Clan, Jiang Cheng.Who other than his shidi, Jiāng Chéng, putting an end to his own relative for the greater good. Who else could it be? His disciple-brother, Chief Jiang Cheng of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect!

I wonder if the original is supposed to be a lower-class person speaking? Only #1 makes any attempt to capture that kind of tone.

I actually plan to just read the books without analyzing everything to death, but in the back of my mind, I’ll be wondering about the accuracy of the tone as much as the accuracy of the words.

Thank you, Elaine, for contributing these translations!

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Novel Openings: a fifty-Year Timespan

I acquired only two paper-edition books at WorldCon (plus a whole lot of samples of this and that and some full books in ebook form). I’ll be taking a look at those in a series of posts, but I’m starting with the two I have in paper because they’re an interesting contrast.

It’s been a long time since I read anything by Van Vogt, and of his books, the one I remember best is The Wizard of Linn, which I liked quite a bit, though I gather it wasn’t really characteristic of the weird, dreamlike style for which he was better known. After the panel on Van Vogt, I’m interested in revisiting him, so I borrowed a couple of books from my brother, including The Voyage of the Space Beagle. I might have read it a long time ago, but if so, I don’t remember. This was first published in 1966. Let’s take a look at the way this novel opens:

On and on Cueorl prowled. The black, moonless, almost starless night yielded reluctantly before a grim, reddish dawn that crept up from his left. It was a vague light that gave no sense of approaching warmth. It slowly revealed a nightmare landscape.

Jagged black rock and a black, lifeless plain took form around him. A pale red sun peered above the grotesque horizon. Fingers of light probed among the shadows. And still there was no sign of the family of id creatures he had been trailing now for nearly a hundred days.

Poor Cueorl! I do remember this. He’s trailing prey, but he’s lost them and he’s going to starve. Then a human ship arrives and he sneaks aboard, or maybe he’s taken aboard as a sample of native life, and he kills a few people, and … I don’t remember what happens after that. I know the humans realize he’s killing people, but nope, I don’t remember anything else. I might not have been very interested in the human characters. Opening with an interesting alien would have made me want to focus on that alien, and that goes double for my teenage years, when I was thoroughly focused toward animals. (Some might argue that this hasn’t actually changed.) (They’d be right).

Well, I’ll re-read this and see what happens next. I have a hard time believing the story ends well for Cueorl – I might have blocked the ending for that reason. But we’ll see.

How about this style? I like it. I believe I see the dreamlike quality that people were talking about. This is an interestingly personified landscape; did you notice that? The night yields, the dawn creeps, the sun peers, fingers of light probe. It sounds hostile, and it is. There’s not enough food for Cueorl and his species. They’re all dying. I think that’s the situation. Maybe the whole world is slowly dying, I don’t remember. It sounds like it, and why? Because this is described as a nightmare landscape from Cueorl’s perspective, not a human perspective. This is presumably the world where his species evolved. He ought to find it beautiful and benign, unless something has gone wrong and the ecosystem is no longer suitable for his species. If that’s not the case, then this is a failure on the author’s part, because it’s ridiculous to describe a landscape this way if humans find the landscape hostile. Humans didn’t evolve here. Creatures that evolved in this ecosystem will of course be suited to the ecosystem and so of course they won’t find it hostile. Penguins don’t glower around at the ice thinking how nightmarish the landscape is, you may be sure.

Did you notice that “black” is used three times in these two short paragraphs? The black, moonless, almost starless night … Jagged black rock and a black, lifeless plain. Does that work for you? I think it’s fine. I think this repetition is one element that’s building a poetic feel. I wouldn’t suggest repeating words like this accidentally. Removing accidental repetition is one thing proofreading is for.

Meanwhile! I have here a totally different book published (English edition) more than fifty years later. I don’t know when the original story was written, but I’m guessing that wasn’t much before the English edition was printed. I mean “much before” relative to 1966. Let me check. Yes, according to Wikipedia, this book was first published as a serialized novel in 2015, which is indeed just about exactly a fifty-year span of time. That’s not all that’s different.

This is The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu.

I picked this up solely because I know commenter Mary Beth enjoys these Wuxia and Xianxia stories, so I DM’d her from the Dealer’s Room and asked What about it, this dealer has this book, here’s the title and the author, should I try it? She said yes, so here it is, one of the (very) few paper books I’ve picked up this year.

The first part of the back cover description says:

Wei Wuxian was once one of the most outstanding men of his generation, a talented and clever young cultivator who harnessed martial arts, knowledge, and spirituality into powerful abilities. But when the horrors of war led him to seek a new power through demonic cultivation, the world’s respect for his skills turned to fear, and his eventual death was celebrated throughout the land.

Sounds like a tough situation! I see that Wei Wuxian then wakes up years later in the body of a young man who sacrifices his soul so that Wei Wuxian can exact revenge on his behalf. That … was possibly a little over the top. But handy for the guy who gets to take over the body, of course. Let’s take a look at the opening:

“Rejoice! Wei Wuxian is dead!”

It hadn’t been a day since the Siege of the Burial Mound, and the news had already flown across the entire cultivation world as if it had sprouted wings. The speed was only comparable to how fast the flames of war had spread back then, if not faster.

Suddenly everyone, whether they were prominent clans or rogue cultivators, was discussing this operation of vanquishment that had been led by the four great clans and attended by hundreds of sects both big and small.

“Fantastic, fantastic indeed! Who was the hero who killed the Yiling Patriarch?”

Reading a few pages more, it looks like he wakes up again in his new body right away, thirteen years and four pages later. That’s good, because the story is going to have to carry the story. That sounds circular, but it’s not. In some novels, the style carries the story or the worldbuilding carries the story or whatever. Not here. The style here is very plain. I don’t mean plain, exactly. Ordinary? Cliched? Maybe that’s the word I want. I mean, here:

“It’s not all because of the cultivation path. At the end of the day, it’s still because Wei Wuxian was someone of bad character. He roused the wrath of heaven and the grudges of men. You know what they say: What goes around comes around; the heavens are watching…”

Three different cliched phrases in two sentences. I wonder how it reads in the original? Regardless, style is not a dealbreaker for me. There are a fair number of novels I enjoy very much at the story level, even though the style is not exactly all that and a bag of chips. I can think of three or four like that offhand. This is a beautiful edition with illustrations and I’m looking forward to reading it. There are four books in the series, btw, and they only had three of the four in the Dealer’s Room. I’m going to be annoyed if I really like this series and can’t get the fourth book in the same edition. I hate that. … And yes, I see, checking on Amazon, that the fourth book looks very different. Maybe it was never published in the same edition or something.

I started Grandmaster yesterday, by the way, and I’m already halfway through the first book. It’s fun, and also fits the relaxing reads category because it’s quite lighthearted. Wei Wuxia is not a guy who takes himself, or anything else, too seriously. I started enjoying the story at this paragraph:

He tripled checked that there was no mistake and cried This is ridiculous mentally ten times before rising to his feet with difficulty, supporting himself against the wall.

I laughed. That line certainly establishes the protagonist. When I needed a break yesterday, this is the one I picked up, and that line is why. As I said, I’m halfway through the book now.

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Hugo Winners 2022

So, as I wasn’t at the Convention Sunday, of course I didn’t attend the Hugo Awards ceremony. I looked up the winners this morning. Here’s the tor.com post that lists the winners. Let’s see ….

Novel: A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine 

I liked the opening a lot, but didn’t read this, largely because it’s the second book in the series. I do want to go back and read the first book eventually.

Novella: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

I didn’t read this. I’m sorry Elder Race didn’t win, but, since I didn’t read this one, I can only shrug. I’m sure Psalm was good.

Novelette: “Bots of the Lost Ark” by Suzanne Palmer

I did read the novelettes, and I’m glad this one won.

Short Story: “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” by Sarah Pinsker

I read most of these, and this was the one I put second. I liked it, but (a) I liked “Mr. Death” better, and (b) I think “Oaken Hearts” was actually a horror story, not fantasy.

Series: Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire

I haven’t read enough of the nominees to have a strong opinion.

Lodestar: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik 

YAY! In this case, although I didn’t read any of the nominees, I did have a strong opinion. I wanted this one to win and I’m glad it did. The third book comes out in … let me see … about 20 days. Well, I’ll probably drop everything and read it the day it appears on my Kindle.

Astounding: Shelley Parker-Chan, for She Who Became the Sun

From everything everyone said, I think Parker-Chan probably ought to have won. Good for her, and maybe when (if) I’m in the mood for a really grim story, I’ll try this novel.

Congratulations to the winners!

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Saturday at WorldCon

So, sorry for the pause, but very early on Sunday morning, I got a call from my mother. She’d hurt her back and didn’t think she could take proper care of the dogs and could I please come home. So an hour later I was on the road. I will say, 6:15 AM is a great time to leave Chicago, in practical terms. The drive took a full hour less on the way home than the way there. My mother’s all right, btw. She probably has a pinched nerve, which is no fun as I’m sure a lot of us know from personal experience, but she’s not in much pain as long as she can sit or lie down and doesn’t have to do stuff related to taking care of the dogs. Surprising how much bending that requires, as I’ve noticed when I’ve had back trouble myself.

The dogs are, I will add, extremely happy that I came back a day early.

But all this means I couldn’t post about Saturday until now.

Saturday was a busy day! Various panels I wanted to sit in on, then a panel of my own, various other activities, I seemed to be on the go practically the whole day.

The panel That’s Not How That Works was great fun. A couple people in technology and engineering, someone experienced with horses (not me, someone else), and an expert in linguistics – her podcast is Lingthusiam, and you should check it out if you’re interested in linguistics. I downloaded some episodes, which I haven’t listened to yet, but listen to this: “Your brain is where language – and all of your other thinking – happens. In order to figure out how language fits in among all the other things you do with your brain, we can put people in fancy brain-scanning machines and then create very controlled setups where exactly one thing is different. For example, we can compare looking at words versus nonwords of the same length, or listening to audio clips of a language you speak versus a language you don’t speak.” … and that’s what the episode is about. That sounds so interesting and cool! I’m looking forward to listening to that.

The moderator of the panel started off by noting that mistakes about guns and horses are particularly risky for authors. I mean, risky in the sense that lots of readers will notice and care. (I would add swords to that list.)

Then he asked panelists, “What’s one thing that doesn’t work the way people think it does?” Of course I said wolf behavior is not like dog behavior and neither is a bit like werewolf behavior as envisioned by modern urban fantasy and paranormals. The moderator then won my heart by saying, basically, “Oh, really? Can you expand on that a little?” Why yes, yes I can, and thank you for asking!

The linguist pointed out that a world probably would have a lot more than one language and that “Common” is a trope that has problems. The engineering types pointed out that various things common in SF don’t make sense, but don’t ask me what, I’m not sure I followed what they were saying. The expert on horses said very firmly that horses cannot gallop for long periods of time and that if you don’t give them plenty of the right kind of food they will promptly die. (I helped by asking leading questions, like “So what gaits can a horse maintain for a long time?” I’m sure you already know that the answer is “They can walk and trot, sorry if that’s not thrilling, but if you’re going any distance, those are the gaits you’re going to have to use.”

So, that was a good panel. I enjoyed it a lot and I think the other panelists and the audience would say the same.

That was my last panel for this WorldCon, however.

I deeply regret not getting back to the art show. There were a great number of items I wanted to look at more closely and perhaps buy, plus a whole annex of the art show I never got a chance to see. Other that that, overall, a good convention.

Archon is coming up now, and I sure hope everyone has a totally boring weekend with no injuries, illnesses, or excitement of any kind.

In fact, I see that my Archon schedule arrived in my inbox this morning. Let me see …

Religion and its Place in Science Fiction and Fantasy 1 Oct 2022, Saturday 10:00 – 11:00

Plenty of our favorite worlds have their own religion, or have a mix of real world religions. How do they stem from what we know in the real world?

The Hero in Fiction 1 Oct 2022, Saturday 12:00 – 13:00

What makes a hero compelling or boring? How do you craft your novels’ heroes? What traps and tired tropes should you avoid?

Best Indie Authors of Science Fiction & Fantasy 1 Oct 2022, Saturday 15:00 – 16:00

Have a favorite indie author you’d like to talk about?  Looking for new authors to read?    

Science Fiction Settings – Beware of Planetary Chauvinism 1 Oct 2022, Saturday 16:00 – 17:00

Most space-based science fiction starts with the idea home is a planet – but what if that wasn’t the case?

Some of those are going to require research. I better get on that immediately.

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Sex, Social Systems, and Science Fiction

So, Friday was a good, fairly relaxing day at the convention. Too much walking and being on my feet, but that was inevitable. I don’t think my knee is getting too much worse, so hopefully I’m not setting recovery back in any dire way.

Notable this year, the art show is just top notch. I’m tempted by a whole bunch of items — Judy Peterson’s puzzles among them. She’s doing flat puzzles now as well as the animals that stand up. Also, she shows me more kitten pictures every time we encounter each other, so that’s good. I’m going to miss those kittens SO MUCH.

Lots of other artwork as well, including these rather remarkable shadow-box things made by a person named Dave Howell. He calls them paradox boxes, and I’m not sure how to describe them, except as a sort of pointillist art where you can see different words if you look at the box from different directions. Somewhat to my astonishment, I can’t find any sort of website of his. You’re not allowed to take pictures of the exhibits, so I’m stuck for a way to explain more clearly what these paradox boxes are, except to say that I’m very tempted to buy one that shows you FAITH if you view it one way and REASON if you view it the other way. His biggest box shows about twenty words. I couldn’t find them all.

Most fun panels so far — I liked one on conspiracy theories, I liked one on Really Big Things (megastructures), but, perhaps surprisingly, I particularly liked one on Van Vogt. I’m not even that familiar with Van Vogt, but I liked a couple of his books and think he was an interesting writer. What made the panel was the enthusiasm of the moderator, which is perhaps a lesson to keep in mind. His enthusiasm for the topic was engaging. Knowledgeable panelists who pick up that enthusiasm is also engaging. I’m borrowing a couple of Van Vogt’s books from my brother to read later.

My Friday panel was Sex, Social Systems, and SF, and this was a lot of fun and hopefully struck the audience in much the same way; eg, lots of enthusiasm from the panelists. The moderator was Diane Kelly, the other panelists were Eleanor Konik, Erica Holcomb, and William Tracy. Diane’s idea for the panel was to throw out some unusual reproductive / social system from nonhuman animals and play around a little with how that might look if you created an alien species with something similar and ran that social system forward into a technologically advanced civilization.

We started with lekking — seen in various birds, various antelope, various fruit flies, and so on — a “one-stop shop” where males display in a tight-packed group and females come to that one place to consider the males and pick a mate. Since I prefer mammals as a rule, here’s a description of this behavior in the Ugandan kob antelope.

Then “exploded” or dispersed lek display behavior, as in bower birds — I expect you’re all familiar with bower birds.

Then simultaneous one-time breeding and death, which is called semelparity and is seen in eg salmon, but more interestingly in a little marsupial called Antechinus. Here, we can actually connect to science fiction, via the story Love is the Plan the Plan is Death by James Tiptree Jr.

Then reduced males, such as in the deep sea angler fish, where if a male is lucky enough to encounter a female, he attaches to her as a parasite because heaven forbid he loses her again.

Then species which switch sex, from male to female where egg production matters most (bigger females can produce more eggs), or from female to male where territoriality matters most (bigger males are better at territory defense). This sort of thing is not all that unusual in fish, with clownfish being the typical example. They live in small groups where the biggest individual is female and the rest male. If the female dies, the next-biggest individual becomes female. Yes, this is really, really neat. Of course this makes me think of the Faded Sun trilogy by CJC, where the regul choose their sex as they mature, becoming male or female based on social cues. That’s not the same, but it’s certainly similar.

Oh, we also hit mouth-brooding just for the coolness value. Hard to see how that would work in a civilized species, but I mean, really, mouth-brooding?

Also extreme r-selection, where a female produces thousands of young and shows zero parental care. There are two good examples I know of in science fiction: the crustacean species in Mother of Demons by Eric Flint and the Ilmatarans in A Darkling Sea by Jim Cambias. The funniest moment in the panel was when I said, “And there was this great example in A Darkling Sea by James Cambias; has anyone read that?” and Jim raised his hand in the audience and said, “Well, I have.” Turns out the moderator was Cambias’ wife, which I had no idea was the case.

We didn’t even scratch the surface of this topic. Not even close. Really fun topic and I would love to do more with it.

Anyway, after that panel, Craig and I went out to dinner with a few other people. We went to Vermilion, and I will now describe the dessert Craig and I shared, which we ordered because the description in the menu was so entertaining.

Ceiling Smasher: Vermilion hedonism dense flourless chocolate cake spiced cotton candy ceiling — molten chocolate ceiling demolisher

I mean, that is a completely irresistible description. Here’s how it looked when it arrived, with the cake all but hidden under the cloud of cotton candy:

Here is what pouring the chocolate sauce onto the cotton candy did:

Tasty, too. I definitely recommend Vermilion if you find yourself in downtown Chicago and want a memorable dinner. Everything was excellent. The restaurant describes itself as Indian/Portuguese fusion, and what can I say that tops that? Except I can say that I’m going to try to recreate the curry leaf tamarind paneer. That was so good that I went on to order the blackened chili tamarind ribs, which were also really excellent.

Okay, so, that was Friday! It’s early-ish Saturday now and I’m going back to cutting Tasmakat. I’ve managed to get rid of about six thousand words so far.

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Relaxing reads

So, the first day of WorldCon was … actually, it was pretty relaxing. I had a calm drive to Chicago, possibly the least death-defying drive ever, where I didn’t see a single person do anything wildly stupid on the highway, construction was minimal, and given that I arrived in Chicago right at rush hour, honestly, traffic was not dreadful. The kittens were pretty quiet. Their new person arrived soon after I did and the transfer was accomplished with a minimum of wear and tear all round. The person is Judy Peterson of Fantanimals, who is a dealer at the convention, obviously, and so last night (Thursday night), I found her in the dealer’s room and she showed me pictures of the kittens settling down in their temporary home in Chicago. They’ll go with Judy and her husband to their permanent home after the convention.

Then all of Thursday and the convention itself was pretty relaxing. I woke up at my normal time (about four) which gave me a long morning at Craig’s place. I cut three thousand words from Tasmakat, about a thousand words per chapter, almost all at the sentence level. If I can do a thousand words per chapter, I should be able to drop about forty thousand words, or about, I don’t know, a hundred and twenty pages or something like that, which will put the length back to something reasonable. Well, reasonable-ish.

At the convention, the registration line wasn’t too long, and although the hotel itself is maximally confusing, I found the green room (where panelists are supposed to meet up) and the room for the panel (opposite tower of the hotel) with minimal trouble and (this was good) minimal-ish trouble from my knee. Have I mentioned I’ve been having knee trouble? I don’t think I’ve mentioned that. But I finished doing a series of physical therapy appointments last week and I’m hoping I manage to get through the convention without too much walking or standing (this will be hopeless). Speaking as someone newly mobility-impaired, would convention organizers kindly not put a room where you’re supposed to meet your co-panelists that far from the room where the panel takes place, like, ever?

The panel was pretty well attended, and I do have a few relaxing reads mentioned by other panelists that I’m going to try and that I’ll share with you.

Empress of Salt and Fortune — Nghi Vo

A young royal from the far north, is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.

Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor’s lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.

At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She’s a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.

This description certainly does not sound especially relaxing, comforting, or low-tension, but it was recommended in this context, so perhaps it is all those things. Have any of you read it? What did you think?

Here’s another:

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He’s tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world.

Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn. And his secrets will come to light.

The House in the Cerulean Sea is an enchanting love story, masterfully told, about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.

Well, that sounds lovely. I think I have this on my Kindle right now. If I don’t, I should.

One more:

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

This is supposed to be The Thin Man, but in space.

Tesla Crane, a brilliant inventor and an heiress, is on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner, cruising between the Moon and Mars. She’s traveling incognito and is reveling in her anonymity. Then someone is murdered and the festering chowderheads who run security have the audacity to arrest her spouse. Armed with banter, martinis and her small service dog, Tesla is determined to solve the crime so that the newlyweds can get back to canoodling—and keep the real killer from striking again.

That does sound like The Thin Man in space! That sounds like fun. It’s not out yet. It’s out in October. One of the panelists beta-read it, hence the recommendation.

I’m up early again today (Friday). It’s, let me see, not quite five as I type this. Back to cutting Tasmakat! But don’t worry, just at the sentence and occasionally the paragraph level. I don’t think I’m cutting anything that could be described as a whole scene.

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Four Mistakes that Will Doom Your Novel

From Kill Zone Blog: Four mistakes that will doom your mystery. They did mine.

And, having read through the post, I would definitely say “novel” rather than mystery. These are mistakes that could doom most novels in any genre except maybe literary.

Here they are:

1) Introducing too many characters too soon.

2) Beginning with a boring opening where nothing happens.

3) Beginning with too much backstory.

4) Letting your protagonist become passive.

You can click through and read the comments about each one. The last is the most interesting, but let me hold onto that one for a minute.

For Point 1, I think introducing too many characters too fast is pretty much the kiss of death. I’m not sure it’s possible to introduce twenty characters, or even five, in chapter one and make it work. I mean important characters; I’m sure it’s possible to have a crowd scene in the opening. But I’m not sure it’s possible to have a crowd scene where you name a lot of characters, far less show them to the reader in any kind of detail.

However, maybe somewhere someone was so good a writer that they pulled this off. If anyone has a counterexample — a great, compelling opening, or a least a reasonably successful opening, where the author introduced a bunch of characters really fast — by all means, drop it in the comments.

For Point 2, I added the word “boring.” It’s definitely possible for talented writers to open a story quietly, with a scene where basically nothing is happening; see for example many books by Georgette Heyer or From All False Doctrine. I’m sure there are quite a few. Quiet is fine, if you can pull that off. But if quiet slides into boring, oops, that’s a novel that’s not likely to find much of a readership.

Point 3 is tough, because you do need to build the world and set the protagonist in place in the world. In SFF, one way to do that is with tidbits of backstory. I’ve seen plenty of advice not to go overboard with that, and I basically agree. Tidbits of backstory are fine. Lots of backstory is likely to push the reader away. This is true even if you’re avoiding the dreaded (well, dreaded by me) history-lesson prologue.

In fact, I suspect too much backstory is a real problem for mysteries and thrillers because there’s a tendency to start book in these genres like this:

EXCITING TWO PARAGRAPHS. Loooooooong chapter explaining backstory.

And while a really talented author can pull that off, it’s a trick and a half to hold onto your readers through a first chapter that’s structured like this. Have you ever hit something like this and skipped ahead to see what happened after the initial two paragraphs? (Raises hand). If you don’t find the section where the present-day story resumes pretty quickly, do you DNF the novel? (Raises hand again.)

I guess I’d say the trick is to make the backstory just as compelling as the exciting present-day scene. If you can do that, go for it. If not, maaaaaybe think twice about this kind of structure for your opening.

Point 4 is interesting because the example used in the post involves a mystery where the bad guy walks away at the end while the hero stands there and watches him go. This would be AWFUL if it also meant that the bad guy got away with the murder. For me, an unjust ending to a mystery or thriller is an absolute dealbreaker that means I’m done with the author forever.

But evidently this was not the case here; in the book cited in the linked post; the wheels of justice were grinding away, but offstage. The bad guy was going to go down, but not right at the moment. For me … I don’t know. That certainly wouldn’t be a dealbreaker in the same way. It might be okay. Nevertheless, I think I agree with the author of the post that adding a physical, active reaction there (the hero apparently beats up the bad guy) is likely to be more satisfying to the reader.

For me, this is not a question of passivity, or I don’t think it is, at least not most of the time. It’s a question of the justice of the ending. There are some books that I really like, but the ending kind of messes with that. An ending that seems unjust (worse: and ending that is clearly and definitely unjust) will sometimes retroactively spoil the book for me, no matter how much I loved it to begin with.

Maybe passivity itself could also be a problem. I’m not sure. I think that if your protagonist’s choices and actions don’t drive the resolution, that could be a problem. But it seems to me that if the protagonist’s choices and actions do drive the resolution, but in some more subtle way than a fistfight, then the reader as well as the protagonist might be satisfied to watch the bad guy walk away, with his doom hovering metaphorically over his head, knowing that in the next scene — whether that’s shown or not — that doom will come crashing down. I think that could be fine. I bet there are mysteries with that kind of ending, though I can’t think of specific examples offhand.

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Gentle Romances

From Book Riot: LOVE ISN’T A BATTLEFIELD: 13 GENTLE, LOW-DRAMA ROMANCES

That’s certainly an inviting title for a post! I’m definitely up for gentle, low-drama everything whenever life is stressful; eg, for years on end lately. Also, contemporary romances in particular are useful to me because I can read them when I’m working on WIP of my own and therefore don’t want to read complicated, involved secondary world fantasy or SF. Low drama is good there too. So sure, by all means, let’s take a look!

Sometimes it’s not enough simply to know a happy ending is coming. Sometimes, the whole thing needs to be happy. I’ve endeavored to find a wide range of books across sub-genres and levels of explicitness, so you can find your particular happy place within the world of gentle romances.

Very promising!

Okay, looking over the list, this one stands out:

When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare

Again, it was tough to pick among Tessa Dare’s outstanding bibliography for this list, but if you haven’t yet read When a Scot Ties the Knot, you simply must. Madeline did what so many of us have done to avoid unwanted male attention. She invented herself a boyfriend: Captain MacKenzie. She sends him letters and everything. So when the real Captain MacKenzie shows up with her letters in hand, she’s in some real trouble. All Madeline ever wanted was to uncover the secrets of lobster mating (not even kidding), but she accidentally caught herself a mate.

Mating habits of lobsters? That is a startling interest for the lead in a Regency Romance novel. That’s definitely a detail that catches my eye. And Regencies are just as good as contemporary romances for presenting a familiar setting. You know what, sure, I’m picking up a sample.

Here’s another:

Digging Up Love by Chandra Blumberg

Ready to fall in love with some characters? Alisha is a baker and power lifter dreaming of opening a cookie shop in Chicago. Quentin is a dreamy bespectacled paleontologist. When Alisha’s grandparents discover a dinosaur bone in their backyard, Quentin is on the scene. And he meets Alisha, who is also a dinosaur lover. Yes, there are Jurassic Park references. And also a completely amazing romantic gesture that I will not spoil. If you’re looking for a romance with kisses only, this one’s for you.

Both baking AND paleontology? Wow. Sure, another sample.

One more:

Twice Shy by Sara Hogle

Maybell is a dreamer who prefers her mind palace to real life. She inherits a rambling old house in the Smokies, but she shares ownership of it with the groundskeeper Wesley. He’s guarded and uncompromising, and suddenly, all of this is way too real for Maybell. They have a grumpy/sunshine slow burn relationship that unfolds beautifully. This book also depicts characters struggling with anxiety. When it comes to sex, this is a closed door romance.

I’m not sure this one sounded as good to me up front, but I like the first half-dozen or so reviews on Amazon. We are indeed fixing up the house together, and that sounds appealing. They start communicating by passing each other notes! That’s funny and also appealing. Yet another sample.

If you’re in the mood for a gentle romance, definitely click through and take a look at the whole list.

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Sale!

Whoops, almost forgot, but everything’s on sale today at Book View Cafe.

I’d have posted this earlier, but was teaching my Biology class and couldn’t until now. But you still have half a day!

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Writing Fiction With No “Mind’s Eye”

An interesting post that leads to a fantastic exercise in imagination: Aphantasia: Writing Fiction With No ‘Mind’s Eye’

I’d been writing fiction for more than a decade before I encountered the term “aphantasia,” which describes a rare inability to see mental images in the mind’s eye.

I’d been instructed many times to visualize an image to meditate, relax, remember or write, but when I tried, I saw nothing. Over time, I assumed that “visualize” and “mind’s eye” were figures of speech. I didn’t know other people could literally generate images in their minds without a real-life image to look at.

Media reports suggest aphantasia affects about 2% of the population, or one of every fifty people. The condition may be genetic or the result of trauma. By their own reports, my parents see mental images; my sibling doesn’t.

People with aphantasia learn to substitute other mental processes to work around the lack of mental images to some extent. Instructed to “picture a lemon,” I can think of the color yellow and the classic shape of a lemon. Asked to “picture the letters of the alphabet,” I can sketch them in my mind’s eye, in monochrome, up to about the letter “h,” then I get a vicious headache and have to stop.

This is just so difficult to imagine! I know that undoubtedly plenty of people have a better visual imagination than I do, there’s no doubt a wide, wide range of phenomena in this regard. But knowing that and being able to imagine what it might be like are completely different.

Whenever possible, I visit my settings in real life and write notes about what I observe.

In writing my Fantasy novel, I stuck with Contemporary Fantasy — our world, our time — rather than write about an imagined world. Setting the story where I live, in Ventura, California, gave me plenty of places to see in real life. I scheduled time to visit my settings during the same season and at the same time of day as my characters.

That’s a reason to write contemporary fantasy that never occurred to me!

The link that’s supposed to go to a quiz where you can assess your visual ability is … well, too complicated for me, I guess, or else it makes you sign up for a newsletter, which I don’t want to do. Buzzfeed steps in to fill the need for a much simpler to access, if possibly less valid, quiz. It’s all self-assessment about how clearly you can picture stuff.

Regardless of the validity of quizzes like this, aphantasia and other variability in imagination is just plain interesting. I wonder if anybody has ever written a telepathic character who was puzzled or baffled or confused by the variability in the internal worlds of the people around him. This didn’t occur to me. I’m not sure it’s ever occurred to any author who’s written a telepath.

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