Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 115

New Book: Steadfast: (Elemental Masters #8) by Mercedes Lackey

Steadfast: (Elemental Masters #8) by Mercedes Lackey is officially released today. I haven't been as entertained by the more recent books in this series, but I am intrigued with a novel drawing inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen's Steadfast Tin Soldier. This is one fairy tale that doesn't get many retelling treatments, especially novel length ones.

Book description:

The new novel in Mercedes Lackey’s bestselling series of an alternative Edwardian Britain, where magic is real—and Elemental Masters are in control.

Lionel Hawkins is a magician whose act is only partially sleight of hand. The rest is real magic. He’s an Elemental Magician with the power to persuade the Elementals of Air to help him create amazing illusions. It doesn’t take long before his assistant, acrobat Katie Langford, notices that he’s no ordinary magician—and for Lionel to discover that she’s no ordinary acrobat, but rather an untrained and unawakened Fire Magician. She’s also on the run from her murderous and vengeful brute of a husband. But can she harness her magic in time to stop her husband from achieving his deadly goal?

New Book: Far Far Away by Tom McNeal

Far Far Away by Tom McNeal is released next week. This is part of the unusual subgenre of fairy tale retellings that draws inspiration from the Grimms Brothers as much as any particular fairy tale, like Cornelia Funke's Reckless (Mirrorworld) and Fearless (Mirrorworld) as well as the movie, The Brothers Grimm and even the Grimm series on NBC.

It says quite a lot about Jeremy Johnson Johnson that the strangest thing about him isn't even the fact his mother and father both had the same last name. Jeremy once admitted he's able to hear voices, and the townspeople of Never Better have treated him like an outsider since. After his mother left, his father became a recluse, and it's been up to Jeremy to support the family. But it hasn't been up to Jeremy alone. The truth is, Jeremy can hear voices. Or, specifically, one voice: the voice of the ghost of Jacob Grimm, one half of the infamous writing duo, The Brothers Grimm. Jacob watches over Jeremy, protecting him from an unknown dark evil whispered about in the space between this world and the next. But when the provocative local girl Ginger Boultinghouse takes an interest in Jeremy (and his unique abilities), a grim chain of events is put into motion. And as anyone familiar with the Grimm Brothers know, not all fairy tales have happy endings. . .

Bargain Ebooks: Sarah Zettel's Isavalta Series

A Sorcerer's Treason (Prologue Fantasy), book one in Sarah Zettel's Isavalta series, as well as the other three books in the series, are all priced temporarily at 99 cents each for ebook format, part of a sell by publisher Prologue Books Sale. I am unaware of how long the sale will last, but the books are usually priced $3+ each. I've had the first title sitting in my TBR (to be read) pile for a while. The series uses a historical  American setting with a fantasy world inspired by Russian, Chinese, and Indian folklore which sounds quite fascinating and something different for those weary of the typical fantasy settings. I'll probably buy the other three once I hit publish on this post.

Book description:

Bridget Lederle resides in the lighthouse she’s tended since her father died. Here, on the rocky shore of Lake Suprior, she’s alone with the bitter ignominy of her birth, the shame of her love child’s death, and the ghost of a mother she never really knew . . .

That all changes on the wintry night she rescues a mysterious, charismatic stranger whose boat is nearly dashed upon the rocks. After she’s nursed him back to health, he tells her a fantastical tale . . . of another world, where somehow only she can save the beleaguered Empress from sorcerous plottings to usurp the throne.

His tale is wildly fanciful, yet Bridget feels somehow drawn to his world, to the empire of Isavalta. Kalami, her handsome, charming patient, transports her with him from Lake Superior to a dazzling world that seems like a dream . . .

But if Isavalta is a dream, Bridget’s new life is a nightmare. Caught in a magical crossfire between the powerful Dowager Empress, her daughter-in-law, an the sorcerers who serve their mistresses and other more subtle ends, she doesn’t know whom to trust, whom to beware . . . With the fate of an empire at stake and her heart torn by conflicting desires, she becomes a reluctant player in a deadly game of politics and magic with rules as hard to untangle as the knots in a silken tassel or the threads of a woven rug.

As she attempts to see beyond the masks of power and discover truth in a world where magical spells can take almost any form, each hour she spends in the luxury of Isavalta’s court bunds her more tightly in the seductive embrace of secrets from her own past and of unfulfilled yearnings she can’t deny. A stranger in this bedazzling place, she must find a path to salvation - for herself and for her new, otherworldly home - but that path seems rockier than the Lake Superior shore she left behind.

The Usurper's Crown (Prologue Fantasy)

Book description:

Ingrid Lotfield was a good woman, doing right by her parents, protecting her sensitive sister, and reliably completing her fair share of the chores necessary for life in their fishing village in 1872, on the cold shore of Lake Superior. Then Avan came. He said he was Norwegian, as many of the fisherman were. He was different - kind and quiet and strong—and one day he somehow miraculously helped to save her sister form a terrible fate in a watery grave.

She knew Avan was from a far land, knew he loved her. They would be married, have children . . . be fisherfolk as had generations before them.

But before they could wed, he was called back to the land of his birth, a land beyond the shore of Superior, beyond Earth, a magical land where he was more than a fisherman. He had to go. He wouldn’t see her hurt, and there were untold forces in his homeland, Isavalta, that could harm her beyond her wildest imaginings. But her love was too strong for him to resist. She would go with him, no matter the risks. So brave, so dear. Together they would face danger and excitement: to save an empire and its empress, and find their own fate, no matter what peril, mo matter how strange.

The Firebird's Vengeance (Prologue Fantasy)

Magic and the force of destiny propelled Bridget Lederle across the void between worlds, through the Land of Death and Spirit, to the world of Isavalta, where she discovered secrets about herself and her family that had been hidden since before her birth. It seems like only yesterday that a charismatic stranger swept her from her home on the shore of Lake Superior and took her on an impossible journey to a strange, bejeweled world where sorcery could spring from the simplest of patterns, with most serious effect.

In Isavalta she also discovered magical powers she had never suspected she possessed before her transit between the worlds. More than self-knowledge has changed her: she is in love with Sakra, a powerful sorcerer and her staunch ally. And she learns that her daughter, who she thought was lost to her, is alive.

But that daughter is also the pawn in a dangerous game of power and politics. The powerful spells of a ruler intent on conquest threaten to destroy both mother and daughter. Torn between the contending forces of magic and empire, Bridget lives an extraordinary adventure replete with unimaginable dangers. Beset by enemies on all sides, she must rely on the aid of supernatural forces she can’t control, lest she be destroyed by a fate she cannot imagine.

Sword of the Deceiver (Prologue Fantasy)

For five hundred years, the great southern empire of Hastinapura has flourished, ruling the world of Isavalta with an iron fist. But nothing lasts forever . . .

The day of her womanhood ceremony finds Princess Natharie of Sindhu happily celebrating with her family, joyfully awaiting her marriage to a prince of another realm. However, when the empire demands that her family send someone to court, Natharie realizes that she is the only one who can satisfy the empror’s wishes.

As Natharie spends time in the Hastinapura court, she learns of the empire’s bloodthirsty worship of the Mothers and of the intention of their high priest, Divakesh, to spread their worship beyond the empire - including into neighboring Sindhu - at any cost.

These plots threaten to pit Natharie’s homeland against Hastinapura in a disastrous war. Appalled by the power and brazenness of the emperor’s brother, Pirnce Samudra, she realizes as each day brings war ever nearer, that the powerful prince may be her only hope to prevent a war that could destroy them all.

Bargain Ebook: Beauty and the Bounty Hunter: Once Upon a Time in the West by Lori Austin

Beauty and the Bounty Hunter: Once Upon a Time in the West by Lori Austin is $2.99 through June 4th in anticipation of the release of the second book in the series, An Outlaw in Wonderland: Once Upon a Time in the West (ONCE UPON A TIME IN WEST), on the same date. I cannot tell from the descriptions how much fairy tale themes are used in these books beyond clever book and series titles, but I thought I would share anyway.

Book description:

Cathleen Chase is no killer—but as Cat O’Banyon, she is a ruthless bounty hunter who always gets her man. Catching one lowlife after another, she continues her search for the only man she really cares to locate. The one whose voice she will never forget; the man who murdered her husband. She’ll stop at nothing to find him.

Con artist Alexi Romanov taught Cat every trick she knows. He is a master of deceit, disguise, and desire. He’s difficult to trust, and even more difficult to resist, but he has news she can’t ignore. The man she’s after has placed a bounty on her head. To get him before he gets her, she’ll have to team up with Alexi again....And just like before, the two of them together are nothing but trouble.

Hobbit House in Montana

Saw this online this morning and thought I would share for the Hobbit fans out there. I loved all the fairy houses around the house especially. It's very tempting to install a little door to the unknown somewhere in my yard....

Ebook Bargain: Bluebeard: The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988) (Kurt Vonnegut Series) by Kurt Vonnegut

Today only: Bluebeard: The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988) (Kurt Vonnegut Series) by Kurt Vonnegut is bargain priced to $1.99 in ebook format on Amazon. This was also on sale in November which is when I picked it up.

Book description:

Bluebeard, published in 1987, is Vonnegut's meditation on art, artists, surrealism, and disaster. Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter, who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters), with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.

Vonnegut's intention here is not so much satirical (although the contemporary art scene would be easy enough to deconstruct), nor is it documentary (although Karabekian does carry elements of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko). Instead, Vonnegut is using art for the same purpose he used science fiction cliches in Slaughterhouse-Five; as a filter through which he can illuminate the savagery, cruelty, and the essentially comic misdirection of human existence.

Readers will recognize familiar Vonnegut character types and archetypes as they drift in and out through the background; meanwhile, Karabekian, betrayed and betrayer, sinks through a bottomless haze of recollection. Like most of Vonnegut's late works, this is both science fiction and cruel contemporary realism at once, using science fiction as metaphor for human damage as well as failure to perceive. Readers will find that Vonnegut's protagonists can never really clarify for us whether they are ultimately unwitting victims or simple barbarians, leaving it up to the reader to determine in which genre this book really fits, if any at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is one of the most beloved American writers of the twentieth century. Vonnegut's audience increased steadily since his first five pieces in the 1950s and grew from there. His 1968 novel Slaughterhouse-Five has become a canonic war novel with Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to form the truest and darkest of what came from World War II.

Vonnegut began his career as a science fiction writer, and his early novels--Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan--were categorized as such even as they appealed to an audience far beyond the reach of the category. In the 1960s, Vonnegut became closely associated with the Baby Boomer generation, a writer on that side, so to speak.

Now that Vonnegut's work has been studied as a large body of work, it has been more deeply understood and unified. There is a consistency to his satirical insight, humor and anger which makes his work so synergistic. It seems clear that the more of Vonnegut's work you read, the more it resonates and the more you wish to read. Scholars believe that Vonnegut's reputation (like Mark Twain's) will grow steadily through the decades as his work continues to increase in relevance and new connections are formed, new insights made.

Check Out: Indexing (Kindle Serial) by Seanan McGuire

Okay, this sounds like complete fun. Check out Indexing (Kindle Serial) by Seanan McGuire. Any book description that includes "they are tasked with identifying potential outbreaks using the Aarne-Thompson Indexing" is completely fun. And we won't quibble that it's ATU with Uther added, will we? Because this is cool nerdy fairy tale fun all the way... (After all, there are still parts of SurLaLune that haven't been updated with the ATU numbers either.) And the entire serial is a $2.99 commitment. Not much of a financial risk..

Book description:

This book is a Kindle Serial. Kindle Serials are stories published in episodes, with future episodes delivered at no additional cost. This serial currently contains one episode out of an estimated twelve total episodes, and new episodes will be delivered every two weeks.

“Never underestimate the power of a good story.”

Good advice…especially when a story can kill you.

For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, encounters, and actions into a cohesive whole. But for an unfortunate few, that day-to-day existence is affected—perhaps infected is a better word—by memetic incursion: where narratives the rest of the world considers fairy tales becomes reality, often with disastrous results.

A motley team struggling with their own unfolding narratives, they are tasked with identifying potential outbreaks using the Aarne-Thompson Indexing and making sure the story doesn’t reach “ever after”…because if it does, someone is usually dead, broken—or worse. When you're dealing with fairy tales in the real world, it doesn't matter if you're Cinderella, Snow White, or the Wicked Queen: no one gets a happy ending.

Indexing is bestselling author Seanan McGuire’s new urban fantasy where everything you thought you knew about fairy tales gets turned on its head.

Episode List

An additional episode will be delivered every two weeks until the book is complete. New episodes will be added to the same book on your Kindle, keeping your place and retaining your notes and highlights. You'll be notified via email when a new episode has been delivered.

Episode 1: Released on May 21, 2013. 36 pages. The men and women of the ATI Management Bureau are here to keep you from noticing the fairy tales threatening the fabric of existence on a daily basis. But when those fairy tales start changing their approach to fit the modern world, can the Bureau's field team find a way to keep us all from dying happily ever after?

Upcoming Fairy Tale Fiction

 
Amazon.com Widgets Last week I got to spend a few hours researching more upcoming fairy tale titles--yes, most of these are still listed through hard research on my part, not notifications!--and realized I reached the maximum on the Amazon Listmania lists, a tool I use to create the book widgets on the blog and site.

 In other words, there are at least 55 new releases in fiction this year. I created two lists for fiction alone and will keep adding to them as I discover more. I've created slideshow widgets here, but here are also direct links to the lists: Fairy Tale Influenced Fiction 2013 Part 1 and Fairy Tale Influenced Fiction 2013 Part 2. There are also lists for picture books and nonfiction but I'll address those in separate posts later. I've also started to get a headstart on 2014 releases!

Biggest upcoming trend? Snow Queen thanks to Disney's Frozen. While that should not be surprising, it wasn't the trend for Tangled/Rapunzel or Frog Prince when those movies were released. Some marketing people are finally paying attention.

Amazon.com Widgets

New Book: Stroke of Midnight by Olivia Drake

Stroke of Midnight by Olivia Drake will be released next week on June 4th. This is the second in a romance series by Drake with the previous and first title being If the Slipper Fits (Cinderella Sisterhood), which was released last summer. The entire series is inspired by Cinderella it appears.

He’s no Prince Charming. She doesn't own have a pumpkin coach. Sometimes love is nothing like a fairy tale; it’s even better…

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

The infamous Laura Falkner has returned to London society in disguise. Determined to clear her father's name, she becomes a companion to elderly Lady Josephine—only to learn the woman's nephew is none other than Alexander Ross, the devilish Earl of Copley, the man Laura once loved with all her heart. The same man who’d accused her father of theft and forced them to flee England.

TO FALL HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE

Alex has never forgotten Laura—or forgiven himself for letting her go. Today, Laura is as lovely—and stubborn—as ever, and her attempts at crime-solving are putting her in danger. The only way Alex can keep her safe is to marry her. But how can this notorious rake convince Laura that his heart is true…before the clock strikes twelve?

New Book: Sold for Endless Rue by Madeleine E. Robins

Sold for Endless Rue by Madeleine E. Robins was released last week. It's one I missed on my lists but SurLaLune reader Jennifer S. emailed to let me know about it. And I even own other titles by Robins--not fairy tale related, but mysteries--so this was a new surprise for me! And we all know that Rapunzel isn't reinterpreted as often as other fairy tales, so this is another treat.

Book description:

After a blighted childhood, young Laura finds peace and purpose in the home of a midwife and healer. Later, she enrolls in Salerno's famed medical school—the first in the world to admit women. Laura and her adoptive mother hope that Laura can build a bridge between women's herbal healing and the new science of medicine developing in thirteenth century Italy.

The hardest lessons are those of love; Laura falls hard for a fellow student who abandons her for a wealthy wife. Worse, her mother rejects her as "impure." Shattered, Laura devotes herself to her work, becoming a respected medico. But her heart is still bitter, and when she sees a chance for revenge, she grabs it—and takes for her own Bieta, the newborn daughter of a woman whose husband regularly raided the physician's garden for bitter herbs to satisfy his pregnant wife's cravings.

Determined to protect her adored daughter from the ravages of the world, Laura isolates the young woman in a tower. Bieta, as determined as her mother, escapes, and finds adventure—and love—on the streets of Salerno.

Bieta's betrayal of her mother's love comes at a terrible price as lives are ruined and families are torn apart. Laura's medical knowledge cannot heal her broken heart; only a great act of love can bring everyone forgiveness and peace.

And really, that is a beautiful cover. Let me show it larger without the Amazon link:


And you can read an article about the book by Robins at The Big Idea. Where she shares her love for Paul O. Zelinsky's Rapunzel (Caldecott Medal Book). Lovely all around!
Here's an excerpt from the article:

As happens with these sorts of bolt-from-the blue notions, it sat around gathering dust-bunnies and stray factoids while I wrote other things. I began cursorily reading up on daily life in the Renaissance, thinking of ways to rehabilitate the witch. Maybe she’s a midwife? At least that would give her a reason to be in the room when the baby was born. But why take the kid?

I had nuthin.

And then I stumbled across a factoid that rewrote my whole idea of the middle ages and, by the way, this story. The first medical school in Europe, the Scuola Medicina Salernitana, not only had women as students, but women instructors. One of the most famous, Trotula di Ruggiero (immortalized in the Jack and Jill rhyme as “old Dame Trot”), specialized in women’s medicine–what we’d call OB/GYN. Her texts on the subject were in use for centuries. Dame Trot was not a damsel or a peasant. She was a professional woman. How cool is that?

And cause I have great love for Zelinsky's Rapunzel, here's an image. Amazon has the look inside feature for this one if you need a taste of Italian Rapunzel today.