Sarah Chorn's Blog, page 71

[Guest Review by Elizabeth Bear] My Real Children – Jo Walton

About the Book

It’s 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. “Confused today,” read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know—what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don’t seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead. She remembers the bomb that killed President Kennedy in 1963, and she remembers Kennedy in 1964, declining to run again after the nuclear exchange that took out Miami and Kiev.

Her childhood, her years at Oxford during the Second World War—those were solid things. But after that, did she marry Mark or not? Did her friends all call her Trish, or Pat? Had she been a housewife who escaped a terrible marriage after her children were grown, or a successful travel writer with homes in Britain and Italy? And the moon outside her window: does it host a benign research station, or a command post bristling with nuclear missiles?

Two lives, two worlds, two versions of modern history. Each with their loves and losses, their sorrows and triumphs. My Real Children is the tale of both of Patricia Cowan’s lives…and of how every life means the entire world.

320 pages (hardcover)

Published on May 20, 2014

Published by Tor

Author’s website

Buy the book

Many thanks to Elizabeth Bear for taking time out of her busy schedule to review this for me. What a woman!!

—

My Real Children, the new novel by Jo Walton, moves from strength to strength.

(Reviewed by Elizabeth Bear)

This is a deceptively simple story, which follows the life of Patricia Cowan–one woman in two different time-streams. In these alternate lives, her history differs drastically. The world’s history differs as well, and neither of history is our own. In the present day, Patricia are told from her point of view in a present day where she is affected by a form of dementia, and cannot separate her memories of these two lives–which have begun to merge in her memory. The assured tone of the novel in the past-time sections, however, dissuades the reader from the idea that either or both of these realities are merely delusional.

This book should not be as entertaining as it is: it’s often static, mostly narrated rather than dramatized, and the protagonist is often passive–other than the one cascading choice that drives her two alternate lives.

But it’s not just entertaining. It’s captivating. I’m a notoriously difficult, picky reader, and I can’t remember the last time I actually stayed up past my bed time to finish a novel. My Real Children kept me up four hours past my appointed hour of rest, because I kept just-one-more-chaptering myself.

Some of this is because of that assured tone I mentioned. Walton writes the narrated sections after the manner of good nonfiction, so the exposition becomes a pleasure in itself. Large sections of the book read more like a biography than a novel, and that is not in this case a criticism. Some of it is because the protagonist is an engaging woman, and I as a reader cared deeply for her; some of it is just a reflection of Walton’s own skill as a novelist and a nonfiction writer.

The short version here is that I adored it. However, I do think the book suffers slightly from a couple of logical flaws, which are spoilers.

Spoilers. Serious, major, total spoilers:

The book never explains the mechanism by which the narrator’s choice causes the cascading effects that it is eventually revealed to. And it never explains how she comes to the realization or supposition that it does, which provides what should be the emotional resolution and crowning, lady-or-the-tiger, unresolved choice of the novel. Nor does it explain why on earth she thinks she has the power to go back and make that choice differently with her current knowledge. For me, at least, the arbitrariness of all of this robbed that dilemma of its power; it’s a horrible moral crisis and well-constructed in the backstory, but I just couldn’t figure out how Patricia Cowan’s choice was supposed to actually change anything.

But that, quite honestly, is the last couple of paragraphs, and they are more or less my only complaints about the book.

[Guest Post] Wm Henry Morris on Patience Rewarded

About the Author

Wm Henry Morris writes, reads and edits all sorts of fiction with an emphasis on where literary fiction and genre fiction intersect. He can be found at @WmHenryMorris and williamhenrymorris.com.

—

Patience rewarded: The Goblin Emperor, Fool’s Assassin and The Mirror Empire

By Wm Henry Morris

I’ve been thinking about the books I have read so far this year that have stuck with me. One of the ways I judge a book is by how much I’m thinking about it weeks and months after I finish it. Several 2014 titles fall into this category for me (including the books of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy), but the more I reflect, the more I’ve come to realize that three of the most enjoyable, lingering experiences for me were reading The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb and The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley. While all three are fantasy novels, they are very different books and reading experience from each other: the bright stand-alone sweetness of The Goblin Emperor; the slow burn re-starting of a painful, complex relationship in Fool’s Assassin; the thrown-in-the-deep-end, hurtling action series start that is The Mirror Empire. What they have in common, however, is that they all demand patience of the reader.

Books that demand patience don’t always do well in the marketplace. These three titles have made a splash this year in the genre community so clearly they’re finding their audiences. And yet readers have not always reacted positively to the aspects of them that break from the fast-paced plot/transparent prose/straightforward narrative structure that is the dominant mode of genre fiction. This interests me and so I’m going to attempt to briefly explore for each book what the sticking points are — what demands patience of the reader — and then explain why, at least for me, exercising that patience is worthwhile.

Please note that there are middle-of-the-book spoilers ahead for Fool’s Assassin with an oblique nod to the ending. For the other two books I spoil only the basic first-few-chapters info that the marketing copy for them already lays out.

The Goblin Emperor

Addison’s The Goblin Emperor has rightly been acclaimed for being a stand alone fantasy novel that is hopeful and full of kindness. The book doesn’t contain much overt action. It’s about Maia, the half-goblin son of an emperor who has been living in exile, attempting to negotiate the perils of court when he ascends to the throne after his father and sibling-heirs are killed in an airship crash. The court machinations and Maia’s success at negotiating them hinge on such small gestures and words and understanding of how and when to flout convention that buying into the stakes of the story requires taking an interest in how the emperor’s court works. But I don’t think that’s what frustrates readers most.

It’s all the names.

Katherine Addison’s steampunkish world of elves and goblins borrows somewhat from 19th century Russia, including the names and titles. And The Goblin Emperor can get just as confusing as a Russian novel as you’re trying to figure out who is being referred to since it seems like every character has at least three or four versions of their name that get used.

But here’s why I think Addison’s use of names is important to the novel and why readers can be rewarded by being patient with them:

When Maia is brought to court, he is in a state of confusion. In spite of his ostensible education at the hands of his court-savvy (but also in exile) cousin, he really is quite clueless about the proper forms and running of an emperor’s quote. The use of names creates a similar state of confusion in the mind of the reader. We can identify with Maia — this whole court business is indeed quite confusing. And if we’re patient and stick with the book, just like Maia is patient and sticks with his decision to ascend to the throne, we begin to better navigate all the names and understand who all the players are. The use of names is there to take the reader on a similar journey as the main character — from confusion to clarity (if not complete fluency).

There is a glossary at the end of the book to help with all the names, but I found that looking things up broke up the flow of reading too much and didn’t really help, so after a couple of uses, I decided to just be patient with book and was rewarded with this mirroring of Maia’s increasing grasp of his situation with my own so that by time the plot climax arrives, I had no difficulty understanding who was who and what they each wanted. And that made those scenes quite delicious.

Fool’s Assassin

Remember: major spoilers for the middle section of this book.

Robin Hobb’s Fool’s Assassin requires a very different sort of patience from The Goblin Emperor. As it begins, we are presented with a set of main characters that we know quite well from the previous Fitz and the Fool books, with Fitz once again taking center stage. The only one who is missing is the Fool, and I think most readers suspect, as I did, that there was no question that he would be back. The only question is when the Fool would actually arrive on the page.

But it soon becomes clear that Fool’s Assassin isn’t so much about FitzChivalry and the Fool or Fitz (living in semi-retirement as Tom Badgerlock) and his wife Molly, as it is about Fitz and his daughter Bee, who Molly bears under very strange circumstances and who ends up being a very strange, very smart little girl.

None of that requires much patience. What does is how much time is spent in the middle chapters of the book on Fitz and Bee’s relationship when what most readers want to get to the end where all the action really happens. Instead we have incident after incident where Fitz misunderstands his daughter’s needs and/or how to communicate with her or interpret her words/actions, and she loses trust in him only to have them eventually clear things up and re-forge their father-daughter relationship. At a certain point, the reader may be tempted to say “Okay, I get it!” and skip ahead.

I’m glad that I didn’t. I found it quite touching to experience the variations in the pattern and realize how true to life they ring. Relationships don’t deepen like an after school special where all it takes is overcoming one misunderstanding to make everything okay. Bad patterns don’t improve after one instance of recognition. It takes constant work and refinement, and Hobb gives us this in depth, but with variation, and by being patient with the variation we’re rewarded as readers with how exquisite Hobb, who is a master at portraying relationship, can depict those variations, like the movements of a symphony or the flow of a multi-course meal.

I also think that, especially after what happens at the end of the book, that it’s very important that we have deep experience with Fitz and Bee’s relationship. That extended portrait is likely going to be important as the series moves forward.

The Mirror Empire

I don’t have one element to point to in The Mirror Empire. It’s more the combination of a bunch of them. Kameron Hurley amps up the requirement for patient reading by throwing in a ton of characters, locations and magic systems — not to mention a spectrum of genders (and the mirror worlds themselves). The reader is dropped in this complex melange and moved through it without ceremony and not a whole lot of scaffolding.

I made the mistake of taking the early chapters slow and at a certain point got rather impatient with the novel. But then I decided to just go with it and exercise both patience and commitment by tackling large swathes of the novel at a time. For me, at least, that worked. By being patient (note that there is a glossary in The Mirror Empire: as with The Goblin Empire, I recommend not using it) and letting the narrative move me forward, I soon found that characters quickly became much less blurry and the various pieces on the board(s) began to assemble themselves in my mind and once I had them in place, the plot became quite exciting as I tried to anticipate how everything was going to collide.

What’s nice about Hurley’s approach is that it doesn’t waste much time with info-dumping and world building. You still get a lot of that packed into the book, but it all comes in the context of the characters themselves and never more than what context they specifically have access to. What’s more, this is also a situation where many of the characters themselves don’t know what’s going on and so the reader moves along with them from confusion to glimmers of recognition to creeping, horrifying awareness. It’s a lovely effect. But it requires being both patient and persistent with the novel.

Not all novels reward patience. Some demand too much for too little reward. And personal tastes differ. I’m not saying that alternate reactions to these three novels are wrong. I can see how what I view as enhancements to the reading experience can be seen as defects.

I am saying that when authors (like the three authors above) know what they are doing, the extra work that they require of the reader is often for a good reason. The pleasures that such work can bring only come if the reader is willing to be patient.

 

Sleeping Late on Judgement Day – Tad Williams

About the Book

The conclusion of Tad Williams’ brilliant Bobby Dollar series.

Where does an angel go when he’s been to Hell and back?

Renegade angel Bobby Dollar does not have an easy afterlife. After surviving the myriad gruesome dangers Hell oh-so-kindly offered him, Bobby has returned empty-handed – his demon girlfriend Casmira, the Countess of Cold Hands, is still in the clutches of Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell. Some hell of a rescue.

Forced to admit his failure, Bobby ends up back at his job as an angel advocate. That is, until Walter, an old angel friend whom Bobby never thought he’d see again, shows up at the local bar. The last time he saw Walter was in Hell, when Walter had tried to warn him about one of Bobby’s angel superiors. But now Walter can’t remember anything, and Bobby doesn’t know whom to trust.

Turns out that there’s corruption hidden within the higher ranks of Heaven and Hell, but the only proof Bobby has is a single feather. Before he knows it, he’s in the High Hall of Heavenly Judgement – no longer a bastion for the moral high ground, if it ever was, but instead just another rigged system – on trial for his immortal soul…

349 pages (hardcover)

Published on September 2, 2014

Published by DAW

Author’s webpage

Buy the book

This book was sent for me to review by the publisher.

—

It is hard for me to end a series, especially a series written by one of my favorite authors. Bobby Dollar came out of left field and really surprised me. He was a character I loved, and really didn’t expect, but I think I loved him even more for his unexpectedness. Sleeping Late on Judgement Day is the last book in a trilogy that I have quickly come to love, and I really don’t want to see it go.

This trilogy has been interesting for a lot of reasons, but one of the primary reasons is how it started fun and light, and each book has grown darker and more series while still managing to make me laugh out loud plenty of times. Williams has managed to strike the perfect balance between depth, darkness, and humor. Sleeping Late on Judgement Day is a fantastic follow-up novel after the mind-blowing Happy Hour in Hell. This book starts almost directly after the second book ended. Happy Hour in Hell was one of the best books I read last year, but it was darker than I expected a Bobby Dollar book to be. After that, you can pretty much picture the mood in Sleeping Late on Judgement Day. It’s dark, and somewhat depressing, but also lined with hope and those crazy laugh out loud one-liners and antics that readers of the series have grown to love.

Bobby Dollar has a knack for finding himself in trouble, and that talent of his starts on page one. Things have been coming to a slow boil for a while now. The stage is set, and Williams doesn’t hold back at all. Old friends are back, and new information arises. Bobby finds himself in the unique position of being practically alone. It’s interesting to see how the series has developed Bobby. While in some ways he will always be one of those characters that is ready for a good time and a quick laugh, his exploits have matured him a bit and that’s never more obvious than it is in Sleeping Late on Judgement Day. We have the same Bobby Dollar here, but this one is a bit more ruthless, and a bit more willing to trust himself over the advice and inclinations of others, especially those he might have trusted in the past.

The secondary characters, as always, shine. Of course Bobby Dollar is the central figure, but the book wouldn’t be nearly as interesting without Caz, Sam, and Temeul. That also brings me to the next point of the novel that impressed me. The series as a whole has been a delicate balance between the dark and light forces in Bobby’s life. Nothing really contrasts as much as Heaven and Hell, and Bobby seems to be standing right in the middle of those two forces throughout the series. Bobby is also a character of sharp contrasts. He has his vices, alcohol is one, but he’s also pretty selfless in the face of adversity. However, the series itself is a twisted, sort of layered, humorous and emotional look at love, and just how much a person is willing to give up for it. Heaven and Hell, the actual places, are often reflected in Bobby Dollar’s emotional state of being, his vices, his virtues, and his unending, relentless love of Caz. That never became more clear, or more poetic and powerful, than in Sleeping Late on Judgement Day.

Williams isn’t a novice to writing. He knows how to pace his books, and how to draw together all of the plot threads that he’s left open and mysterious throughout a series. There are a ton of “ah ha!” moments in Sleeping Late on Judgement Day, but they are scattered at nice intervals throughout the book and dropped in such a way that readers will feel good about the answers they are given rather than disappointed. The ending contains quite a big “ah ha” moment that will sort of close out the series. There is easily enough room for Williams to return to this world and these characters in the future if he chooses to. That being said, some readers might be less than satisfied with the ending, as it has a sort of “open” feel to it. Not everything is neatly tied up, which is also why I wouldn’t be surprised if Williams writes more in this world in the future. While the ending works, it will probably leave some readers wanting. 

Sleeping Late on Judgement Day really surprised me. It’s darker and more personal than I expected, and I loved it for that. The emotional and personal parallels between the story and Bobby Dollar are incredibly compelling. Bobby Dollar and company have grown in leaps and bounds since the series started. That growth has never really been as obvious as it was in Sleeping Late on Judgement Day. The book is flawlessly paced, and incredibly dynamic. It’s an experience and an adventure and a very satisfying end to a trilogy I never wanted to end. I sincerely hope that Williams revisits this world sometime in the future.

All of Tad Williams books are wonderful, but this one is truly something special.

 

5/5 stars

[Guest Post] Mercedes Murdock Yardley on Books and Butterflies

About the Author

Hi. I’m Mercedes. I have two broken laptops, three kids, a husband and no time to write, although I try my very best.

I like to write stories. I like to write poems. I like to write essays and sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they aren’t.

I’m the author of Beautiful Sorrows,Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Nameless: The Darkness Comes, which is the first book of what I’m calling The Bone Angel Trilogy, and Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy.

—

Releasing Butterflies

By Mercedes Murdock Yardley

“Books are like babies,” an author told me once. “You don’t have a favorite. You love them all equally.”

“Books are just widgets on your website,” another author told me that same night. “They’re just one more thing to sell. One more product to make a page for.”

Books aren’t babies or widgets. They’re books. They’re your literary darlings. And while I love each one of mine insanely for who they are and what they mean, oh yes, you’d better believe I have a favorite.

It’s called Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy, and I just released it.

It wasn’t like releasing the others. Of course there’s that sense of “Ahhhhh!” and “Eeeeee!” and the excitement and stress that comes from any book release. I stay up at night wondering how to promote it. I think about the characters and muse whether or not their story is finished. But when it’s your favorite book, your favorite thing you ever wrote, the book release process changes. It’s a little more exciting, yes. It’s a little more terrifying, naturally. But the feel of letting these special and oh-so-dear-to-your-heart characters out into the wild? Oh.

Oh.

I grew up raising Monarch caterpillars. We’d feed them milkweed. We’d keep them sheltered from the birds and winds and wild children that would bend and flatten them. These caterpillars would climb to the underside of their milkweed leaves and they would start the transformation process.

“A caterpillar spins a silk cocoon,” people would say, “and then they turn into be-yoo-tiful butterflies.”

Butterflies don’t spin cocoons. Moths do. Their paper-thin skin bursts and tears in the most sickening of manners to reveal the chrysalis underneath. There’s violence in it. Savagery.

Funny, that. It’s just like pouring your sweat and soul into your favorite book.

If the butterfly is protected, it lives. It struggles and kicks and fights its way out of its chrysalis. It emerges fat and battle-worn and wet. It’s exhausted. It takes quite some time before it manages to flutter its wings. Once. Twice. The wings dry, eventually.

Releasing a favorite project is like releasing those butterflies into the wilderness. There’s pride and joy and a little bit of sorrow that it won’t be just yours anymore. There’s fear for the journey. What if they fail? What if they’re unloved? What if something happens? But it’s still the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, and maybe it can spread joy, and maybe somebody will smile when they see it. Maybe it will be something better than you can ever be. It’s a whimsical, ethereal thing. Fly, favorite book. Fly, little butterfly. Make us all proud.

—

About Pretty Little Dead Girls

“Run, Star Girl.” Bryony Adams is destined to be murdered, but fortunately Fate has terrible marksmanship. In order to survive, she must run as far and as fast as she can. After arriving in Seattle, Bryony befriends a tortured musician, a market fish-thrower, and a starry-eyed hero who is secretly a serial killer bent on fulfilling Bryony’s dark destiny,

Mercedes M. Yardley’s Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy is a dark, lovely fairy tale with lyrical language and a high body count.  It features a cover by HUGO award winner GALEN DARA.

Buy the book.

Read my review.

[Guest Post] Kenny Sowards on Outlining

About the Author

Kenny Soward grew up in a small Kentucky suburb listening to hard rock and playing outdoors. In those quiet ’70s streets, he jumped bikes, played Nerf football, and acquired many a childhood scar. His love for books flourished early, a habit passed down by his uncles, and he spent many high school days in detention for reading fantasy novels during class.

At the University of Kentucky, Kenny took creative writing classes under Gurny Norman, former Kentucky Poet Laureate and author of Divine Rights Trip (1971). By day, Kenny works as a Unix professional, and at night he writes and sips bourbon.

He lives in Independence, Kentucky, with three cats and a gal who thinks she’s a cat.

—

Outlining

By Kenny Sowards

Outlining. How stifling. How constraining. How downright rude! And how dare you think it won’t kill your creativity. If you outline, then you’re just a big, dumb brick who will end up painting yourself into a corner … piled knee-high with snakes … and then a really short gnome will come out of nowhere and punch you in the gut.

That’s how a lot of writers feel about outlining.

For me, it was just sheer laziness. I didn’t want to think about acts and blocks. What the hell was all this talk about conflict and push? I mean, doing an outline would be boring and almost like … cheating! A wormhole would surely open up and devour everything I held dear.

But after overwriting a recent WIP by almost 30k words, and going through a ton of painful revising and rewriting, I knew something had to be done. There was no way I could putter around like that if I wanted to have any chance at keeping my sanity and create a functional writing gig for myself.

So, I decided to investigate how the dreaded outline might help me. Dun – dun – dunnnnnn!

It couldn’t be that bad, right? After all, I played drums in a band for years, and despite many of my musician friends being stolidly against using a metronome – the thing that goes click, click, click in a drummer’s ear when they play – I thought it really helped my creativity because I didn’t have to focus on keeping time. The metronome kept time for me. All I had to do was play along with it, which really loosened me up and allowed me to get pretty wacky behind the kit.

So, I figured I would take the same approach to outlining.

I set about creating a basic three act outline – since I don’t have time to explain all that here, you can go to this link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ryXJ18eUp8) and watch a video showing a very basic three act outline with twenty-seven chapters and up to 90k words.

I decided to try this on CogWeaver, the third book in my GnomeSaga series. I took one month to outline, where I created the acts and blocks (sub-chapters) on note cards. I found that ideas would hit at the weirdest times, and I made sure to capture those ideas throughout the month I was outlining.

With the outline done, starting the draft seemed easy. I didn’t get hit with the crippling fear of what-to-do-next. I knew, basically, where I was going, and I was able to smash through the first quarter of the book like a knife through butter – okay, that’s a bit overused – how about, like a lightsaber through butter, I mean, like a lightsaber through a brick. Oh, you know what I mean.

In any case, little sparkles of excitement began flitting round in my belly. Yes, this happens to me.

Some things I learned:

I did not have to follow the outline exactly – yeah, I’m a rebel, just like you. I often inserted an additional plot point or block, removed them, or even combined them. The key was in the forethought; all of it had been worked out prior to drafting.
I had to trust myself. Provided I took my time with the outline – and had a good time creating it – I should have some pretty epic things going on, right? So, when the time came to write the parts, I had to simply recreate the same energy I had when I first thought of the part.
Conversely, I had to know when a chapter just wasn’t going to work, in which case I made an on-the-fly change, adjusting future plot points and blocks as needed before moving on with the draft.

The end result was that I became twice as productive, fearless even, able to almost double my normal word count while retaining the quality of the work. I was able to see where the best places for conflict and resolution should fit and take some time to actually give it some thought.

While it isn’t for everyone, outlining has been great for me, and I intend on using outlines for the foreseeable future. It’s almost better than sliced bread. Almost. Of course, I may come back next year and completely flame this post and call myself an idiot, but so far, so good.

Author Mercedes Yardley and I talked about outlining the other day, and after some fun discussion about why outlining does not kill your creativity, she said something beautiful. She said outlining was “like throwing butterflies in a jar instead of letting them flit all around the place.”

Exactly!

Now go capture your butterflies!

—

Kenny’s book Rough Magic is set to release on October 13. Here’s a bit about it.

NIKSABELLA the gnome has tinkered in the shadows for years, developing an invention that might change the world—even if she doesn’t know it. She has few friends and even fewer allies in Hightower, where social and academic status is crucial.

Her brother, NIKSELPIK, is an obstinate wizard who drinks heavily, sings dirty songs, and makes unmannerly passes at gnomestresses. A dark addiction consumes him, giving him increased power while also pushing him closer to death.

Dark, otherworldy creatures, foreign to the lands of SULLENOR, have suddenly appeared, making chaos wherever they go. In the wake of this, Niksabella must fight to protect her life and her invention, while Nikselpik engages the enemy as an unlikely counselor to Hightower’s military elite.

Will the gnomish siblings find their true powers together, or perish apart? And will they overcome the wounds of their childhood before it’s too late?

Pretty Little Dead Girls – Mercedes Murdock Yardley

About the Book

“Run, Star Girl.”

BRYONY ADAMS IS DESTINED TO BE MURDERED, but fortunately Fate has terrible marksmanship. In order to survive, she must run as far and as fast as she can. After arriving in Seattle, Bryony befriends a tortured musician, a market fish-thrower, and a starry-eyed hero who is secretly a serial killer bent on fulfilling Bryony’s dark destiny.

Mercedes M. Yardley’s Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy is a dark, lovely fairy tale with lyrical language and a high body count. It features a cover by Hugo Award Winner GALEN DARA

Published on September 29, 2014

Published by Ragnarok Publications

Author’s webpage

Buy it now. 

This book was sent for me to review by the publisher.

—

It’s rather rare that I get to read and review a book written by an author that I personally know. Granted, I don’t know Yardley well, but I know her. We worked together on a project that didn’t end up working out for either of us. We’ve had a ton of private message exchanges about plenty of things. I even met her for brunch once wherein my kid and husband crashed our party and she was kind and gracious with their company.

The thing is, once you know someone, it changes how you read their book. You know the person who wrote it now. You’ve interacted with them in person. It adds some depth and some interesting new dynamics to the work as a whole.

Yardley is, from what I know of her, one of those people who seems to shine in the face of adversity. Life hasn’t been easy for her, but she smiles and she’s nice and kind anyway. It’s rare to find gems like that these days, but Yardley is one of those people. Her kindness shines like a light, attracting everyone to her. That’s so refreshing in our jaded day and age.

And I was thrilled – absolutely thrilled – to see that as one of the primary strengths of Pretty Little Dead Girls.

Bryony is one of those characters that I really thought I’d hate. In fact, about two pages in I thought to myself, “Oh god. Why did I have to agree to read this? I really, really hate Mary Sue characters.” Bryony has all of the features it takes to get me to hate a character almost instantly. She’s happy all the time. She’s overly sweet. She’s absolutely innocent, and she makes everyone want to protect her. Bryony can do no wrong because that’s who she is.

Now that it looks like this has taken a turn for the worst, let me turn the tables on you.

Bryony Adams is one of those characters that would be so easy for me to hate, but I didn’t. In fact, I absolutely loved her, and that should really tell you something about the way Yardley has written this book. If she can take someone like me, who is just about dead set to viscerally dislike anyone who is unnaturally pleasant to be around (Really people, there is such a thing as “too happy.” It’s weird.) and made me actually really root for Bryony, that sends a loud message about the quality of the characterization. One I don’t really need to expand upon. 

Pretty Little Dead Girls is written in a very unique way, sort of omnipotent third person. While the main focus is on Bryony, we get bits and pieces from all of the people around her and the people engaged in her gruesome fate. It’s an interesting hodgepodge tapestry that Yardley has woven. Normally this style of storytelling falls apart fast and in a messy way, but not here. Yardley managed to pull everything together and keep it from ever getting messy. It’s easy to keep track of who is who and why they are doing what they are doing. Motivations are right on the surface and while Bryony is the obvious star of the story, the central force where everything spins around her, the other characters are interesting, but obviously supporting roles to Bryony’s light.

The interesting way of telling the story is also very effective. Words are tools, and it’s obvious that Yardley has utilized that tool to its fullest extent with Pretty Little Dead Girls. The book feels like a fairytale, and the people who say that this novel feels a lot like Neil Gaiman aren’t wrong. This does feel very much like Gaiman’s fairytale twists. The powerful prose, and the way that Yardley has chosen to tell her tale immediately draws in readers. It’s hard to put this book down. I blasted through it in a little over a night, and I didn’t even mean to, especially when I was pretty sure I was going to hate it when I started it. It’s hard to put down, and there are plenty of quotable gems scattered through it.

Perhaps, however, the thing I enjoyed most about this novel is the contrast of it, and that contrast is why I loved Bryony despite all of the reasons I’d naturally hate reading an entire book filled with her. The first line of the novel is:

Bryony Adams was the type of girl who got murdered.

And then we are introduced to this person, and all of the people who feel sorry for her due to the fate that is looming over her. Bryony is called “Star Girl” throughout the book, and she truly does shine like a star. As I mentioned above, Bryony is the sun and everyone else is just orbiting around her. She’s light, she’s innocent, and she’s all of those qualities that the world tends to beat out of people before they are very old. However, the book itself is pretty dark. It’s about death and destruction, about people breaking down and falling apart, about being unable to stand in the face of our base natures and Bryony is the light that keeps all of those shadows back. It’s an interesting spin on human nature, and nothing really contrasts more than hope and life against death. I enjoy books with contrasting elements, but usually those elements are subtle. Not here. Pretty Little Dead Girls is based on those contrasting elements. They are laid out right there on the first page for readers to see.

And that, folks, is why Pretty Little Dead Girls worked so well for me. It was a study in contrasts – light against dark, subtle against loud, hope against disbelief, hunger against satiation. Pretty Little Dead Girls is all of those things that make us human, picked apart and thrust in the open for us to internalize in our own unique ways. It’s a study of what makes us human, and it’s also a study of strength, and the different kinds of it. It’s not what I expected, and I’m so glad. Yardley absolutely blew me away with this novel, and she’s a friend of mine, which makes it that much more gratifying to be so blatantly honest about the book she obviously poured her soul into.

And what a beautiful soul that is.

 

5/5 stars

 

P.S. I wrote this review while medicated because yay surgery. I sincerely hope it makes sense.

[Guest Post] Anton Strout on Methods of Artistic Expression, or Exploring Your Core

About the Author

Anton Strout was born in the Berkshire Hills mere miles from writing heavyweights Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. He currently lives in the haunted corn maze that is New Jersey (where nothing paranormal ever really happens, he assures you).

He is the author of the Simon Canderous urban fantasy series and the Spellmason Chronicles for Ace Books, a division of Penguin Random House. Anton is also the author of many short tales published in anthologies by DAW Books. His latest book, Incarnate,the third Spellmason Chronicles book, is coming out September 30, 2014.

In his scant spare time, his is a writer, a sometimes actor, sometimes musician, occasional RPGer, and the worlds most casual and controller smashing video gamer. He currently works in the exciting world of publishing and yes, it is as glamorous as it sounds.

He is currently hard at work on his next book and be found lurking the darkened hallways of his website or talking with your favorite SF&F authors on The Once and Future Podcast, where he is host and content curator.

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Methods of Artistic Expression, or Exploring Your Core

By Anton Strout

 

Some writers say, “Oh, I always knew I was going to be a writer!” or “The Muse was with me at birth!”

I want to punch those Muse people right in the neckmeat.

Yes, I got the writing bug early, but at best I was a dabbler.

There were a million things I wanted to be growing up, but at the core was one common idea: I wanted to entertain.

I don’t often think of myself as an artist. It seems pretentious to me, but at the heart of it I am. So I entertained anyway I could growing up:

Magician. Musician. Actor, teacher even, and eventually, writer.

So how the hell did writing win out?

Well, let’s face it… magic can only get you so far unless you’re name is Penn or Teller. In magic, you are out to deceive. You weave a tale, you misdirect, leading the audience one way and surprising them in a way they hadn’t expected. That’s writing, isn’t it? Fun, but something I grew out of but still love to watch.

I’m a musical dabbler as well. I can pick up many an instrument and learn just enough to get by on it. I used to beat myself up about it, being a jack of all trades but master of none (the way I see fledgling writer’s posting “I suck” or “wanna read my bad pages for me?”, by the way). Eventually I got sick of hearing myself be Eeyore and I stopped fretting over my inadequacy and just played. Guess what? People liked it. I had success with it, playing semi-professional at times even. Still, while I was hitting my common core idea of entertaining, music is a hard life, and ultimately I don’t think my soul was fully committed to it. But I did write songs. I told tales through music, and again, writing reared its prose-filled little head again.

I also loved acting. It’s what I studied in college, but I can stare at myself in the mirror and tell the truth to my own face… I don’t have ‘the look’. Unless they’re looking to cast a balding overweight fantasy author! Then I’d totally be in. Acting was my love, and it’s what I started college with and why I moved to New York City, but I discovered that the day to day pass/fail of auditioning wore on my soul as well.  As an actor you’re indeed entertaining, usually telling a story, but it is a tale written by another. The lack of the creative writing process in it for me sealed the fact that I should absolutely be writing instead, and not just dabbling in writing as I had over the years.

First of all, the writing has a much better pass/fail cycle. You can spend a year or two writing and polishing a book, and then only get stuck in yes/no mode when you send it out. It’s not every day rejection like a New York actor pounding the pavement auditioning. Writing is just bulk rejections every couple of years when you submit something you put the time into writing, which in theory seems far more appealing to me.

Not that I had to really deal with rejection, mind you.

(Turn your hate machine on now, wannabe-authors)

My first book, Dead To Me, was only rejected once. And three days later I sold it and its sequel. You might read that and think I got super lucky. And in some respects, you would be right. The stars did indeed line up that day, but there was more than ‘luck’ to it:

Thirty eight years of dabbling. Thirty eight years of trying something else, but all roads eventually leading to the book writing. Six years of my Dorks of the Round Table writing group where we tore each other apart to try to get published (all of us are now, by the way). Learning to write over the course of a lifetime. Sixteen years working in traditional publishing learning what does and doesn’t sell out there. Seven books so far over two series. Picking up the pieces of the Simon Canderous book four to pitch The Spellmason Chronicles.

I suppose yes, there was some luck to only having to endure one rejection, and for only a whole three days at that, but when I take my life as a whole, the path to writing as my method of creative expression makes more and more sense to me.

Of course I was going to get published. I have spent my whole life in pursuit of that one singular goal I mentioned earlier: I wanted to entertain, and hopefully my words and books do just that.

I still engage in all my other avenues of entertaining on some level, bu if there’s one thing I can feel lucky about? It’s that I get to share my stories with you, dear reader. Thanks for reading and I hope to see your noses buried deep in the pages of The Spellmason Chronicles real soon.

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Bonus, Anton is doing a Rafflecopter giveaway. Click the link for more information!

[Guest Post] Jaime Lee Moyer – A Year Isn’t so Long.

About the Author

Jaime Lee Moyer lives in San Antonio, land of cowboys, cactus, and rhinestones. She writes books about murder, betrayal, friendship, magic, and kissing, an activity her cats approve of (even the kissing).

Her first novel, Delia’s Shadow, was published by Tor Books September 17, 2013. The second book in the series, A Barricade In Hell, comes out June 3, 2014, and the third book, Against ABrightening Sky, in 2015.

Jaime’s short fiction has appeared in  Lone Star Stories, Daily Science Fiction, and the Triangulations: End of the Rainbow, and Triangulations: Last Contact anthologies. She was poetry editor for Ideomancer Speculative Fiction for five years and edited the 2010 Rhysling Award Anthology for the Science Fiction Poetry Association. A poet in her own right, she’s sold more than her share of poetry.

She writes a lot. She reads as much as she can.

You can learn more about Jaime by checking out her website.

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A year isn’t so long. It only feels like forever.

By Jaime Moyer

On September 17th, I will have been a published author for one entire year. This was a year full of surprises, of holding my breath, of learning all the things I thought I knew all over again. I usually relearned everything the hard way.

Realizing an entire year had passed was a bit of a shock in and of itself. I live my life day to day, and things like anniversaries creep up on me. But a one-year anniversary seemed notable and worthy of comment, so here I am.

Surprise number one, which wasn’t really a huge surprise to me: I can measure the way my life has changed in inches, not in miles. Many of those changes are internal. The way I look at certain things in life has changed; some goals and priorities. No one else would notice.

From the outside nothing about my life looks any different, aside from a shelf on the bookcase where all the books have my name on the cover. I still have a full time job. My long time friends, and my newfound friends, are still very very important to me. They are my family of choice.

I’m always sacrificing sleep to writing and writing related work, and I’m still not famous. I’m not even well known.

(spoiler) The average SFF writer’s life—or any writer’s life for that matter—isn’t anything like what you see in a movie.

Surprise number two: People honestly and truly think that being published equals instant riches, a life of ease and an end to working hard for anything, ever again. That includes everyone from extended family (who really should know better) to total strangers, and everyone in between.

I shouldn’t have to say that’s not true, but I’ll say it anyway. That’s not even remotely true.

Surprise number three: Readers will go out of their way to tell you how much they loved your book, thus making your day.

And readers who are less than fond of what you wrote aren’t shy either. You hear from them too.

Surprise number four: Anyone who tells you not to read reviews has your best interests at heart. Trust them, listen to them. Those people are your friends.

Because really? Life is too short to be upset by someone trashing a book you spent a year or more of your life on, all because they found a typo in the last ten pages.

Surprise number five: My personal definition of failure has always been this: The only way you ever really fail is if you don’t try. Give what you care about your absolute best, get up again if you fall, and keep going.

Probably the biggest surprise of all is that after a year, I still (mostly) believe that.

[Guest Review by G.R. Matthews] Artful – Peter David

Huge thanks to G.R. Matthews for writing this review!

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About the Book

Oliver Twist is one of the most well-known stories ever told, about a young orphan who has to survive the mean streets of London before ultimately being rescued by a kindly benefactor.

But it is his friend, the Artful Dodger, who has the far more intriguing tale, filled with more adventure and excitement than anything boring Oliver could possibly get up to. Throw in some vampires and a plot to overthrow the British monarchy, and what you have is the thrilling account that Charles Dickens was too scared to share with the world.

From the brilliant mind of novelist and comic book veteran Peter David,Artful is the dark, funny, and action-packed story of one of the most fascinating characters in literary history.

With vampires.

 

288 pages (paperback)

Published on July 1, 2014

Published by 47North

Author’s webpage

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Oliver Twist was just lucky. It could have happened to anyone. Honestly, the boy was hungry and had to be forced to go and ask for more. He could not even think to do that simple thing for himself. And then he runs away from a perfectly good job and a cushy life in a funeral parlour. Co-workers can always be difficult but a little perseverance and all could have been sorted. But that’s what he always does, gets into tiny bit of trouble and runs away. The Artful Dodger finds him on the street, gives him a place to live, a trade and then what does the ingrate do? At the first sign of trouble he runs and, by doing so, causes Dodger to lose his home, Nancy to get killed and for the gang to break up leaving all those poor children without a roof above their heads. The fact that he then gets picked up by Mr Brownlow, taken into his home and given the life of luxury was just dumb luck. What kind of hero is that to hang a book around? This is premise that Peter David presents us with when he begins his new novel, Artful.

The Artful Dodger doesn’t have that kind of luck. Life has been tough for this orphan of the streets. His reward for helping Oliver, transportation to Australia and Fagin, the kindly old Jew who took in all those boys and looked after them, gets his neck stretched by the hangman. Dickens original story only has a happy ending for Oliver.

This is where we join Dodger and Fagin. Fagin is dead and Dodger is about to be chucked onto a boat and sent to the new lands. But where Oliver relied on luck for his escape from certain doom, Fagin relies on the fact that he is a vampyre, and Dodger on his brains. The hanging is nothing but an excuse for a good sleep and Fagin is awoken by a dark figure who plans for England. Dodger escapes the clumsy guardsman and escapes into the back streets of London.

Peter David hangs the novel cleverly on a few details of Dickens Oliver Twist and writes in a similar style to the author of the original, with a modern twist here and there. Each chapter begins with a short synopsis of what is going to happen and then the prose begins to describe the events. It is an old fashioned approach, in keeping with the style of the book, and after a few chapters it feels quite normal.

Artful is soon joined in his adventures by a Princess and a Van Helsing as the battle with the vampyres takes on a country shaking importance. All the staples of (just) pre-Victorian England are present and you get the sense that the author enjoyed playing with the history, original story, and London stereotypes. There are the rich gents looking down their noses at the street urchins, the doxies protecting their pitches, judges handing out harsh penalties for minor offences, children being seen and not heard, it is all there.

In any story about vampyres the odd death by neck exsanguination is to be expected and as the story progresses these increase in frequency. We also begin to see the division in the vampyre ranks. However, the first third of the book is a little slow. A lot of time is spent explaining all the little clues, links and hints that Dickens, supposedly, left in the original Oliver Twist. Yet more time is spent explaining the world, London and the culture of the time. During all this I was really wishing the story would just get going.

And then it does. Once everyone knows who is who and what is going on the story takes off. It doesn’t do anything new or take us anywhere that story hasn’t taken us before. It boils down to a simple, chase, capture, rescue and reward format. But, it does it well. There is peril and excitement, deception and violence. The vampyres remain true to the traditional undead biters of the neck. They are incredibly strong, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but they have the weaknesses; crosses, garlic, stake through the heart.

The story ends with the promise of more though predictably, given the time period, it hints that this will involve Jack-the-Ripper.

Overall, it is an interesting and fun book let down by the slow start. If you push on through that, you will be rewarded.

 

7/10

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Thanks to G.R. Matthews for writing this review. To learn more about him, and his books, check out his website. 

[Guest Review by Ria Bridges] The Free – Brian Ruckley

Huge thanks to Ria Bridges for writing this review!

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About the Book

From the bestselling author of Winterbirth comes a magnificent new epic fantasy about The Free – the most feared and revered band of mercenaries the kingdom has ever known . . .

They are the most feared mercenary company the kingdom has ever known.

Led by Yulan, their charismatic captain, the Free have spent years selling their martial and magical skills to the highest bidder – winning countless victories that shook the foundations of the world. Now they finally plan to lay down their swords.

Yet when Yulan is offered a final contract, he cannot refuse – for the mission offers him the chance to erase the memories of the Free’s darkest hour, which have haunted him for years.

As The Free embark on their last mission, a potent mix of loyalty and vengeance is building to a storm. Freedom, it seems, carries a deadly price.

Published on October 14, 2014

Published by Orbit

Author’s webpage

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I had high hopes for Brian Ruckley’s The Free. As I’ve experienced more gritty fantasy stories, heavy on the action and morality displayed in shades of grey, I’ve come to realise that I enjoy them more than I would have given credit for many years ago. The Free seemed like something that would deliver that kind of hard-hitting action, given that the story revolves around a mercenary company and their last mission together.

Unfortunately, I ended up somewhat disappointed, as the book didn’t live up to my expectations.

The premise was sound, if a little bit overdone. The story centres around the Free, a mercenary group with some political loyalties that go beyond merely who can put the most coin in their pockets. Their final mission before disbanding? To bring down a tyrant who would be king, to avenge past wrongs, and to bring peace to the land once more. The story is told from two perspectives; that of Yulan, the leader of the Free, and of Drann, a farm boy turned soldier turned semi-willing contract-holder who was made to ride along with the Free on their mission, and thus provide an easy way to explain some thing to the reader by having them explained to the largely-ignorant Drann.

The book suffered, mostly, by having a cast of characters with little to no depth. Yulan was the only one who actually came across as a real person, with a history and complex emotions and any amount of, well, character to his character. Most of the others filled needed spots on a stage, notable more for what the story needed them to do than who they were. It was as though Yulan traveled with a company of plot points.

The antagonist, too, seemed fairly flat. A spoiled prince in many ways, thinking he can rule because he’s royal blood and that all those pesky smelly peasants should just bow before him. Cruel for cruelty’s sake. That’s about it. He was more of a caricature than a character, an irredeemable bad guy who exists just to stand in the way of the heroes and to give them a purpose and reason to act.

The style of writing also didn’t really do it for me. I found it to be irritatingly inconsistent at times, ranging from very evocative phrasing to such a distanced narrative that it was hard to compel myself to keep reading. For the most part, it felt rather flat, neither particularly bad nor good, which I suppose means that it could have been a lot worse even if it didn’t really do anything to stand out or encourage me to push on with the story.

There was some solid world-building underfoot, hinted at more than explicitly stated, and I wish more attention could have been paid to people and places and cultures rather than trying to explain things to Drann, since a greater look into the world and its people would have been very welcome. Readers get to see only a tiny portion, enough to know that the author has done his work in establishing things well enough to make the foundation solid, even if you don’t get to actually see the effects. There’s a confidence to the writing that I have to commend, even if the narration wasn’t all I was hoping for.

One aspect of the book that shines, though, is the magic system. At first glance it seems like a variation on the classic “four elements” system, only substituting seasonal influences. That alone would have been an interesting twist, incorporating a more varied set of talents than magic often sees in traditional tales, but then Ruckley introduces the idea of Permanences. Permanences occur when a magic-user channels more than they can handle and compensate for, the energy spills over and creates a Permanence, an embodiment of the seasonal element channeled than cannot move away from the physical world. Terrifying, destructive, and the stuff that nightmares are made from and that scare children into staying inside after dark, Permanences were amazing things, and every time one was mentioned, it was as though my ears perked up and everything became so much more interesting. Imagine something like The Bereaved, vaguely human-shaped and crying black tears of rot and decay that drains the life from everything it touches. How can that not be interesting?!

The Free isn’t a book that took great force of will to keep reading, but it was one that, after a while, I wanted to finish mostly so I could just see what happened and move on. It doesn’t have much in the way of reread value, due mostly to the lack of character interest or distinction. It’s a fairly run-of-the-mill sword-and-sorcery tale with mercenaries. Not something I’d really recommend, but not something I’d advise that people stay away from, either. Which, from everything I hear about Ruckley’s other books, makes it a shame that this was my introduction to his work. Ultimately, it’s a take-it-or-leave it book, okay but not great, and one that I don’t think will have much of an impact.

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Huge thanks to Ria for writing this review. Check out more of her fantastic reviews on her website.