B.R. Sanders's Blog, page 9

I’m doing Camp NaNoWriMo!

Come check me out over on the Camp NaNo site!

Ok, so do you remember this very exciting news? About how in 2017 I’ll have another set of Aerdhverse books coming out with the Zharmae Publishing Press? Let me refresh your memory:

About A Tale of Rebellion

The humans of Elothnin went west, hungry for wheat and space, but the elves were already there. When the humans burned the elves’ homes, the elves rebelled. For forty long years the rebellion smoldered, but the elves have been beaten back into the gnarled forest, forced to rely on guerrilla tactics and strange bedfellows.

Rethnali has only ever known the rebellion. Born and bred to it, raised by a great elvish general and now a captain herself, Rethnali’s whole life is ruthlessness and strategy. Over the course of four books, Rethnali’s will is tested. Some friendships fray and tatter; surprising new ones blossom. She puts herself and her soldiers in danger over and over again, all in the name of winning back the lands stolen from her people. Sacrifice–what will she sacrifice to see this rebellion through to its end? And who will she be once all those sacrifices have been made?

Exciting, right? So, Book 1 (titled Extraction) is already in edits. I’ve got first drafts of the second and third books done. The final book is outlined. I’m using Camp NaNo reread and revised the second book in the series (The Incoming Tide). It sorely needs it. Here’s some of the things I’m planning to work on this month:

Pronouns. Several characters have shifted genders over the course of the edits, and this draft has to be brought up to speed. I have to hunt and peck and correct the pronouns, which is a kind of penance for getting their genders wrong in the first place.
Pacing. In the current draft, time jumps in weird twitchy ways. Action is glossed over where it should be played out. I’m noting all these weird hitches for the revision stage.
Consistency: Tracking all the character names, the place names, the names of the pirate ships. I have a running tally of all the votes taken and the shifting alliances.
Changes: At least one character I knew had to die is going to live after all. So that changes things. I’m wondering if someone else is going to surprise!die. Gotta keep track of all these notes in the margins.

Wish me luck!

Book Review: THE STAR-TOUCHED QUEEN by Roshani Chokshi

 

Amazon | Goodreads

Notes on Diversity:

Like The Wrath and the Dawn, this is a book about a woman of color by a woman of color. The cast is all people of color–specifically Indian people. The fantastic creatures that appear come from Indian folklore and mythology.

Also, like The Wrath and the Dawn, the diversity stops there. No queer characters appear in the book. There is no discussion of disability. Class does not come to the fore.1 Readers longing for an exploration of these themes may want to look elsewhere.

Review:

Mayavati was born with bad luck. Her horoscope states that her marriage will join her to death, devastation and destruction. In the land of her birth, Bharata, a bad horoscope taints a person.

fuck yer star charts

Maya is shunned by the wives and daughters of the harem, left to her own devices, until fate moves her to a place where her death can be used as a political tool. But she does not die. She finds herself married to a mysterious king of a mysterious land–Akaran, where creatures of myth and legend roam. Amar, her new husband, tells her she has powers she never dreamed of, and that he can teach her, but only if she doesn’t ask too many questions, and only if she doesn’t explore the new palace. But, of course Maya’s curiosity gets the better of her.

First, I have to say that Chokshi’s writing is gorgeous. I’ve read her short stories, so I knew that going in. She has a wonderful way with unexpected visual metaphors that surprise and delight me:

This was the court of Bharata, a city like a bone spur — tacked on like an afterthought.

Or:

A sound spidered through the floor.

The book is beautifully written, a real pleasure to read. Chokshi is the kind of stylist I am jealous of as a fellow writer as I know my own writing is much more prosaic than hers. Hers sings; it’s lyrical. You can get lost in the words.

The structure of the book, too, is so clever once you know the story. Of course Maya told all of those stories to Gauri!2 Of course the details she made up proved to be true when she makes it to the Night Market! I REALLY WANT TO TELL YOU THINGS RIGHT NOW THAT ARE SPOILERS but I will not, so please read the book so we can discuss, ok?

The narrative is lovely, too. I really rooted for Maya. As a character she is ambitious and she is suspicious. She sneaks into the rafters of her father’s diplomatic councils and learns about warcraft and politics. She yearns for power. She knows she is smart, and she wants to use her sharp and cutting mind for something for anything. It was not surprising to me that when presented with the opportunity her new husband, Amar, represents that she would take it. She may be attracted to him at the outset, and grateful for his rescue, but she does not immediately fall in love with him. I loved this tension within her, the suspicion of him (she openly says she does not trust him to him) and this desire for power.

Maya is such a strong character. She has such agency throughout. Chokshi draws her as a complete human being, and allows her to both rise to full glorious potential and to give in to her weaknesses. She falters. She learns from her mistakes. One of her mistakes is very dire, indeed, and she does what she needs to, sacrifices what she has to, to make things right. Maya is a better, more mature version of herself by the end of the book. Not a different person–still herself, still recognizably herself, but grown up. The character work in The Star-Touched Queen when it comes to Maya is truly excellent. The characterization of some of the minor characters–Kamala and Gauri, especially–was also very strong.

WELL-WRITTEN GIRLS 4EVA

I wish the characterization of the other two main leads, Amar and Nritti, were as strong. Amar remains throughout a besotted cypher. We know he loves her, and that he has secrets, and that’s about it in terms of his character development. Honestly, in terms of plot, he doesn’t have much else to do, but there could have been a great deal more shading here to differentiate him from the other Brooding But Secretly Very Loving Love Interests I’ve read.

Nritti is a much more interesting case. She is the book’s main antagonist, and her role in the plot and in Maya’s life3 is a complicated one. They were friends, until they weren’t, and Maya only half-remembers a shadow of a feeling of trust in Nritti. Until Nritti’s backstory is revealed, it’s key that her characterization is very strong–that the reader feel that she is trustworthy, that we have a strong connection to her, too, stronger to her, perhaps, than to Amar because her role in the story is not so well telegraphed by narrative convention as Amar’s is. But she winds up ambiguous. And then she winds up duplicitous. And as a character, for me, she wound up a hollow, strange mess of wasted potential.

so they were….frenemies, basically?

Nritti, also, was highlights worrisome issue in that there was an underlying element of femme…suspicion? in the book. It seemed as if the more feminine a female character was, the less Maya could trust that character (from childhood, an example would be the harem wives who exclude her). Gauri, her sister, grows into a soldier. Kamala, a female-identified flesh-eating horse demon that appears in the last third or so of the book ends up being a much more interpretable, sympathetic, and interesting character than Nritti. Kamala has more shading and depth. So it isn’t that Chokshi didn’t know how to write her non-human characters, or characters that are at first glance repugnant. It’s that Nritti never quite formed. I think this is an Unfortunate Unintended Consequence, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen in the text.

Still, I would recommend this book. The weaknesses with Amar and Nritti are, to me, quite well balanced by the strength of Maya herself, and by the beauty of the writing. I very much enjoyed this book, and I am excited to see what Chokshi does with the next book.

1Arguably there is a glancing blow at class made in the book when Maya returns to Bharata as a sahdvi. I don’t count this, personally, as a discussion of class since she experiences her role as a sahdvi as a costume/disguise. She never claims the status fully. Like Shahrzad in The Wrath and the Dawn, this is a book about a princess. Maya is a princess who was abused emotionally and psychologically, yes, but she was first a princess and then a queen, and her social position and worldview is different throughout the book than a peasant or a pauper.

2GAURI!!!! I am very excited that the companion novel, A Crown of Wishes is all about her.

3Technically, in Maya’s lives since Nritti knew Maya in a previous incarnation, too.

#OwnYourOwn: Be Alive, And Be Trans

Read more about #OwnYourOwn here, or read through the hashtag on twitter

It’s hard to be alive sometimes. It’s not easy to be a person. That’s true, I think, across the board. It becomes more horrifically true when you layer on oppression.

It becomes more true when you spend your formative years consuming narrative after narrative telling you that you are most definitely going to have to die at the end of the story. Maybe because your very nature is duplicitous. Maybe so that some cis person can learn about injustice and rail against it. Who the fuck knows.

When I was growing up, all I knew about myself is that I didn’t seem like the other kids. I felt sporadically uncomfortable in my skin, like I wanted to step out of my body and into a new one I’d edited and reformed for myself. Other days were just fine. The dominant trans narrative–I knew I was like this since I was four years old, I have always been a boy trapped in a girl’s body*–that was so different than this nebulous shifting experience of my own physical/emotional give and take that it took decades for me to begin to think of myself that way.

There weren’t stories for me.

There weren’t reflections of people like me in the books I read, in the shows I watched.

And I was poorer for it.

In my own writing, I stick nonbinary and genderqueer people in all the time. I put them in there to show other people that we exist, and that we have entire lives. Families. Hobbies. Minutia. That we survive and thrive.

I put people like me in so that there is a reflection of me out there in the world, just in case there is some kid like me yearning for a mirror that they don’t even know they need yet.

Whatever story is burning in you to get told? Tell it. Whatever story you’ve always wanted to read but have never found? That is the one only you can write because you are the one who has lived it. No one can write it better than you.

Show the world what it’s like to live anyway. Shatter all those stories where you’re supposed to be the sidekick, or the joke, or the sad dead thing in the corner someone better off can pity. Or the villain. You’re none of those things. You’re the hero. Show that part. Show how alive you are now, and how alive you’ll stay, and how much glorious breadth there is in your life every day.

I believe in you.

*My kid, though, fits this narrative precisely.

Book Review: THE WRATH AND THE DAWN by Renee Ahdieh

 

Amazon | Goodreads

Notes on Diversity:

The Wrath and the Dawn is a book about a woman of color by a woman of color! Yay!

The cast is predominately Middle Eastern/North African.1 Shahrzad’s handmaiden, Despina, is Greek, and I read her as white, but she was the only character I read as white.

This is arguably a woman-centric book; a lot of people seem to think so. My opinion is a minority one, so stay tuned for that and your mileage may vary.

Readers looking for queer representation will see none here, not even in passing. This is an aggressively hetero book. Readers looking for any sort of socioeconomic/class discussions will also not see any of that here. All the characters come from wealthy families tuned into the political elite of the kingdom.

And as a note of warning, I personally found the book’s treatment of mental health a disappointment. Readers with sensitivities around suicide in particular may find the book lacking.

Review:

The Wrath and the Dawn has a lot of hype around it. It’s been extremely well-received. I was excited to read it! A retelling of 1,001 Nights centering on Shahrzad? Ok, that’s potentially tricky ground to navigate, but the reception was so warm by people whose taste I respect that I went into the book with high expectations.

Me, with high book expectations

I am sorry to say my expectations were not met.

 

This book is so nearly-universally beloved that I have the strange experience of feeling like I must have read a completely different book than everyone else. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Ok. So.

The Wrath and the Dawn is about Shahrzad and Khalid. Khalid is the Caliph of Khorasan, and he is the one that is doing all the marrying/murdering of young girls. In this version of 1,001 nights, he is young and broody and handsome. Shahrzad is young and brave and murderous. When Khalid marry/murders Shahrzad’s cousin, Shahrzad volunteers to marry him. But she has a plan to bring him down.

This set up is pretty damn great. It works for people who love the source material (me), and it works for people who don’t. But…it only works if the problematic elements of the source material are subverted.

The quick version is that I don’t believe this book works because this is less a retelling as it is a modern version of the same story, and as the story is brought forward, so are its nasty elements. Leaving aside the stylistic quibbles I had with Ahdieh’s writing, it was her narrative choices that really rubbed me raw. Ultimately, the book is not Shahrzad’s story, but Khalid’s…and it asks us to forget, or at least not to mind, that Khalid murdered all those girls so that he can be set up as a potential love interest for Shahrzad.

hold up, book

My issues with the book go deeper than that, substantially so, but to dig into that is spoiler territory, so I’m putting that under a cut. Feel free to continue reading if you’d like and/or if you are not spoiler-averse. I also was unnerved by Ahdieh’s handling of sexual consent, issues regarding mental health, and the overall place in the narrative for men’s agency compared to women.

Full spoiler-y analysis begins here.

Last warning for spoilers!! ALSO CONTENT WARNINGS FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT.

OK. So. I really could not stop comparing this book to Twilight as I read it. Shahrzad was much angrier and much more engaged in the world around her than Bella Swan–she also could handle a bow, so technically she’s more a Katniss–but Khalid was a straight up Edward Cullen type, down to the amber colored eyes. Except that Edward Cullen, for all his vampirism and controlling behavior and stalking, didn’t actually kill women. Khalid did. Like, dozens of them. Which potentially makes him worse.

Seriously. So, Shahrzad gets there full of bile and rage, and within about thirty six hours she’s all swept away by his bedroom eyes and his air of mystery. I know the ways of the heart are fickle, but this was so drastically unrealistic that I just could not.

Worse than that is that Khalid chooses to consummate their marriage. There is a very dry, very primly written scene where Shahrzad admits this is happening but has no feelings about it other than stating that it isn’t pleasant. It is pretty clearly rape from my perspective. She tells a story; dawn breaks, she lives.

The second night, the same thing happens–another rape. Her handmaiden tells her that the weird thing is he never slept with any of the other married/murdered girls before. This, I think, is meant to imply she is special? I think this is meant to be romantic??

No.

Ok, and then, there is a scene where they are growing closer, they are full on ~romantic~, they are nuzzling up, this happens:

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Exercising restraint.”

“Why?”

“Because I failed to do so in the souk.”

“Does that matter?”

“Yes, it does,” he said quietly. “Do you want this?”

Shahrzad paused. “We’ve done this before.”

The book itself just admitted their prior sexual contact was nonconsensual. But it tried to do so in a way that made Khalid a hero for asking for consent this time instead of a villain for failing to ask for consent every time.

That alone is enough for me to knock this book down into two-star territory. Having the protagonist’s love interest also be her rapist without any real dissection or discussion of that situation is just wrong. And irresponsible. This book contributes to rape culture. But why was Khalid Shahrzad’s love interest to begin with? She came in with one–Tariq–who seemed to literally only exist as the third leg of a rickety love triangle. Why couldn’t she have just stuck with him instead of falling for a tortured murder-boy-king?

Ahdieh goes to great lengths to make the murders of Khalid’s wives explainable. There was a curse involved. And a dead first wife–oh, she was a suicide, and that wasn’t really Khalid’s fault, either. A curse that was a tragedy, really, because his first wife was a selfish suicide who drove her father to madness.

Very Unfortunate Implications regarding mental abound.

 

The book makes the case that Khalid’s actions (girl-marry-murdering) are understandable and that he’s really very sorry and so if you could, I don’t know, look the other way a little that would be just great. These two crazy kids could work it out!!

But, no.

Look, he is a murderer. Nowhere in the text does it suggest that he tried to find alternate solutions to his curse, but I bet that unbreakable curse gets broken in The Rose and the Dagger with no more dead wives in sight. So, the book asks us to accept Khalid as a romantic partner for Shahrzad even as the text itself handwaves away the fact that he is a killer and a rapist.

I just can’t. This isn’t new. This isn’t different. I’ve read this story a hundred times before. The fact that it’s horrifying in a boring, familiar way is horrifying in and of itself.

Ultimately, though, the book was about Shahrzad coming to accept her love of Khalid. It wasn’t really about her. It wasn’t about her growth as a person, or her arc, or her quest, or anything like that. Ahdieh uses her as a vessel to uncover truths about Khalid to make him more palatable to the reader. The book is about him.

I came away from this book exhausted. I don’t want to read about men who kill women but who can be redeemed by the love of the right woman if she just puts up with enough of his shit long enough. I don’t want to read stories where women die by the boatload just to get the story going, just so that a man can feel enough manpain for him to fall in love and get his shit together.

The whole time I was reading Shahrzad and Khalid’s budding love story I kept thinking of all those dead girls and their fractured families. I kept wishing it was a ghost story, and that their ghosts haunted his halls.

1There is also a brief appearance by a character named Musa, who is a Moor. Musa is a literal magical negro. He shows up in the story with a friendly demeanor and twinkly eyes to humanize Khalid and to tell Shahrzad that he knows about magic and that maybe she has some. And then he bounces. That is the sum total of his contribution to the narrative. That was the only Black character in the book.

New Patreon Release: “A Matter Of Circumstance”

 

A brand new, never-before-seen Aerdhverse story is available via my Patreon for subscribers at the $1 level and up! For information about Patreon subscriptions and the reward tiers, go here.

This one, “A Matter of Circumstance”, is directly tied to Ariah; I don’t think you have to have read the book to enjoy the story, but the context probably helps. Here’s a blurb about the story.

Ariah’s abduction throws everything into chaos. What are Sorcha and Shayat willing to sacrifice to get him back? How does their story change? What do they mean to each other now that he is not there to intercede?

If you read this story and feel moved to write a review, you can do so on Goodreads here!

“A Matter Of Circumstance” Cover Reveal!

We are a week out from my next Patreon short story release! The story has been edited, copy edited, and now it has a cover!

So now you know the story involves trains. At least one train. Or at least a picture of a train.

Or maybe no trains. Maybe I just arbitrarily put a train on the cover to trick you.

 

Life Snarls And Missed Events

Announcement: “The Recruit” is in New Legends: Castle, Creature, Caster

Exciting news! An Aerdh-verse story of mine, “The Recruit,” is in New Legends: Caster, Castle, Creature, out now from Visual Adjectives! You can pick up a copy here.

About “The Recruit”

Valiyon, the Mother of the Elvish Rebellion, leads an intriguing recruit into an ambush against her old foe’s homestead. The ambush is supposed to be a test, supposed to reveal the recruit to Valiyon, but everything goes sideways.

About the Anthology

New Legends introduces new characters with new origins and new legends in the making. Expanding on the concept of Anthologies, New Legends is a series of collections, each containing a unique theme, original stories, and showcasing distinct genres.

Caster – Castle – Creature is a collection of stories showcasing fantasy. Casters, masters of mysticism and the arcane energies. Castles, homes to the nobles, lords, and ladies who rule over the realm. Creatures, the will of the world, shaped, formed and evolved from the essence of the land.

Bi Book Awards & New Patreon Story!

Click here for full flier
Tickets $15 in advance or at the door
Westbeth Community Room, 55 Bethune St. W. of Washington St., NYC

I am so excited to be packing off for a couple of days to go to the Bisexual Book Awards! I’ve been honored with the opportunity to do a short reading from Ariah. If you’re going to be in New York on June 3rd, I’d love to see you! RSVP, and come by the Bisexual Book Awards!

Not able to make it? No worries! A new short story is coming–and not only is it set in Aerdh (the fantasy universe Ariah was set in) but it features characters from Ariah! It will be released via my Patreon on June 12. There’s a sneak peek and some info up over here about that.

Guest Post over at On Writing!

Wrote a book? Not sure what to do with it? I wrote a guest post over at On Writing about thinking about how your skills and personality might help guide you to a publishing pathway. I’d love for you to check it out!