K.M. Carroll's Blog, page 3

My top 5 best reads of 2023–and the bottom 3 worst

Oh boy, oh boy, I love end of year analysis posts! R.F. Gammon posted her top 5s and asked for other people’s, so I’m writing mine.

Fortunately, I seem to have reviewed the books I read all year, so you also get links to the big, long review rants I did of these books.

Number 5: Captain of the Guard by Ron C. Nieto. Underdog prince is sent to whip a distant guard post into shape as their captain. He is disrespected but he’s smart and out-thinks his men at every turn. He also out-fights them and kicks their butts, and just as he’s getting somewhere, an enemy invasion over the mountains suddenly turns his lazy guardsmen into the absolute only thing standing between his kingdom and being wiped out. Hero constantly out-thinks the enemy. Hero constantly pulls off amazing badass things to win against hopelessly stronger armies. I haven’t read a book that kept me guessing and thinking like this in a long time.

Number 4: Baptism by Fire by Alexandra Gilchrist. Buddy cop story where one guy is the human detective with so much grit it got him fired from his old job, and the other guy is a 600-year-old-phoenix trapped in human form. Kind of like the trope of human + vampire, except Dante is about the opposite of any vampire. Rick and Dante patrol Washington DC to protect it from Mythics, which are other monsters in human form. If Dante dies, he resurrects in fire 30 seconds later, and it’s Rick’s job to watch his back and bring him more clothes. This leads to some very interesting situations, such as Dante needing to resurrect in a closed room and the danger of burning up all the oxygen for Rick.

Number 3: The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas. In a city that runs on a dwindling supply of magic, a young boy is drawn into a life of wizardry and adventure. Conn should have dropped dead the day he picked Nevery’s pocket and touched the wizard’s locus magicalicus, a stone used to focus magic and work spells. But for some reason he did not. Nevery finds that interesting, and he takes Conn as his apprentice on the provision that the boy find a locus stone of his own. But Conn has little time to search for his stone between wizard lessons and helping Nevery discover who—or what—is stealing the city of Wellmet’s magic. — That’s it and it’s wonderful. Read my full review here!

Number 2: The Darkwater Saga by Patrick Carr. A detective in a high fantasy world is the only one to ever escape alive from the cursed Darkwater Forest. Now with the ability to see into people’s minds, he begins piecing together a plot by certain evil forces to kill the king and consume the kingdom … the minions of the Darkwater Forest, of which he may be one. Great wounded warrior main character, a little confusing at first but it gets better. Read my full review here!

Number 1: The Eleven Alliance series by Tara Grayce. A human princess is in an arranged marriage with an elf prince to secure peace between their kingdoms. The trouble is, this is the topmost elf assassin who slays entire armies with magic … and he has PTSD like you wouldn’t believe. Watching these two fall in love and watching him start to heal is the most wonderful thing about these stories. And also when the evil trolls pulled out the repeater gun. So much fun! Read my full review here!

Welp, that’s my top 5 reads. I highly enjoyed all these books, and recommend them if you think they sound interesting.

However, as you read loads of books, you do happen across books you disliked. I make it a point to stop reading books I dislike, but for whatever reason, these three got read all the way through. So here they are, in all their dubious glory:

Number 3: The Voice of Power by Melanie Cellier. Lots of people love this book. I am not one of those people. The heroine is one of those shallow, spunky, whiny girls who thinks everyone is out to get her, and therefore manufactures her own enemies. She is the cliche Chosen One who can speak magic when everybody else can only read it. She goes to the Cliche Academy which has only 2 named teachers. She befriends the Bubbly Best Friend who Takes Her Shopping. She is bullied by the Mean Girl Clique and crushes on the Mysterious Dark Prince. Bad guys attack her for no stated reason. The school setting is barely developed. The heroine accuses the Dark Prince of ignoring her when he’s obviously trying to protect her from political factions who want her dead. It’s a frustrating read with a stupid heroine. Apparently she only gets more powerful and more stupid as the series progresses.

Number 2: By Blood and Blade by Anna Augustine. Heroine has been stuck in the Wife Market for months because nobody wants her for a wife. She gets bought by the prince who didn’t want a wife in the first place. This premise alone sold me the book. However, the rest of the book is this heavy handed “oh we have wounds that we must heal from” but it’s not written in an organic manner. Instead of healing, like in Elven Alliance, what we get is “sex is the only way we can possibly heal from abuse”. It’s this weird, hollow, horny message that doesn’t ring true. I enjoyed the read, but when I finished, I put it down and went, “What was this author saying???”

Number 1: Smoke and Light by Kristen Ardis. I tried to find a link but this book has apparently been unpublished from Amazon. This is interesting. You get the Goodreads instead.

This is an amnesia book. Heroine wakes up with amnesia with everyone around her telling her that she has been saved from the Evil Rebels and that this Handsome Prince is her fiance. They tell her this so long and so hard that you become instantly suspicious. Heroine gets the Bubbly Best Friend who Takes Her Shopping. She is doted on by Swoony Prince who trots out cliche lines like “you’re my everything”. This is apparently what passes for lyrical prose. Heroine has Dreams of Hot Boy in a Pagan Grove outside the city somewhere. She meets Hot Boy in the Pagan Grove and he doesn’t tell her anything about her past. So she goes back and sleeps with Fiance Prince. Oh wait, he’s the villain who gave her amnesia. The Evil Rebels are the good guys. She’s a prisoner. And Hot Boy in the Pagan Grove was her real fiance.

Yes, this is a cheating book! And it’s set up so, so carefully so she can’t be blamed for cheating. Hot Boy should have left her to be torn apart by Evil Prince, since she deserved him, but he takes her back because forgiveness or something. She does not sleep with Hot Boy. I figure that’ll be book 2. This author was ostensibly a Christian but there is not the fainest wisp of Christian morality in this book. The Heroine is said to be full of Light, whatever that means. This was hands down the worst thing I read this year. I’ve been angry that I read it ever since.

That concludes the five best books I read this year and the three worst ones! Hope you enjoyed the ride!

Game review: Healer’s Quest

I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed a videogame on here before. Mostly I figure that so many other people talk about videogames on youtube and such, they don’t need me adding to the pile.

But Healer’s Quest is a little indie game, and it made me laugh so much, so I figured I’d talk about it.

First, some background. From the time my hubby and I started dating, he always played the warrior and I played the priest who healed him and kept him alive. We did this in World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy 11 and 14, anywhere we played RPG classes. I was always healer, he was always the ‘tank’, or the super armored one who fights the bad guys.

Anyway, we played World of Warcraft the longest, and experienced the playerbase’s slow slide into toxic gamerbros. I finally burned out and quit because I couldn’t get gear, and other players treated me like complete and total dirt because my stats weren’t high enough. I went and played easy things like Minecraft.

Anyway, a month or so ago, I saw this random ad for some game called Healer’s Quest. It was on sale. I’ve had this increasingly futile search for healers in fiction, so I went, why not? And grabbed this little game where you play a healer.

The whole game has these soft-looking pastel graphics and it’s very easy on the eyes.

So I started playing this game, and it’s a total spoof of all RPGs. You pick up this random wand and cast healing spells on a random warrior named Tanky. Soon Tanky joins up with Murky the wizard, Grumpy the lumberjack dwarf, and Beauty the archer who totally isn’t an elf. The party treat you like dirt. They constantly tell you how useless you are, offer to sacrifice you to dragons or trade you to vampires, and just in general throw you under the bus.

And this is *hilarious* because this is what real players have done to me for *years*.

They don’t even give you any gold because “you didn’t fight anything”. More WoW flashbacks, haha! Star Wars: The Old Republic used to not even give healers experience points unless they damaged the monsters in the dungeons. Healers are indeed the most despised class.

Plus the dialogue is funny in general.

Or some other ones, like they ask the dwarf why he quit the Baddies Guild:

Then the tank says “Or being a lumberjack” and Grumpy hits him with his axe.

The game itself is actually pretty fun to play. You can only have four spells on your hotbar at a time, but you have a big library of spells to swap in and out as the need arises. I wound up swapping in custom spells depending on whether we were fighting enemies that poison vs enemies that just deal a lot of damage, for instance. There winds up being a bit of strategy to it. Also each spell has a tech tree to level up. The main one to get is Remedy, because otherwise you’ll be locked out of the game at the 1/3rd mark by stuff killing you with status effects.

The game kept me laughing all the way through. There’s a tiny dungeon that is a spoof of a cellphone game, with its own currency and cosmetic items you buy to decorate the dungeon. I tried it and it really worked. I was howling.

Also, there are three kinds of “healer karma” you can play: Good, Evil, or Victim.

Good: you are sunshine and wholesome and nothing gets you down. Think most anime healers.

Evil: The vampire healer who powers up when people die. I haven’t yet played this one but I want to.

Victim: You are still wholesome but you are scared and mousy and the group runs roughshod over you.

I’ve mentally gone through every healer storyline I’ve ever seen in a game or book, and these three are literally the only personalities. ROFL!

Anyway, I had so much fun playing this game. Even though it looks like a kids game, it’s not a kids game. There’s nothing bad in it, per se, but there’s some adult humor around the mage always wanting to get with any girl the party runs across. Kind of like Brock in the Pokemon show. And I admit it, I laughed until I hurt myself. I’d put it about a PG-13.

Book Review: Elven Alliance books 1-4 by Tara Grayce

So I kind of read this first book on a dare.

I think I read a lot of books on a dares. I’m very picky, and I’d been wanting to read some cozy fantasy that might be fairytale-based but might not. I tried The Way of Kings by Sanderson and got horribly, mind-numbingly bored (and also irritated that it’s 3 books in 1 and I had to read the whole massive slog to see freakin’ Kaladin get off the bridge crew). I’d tried this book and that book, and this author and that author, and nothing really clicked. I got to where I was annoying my friends by taking their book recommendations and listing off why I stopped reading each one. Yeah, I’m a jerk that way.

Anyway, I sampled the first Elven Alliance book by Tara Grayce and got hooked. Here’s what it looks like:

Essie would do anything for her kingdom…even marry an elf prince she just met that morning.

The human kingdom of Escarland and the elven kingdom of Tarenhiel have existed in an uneasy peace after their last wars ended with both kings dead. As tensions rise once again, desperate diplomacy might be the only way to avert war. If only negotiations between elves and humans were that simple.

When a diplomatic meeting goes horribly wrong, Essie, a human princess, finds herself married to the elf prince and warrior Laesornysh. Fitting in to the serene, quiet elf culture might be a little difficult for this talkative princess, but she’s determined to make it work.

With impending war and tenuous alliances, it will be up to Essie to unite her two peoples. And maybe get her hands on elven conditioner while she’s at it.

From bestselling author Tara Grayce comes a no-spice, humorous fantasy romance / romantic fantasy tale of elves and epic magic perfect for fans of K.M. Shea, Kenley Davidson, and Sylvia Mercedes!

Anyway, I started reading, and the book was funny. Like, funny with my own similar sense of humor. The heroine is spunky but not a terrible person. She’s determined to do right by her kingdom and her elf husband, and she treats both of them well. I’ve read several books with the spunky human marrying the shy elf husbando, and the heroine proceeds to disrespect her elf husbando and treat him like garbage. Not these books! Within a few chapters I totally shipped this princess and the painfully shy elf assassin.

So … I was reluctant to pick up book 2. In my experience, book 2s never live up to book 1s, so I’ve developed the bad habit of only reading book 1 of everything. But my friends assured me that the elf prince gets his own scenes in this book, so I picked it up and gave it a try.

Marriage to an elf is complicated…especially bringing him home to meet the family.

Princess Elspeth of Escarland married the elf prince and achieved peace between the elves and her human people. But after a recent ambush by the trolls, it is clear the trolls are trying to start a war between the elves and humans once again. To keep their peoples at peace, Essie and Farrendel travel to meet Essie’s family and negotiate a stronger alliance.

Yet in Escarland, not everyone is happy with peace. Traitors lurk in both Escarland and Tarenhiel, and it will be up to Essie and Farrendel to flush them out. The consequences of failure might be more personal and deadly than they can imagine.

The best selling Elven Alliance series continues with this no spice, humorous, swoony romantic fantasy.

I typically dislike books where the girl takes her guy to meet her family, because it’s such cringe. But this book surprised me by not being cringe. It continued being funny, and poor Farrendel was coaxed out of his shell a little … only to be slammed back into it. Because this book is a cliffhanger. You know how book 2s are!

So I had to pick up book 3.

Essie should be planning her happily ever after, not planning a war.

Although they once were enemies, the humans of Escarland and the elves of Tarenhiel have allied to fight the trolls from the far north. But alliances are tricky things even in the best of times, and with Farrendel, the elves’ foremost warrior and Essie’s husband, captured by the trolls, the circumstances appear dire indeed.

But Essie won’t give up, and she will make her two peoples work together to fight this war if it’s the last thing she does. One way or another, she will get Farrendel back, no matter what it takes.

The Elven Alliance series continues in this epic, no spice steampunk fantasy romance / romantic fantasy adventure featuring elves and happy endings.

So this book was a little rough. Farrendel gets tortured (off screen, thankfully) for most of it. The majority of the book focuses on his sister who betrayed him and got imprisoned, herself. And on Essie, of course, who is busy making the elves and humans play nice as they coordinate their armies for an invasion. The humor I’d enjoyed in the other books wasn’t quite as prevalent. You can tell this was originally supposed to only be a trilogy, and this is the Big Serious Third Book.

Oh, how this series got away from this author.

Anyway, it does have a decently happy ending, with evil sister married off to the troll prince, and serves her right. But it couldn’t stop there, because …

Essie has her elf back…but his mind is still stuck in that dungeon.

The war is over. A peace treaty has been signed. But Farrendel and Essie still have a battle ahead of them. Will Farrendel be able to build a new life with Essie now that he no longer has a war to fight?

Melantha has ruined her life and the lives of all those around her. Now that she finds herself far from home and married to a troll who was once her enemy and captor, can she figure out what love and honor truly mean before it is too late for all of them? Not everyone in Kostaria is happy with peace or with their new elven queen. If Rharreth and Melantha cannot find a way to bring peace to their troubled kingdom, war threatens not only their happily ever after, but Essie and Farrendel’s as well.

This book is like 500 pages. Half of it is Farrendel going through therapy and rebuilding himself, which is rough at first, but it gets better and better. He winds up getting into building magitech powered by his own magic, and it’s sheer joy to read. The humor and comedy of these parts are cranked way up, including gag gifts for certain stiff elvish family members.

I really didn’t want to spend any more time with Melantha after what she did to Farrendel, I don’t care if she did repent. But I gave her a chance because I liked the troll prince guy. She actually turns out to be pretty cool and uses healing magic offensively, which was really entertaining. The troll prince, Rarreth, is kind of a beta at first, because he was the younger prince and wasn’t supposed to be king, after all. So seeing his growth into the king his country needs is also really fun to read. By the end he’s kicking butt and chewing gum, including dueling the usurper who tries to steal his throne.

So, I guess I’m basically fated to read the rest of these now. I think there’s 9 books, and I need to read them and find out what’s up with the other characters who have been having drama in the background. I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful it is to read books from an author who loves their world and their characters, and isn’t just bashing out books to make a buck.

Here’s a link to the whole series because it’s just easier!

A hard decision

So there’s this small press whose anthologies I contribute to now and then. About every year or so, I check in to see what themes they have going on, and decide if I want to write for them. It’s been a while, so I checked in and liked one of the themes. I wrote a nice story for it, submitted it, got accepted.

Found out that my story was going to be the first one in the anthology, which is where they put the very best one. It was a real feather in my cap and I was all proud of it.

Then the editor let slip on social media that this was not going to stick to f/m pairings. No, she was going beyond that in the name of non-discrimination.

Until this point, this had been a Christian press. I had always been pleased with the quality of the anthologies they put out, and I enjoyed working with the editors. But this new direction was a slap in the face. For one thing, this anthology featured mail-order brides. The whole point of mail-order brides is to import a member of the opposite sex to start a family with on the frontier. If you’re just going to settle for the same sex, why order one in???? You have plenty!!

Anyway. I also disagree with this on theological and moral grounds that I won’t get in to at the moment. To make a long story short, I thought long and hard about it, and decided to withdraw my story from the anthology. I couldn’t be proud of being the front runner of a bunch of stories that feature stories/authors that literally hate me and everything I stand for.

Anyway, the anthology has launched, and the stories not only feature m/m, they also have weird harem romance garbage. It’s like, you name a perversion, it’s in there. It’s way worse than I thought. I can’t grasp how the concept of mail-order brides could be stretched to cover this nonsense. It’s certainly nothing like the original concept as posted on the website. I have a friend who kept her story in, and now is very sorry she did.

So yeah, this experience has been really, really bad, and it seems to just be getting worse. I’m going to change my story to remove all mention of the anthology setup and publish it myself. I worked hard on it, dangit, and I loved the idea of my alien rancher on Mars sending off to Earth for a human wife, who is willing to give him a shot … and winds up saving him from pirates.

Sparkly new Malevolent covers!

Welp, it’s time. I haven’t updated the Puzzle Box trilogy since it was published circa 2017, and the old cover art was looking really dated. So I present to you … the new shiny cover art!

Everybody who has seen them tells me they prefer them to the old covers. They’re certainly more magical! I hope to have all the paperback covers updated by the end of the week.

Summary for book 1:

Young adult paranormal romance

Libby is a high school senior who has been been bedridden for six months with Valley Fever, stuck on her father’s farm in California’s central valley.

When the beekeepers arrive in February, bringing their bees to pollinate the almond crop, one of them looks like a vampire, says his name is Malevolent, and tries to murder Libby’s lousy boyfriend. Yet his honey improves her illness, and his bees sing words that she can understand.

Mal took up beekeeping in order to preserve the last remnants of his humanity. A simple trip to California quickly turns into something far more complicated, as he meets a lovely girl who is deathly ill, infected by Mal’s own brother. Feeling guilty and responsible, Mal sets out to heal her with his precious, magic-infused honey, and with each passing day, comes closer to breaking his personal creed:

Befriend Many, Serve Some, Trust Few, Love None.

Once healed, Libby has the strength to break up with her boyfriend–touching off a war between Mal and his brother. This escalates into a realm of awful magic Libby has never dreamed of, where she is both pawn and prize in the battle against a Necromancer. In the end, Libby must face her growing feelings for Mal, and decide whether to destroy him–or rescue him from his soulless existence.

Malevolent

Malcontent

Malicious

The Patreon model and what it means for authors and readers

I’ve seen a lot of talk lately about how to use the patronage model to write books. I’ve seen lots of authors who run Kickstarter campaigns for their books, hoping for a huge success like Brandon Sanderson’s, which raised 15M in one day. I see authors who set up a Patreon, where for 1$ a month you can be the recipient of free stories and early book access. Author Brian Niemeier is going whole-hog with his own Patreon:

As one of my cherished patrons, here’s what you can expect:

Free books
The lower tiers offer free copies of my select eBooks. Signed print copies become available at higher tiers. Subscribe at the highest level to get one of my print books, signed, every month.

Exclusive posts
In addition to my regular blogging here at Kairos, I’ll be posting regularly on Patreon. Subscribe to get access.

Patron-only Discord Q&As
Fans of Geek Gab and my guest appearances on other live streams will be glad to hear of my return to regular streaming. I’ll be holding a live AMA each month on Discord to talk shop, pop culture, or whatever else the chat asks about. Server access is for patrons only. $10 a month secures your ongoing reservation for the live chat. $50 gets you a recurring seat as my co-host on the panel. Save your spot now.

Private group chat
For those newpub whiz kids who want more direct, focused face time with me, there will also be a monthly hour-long group chat. If you want to discuss the ins and outs of the writing business, brainstorm book ideas with fellow pros, or talk marketing strategy with a #1 bestseller, this is your chance. So take it now.

And of course, no neopatronage service would be complete without …

Direct patronage
This is it, the heart and soul of neopatronage. Maybe you’ve reviewed my books on Amazon, given me feedback on Twitter, or even claimed a Build-a-Mech perk on Indiegogo. All are varying degrees of reader input. But now, for the first time, I’m going full Willy Wonka and opening the doors of my story factory to avid readers who are ready to become elite patrons.

Tired of waiting for the Amazon launch to read my books? For just 25 bucks a month, not only will you get to read my captivating tales before anyone else – even Indiegogo backers – you’ll get alpha-level access to my projects before they’re even done!

Brian Niemeier, Soul Cycle Books

This kind of business model makes me squirm a little bit. How is a new reader supposed to interact with this author if all of their media is locked behind a paywall? With XTwitter being more and more paywall oriented, and the other platforms also squeezing off the media of anyone who doesn’t cough up, it’s harder and harder to reach new people.

Also, isn’t the sale of a book enough? Why do authors need to double- and triple-dip when it comes to their fans’ generosity? Newsflash: authors aren’t actually that interesting. The behind the scenes stuff is only of interest to a fraction of a percent of hardcore fans. This sort of model is only viable to the superbestsellers, not the little guys just starting out.

I was interested to read a similar argument on Deviantart. Of all the artists I follow, exactly one of them routinely locks his dragon art behind a paywall or a subscribers-only wall. So he asked,

Why don’t people like subscriptions?

I used them even when they were in beta access. … At the same time I noticed that some people here earned 20-30+ subscribers. I never saw more than 34-35. What is wrong with dA’s system? And how you think what we, artists, can do to get subscribers here?

The artist got lots of responses, but this one sums them up:

I’m not going to pay money to basically look through an art gallery. As an artist myself, why should I have to pay money to view other people’s art… on a social media platform that’s supposed to be for artists to share their works?
I won’t pay for something that used to be free. I’m not paying just for the privilege of ‘looking’ at something. I pay for the right to ‘own’ something. I don’t care how good you are.

This site was supposed to be for people to freely give eachother advice and enhance eachother’s skills through social communication.

Read the whole sordid discussion here

The paywall artist asked, “But artists have a right to make money, too,” to which people replied, “Then take commissions.”

When applied to authors, this boils down to “write books we want to read and sell them on every store”.

Discoverability for our books is as tough as it always was. No matter what new tools or tricks pop up, the best way to sell books is still word of mouth. That’s why Christians trying to cancel Harry Potter rocketed it into the stratosphere, where it sits to this day. You can’t beat word of mouth advertising like the kind that was leveraged against Harry Potter.

But when you take a middle of the road book, or two or three, and lock most of your marketing behind a paywall, this seems counter productive to me. Sure, locking your private discord behind a paywall means fewer trolls get in, but it also means very few other people get in, too.

The Realm Makers conference has most of their social media presence built on Facebook. But as Facebook gets more and more restrictive, they’ve moved their main presence to Mighty Networks … and locked it behind a paywall. Sure, you can go there and look at posts and reply to posts, but only paying members can make a new thread. This has led to a stale backwater with no new conversation and no new blood. I don’t think it’s a viable way to run a business.

Anyway, I don’t have any answers to this. I’ve always tried to smooth the path from potential readers to my work as much as possible, providing multiple access points (art, comics, book ads, talking about my work, etc.). It just seems like career suicide to slam a giant paywall right in the middle of that path I’ve been trying to smooth.

Clean Reads Magazine review of my book Sanctuary

Clean Reads Magazine reviewed my book Sanctuary! I was so excited to get this kind of spotlight! It was featured in the Spring 2023 issue of the magazine, which you can find here.

I’m currently converting the first book of this storyline, Bloodbound, into a graphic novel. Follow along here!

Dear Christian fantasy writers

A while back, in an article I can’t seem to find, I read some person talking about why they read Christian fantasy. They said that they’re not Christian, themselves, but they love the fluffy, clean stories and the clean romances. They said that they used Christian fantasy as comfort reads, because most of the time, there’s not even any Christianity in them.

This stuck in my mind like a splinter. I totally understand the fluffy, clean comfort reads. I’ve been reading a bunch of fairytale romance lately, and it’s certainly that.

But the lack of any Christianity at all? What made it Christian, then? The author of the article even protested these books being shelved in a different part of the store, because they were just … fantasy.

I’ve seen some authors and even some small presses lately talking about wanting to be a light in the darkness. Then I read their books, and man, I can’t find any light anywhere. It’s hidden so well under that bushel basket that it’s invisible. What I do find is this creepy glorification of romance and sex. It’s that insidious message of “you can redeem your wounded and filthy soul if you just have enough sex with the right person”. And I see Christian author after Christian author buy into that. What about Jesus, the Redeemer of our souls? Who offers it as a free gift, no sacrifice needed? This message is weirdly lacking.

Larry Correia mentioned on his blog a few years ago that he’s a Mormon writer, and he and the other Mormons are always encouraging each other to include their faith ever more boldly in their books.

Yet Christians do the opposite. I can’t tell you how many Christian authors I’ve seen telling Christian authors to minimize Christian content. “Readers don’t want that,” they say. “You might get bad reviews!”

But if the Mormons are encouraging each other to be bold, shouldn’t we Christians do the same?

So here is my message to all Christian authors, especially the younger ones who are just starting to write and testing their wings: be bold. Put your faith in your books. Make it obvious and talk about Jesus. Make it less obvious and let it be metaphors and symbols. Experiment. Read classics, back when people were unapologetic about their faith. (Do you know how Christian Dracula by Bram Stoker is???) Talk to God and others. Don’t be a prideful snob about “how well you captured it” when in five years you will be dying of cringe at how bad your writing was. Just … try.

And work out your own faith with fear and trembling.

Like Carman said,

You can’t teach what you don’t know,
you can’t lead where you won’t go.
Cry, turn blue, but whatever you do,
get your business straight with God.”

Carman, Revival in the Land

Book review: The Magic Thief series by Sarah Prineas

I read Magic Thief years ago, when they were still coming out, and I loved them. But according to my blog, I never did a proper review, and this must be rectified at once.

First off, these are kids books. Middle grade books about an Oliver Twist-like thief kid who lives on the streets of a London-like city called Wellmet. He picks the pocket of a wizard and steals his locus magicalicus, which is a stone that acts like a magic wand. He doesn’t immediately die, meaning he has magical aptitude, so the wizard takes him on as an apprentice.

Here, just read the summary:

In a city that runs on a dwindling supply of magic, a young boy is drawn into a life of wizardry and adventure. Conn should have dropped dead the day he picked Nevery’s pocket and touched the wizard’s locus magicalicus, a stone used to focus magic and work spells. But for some reason he did not. Nevery finds that interesting, and he takes Conn as his apprentice on the provision that the boy find a locus stone of his own. But Conn has little time to search for his stone between wizard lessons and helping Nevery discover who—or what—is stealing the city of Wellmet’s magic.

Grab the book here (affiliate link)

Anyway, the books get better and better as you go on. I’m particularly fond of the grumpy old man with a soft heart, kind of like in Heidi. Nevery is an excellent character, exasperating and endearing at once, never admitting that he’s coming to love Connwaer like a son. Conn, himself, is much more fun than Harry Potter, my kids say. Even when events have him down, he doesn’t angst and snap at people. Unlike Harry, Conn is extremely smart and always figuring things out. He’s always three steps ahead of everyone else, and everyone else just assumes he’s up to no good. In fact, most of the conflict comes from Conn saying things like, “The city’s magic is a magical being and spell words are its language” and the adult wizards going “Preposterous!”

Book 2 introduces us to the predator magic, book 3 introduces us to dragons and their links to magic, and book 4 ties all the themes and threads up in a wonderful bow.

My kids told me that this series is better than Harry Potter in most ways. My oldest daughter was trying to struggle through Order of the Phoenix and put it down in disgust. “Harry is yelling at his friends for no reason, mom. Connwaer never does that, and even when he’s having angst, he hides it.” They’re also much shorter and easier to read than Harry, with worldbuilding that makes more sense, especially where the magic is concerned.

Your mileage may vary, of course. People who grew up with Harry Potter may find Conn and his world very different and harder to enjoy. But if you didn’t grow up with Harry quite as closely, Conn is a very enjoyable companion. I’m sad we finished the books, because I wanted to stay in Wellmet a little longer.

The state of YA fiction in 2023

So a few months ago, I started following some Bookstagrammers on Instagram. It’s a fun way to get book recommendations and see pretty cover art.

If you’ve never seen a Bookstagrammer, they generally look like this:

Kind of a kitschy way to show off a book you’re reading or promoting, along with the many, many props you’ve collected to take pictures of. (Cough excuse my cynicism.)

Anyway, last year I did a bunch of character art commissions, and this year the authors are using them to promote their books, so naturally I’m keeping tabs on what they post. It’s kind of satisfying to my ego to see my work in these Bookstagram pics.

Aside from promoting their own books, these folks promote other people’s books. But by reading the discussions on these books, I’m receiving an unwitting education in Young Adult fiction. Namely, how people read Young Adult Fiction.

First off, this promotion I spotted:

This lady goes on to say that it’s all right to use the same collection of tropes to write a similar story as somebody else, because she enjoyed both books.

But what I’m taking away from this is that both of these books were functionally the same. Like, is there some kind of hot sheet that YA authors are working off of? Or some movie? Because that’s a lot of very similar ideas.

Anyway, a few months ago, one of these ladies posted “Who is your favorite book boyfriend?” You know, what male protagonist is so hawt and swoony that you’d date him. The replies were breathless and pretty entertaining. But one gal said something to the effect of, “Oh, I just skim the female protagonist’s scenes and only read the male protagonist’s POV.”

To me, as both a reader and a writer, that is a massive red flag. This reader admitted to only reading half of every YA book. And from the amount of likes and responses she got, she’s not alone.

So I read some YA books and realized why this is.

You see the remark up there about “a strong female protagonist”? This is the heroine of EVERY YA NOVEL. She is the same character. She is not ugly, she’s not pretty, she’s just sort of plain, but every boy falls for her. She has no personality except either Perpetual Confusion or PMS. She has no responsibilities or interests, except when the author decides to make her an artist. (I swear, every book I’ve read recently had the heroine lugging around a sketchbook.) If she has a younger sibling or an ailing parent to look after, she worries about them to the point of anxiety attacks. Like, this is the only thing on her mind, ever. Except when she worries about what Hawt Boy thinks of her. Also, she has the bubbly Best Friend who always Takes Her Shopping and Makes Sure She Has Cute Clothes.

I think adults are writing these books who have never met an actual teenager in their lives.

Meanwhile, when you finally get to the boy’s point of view (if he even has one), he’s usually being responsible for his family, thinking about defending the women, children, and culture at large, and learning/using his powers. He’s not overthinking everything. He’s not panicking about stupid crap. He just does things. Sometimes he has reasonable angst, like, “How can I get stronger to beat [generic enemy]?” When he notices the girl, it’s usually awkward and cute, and he’s not wallowing in self-loathing and anxiety. Then he goes off and deals with his other responsibilities. He generally carries the actual interesting parts of the story and world building.

There’s generally only one personality for these guys, too, but it’s a much nicer one than the girl’s.

As part of my hunt for male healer books, I’ve read some YA, and … it’s very flat and full of stereotypes. The same tropes are repeated over and over. The romance is hackneyed and unbelievable. “You’re my everything,” he whispered breathily into her hair. And this is considered “swoony”. I’m sitting here laughing at it.

“Oh, kids don’t read anymore,” whines the news. “Book sales are down! Barnes and Noble won’t stock children’s (read: YA) hardcovers because of the high rate of returns!” Meaning nobody is buying these YA books with gorgeous cover art because the story inside doesn’t live up to the cover. A lot of them are filthy. I just beta read one where the girl cheats on her fiance and doesn’t get blamed for it because of amnesia. What happened to an author’s responsibility to the reader that Diana Wynne Jones talked about?

Writers of fantasy for children have a heavy responsibility: anything they write is likely to have a profound effect for the next fifty years. You can see why if you ask ten adults which book they remember best from their childhood. Nine of them will certainly name a fantasy.

If you inquire further, you will find your nine adults admitting that they acquired many of the rules they live by from this book that so impressed them. This may not necessarily mean rules of morality–though it may–but wider things like what ways of behaving are wise, or unwise; or how to spot a person who is going to let you down; or what frame of mind in which to face a disaster; or possibly the way you look at life in general.

Diana Wynne Jones, Fantasy Books for Children

So, if you are a reader, I recommend you go back a few decades and read older kids books, like cadet fiction from Heinlein (Have Space Suit, Will Travel is great) or read actual children’s fiction like the Henry Reed books by Keith Robertson. Teenagers holding down jobs but not plagued by the annoying tropes of modern YA.

If you are a writer, I recommend you do the same thing, then go write something fresh and new that throws out ALL the popular tropes. Who knows? You may actually write something enduring and lasting.