M.A. Ray's Blog, page 5

“The Iron Trial”

The read I’d like to discuss this week is The Iron Trial, by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare.

This book was much better than I’d expected. I’m reading my way through the Shadowhunters right now, and I can’t say I love it, but I really enjoyed this one. It tasted good enough to my brain that I had to lay it aside once or twice because I wasn’t wanting it to end.

I thought it was an interesting reaction to the Chosen One trope in general and the Harry Potter series specifically. Well-characterized and well-plotted, well-written, I felt. The friendship between Call and Aaron made emotional sense to me, and even though I felt as if Tamara was less well-realized than the male characters, almost a little tokenish, I thought she was a good addition to the group.

All in all, I’d recommend this, especially to people looking for something a little different in their ya/mg fiction, or for fans of Percy Jackson.

Vard Worship

Since he’s the god of beer, you’d expect Vard’s ceremonies to involve a good bit of it — and you’d be right. His temples are almost always humble affairs, usually in a communal, tavern-like style. Though He has His dedicated priests, more important is the god’s teaching that community is king, and services, generally held in the evening, always include at least a small mug of beer and a supper. Often, in a small village, the tavern will double as the temple.

Vard’s priests tend to know everyone, as much as Knights of the Air, with whom the god’s Church is closely aligned, even more so than the official Church of Akeere. The leaf of the white oak, Akeere’s sacred tree, is displayed in every tavern belonging to the Brew-Lord, and in most way stations of the Knights, Vard’s priests will staff the tavern.

No major schisms have affected Vard’s Church. A close-knit Order, the Tappers, travels together as a military unit. They work as engineers and specialize in the breaking of sieges, from either side.

Wallace MacNair

Wallace is one of my favorite characters in Menyoral. He began as sort of an offhand thing, but now he’s turned into a really important figure. He first appears in The Service as Evan Grady’s friendly, overweight Squire, and as a young Knight in Live Free or Die. (Yeah, yeah, spoiler, but you’d sort of know looking at him anyway.)

The thing about Wallace (a.k.a. Wally, but only if you’re Evan) you might not have considered is that he’s actually several months younger than Dingus is. He doesn’t look it, because his adoptive family is Bearded (Rothganar dwarves), and has encouraged him since he was small to grow a beard — not that it’s come in until recently. They’re terribly insular, but when the matriarch of clan MacNair found a blond baby on a hillside, they couldn’t leave him to die. Instead they brought him underground, and when eleven years later a passing Knight took shelter in one of their caves, let him go again.

Wallace is much loved at home, and much missed, but he never really fit in, and that’s why Dingus starts to trust him — but the two don’t know each other very well. Both are in for a surprise when I finally finish Hard Time.

(If you’re a regular reader of the blog you might remember a previous Snippet Sunday on the subject, and you can find that here. If you want to see a piece of Live Free or Die, take a look here.)

Midia — Why I Write About It: A Guest Post by Jen Ponce

Hello Em and Em’s audience! I’m Jen Ponce and I’m here to talk about my home away from home: Midia.

Midia is the world where Devany Miller discovers magic for the first time. It’s a world that exists in a universe parallel to our own, a world separated from us by the Slip—the dwelling place of the demon-like Skriven. You can read more about how Devany found her way to Midia in the Bazaar. For this post, I’ll give you a peek at the creation story Wydlings tell around their fires on First day.

Long ago, long before the Witch King stole the Spider Queen’s eyes and took her egg sac, long before the Spider Queen herself was a queen, there was a web made of star dust that stretched into infinity. On this web ran a cosmic spider of a size so immense as to be incomprehensible to those who now live because of her toil. She was the First and she wove magic into the universe and set the stars spinning. On and on for eons she worked, creating galaxies and solar systems so that her web danced and shivered with life.

Perhaps it should not surprise us that she grew bored with her lot and curious about her own origins. She crawled the web and searched the darkness but could not find any clues. It was then she turned her attention to the worlds she’d made. She was too big to meddle with the life she’d created but where else would she find the answers she sought? She tore herself apart, the violent rending scattering pieces of her throughout space. One such piece landed on Midia, a planet covered in wind-blasted sand and murky liquid that boiled and bubbled with poison. When a tiny, hair-covered leg tore free from the fleshy bit of the First and touched the ground, the world blossomed with magic and the Spider queen was born. Through each spider born from her destruction, the First seeks her answers.

Midia is a vast world teeming with creatures shaped by the magic that infuses every rock, bush, and animal. It’s a world filled with wonder and horror. Nex is one of those horrors, at least, that’s what he would like you to believe. He was once the king of the fleshcrawlers until his queen separated his head from his body. Now he’s Devany’s friend and right hand … head?

Neutria the big ass spider is one of my favorites too. She’s a chythraul—the child of the Spider Queen, or so she claims–and when her kind hunts, they take the skin of a witch or Wydling and crawl inside it to use as a disguise. When they tear their way out of the stolen skin? It’s a sight that’s been known to reduce grown men to tears.

So why do I write about Midia? Because magic. Because when it’s late at night and the stars glitter in the darkness of space I hear the First whispering to me, urging me to find out where she came from and who made her. And I’m not about to piss off a giant cosmic spider, you get me? So I write, and the First stares over my shoulder, waiting …

Bio

I’ve been telling stories since I can remember, first with puppets, then with dolls, and finally with pen and paper. I’m a mom to three boys, three cats, and a goldfish named Reginald. I crochet, read, and imagine I’m much more exciting than I really am. I also love vampires, zombies, and things that go bump in the night. (Those things could be monsters or lovers, I’m okay with either.)

You can find my work on Amazon. If you’d like to read more about Devany, Nex, Neutria, or the Spider Queen, check out these titles available now:

The Devany Miller Series:

The Bazaar

Slip Song

Demon’s Cradle

World Weaver

Short story collection with a Spider Queen short:

Touch but a Web

 

 

 

 

 

Tour Guide Tuesday: The Bleeding Wall

This plain stretch of crumbling coquina wall is near city center on Brightwater’s mainland. It’s the last weathered remnant of the wall that once protected the Semoul dwelling of Brightwater from the land, thousands of years ago, and the same wall that, once repaired, protected the human city after the Semoul were conquered.

As the settlement changed hands again and again, the wall remained, first maintained, then piecemeal, until all that was left was this fifty-three-foot span. Before the death of magic, the wall had seen so much blood and pain that after being the subject of a hotly-contested sorcerous duel, it began to spontaneously bleed.

In legend, the wall bled whenever there was a serious threat to Brightwater. It’s difficult to ascertain whether this is truth or merely legend, but some reported blood on the wall the night Before magic died. Whatever the fact of the matter may be, there are certainly some strange rusty stains on the Bleeding Wall and the cobbles since added around it, and these will not be scrubbed off. In addition, the wall sits in the center of a busy crossroads and has never yet been struck.

Magic Circles

A magic circle is an aid to casting. It contains a kind of shorthand for the mental processes a caster must go through in order to properly tune their mind to the music of the spheres (that is, to the magical field generated by the planet).

One of the first things a fledgling sorcerer or priest learns is how to interpret these complex symbols. They’re often composed of more than one circle, interlocking or concentric, and each spell has a unique circle and/or combination of Words, if the caster is a sorcerer. By memorizing the necessary gymnastics of mind, the caster memorizes the spell; otherwise, they need the circle visible.

Magic circles may be inscribed on paper, vellum, wood, stone, or metal. In the case of enchanted items, such as message domes or magic swords, the circle often takes the form of a fine wire of precious metal inlay in the item.

Magic on an epic scale always requires a circle scribed in rock, preferably bedrock or some other, single stone. See the prologue to Saga of Menyoral: Hard Luck for more. You can have a look here: Excerpt from Hard Luck.

Snippet Sunday #15

A little piece of The Witch under Mountain, which is what I’ve been working on this week, for your delectation.

~*~

Fox woke in the straw, roused by the humans in the pen beginning to shuffle about and make noise. He sat, though he couldn’t have slept more than an hour, and took stock, painfully aware of how much less his estimation must be than Eagle’s. The cavern was brighter than it had been before, not that it was saying a lot. Sulky torchlight only illuminated so high. It was like that marketplace above, where last night they’d seen the troll sweeping, with the vastness of the ceiling obscured. Fox shivered, and not only from the cold. Darker shapes winged through the black.

He turned his eyes across the cavern, where trolls stoked a great hearth-fire. One of them, clad in a burnt, greasy-looking apron, sharpened a series of wicked knives. He leapt to his feet and hurled himself over to the side of the pen that faced Eagle’s smaller enclosure.

“Vo!” he called, clinging to the bars.

Eagle’s head went up, and he unfolded so quickly Fox had trouble tracking the motion. In half a blink he was at the bars too; he didn’t say a word, only stood there looking at Fox as if from the bottom of the sea, faraway and longing.

Fox took him in. Lacy white sleeves spilled from an outsize velvet doublet. Silk stockings sagged into puddles around his ankles, above the tops of huge buckled shoes. His thighs were too slender for the pantaloons, and instead of puffing up as they ought to, they hung around his knees. The whole effect was dreadfully unbecoming—outright laughable, if it weren’t for the situation—as if the thinnest little chick were given clothes meant for a fat capon.

Five Comics I Think You Should Read

Since I’ve been reading somewhere in the middle of a couple different book series(es?), I thought I would skip the specific review this week and instead recommend some of my favorites.

Vard the Brew-Lord

Vard is one of the more popular gods of Rothganar. As you can imagine — people like beer. He’s usually worshiped in conjunction with others, especially Akeere, because it takes at least two to make a party. In addition, His worshipers value laughter, connection with others, comfort, and home. Beer brings us together, they say.

He is almost always pictured as a man with a beer belly and strong arms, for better hugging. In most depictions He wears a beard, but the god doesn’t care much about the details of His supposed appearance. Vard loves a good prank, and many of His stories involve some trick He’s played on one or another of His fellow gods.

In the wake of the destruction of magic, Vard has become especially important. In many places, beer is safer to drink than water, and as a result His church has seen a distinct upswing in popularity, even more so than before.

Vard’s church is the most united of any in Rothganar. His teaching requires empathy and understanding of others in pursuit of connection, and thus, no large schisms have historically troubled it, and every order of the church is accepted and endorsed by it. More on Vard worship next week.

Sir Dingus P. Xavier

People laugh at Dingus’s name, in story and out of it.

They’re supposed to.

You’re supposed to underestimate him until it’s too late.

Dingus began life as my husband’s first Dungeons and Dragons character. He used to be shorter, he was a ranger/barbarian, and he had my husband’s snarky charm. I looked at him and said to myself, I must torture him. Because, honestly, I have always been a writer.

I started out with a short story, meant as a gift, and I guess I didn’t think of stopping until it was too late. I wrote part of what I thought it would eventually be as my senior thesis, and if you know who I am, please, please do not look it up. It was terrible. Present tense? What was I thinking?

Slowly, but also before I’d turned around, Rothganar grew up around Dingus. Really, after a little while, you don’t even notice the name, or at least, I don’t. Objectively I know it’s silly, but I love him so well it doesn’t matter anymore.

I could go on a lot about what Dingus is supposed to mean, supposed to be. I could spend at least six thousand more words about where he comes from. I could talk about my future plans and rub my hands together, cackling evilly. So far he’s gone from scared, sad boy to bad-ass protector of adorable monkey babies. We’ll see how far he can go.❤

Oh. And the “P” stands for Parsifal.