Sable Aradia's Blog, page 19

I’m Teaching a Class at the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers!

Hello gang! For those of you who follow my social media, I’ve been hinting at this for a long time, and it’s finally here! I’m teaching a class with Cat Rambo, just in time for National Novel Writing Month! If you’ve ever asked, “How on earth do I get time to write?” then this class is for you!  Details below from Cat’s website:

[image error]Writing in the Cracks

Instructor: Diane Morrison

This class takes place Saturday, October 12, 2019, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific time.

Stephen King tells us that to write, we need a room with a door we can close. But many, maybe most of us, don’t have that luxury, and if we do, we often don’t have enough hours in the day. This course teaches you how to find ways to get space to write, and how to find time to write in those cracks in your daily schedule, no matter how busy your day or how crowded your space. Topics covered include:

Breaking writing down into bite-sized chunks
Finding ways to shoehorn time for writing into your existing schedule
Redefining writing as a JOB
Protecting your writing time
Dividing writing-related tasks according to concentration levels
Managing your spoons (spoon theory)
Finding cracks in your schedule to write in
Aids & equipment to manage your writing on-the-go
Working with your loved ones to find time & space to write
Techniques & brain hacks to make the most of your writing time
National Novel Writing Month and how it can help

Join Diane Morrison for a workshop in which she shows you how to find time for writing and cultivate a productive daily practice.

Classes are taught online and require reliable Internet connection, although in the past participants have logged on from coffee shops, cafes, and even an airplane; a webcam is suggested but not required. They are recorded for the benefit of class members only.

Cost is $99 ($79 for former students, which includes classes/workshops with me in other venues, such as conference or convention workshops and mentoring sessions).

To register for this class, send an email with these details:

Which class or classes and the dates you are registering for
Whether you would prefer to pay via Paypal, Venmo, or some other means and the email to be billed
Whether or not you are a former student or Patreon supporter
How you found out about Cat’s classes

You will be invoiced when the class slot is reserved.

Free scholarships: If you cannot afford a class but really want to take one, apply for a Plunkett Scholarship. Each class has three slots reserved for such students, and the sole criteria is only that you can’t currently afford the class. To apply for a Plunkett, which covers the entire cost,mail me and tell me why you want to take the class in 100 words or less. QUILTBAG and PoC candidates are especially encouraged to apply. The Plunkett Scholarships are named for Edward Plunkett, who wrote as Lord Dunsany. Scholarships are given out on a rolling basis; I suggest getting them in sooner rather than later. You may apply for multiple classes.

Please DO take advantage of the Plunkett Scholarships! Cat is friendly and inclusive, so usually, all you have to do is ask.  If there’s a slot available, she’ll put you in!

There will also be an on-demand version of the class, which you can work on at your own pace from home. Lessons are broken down into bite-sized chunks, with video also provided for many lessons. We’ve agreed we’re going to keep the price affordable for as many folx as possible. Keep your eye on this space, or on Cat’s website, for details. I hope you’ll join us!

I Just Added a Discord! What the Hell is Discord?

Hello, friends! This week, I made a Discord server and added Discord integration to my Patreon! Some of you probably have no idea what Discord is, so I’m going to tell you. I’m very excited about the possibilities and I’d really love for you to join me there!

So Discord is a communications utility that was originally designed to help people communicate while they’re playing games. There are voice channels and text channels. My impression of the text channels is that they’re something like Reddit combined with ICQ, for those of you old school enough to know what I’m talking about. You sign in and can talk to a small group of people (or a big one, if you decide to go public) about pretty much anything the server owner decides is an option. There’s always a general channel, so you can just be friendly and chatty if you want, too. It’s both live and later communication, a bit like Twitter, but only those you’ve invited to the server can see!

This appeals deeply to my introvertedness. It’s a social platform designed to keep it all as personal and small-scale as you like. I get overwhelmed by the very public nature of most social media, and I’d rather focus on a *conversation.* If you really want to connect with me, not just keep track of the stuff I’m doing, this is the way to do it. You can install it as a utility on your computer, log in online, even use it on your phone.

It also has an option to stream directly to it. I don’t know how to do that yet, but I’m going to figure it out. I think this might be a way to make live video classes directly available to my Patrons at some of the mid-level tiers, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

This is, as of a few days ago, a standard feature of joining my Patreon! Even $1 gets you access to it! Higher level tiers give you a few more features and access to some restricted channels; the Officer-level tiers even give you some moderator’s rights and accesses.

Some of the channels that I’m going to make available to anyone on the server include a #critique channel, where we writers can ask for help in making each other’s work better, maybe even arrange some editing swaps; a #bookclub channel, where we can talk about what we’re reading and make recommendations (or warnings); and a #pagan channel where we can talk about Pagan spirituality, personal practice, or what have you.

If you’re doing National Novel Writing Month, I’ve also created both a voice and a text channel specifically for this, and for the month of November, I’ll be opening up the server to anyone who wants to come do NaNo who is FOLLOWING (just following; you don’t have to join!) my Patreon at that time!

I’m always a slow adopter of new social technology (because I am an introvert) but I’m really excited about this, and it’s so simple! If you’re already communicating on a social media platform, you can figure this out, I promise.

Join my Patreon today to get access to this awesome thing, and help me build a beautiful, supportive community where everyone is included and welcome!

[image error] Or click here just to Follow, too!

Is “Said” Dead?

Marcus Vance has done some actual research in regards to the use of the dialogue tag “said.” It’s not a huge sample size, but it is enough to constitute a legit study. I feel vindicated. Thank you.

Marcus Vance

Photo by Wendy van Zyl on Pexels.com

An Analysis of Dialogue Tag Use

by Marcus Vance

Some writers will tell you that “said” is all you need—that your dialogue itself should answer any questions as to how the character speaks, and their tone.

Other writers will tell you to revel in the vast expanse of language. These writers will say your characters must “whisper,” “yell,” “ejaculate,” and “huff.” Never to simply “say” something.

As with most subjects in life, people take sides and defend them with gusto. Some only use “said,” and others say that “said is dead.”

While every single point across those battle lines can and has been done well, I wanted to study what the “average” short story looks like—at least in regard to dialogue tags. Using a definition I’ve modified from The Write Practice, I define dialogue tags as “a small phrase before, after, or…

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Book Review: Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear

Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read for the Space Opera 2019 Challenge.

Wow, what a stunning book!

I was thoroughly enamoured of the prequel to this, The Forge of God. I thought it was a brilliantly written apocalyptic epic, full of twists and turns and intrigue and enough scientific mystery to keep anyone with even a hint of interest in science fiction satisfied. I saw a lot of reviews that said the second book was better, and I scoffed.

I was wrong. This is a work of brilliance that I’m not sure people truly understood at the time. But it sure left an impression on me.

In this novel, the earth has been destroyed by mysterious alien invaders whose motives are unclear. Young people, children, are selected from among the survivors by another mysterious group of aliens that the survivors call the Benefactors. They have sent autonomous ships to help the humans resettle elsewhere in the solar system, and to avenge themselves on the alien culture that destroyed them. There is a pact among other technologically advanced civilizations that any world that is responsible for destroying another world through self-replicating machines must in turn be destroyed. That is the Law.

A Ship of the Law is dispatched to carry these volunteers on a mission to seek and destroy their destroyers. Due to relativistic effects and cryo-sleep that gave the Benefactors time to terraform Venus and Mars, they awaken to the first evidence of their destroyers centuries after Earth’s destruction. They are now young adults – late teens and early twenties, about the same age that our soldiers are typically chosen – and must decide how they are going to handle this.

The Children, as they call themselves, have named themselves the Lost Boys and the Wendys. With no real parental guidance since they left on this mission, there are shades of Lord of the Flies in their restructured society. Their leader, regardless of gender, is known as the Pan, and s/he is elected to serve for a period of one Earth year. Martin, the son of the protagonist of the first book, is the current Pan when the book opens.

Ships of the Law provide their crews with the information and technology that is needed to aid in their mission – but no more. They otherwise do not interfere, even when there is conflict, however violent, among their crews.

Martin is faced with deciding whether or not to investigate the evidence that suggests that this star system they have discovered is, in fact, their destroyers, and then deciding whether or not to launch their campaign of retribution. And things do not go well.

A new Pan is elected in the wake of the disaster, and his style of leadership is like night to Martin’s day. Martin dithers and tries to gather consensus – not always a good thing in wartime. His successor displays shades of tyranny. Will he do the right thing – or will his desire for vengeance consume him?

It’s not the plot itself that is the beauty of this book, the thing that makes it great. It’s all the other subtle shades. By eliminating a civilization that has destroyed other civilizations, do you become a force of evil yourself? What if the civilization has forsworn its previous actions? What if its successors had nothing to do with it? What if you can’t tell if they’re lying or not?

And then there are gems like what happens when one of the Children begins to receive visions:

“The Most High is neither male nor female. It does not blame, it does not judge. It loves, and it gathers . . .”

This is an almost perfect description of the character of the mechanical beings that inhabit the Ship of the Law, whom they call “the moms.” They do not judge – that is for humans to do. They do not interfere. They only provide the tools needed for “the Job.”

There is a constant element of distrust with the moms. The crew knows they are not being told everything, not even who the Benefactors are or where they come from. And they suspect that it’s because they themselves might become killers as evil as the ones who destroyed their own world. This tension is exacerbated when they encounter another race that also has been victimized by the Killers, as they call them, and the two combine efforts and the resources of their Ships of the Law to achieve their goal. This race has a much better relationship with their ship and their “moms,” and in general, seem much kinder and much less violent than we are. Are humans being given the tools to enact justice? Or are they merely being used?

The resolution is poignant and powerful. Bear asks you to question the nature of God, the ethics of war, the structures of society and faith, colonialism, and the vicissitudes of human nature.

As a side bonus, while the technology here seems downright magical, this is in fact hard science fiction. There’s sound science behind all of it. I’m taking notes for my fantasy space opera work, and hope to draw inspiration from even a small fragment of it.

It’s like a combination of Lord of the Flies, Ender’s Game,  Babylon 5, Octavia E. Butler‘s Xenogenesis, and The Forever War all rolled into one, and yet it’s entirely its own thing too. If you’re at all a fan of space opera or science fiction, I can’t recommend it enough.

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Forge of God by Greg Bear

The Forge of God by Greg Bear

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read for the Apocalypse 2019 Reading Challenge.

Method of the world’s destruction: Unknown aliens using a combination of self-replicating nuclear explosions to shatter the Earth’s crust at the tectonic faults, while superdense compressed matter and anti-matter come together at the Earth’s core to disintegrate the planet. (Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but it’s got to be the absolutely coolest apocalypse I’ve ever read.)

My partner Jamie has been recommending this book to me for literally years. I wanted to save it and its sequel, Anvil of Stars, for when I was reading for an apocalypse challenge and a space opera challenge at the same time (because the sequel is a space opera.) That opportunity came when I decided to jump into a new apocalyptic-fiction challenge and a space opera challenge on Worlds Without End.

I wondered at the range of ratings I saw for this book on Goodreads – everything from a one-star to a five-star rating. “2/3rds of the book was a trip through the paranoid 80s as everyone ran around and did nothing,” said one review. “A boring apocalypse,” said another. “400 pages spent doing what The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy did in the book’s beginning,” said a third. “Flat, undeveloped characters,” said a fourth.

I strongly disagree with all of this! I think this is flat-out one of the best books of apocalyptic literature I’ve ever read – and I have read quite a few.

I wondered what it was that differentiated the people who loved it and the ones who hated it. Perhaps those who hate it don’t like science fiction much?

There’s an argument for that, because there’s a lot of science, especially geology, physics, astrophysics, theoretical physics, and biology, involved in this book. Maybe people just couldn’t follow it, I thought, because Bear in his wisdom does not coddle his readers. He expects you to keep up.

Or maybe people didn’t like the idea of the world running around, chasing its tail, instead of facing the direct existential threat as an organized force. Well . . . that’s human. The cast of Game of Thrones ran around doing that for seven seasons. We’re doing it now in the face of the threat of global climate change.

Like with A Song of Ice and Fire, there are many viewpoint characters in this book, presented in tight third person personal. We only get to see what happened if a character saw it; we only understand what’s going on if a character understands it. Like with A Song of Ice and Fire, the plot is complex.

At the beginning of the book, rock formations, large ones, suddenly appear in places where they have never been on any map before. The first one is noticed in Australia’s desert, the second in Death Valley. Remote areas. More follow later.

The geologists who happen upon the one in Death Valley call the Air Force to report that a MiG has gone down, knowing they won’t believe, over the phone, what has really happened; they have discovered a weak, possibly dying, alien creature near the formation. It speaks perfect English but doesn’t necessarily understand every concept presented to it. They and the alien are taken into custody (and quarantine.) The American government decides to keep a tight lid on the alien presence so as to not panic the public, until they have more information.

The alien tells them that it has traveled with the formation, which is actually a disguised spacecraft, to warn the Earth. It says its people, its world, were destroyed by the aliens who have landed, and it has come in the hopes that the Earth could prepare itself to fight back. But now that it is here, it realizes that we lack the technology to do so, and there is no hope.

In the meantime, the Australians have been visited by robots with a pleasing, friendly shape, who are telling them that the aliens have come to help us, offering us technology and to bring world peace.

Who do we believe?

The President of the United States asks the alien if it believes in God. “I believe in punishment,” it says before it dies. That leads the President to believe that the End of Days as described in the Bible are here. When he is re-elected to a second term, he announces this almost right away. He forbids any counterstrike on the aliens.

The American team assigned to work on it (dated in the distinct absence of women and lacking even a token Person of Colour – well, this was written in the 80s) share their information with the Australian team and confront their aliens with questions about what the American visitor has said. The Australian aliens are promptly destroyed – or destroy themselves.

Why? What happened? We don’t know. Is it a ruse? Are there two alien factions, one benevolent and the other malignant? Again, who do we believe?

To make things more complicated, the alien is autopsied, and there is evidence that it, too, was artificially created.

Confusion results. Are there any aliens among the Russians or Chinese? Again, we don’t know, because in Bear’s future, the Cold War still exists and no information is exchanged across the Iron Curtain.

Not long after, a strange unidentified flying object is seen over the Atlantic Ocean by a boat of oceanographers who are charting seismic activity under the ocean floor. Strange seismic readings start appearing on their graphs immediately after. Other scientists in the field elsewhere in the world notice the same things.

Then something even weirder happens. It turns out that while they are as mysterious and opaque as the aliens who have arrived, Earth may have a benefactor. I can’t tell you anything else that won’t be an enormous spoiler. I may have given you too much information already.

In a way, I can understand the confusion, because this book is almost three different books in one. The first is a first contact story like The Arrival: Why are the aliens here? How do we know what they really intend? The second is a scientific thriller like The Day After Tomorrow: What’s going on? Can we discover enough about it with science that we can do something about it before it’s too late? The third is the true apocalypse story, with a race against time to preserve what of Earth can be preserved before the end arrives.

The ending of this story is beautiful and horrible and poignant. It’s weep-worthy. I was riveted from start to finish. And in this I found what I believe to be the answer to the question: why did some people love this so much, while others obviously hated it and couldn’t understand its point?

I think the answer might be that the people who hated it have never had to confront their own mortality. Much of this story is about how people die when they know they are going to. You can’t stop it, you barely understand it, you get sad and angry and you want to understand why. And there are no real answers to that question. But in the end, you either go raging into the dying of the light, or you come to a place of acceptance – but either way, nothing you can do will stave off the inevitable.

I thought the characters were flat and undeveloped at the beginning of the book too. I thought Greg Bear was an “idea guy,” like Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov. But I underestimated him. By the end of the book, all of the characters, whether they have survived or not, have undergone profound, dare I say “earth-shattering,” changes.

There are some distinct flaws in the book. It’s a bit dated. The Cold War has been projected into a 1990s without the internet and where 1980s ideas about gender still exist. It’s notable that there are no women on the investigatory team of experts, even when one of the major characters is a sociologist married to one of the physicists on the team. I mean, you’re talking to aliens and trying to discern their motivations, and you have not one sociologist or psychologist on the team? Are you insane?!

But all in all, it’s a study of human nature, and philosophy, and existential angst, as powerful on an emotional level as any of the great works of Ursula K. Le Guin – and it is brilliant. I can’t recommend it enough!

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Gunsmoke & Dragonfire September Giveaway!

Aradia Publishing

Check it out! We’re running a September giveaway for Gunsmoke & Dragonfire! Win a handbound leather copy of GnD, one of five limited-edition art cards for GnD with a signed Certificate of Authenticity, or one of ten ebook copies! How? By spreading the word! Details at our Rafflecopter link, or watch the video below:

Don’t have a copy to review yet? You can get one here!

The prizes! Check out the details at https://t.co/XuFQmetuD5.

Gunsmoke & Dragonfire #September#Giveaway! #WIN a handbound leather copy or 1 of several prize packages! https://t.co/NepyVoMR3B How? Spread the word! Offer expires Sept. 30. Rafflecopter link: https://t.co/XuFQmetuD5? #books#scifi#fantasy#weirdwest#western#stories

— Diane Morrison (Sable Aradia) Princess of the Page (@SableAradia) September 1, 2019

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The Costs of Self-Publishing – and how to reduce them

FELIX THE FOX MYSTERIES

The was a recent article on Reedsy, where they analysed data from hundreds of freelancer quotes and arrived at the costs of self-publishing a novel to professional standards. i.e. When you you don’t just upload a just-finished-typing Word file to Amazon, but actually produce a book properly. Instead of having the backing of a publisher that does all this, you handle all aspects yourself.

The article is fascinating, but for a quick review here’s their inforgraphic which summarises the article neatly. Scan through it, as I’ve got some interesting observations to share about how to go pro without going broke.

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Book Review: Clan Daughter by Morgan Howell (Queen of the Orcs #2)

Clan Daughter by Morgan Howell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m really enjoying this series! But I found this book a harder read than the first one, King’s Property. I’m not sure why that is. I think maybe it’s because the first book was such a nail-biting horror-fest that you kind of hope that things will be better when the characters finally get back to the orcs. And they are, but of course the characters find themselves back in the fray.

In this trilogy, which might have made a good single book if any publisher would have published it like that, Dar is a peasant human woman conscripted to serve the orc regiments in the King’s army. Such women are branded so they can never leave, and there’s a bounty on their heads, so they can be killed with impunity. This practice began because the orcs refused to take food unless it was served to them by women.

Of course the human soldiers of the regiment use these women for a variety of other purposes as well, including kitchen drudge, labourer, and unwilling bedwarmer. Survival depends upon earning the favour of a soldier who effectively takes possession of the woman he’s raping; otherwise, she’s fair game for gang rape and is likely to starve to death or die of exposure, since these women only get whatever is left over as far as both food and shelter are concerned.

People are terrified of the orcs, but Dar, our protagonist, has been abused by her father, so she has no intention of being anyone’s bedwarmer. Because she will not conform, she earns the interest (and wrath) of the regiment’s commander, Mudrant Kol. Desperately she hides herself among the orcs, who terrify the rest of the regiment, and slowly, through the kindness of one orc soldier named Kovok-mah, breaks through the cultural and language barriers and is grudgingly accepted. It helps that she seems to be directly blessed by the orc’s mother goddess, Muth la, and her blessing increases a soldier’s chance of survival.

It turns out that the orcs are only fighting because they are commanded to do so by their queen, who is receiving healing magic from the king’s wizard – although you get the sense that something is awry there almost right away.

At the end of the last book, (view spoiler)[she and a small band of orcs escape the regiment and try to find their way back to the unforgiving hills where the orcs have been driven to live by human forces. (hide spoiler)] This book picks up where the last one left off, and the small band, guided by Dar, journey to orcish lands to escape the war. They are given shelter by the clan of an orc who has pledged his life to Dar’s service (that’s all in the last book; no details provided here,) but it is initially a grudging acceptance.

Orc society is as matriarchal as the human one is patriarchal, and here we get to see all the potential hazards of that (hint: it’s not much better, just different.) Kovok-mah returns to his clan and the other members of the band return to theirs, and Dar learns how to fit in with orcish society. This is complicated by the fact that Kovok-mah and Dar have fallen in love and started a relationship, but marriage only happens if it is approved of by an orc male’s mother and his clan matriarch.

For reasons of their own, which have nothing to do with Dar’s benefit, or compassion, but some hidden motive that is not made clear in this book, the Yat matriarch decides to accept Dar fully into her clan. Dar is “reborn” in an orcish ritual and claimed as one of the clan daughters. But part of their purpose is to use Dar to free the orc queen, who is a member of the Yat clan – though even this is likely not entirely because of concern for the queen herself.

Dar is eventually manipulated into attempting to do just that, and yes, something has been awry this whole time. A human soldier from a distant land – who is clearly not of the same ilk as most of the rest of the army, although that’s about all that recommends him in my opinion (because he’s otherwise entirely uninteresting and I can’t fathom why he has the feelings for Dar that he has,) aids them in their cause due to his feelings for Dar.

I found the ending to this book to be unsatisfactory. I realize there’s still a third book to go, so of course the story doesn’t end here, but the author makes it seem like it will, then undoes all the good the characters have accomplished almost immediately. It feels shoehorned and contrived. I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt because I know there’s still a third book to go, and obviously this was all intended to be one story, but otherwise, I would be annoyed.

Still, the rest of the story, and the fresh take on orcs, is so refreshing it almost entirely makes up for it. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see someone else who realizes that orcs can’t simply be the bad guys because somebody else says so! It’s fun to see a human-orc romantic relationship too. Half-orcs have been a staple of fantasy gaming for a long time, and they have to come from somewhere…

Definitely not a stand-alone book, so I’ll reserve my final opinion for when I have finished all three.

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Book Review: King’s Property by Morgan Howell (Queen of the Orcs #1)

King’s Property by Morgan Howell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up this series on some credit at the second-hand bookstore. I was intrigued by the premise, in that it sounded like this was a book that was going to challenge the tired old “orcs are bad guys you can kill with impunity” fantasy trope. Since I am writing a story with a similar premise, I thought I should have a look at what other people had done with that idea recently. When you submit a manuscript to a publisher, they want to know about similar works out there so they have an idea where and how to market your idea. So call it “market research.”

I didn’t know how I would feel about it. “Slave girl learns about orcs to survive and finds they’re not really monsters after all” could be seven types of bad (visions of a more brutalized Gor were making me cringe.) But, it was store credit, so what the hell. I figured if it was lousy I could always bring it back and get more credit.

I needed something new to read for the bathtub, and since I was back to work on that same story (novel series) I mentioned, I thought maybe reading it would inspire me to break through my block. I checked its ratings on Goodreads, and discovered that it had encountered a mixed reception: everything from one to five stars. Weird, I thought. But then I saw that my friend Cat Rambo had rated it at four stars, and I thought, Cat doesn’t say something is good if it isn’t. So that decided me. I would give it a shot.

It was not seven types of bad. It was excellent. The key as to whether you like it or not seems to be, How much can you handle it when the protagonist suffers?

Dar is a desperately poor highland girl who is conscripted into the King’s army. Her family offers her up like a sacrifice. She is branded so she can’t escape and no one would give her refuge if she did. The reason she has been conscripted is that the King employs orcs in his army, and they refuse to be served food unless it’s from a woman’s hands.

Of course, the soldiers use the women for a variety of other things too: scullery maids, servants, kitchen wenches, grooms, and unwilling bedwarmers. If a girl doesn’t find a soldier to protect her in return for sexual favours, then she’s at the mercy of the entire band. Life for these women is brutish and short: they get the last of the rations, are expected to do all the work in camp for the regiment, cook all the food, and screw all night if desired. If they become pregnant, the babies are taken away. One is drowned, though the soldier who took it promised to find it a peasant home to raise it in.

Dar was abused by her father until she stabbed him with a knife, so she has no intention of providing her favours for anyone. But there’s no refuge for her except with the orcs.

The humans hate and fear the orcs. They call them “piss-eyes” (a rather unique epithet, I thought) and Dar does too, at first. The first things she hears about the orcs is that they eat the conscripted women. One girl who is seized with Dar believes this so strongly she hangs herself on route. Dar is made to carry her head to the camp, because she didn’t stop her. This is within about the first twenty pages, so you have some idea of what you’re in for. Kindly, however, all the sexual violence, while mentioned, takes place off-screen, so there’s less trigger warnings than you might expect. Still definitely a book for mature readers, though.

One of the orcs speaks to her gently at the food-serving ceremony and tells her in broken English (or whatever the common human language is, which we read translated as English) that she is saying it wrong. He corrects her pronunciation and she works to get it right. Because he is the only person in the whole regiment who treats her with any gentleness or dignity at all, including the other women, who conspire to earn the favours of more powerful and high-ranking soldiers, she reaches out to him. She realizes that the men fear the orcs, and uses their fear to protect herself by hiding among them when she can.

Slowly, she breaks down the language and cultural barrier – and this is really well done. Really, really well done. Top marks for worldbuilding. We even get an orcish glossary at the end. It sounds vaguely Slavic or Polish.

Dar forms a friendship with this orc, who agrees to protect her. She learns that the orcs serve in the army because their queen has a debt to the human king for healing her sickness; though it quickly becomes clear that something isn’t right there.

Dar also learns in orcish culture, food belongs to women, and only they may dispense it as a gift from their goddess. She pushes this issue when the orcs begin to resist her presence in their camp. She tells them that if they do not consider her a real woman – a mother, in their language – then the food from her hands is no good and they’ll have to get it themselves. But if she is a mother, she’s entitled to their protection and they should listen to her.

Kovok-mah, her orc friend, agrees, and so he announces to the soldiers that Dar is under his protection the next time she attacked in the only way he knows how: “This is my woe man!” Then everyone thinks they are lovers – something a rival among the women for the attentions of one of the commanders, whom Dar is only trying to avoid – is happy to spread. Dar becomes a complete pariah. Her only hope lies with the orcs, and they don’t want her there either.

I’ll stop there, because the rest would be a complete spoiler. But I’ll let you know that I was riveted. I could hardly put the book down.

Why not give it five stars then? It’s got a couple of glaring flaws that are difficult to ignore. Understand that I think it’s worth putting up with them, but they are occasionally intrusive and jarring.

One is that there’s an unsettling “noble savage” element to the orcs in how their language, culture and behaviour is portrayed. It’s not overwhelming, but it is a bit like a sour aftertaste.

Another is the “not like other women” syndrome. People repeatedly, for good or ill, say that Dar is “different from other women.” The rest of the branded women are dismissed repeatedly as whores, even when they don’t have a choice in the matter, and she’s the only one who seems to have any courage. I am tired of this old misogynist trope. Now, to be fair, there’s a bit of the “different from other men” thing going on too, as most of the men in the story are indiscriminate rapists and killers, but it’s not as much. Or maybe I just dislike the fact that there seem to be exactly three or four decent people (human, orc or otherwise) in the whole story and everyone else is irredeemably awful. I understand the circumstances are unusual, but “grim-for-grim’s-sake” gets wearisome after a while.

A third is that the author clearly has no understanding of the mechanics of war. I wish that more writers would spend more time researching this in epic fantasy! The king’s army doesn’t make sense and wouldn’t function. They would fall apart at the first sign of real battle with their slovenly ways and terrible discipline. All they seem to do is march. They never drill, not even when they are stopped from marching by weather. And if any army had to survive on the rations described as long as they did, they would simply fall over from exhaustion and stop marching entirely. I realize that medieval armies put up with a lot more deprivation than modern armies do, but there’s a limit. I grant that this is an unwilling camp follower’s view of war, mostly told from the third person personal, so maybe Dar doesn’t understand, but I can’t figure it out either.

That said, the story does what a story is supposed to do: it grabs a hold of you by the collar, makes you want to keep turning those pages, and makes you want to read the sequel when it’s done. So I think I will! I’m invested in Dar and Kovok-mah and I want to know how things turn out for them.

If you’re a fan of traditional sword-and-sorcery fantasy, as I am, this is a delightfully refreshing read in that war is horrible, death is permanent, and the orcs are not just bad guys because the humans say so. Well worth it!

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Book Review: Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Every now and then you accidentally discover a gem of a book. The way this was marketed, I would not have read it. It was pitched to the general fiction and literary markets, and we found it on a sale table at our local Coles bookstore.

It was my partner Jamie who picked it up. He’s been doing a deep dive into the Odyssey, and so it seemed natural that when he had some money in his pocket that was earmarked for books, this would catch his eye. He decided to give it a shot, and after he’d read it, he kept urging me to read it.

I was reluctant. Circe has always been one of my favourite characters from myth, and I wasn’t certain I’d appreciate a retelling. But eventually I needed something for the bathtub and it was close to hand, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I’m very glad I did! This is a story that might well have been written for me: a witch, a marginalized person, a woman, a humanist, a lonely child and often lonely adult. Like any good myth, it can be read in a variety of different ways. Jamie didn’t see the explicitly feminist narrative that many reviewers are lauding at all. Instead, he saw it through the eyes of a humanist, a witch, a marginalized person, and a lonely child and often lonely adult. He was surprised when I told him that many were interpreting it as a primarily feminist perspective, but he saw it when I pointed it out. Still, he thinks it transcends that.

However you choose to slice it, this is a story about someone surrounded by overwhelmingly powerful forces who is seeking to find freedom in her own life in the midst of them. It’s a story for anyone who has been oppressed by powerful forces in what Miller describes so accurately as “the cycle of fear.” And just like it said at Eleusis, Miller tells us that the key to finding one’s personal power is to Know Thyself.

Circe is the daughter of a nymph and the powerful Titan Helios. She is born with little power of her own; a less-than-divine look, and a human voice. Miller explores what it might mean to be a goddess with a human voice, and she interprets it as marking Circe as a target for derision.

Circe is an attempt by her mother to gain status, nothing more, and Helios cares only for how his children reflect on him. As Miller says, “he was a harp with one string, and the note it played was himself.” She has no relationship with her siblings either, who are poisoned by this dysfunctional environment, even when she raises her youngest sibling in lieu of their parents. There is no love and less nurturing in Circe’s childhood. Like most children with emotionally distant parents, she aches for a sign of love or approval from them, and spends much of her early adulthood seeking that missing validation from the people around her – and not getting it.

Circe discovers that like all of her siblings, she has a talent for witchcraft. Like most powerless people who discovers a source of her own personal power, she is punished for claiming it. Her early experimentation is wild beyond her dreams; she creates the monster Scylla.

This is a stone of guilt she carries throughout the book, because she aches for the many mortals who have fallen to Scylla’s depredations. Like many people who have lacked compassion in her own life, she is compassionate towards others. This, too, is viewed as a weakness by her power-focused family trapped in their cycle of fear, and is exploited many times. This echoes my own experience, and at times I found the book deeply uncomfortable to read in places as I remembered by own wounds in Circe’s.

She is banished to her island, nominally because of her transformation of Scylla (which is regarded as a false boast at first, so incredulous are Circe’s family that she could have any power of her own.) There, she explores the only thing left to her, her witchcraft, and becomes very, very good at it. Like many lonely creative people, she finds refuge in her Art, as I have.

Eventually the other gods realize this island is a convenient place to exile their own misbehaving daughters, so they send nymphs to her, nominally to “serve her,” but they never do. Instead, they continue to highlight Circe’s isolation, a group of “false friends” all around her that make her feel even more alone. She begins to transform men who visit the island to pigs when a random group of sailors attack her.

Odysseus comes to her island the same way wayward travelers usually do, and she finds love with him for a time, imperfect though he is. He inadvertently teaches her to know herself. And when he leaves, she is stronger than when he arrives.

I’ll not tell you any more of the plot, but I will tell you two things. First, that many of the deeper observations about the human condition are in the parts I’m not telling. Second, that it in no means centers around Odysseus. This is Circe’s story.

Miller also explores a great many of the ideas in the Odyssey and in other Greek myths that are the most troubling to me as a humanist; the unjust suffering of Prometheus, the petty and cruel nature of the gods, the lauding of “heroes” who are in many ways truly vile people, the “values” of patriarchy and how they are only upheld by the suffering of young men and all women, existential angst, and what it means to be human. It’s moving and powerful and passionate, and Miller urges us to seek our own answers in Circe’s struggle to find some. She demonstrates a deep understanding of the symbolism and multi-faceted narratives of myth, and since she is a scholar of the classics, perhaps this is not surprising.

One review I read on a strictly science fiction and fantasy book site claimed the book was “boring.” I disagree completely. However, if you don’t appreciate a book where the primary conflict is internal, maybe this isn’t for you.

I notice that Goodreads suggests The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as similar books that I might enjoy if I liked this one. I don’t think it has a lot in common with either of them. A better suggestion might be Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, although this book is more internally-focused and less angry.

It’s worth noting, also, that the writing style is deceptively simple and unobtrusive. Miller is not in love with her own clever metaphors, yet she makes many of them. As a writer, I can’t help but respect the achievement. In ways, her prose echoes the deft hand of Ursula K. Le Guin.

I dreamed of people who had hurt and betrayed me through their own selfishness last night after I finished this book, and I was able to name that sense of betrayal and to know it was not ever about me – it was about them. And that was powerful healing. Thank you, Madeline Miller.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone, especially to fantasy-lovers, historical fiction readers, humanists, Pagans, women, anyone who has ever felt trapped by the overwhelming forces of an unjust system, and anyone who was ever a lonely or neglected child or a lonely adult.

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