Archive for the ‘Novel’ Category

Books Read in 2010

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I read more books in 2010 than I prob­a­bly did in the three years prior.   I don’t regret read­ing any of the books on this list.  Here are some quick thought son each.

1. Transition by Iain M Banks

I picked this up because I’m a huge fan of Zelazny’s Amber series, and the cover copy reminded me of it, with the trav­el­ing between worlds.  Parts of this book worked well for me, and parts did not (most notably, the unre­li­able nar­ra­tor aspect).  I would read fur­ther books in the milieu if they are published.

2. The Blade Itself, 3. Before They Are Hanged, 4. Last Argument of of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

It’s nice once and a while to read an entire series back to back.  The strong char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and rapid plot­ting worked well for me. 

5. Photographing Nature by Ralph A. Clevenger

I learned a lit­tle here, but not much.  Wet-​​belly pho­tog­ra­phy being the strongest con­cept I took away (macro pho­tog­ra­phy, taken at ground level, using a trash com­pactor bag to keep your­self dry).

6. Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

Weird fan­tasy noir.  Very much enjoyed it, and will read Jeff’s books from now on.

7. Paragaea by Chris Roberson

This took me back to what it was like to be 13 and read­ing the John Carter series.  I didn’t want it to end.

8. Monster by A. Lee Martinez

I enjoyed the pro­tag­o­nist quite a bit here, espe­cially his voice.

9. Linchpin by Seth Godin

This book will influ­ence my think­ing about cre­ative work for decades to come. Highly rec­om­mended for all artists and writers.

10. His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

Now I know what all the fuss was about.  Temeraire is a really mem­o­rable and lik­able character.

11. Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

More Temeraire can only be a good thing.

12. Rework by the 47 Signals Guys

Another very influ­en­tial book on my think­ing regard­ing cre­ative work.  I didn’t find it quite so con­tro­ver­sial as some did.

13. Dead Mens Boots by Mike Carey

Every day read­ing a new Carey book is like Christmas.

14. Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

Novik’s China was fas­ci­nat­ing, and Temeraire is com­ing along nicely in his evo­lu­tion as a character.

15. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Jungle City by Greg Grandin

I learned a lot about Henry Ford and his ethics and prin­ci­ples here,  and while at times he was quite repug­nant, there was some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about his drive and deter­mi­na­tion.  Even his fail­ures, doc­u­mented so well, are inter­est­ing lessons.  I hope to write some space col­o­niza­tion sto­ries that take lessons from Fordlandia.

16. A Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik

That dragon is just awesome.

17. For the Win by Cory Doctorow

I’m still try­ing to learn how to write about the inter­net in an inter­est­ing way from Cory.  I gath­ered a hand­ful of lessons from this one.

18. Kraken by China Mieville 

China Mieville spoofs urban fan­tasy.  This was a wild ride.

19. Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez

I read this as a meaty hard-​​cover.  Wonderful line work by Rodriguez and Hill sets the stage with fas­ci­nat­ing world build­ing for what I hope con­tin­ues to be a com­pelling series.

20. Mice Templar by Brian J. L. Glass and Michael Avon Oeming

Epic, in the true sense.  The art­work is breathtaking.

21. Scott Pilgrim Volume 6

A very sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion to one of the best graphic novel series in a decade.  Although I liked the end­ing of the movie better.

22. Ghostopolis by Doug Ten Napel

No one does whimsy in graphic nov­els like Napel.  Tackling the after­life was a bold choice here that I thought paid off pretty well.

23. Transhuman, The Sword, DV8, Wasteland, Victorian Undead, Pax Romana, and more comics

DV8 is espe­cially great as a med­i­ta­tion on super­pow­ers and gods.  Pax Romana was the usual aston­ish­ing work by Hickman.

24. Writing for Comics & Graphic Novels by Peter David

Valuable lessons I’ll prob­a­bly never put to use, but I’m glad I read it.

25. The Elephantmen by Richard Starkings with art by Moritat

Lush art­work, detailed world build­ing, and really fan­tas­tic char­ac­ter in the form of Hieronymus (Hip) Flask. I hope they make a movie.

26. Year’s Best Science Fiction 27th Annual, edited by Gardner Dozois

The usual astound­ing col­lec­tion of short fiction.

27. Dark Reflections by Samuel R. Delany

Recommended by Nick Mamatas—this is my first Delany and cer­tainly won’t be my last. 

28. About Writing by Samuel R. Delany

Fantastic lessons about plot­ting and struc­ture to be learned here.  Must read for writers.

29. Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor

I read an ARC of this and devoured it in a sin­gle sit­ting.  That Geillor nailed the voice and the genre, syn­the­siz­ing some­thing supris­ingly fresh.

30. Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim is back!  I am a huge fan of Kadrey’s super­nat­ural noir style.

31. The Bookman by Lavie Tidar

Nobody writes like Lavie Tidar. I never had any clue where this book was going.  I’m really look­ing for­ward to pick­ing up the next one. 

32. Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

More super­nat­ural noir, set in South Africa with really, really good world build­ing and an inter­est­ing sys­tem of magic.

33. Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo writes the future not as we want it to be, but as it will prob­a­bly turn out, and it breaks your heart.  Anything he writes is a must-​​read for me.

34. Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

The world build­ing here is just amaz­ing.  We have less of the awe­some biotech from the first, but more giant robot awe­some.  I can’t wait for more.

35. The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry

I lis­tened to this on my road trip to Ohio for World Fantasy, and I was utterly enthralled.  Stephen is not just a national trea­sure of Britain—he’s a trea­sure for all of us.

I’m happy to dis­cuss any of these fur­ther in the com­ments.  Just prompt me!

an Interview with Greg van Eekhout, author of Norse Code

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Greg van Eekhout is one of the fun­ni­est con atten­dees I have had the plea­sure of being around. On top of that, he’s a damned good writer with sto­ries like “The Osteomancer’s Son” and “Will You Be An Astronaut?” (appear­ing at EscapePod soon, read by Christiana Ellis).  Greg’s first novel was recently released.  I’ve watched the progress of Greg writ­ing this book on his blog, and so I’ve really been look­ing for­ward to read­ing it.

A Quick Review of Norse Code

Norse Code is Greg’s debut novel, and it’s a fun one. The book focuses on two char­ac­ters pri­mar­ily. The first is Mist, a recently recruited Valkyrie who is work­ing for the Norse Code project. The goal of the Norse Code project is to find and recruit the descen­dants of Odin to pre­pare for the com­ing Ragnarok. The sec­ond is the iten­er­ant Norse god Hermod, the only liv­ing entity to ever travel to Helheim and return.

It’ll come as no sur­prise to you that the paths of these two pro­tag­o­nists cross in the inevitable run-​​up to Ragnarok. Along the way, we meet a cast of char­ac­ters both drawn from Norse mythol­ogy and not, but all are  imbued with a pecu­liar van Eekhout sense of humor. This is not a comedic story exactly, but aspects of it are very funny.

Norse Code does feel at times like a first novel in that you sense the author feels a bit uncer­tain about the plot in places, but van Eekhout’s will­ing­ness to take what you know about Norse mythol­ogy and twist it for his needs makes this a hell of a lot of fun to read. Mist and Hermod are heroes in an older sense, not ter­ri­bly flawed, but sim­ply decent peo­ple with rocky pasts deter­mined to do the right thing despite that.

It’s a short read, one I man­aged to burn through in an after­noon, so you really have no excuse for not pick­ing it up and giv­ing it a try. While the novel didn’t pack the same punch for me as some of Greg’s short sto­ries, it’s a fine first out­ing and demon­strates that he’s an author to keep Odin’s eye on in the future.

The Interview

Can you share with me a lit­tle bit about the day-​​to-​​day nuts-​​and-​​bolts of your writ­ing process? How did you make time to write the book? How long did it take you to write the book from first con­ceiv­ing the idea to fin­ish­ing the book and sub­mit­ting it for publication?

I used to be able to talk about mak­ing time to write with at least some small degree of cred­i­bil­ity, because I had a job that often took up way more than forty hours a week, and I still found time to write sim­ply by mak­ing sure I started each day with an hour of writ­ing. For me, that kind of con­sis­tency was the key. But I don’t have a day job right now and I have the lux­ury of more writ­ing time, and I don’t blame peo­ple if they don’t want to lis­ten to me talk about carv­ing out time and ded­i­ca­tion and all that. That being said, peo­ple who really want to write find the time, some­how. Maybe by giv­ing up TV or games or what­ever. Maybe by devot­ing one hour before work to writ­ing, as I did. Maybe by writ­ing on their lunch break or on the bus. Maybe by just get­ting ten min­utes here, five min­utes there. It adds up. Really, it does.

It took me years and years and years to write Norse Code if you count all the false starts, words that got tossed out (at one point, 30,000 of them in one fell swoop), time squan­dered think­ing about writ­ing the book instead of writ­ing it, and time spent writ­ing short sto­ries and other things because I was stuck on the book. I’m going to say maybe ten years want­ing to write Norse Code, and maybe two years actu­ally work­ing on it. Fortunately, the book I wrote after Norse Code went much more quickly and smoothly.

I noticed quite a few L.A. cof­fee shops men­tioned. Are these all real places that you know from grow­ing up in L.A.? We’ve seen the pho­tos you take for each writ­ing ses­sion of your empty cups. How many cups of cof­fee did you drink in the process of writ­ing Norse Code?

I did grow up in L.A., but there really weren’t many cof­fee joints back then. Instead, we had “spooky houses,” where you were given a pot of a thick, pudding-​​like bev­er­age, an open flame with which to soften it, and sort of a com­bi­na­tion of spoon, fork, and hook, which we called a “spook.” Nonetheless, the cof­fee houses in Norse Code are real places. I think a con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate for the num­ber of cups of cof­fee con­sumed dur­ing the com­po­si­tion of Norse Code would be 1,000. It takes a mil­lion bad words, 10,000 hours of prac­tice, or 1,000 cups of cof­fee before you can begin to say you’ve passed out of your appren­tice­ship. Really, the point of all those pic­tures of cof­fee cups next to my com­puter weren’t to show how much cof­fee I drink, but just a way of mark­ing the fact that, on the day each photo was posted to my blog, I worked on the book. Just some­thing dif­fer­ent than post­ing a word count.

What kind of research did you do to write the book–it’s clear that you famil­iar­ized your­self with Norse mythol­ogy. Can you talk about your research process and how it led to the plot you came up with for the book?

The pri­mary mate­ri­als that give us most of Norse mythol­ogy are short and finite: The Elder, or poetic, Edda, and the Younger, or prose, Edda. We’re only talk­ing a few hun­dred pages here, and they were my chief research mate­ri­als. H.R. Ellis Davidson also has some good books on Norse mythol­ogy, and I used wikipedia and pan​theon​.org some­times as well. My method was to read the Eddas and just sort of keep track of things that seemed par­tic­u­larly cool, like wolves eat­ing the moon and stuff like that. Sometimes it just led me to think through the impli­ca­tions of the myth, which made the plot obvi­ous to me. For instance, when you’ve got a story about the end of the world, and the myth tells you some gods are des­tined to sur­vive it and pre­side over the world that comes after­wards, you apply a basic what-​​if to that sit­u­a­tion. What if I were a god des­tined to sur­vive the end of the world and take over ruler­ship? Would I just wait for the end of the world to hap­pen? Would I encour­age it along? How would I do that? And so forth.

Some parts of the book seemed a bit trun­cated, like the Norse Code aspect itself. Did the Norse Code project play a larger part in the book in ear­lier drafts, and if so, what led to its role being reduced?

I think when you have a book titled Norse Code, peo­ple are right to expect a big part of the book to be devoted to Norse Code (which in the book is a genomics oper­a­tion run by Valkyries). But I never intended that par­tic­u­lar aspect of the book to play a huge role. What hap­pened was, the book was called “Greg’s Damn Norse Novel” for most of the time I was writ­ing it. When it came time to sub­mit it, it needed a real title. Norse Code is all I could come up with. I sort of expected the pub­lisher to give me a “real” title, but I guess they were happy with it, so it stuck.

What’s next from Greg in terms of books? It seems that Norse Code is a stand-​​alone book, which is sur­pris­ing given all the tril­ogy deals genre writ­ers seem to be get­ting lately.

I actu­ally can’t talk about what’s next! I’m not con­tracted to write any­thing else for the pub­lisher of Norse Code, though they get first look at the next book I write for adults. But the next thing out from me won’t be a book for adults, and when I’m free to talk about it, you can believe I’ll be Mr. Blabby McInterHype wher­ever I can.

Is Norse Code your writ­ten first novel in addi­tion to being your first pub­lished one, or did you write oth­ers before sell­ing Norse Code?

Norse Code is actu­ally the sec­ond book I’ve fin­ished. Somewhere in the mid­dle of that stalled-​​out time I men­tioned ear­lier, I wrote a whole other book. That one’s trunked for now, but you never know. Another whack or two at it, and it could pos­si­bly be decent enough to try to sell. If not, though, that’s okay. My goal with the cur­rently trunked novel was just to fin­ish a book, so I con­sider it a suc­cess even if it never leaves my hard drive. Writing it gave me the con­fi­dence to fin­ish Norse Code, and fin­ish­ing and sell­ing Norse Code gave me the con­fi­dence to write other books, so that first, unsold novel will always be impor­tant to me.

Thanks for answer­ing my ques­tions, Greg!  So have any of you read Norse Code? What did you think?

An Interview with Fantasy Author C. C. Finlay (with a side of review)

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Charles Coleman Finlay is an author you are famil­iar with if you’ve read more than a cou­ple of issues of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His recent story, “The Political Prisoner” was a Nebula Award nom­i­nee and is cur­rently a Hugo Nominee and a Sturgeon nom­i­nee. And of course, it’ll be in the next vol­ume of Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best.

I’ve known Charlie since I started writ­ing through his involve­ment with the Online Writers Workshop. Charlie was the first pro­fes­sional author I really got to know, and he was immensely help­ful in help­ing me learn the ropes. It’s been really edu­ca­tional to watch his career progress, as he’s always been will­ing to share the ins and outs of his expe­ri­ences in publishing.

Let’s talk about the first book, and then head into the interview.

A Quick Review of The Patriot Witch

The first book of his Traitor to the Crown series, The Patriot Witch intro­duces us to the world of 1770s America on the verge of a war with the Empire. Our pro­tag­o­nist, Proctor Brown, would appear to be your aver­age farmer of the period. He has his wife picked out, plans to expand his farm. He’s a min­ute­man, but hopes that the scuf­fle that’s brew­ing doesn’t turn into a war, but if it does, he’ll clearly side with the patri­ots. But there’s just one other thing– Proctor Brown is a witch. He’s inher­ited his abil­ity from his mother, who is orig­i­nally from Salem, and has kept her tal­ent secret.

When Proctor wit­nesses the use of magic by a British sol­dier, he begins to real­ize that he may have to use his tal­ent and fight magic with magic. And he’s off on a wild adven­ture that takes him through some of the early bat­tles of the war.

Finlay’s writ­ing is tight, lean prose, and he espe­cially writes action well. I found myself hold­ing my breath a bit dur­ing some of the tense bat­tle scenes. One thing that really stood out is that war kills peo­ple much more inde­scrim­i­nately than I expected. The pro­tag­o­nist will be hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one and then five pages later, their leg will be blown off by a mus­ket. It really drove home the nature of war in this time period for me.

His take on magic is really inter­est­ing, and def­i­nitely draws from the lore of the time period regard­ing witches. Proctor is only just learn­ing what magic is capa­ble of, but by the end of the first book, he’s con­sid­er­ably more skilled than before.

The series is made up of 3 books: The Patriot Witch, A Spell for the Revolution, and The Demon Redcoat. The first two books are already released, and the third will be out shortly.

An Interview with C.C. Finlay

Can you share with me a lit­tle bit about the day-​​to-​​day nuts-​​and-​​bolts of your writ­ing process? How did you make time to write the book, with your full fam­ily life and a full time job? How long did it take you to write the book from first con­ceiv­ing the idea to fin­ish­ing the book and sub­mit­ting it for publication?

There are four of us at home, includ­ing two writ­ers and two teenage boys, all piled up on top of one another. Our house isn’t big enough for us to have a room where Rae (my wife and some­times co-​​author, Rae Carson Finlay) or I can get away for enough peace and quiet to write. So when I’m work­ing on some­thing, I either do it late at night after every­one else goes to bed, or I leave the house and find some­place else to work. You’ll see Luck Bros Coffee in Grandview Heights, Ohio, men­tioned in the acknowl­edge­ments of my books. That’s because I set up office for months in one of their front booths, and they kept me qui­etly and effi­ciently sup­plied with fresh cof­fee and grilled cheese sand­wiches while I wrote.

How did you make time to write the book, with your full fam­ily life and a full time job?

The only way to make enough time to write was to take it away from other things. I gave up week­ends. I spent my weeks of vaca­tion hun­kered over the key­board. I neglected wash­ing dishes or vac­u­um­ing the house. I have three years’ worth of papers spilling out of boxes in need of sort­ing and fil­ing. But I don’t miss work, and I don’t skip my kids’ soc­cer games or school plays unless I’m out of town at a convention.

How long did it take you to write the book from first con­ceiv­ing the idea to fin­ish­ing the book and sub­mit­ting it for publication?

Back in 2006, my agent called me and asked if I had any ideas for his­tor­i­cal fan­tasy series. He thought that would take advan­tage of my back­ground as a his­to­rian and play to my strengths as a writer. I didn’t have any ideas at the moment, but I said if he gave me a week­end I’d see what I could come up with.

That was on a Thursday after­noon. By Monday morn­ing, I had a detailed out­line for the Traitor to the Crown series. Once I had the idea for a secret his­tory about witches fight­ing the Revolution, every­thing sort of clicked into place. Over the next cou­ple weeks, I wrote sev­enty pages of sam­ple chap­ters. Then my agent took the series to Del Rey to see if they were inter­ested. The nego­ti­a­tion process took about a year. I rewrote and added to the sam­ple chap­ters (sell­ing a short story ver­sion of it to Fantasy & Science Fiction), did research on the period and on witch­craft, and refined the outlines.

At the begin­ning of June, 2007, we had a deal. That’s when the writ­ing took off like a rocket. I was sup­posed to write the three books over nine months. It was closer to eigh­teen. The sec­ond book was the hard­est one to pull together. The third book devi­ated the far­thest from the orig­i­nal out­line, but all the pieces fell into place. I turned in the final book in January, 2009. So from first con­cept to all three books fin­ished and pub­lished took three years. The actual writ­ing was more like eigh­teen months.

I know that you’re the founder of the nov­el­ist work­shop Blue Heaven, with past atten­dees includ­ing Tobias Buckell, Greg van Eekhout and Sarah Prineas, and you thank sev­eral of your fel­low work­shop­pers in the acknowl­edge­ments. Can you give some spe­cific exam­ples about how the work­shop expe­ri­ence improved The Patriot Witch and the sub­se­quent books?

In 2007, I took 114 pages of The Patriot Witch and my out­line to Blue Heaven, and I hashed out the strengths and prob­lems of the novel in detail with Greg van Eekhout and Holly McDowell. In 2008, I only had about 250 pages of A Spell for the Revolution done, but Paul Melko and Daryl Gregory put it through the paces and made sure I got on track for the right end­ing. In both cases, being able to work­shop the par­tial novel and talk about the direc­tion it appeared to be going and the bet­ter direc­tions that it could go was essen­tial to my process. I didn’t have time to work­shop the third book, but by that time every­thing felt like it was click­ing. And I had Rae to help me as I wrote.

How did you con­ceive of writ­ing the story of Proctor Brown as a three book series? Was it a deci­sion made by the pub­lisher? Also, can you tell me a lit­tle bit about why the books are being released so closely to one another, seper­ated by only a month?

The Revolution lends itself nat­u­rally to a three-​​part nar­ra­tive divi­sion. The first stage of the war took place in New England, in and around Boston. The sec­ond stage of the war involved the over­whelm­ing British vic­to­ries and Washington’s ulti­mate recov­ery in and around New York and New Jersey. The third stage of the war involved the guer­rilla con­flict in the south­ern states and diplo­macy over­seas. There were many vol­un­teers who fol­lowed the war from one stage to the next, so it was easy to imag­ine Proctor as one of those men.

On the pub­lish­ing side, Del Rey was inter­ested in three books. The num­ber one rea­son read­ers buy a book is because they’ve read some­thing else they like by that author. Bringing the books out in quick suc­ces­sion cre­ates a shelf pres­ence and a chance for read­ers who like the first book to imme­di­ately move on to the sec­ond. Del Rey had done some­thing sim­i­lar with the Naomi Novik books and wanted to try it again.

It sounds like, also from your acknow­eldge­ments, that much of the research for the book came eas­ily due to your job as a research assis­tant. One thing that always strikes me as ter­ri­fy­ing about writ­ing sto­ries with a his­tor­i­cal basis is get­ting some of the details wrong. Was your approach here to basi­cally steep your­self so utterly in the time period via pri­mary lit­er­a­ture? Did you find any aspects dif­fi­cult to get “right”?

You’ll always get some­thing wrong. Four dif­fer­ent peo­ple copy-​​edited or proofed the book and a cou­ple errors still slipped through. It’s even worse when you’re doing the his­tory because you don’t have some­one there to check you on every sin­gle detail. Sherwood Smith, in her oth­er­wise favor­able review of the book, points out a mis­take about young ladies’ head­wear in the very first pages.

That said, what I did was spend as much time in pri­mary sources as I could, and not just writ­ten sources, but images of the cloth­ing, weapons, and archi­tec­ture of the period. Whenever I assumed I knew some­thing, I double-​​checked it, because you make the most mis­takes on the things you think you know. I tried to make sure the details enhanced the story, mak­ing it vivid and imme­di­ate, so I was also ruth­less about cut­ting out infor­ma­tion that didn’t drive the nar­ra­tive for­ward. In the end, the his­tory must serve the story, not the other way around.

The Traitor to the Crown series marks your first series. Your first novel, The Prodigal Troll, was pub­lished by Pyr. What were the pro­fes­sional lessons you learned from your first book that you took and applied in the writ­ing and mar­ket­ing to pub­lish­ers of your lat­est series?

The only lessons that I applied are in the writ­ing of the books. The Prodigal Troll was struc­tured more episod­i­cally, with dif­fer­ent POV char­ac­ters that made each sec­tion feel like it had come to a full con­clu­sion. That was a nat­ural out­growth of the lessons I had learned by writ­ing short sto­ries. In the new series, I kept the POV sim­pler and the nar­ra­tive whole so that these would be fast-​​paced books.

I don’t know that I have any use­ful lessons about mar­ket­ing to pub­lish­ers. Lou Anders was just get­ting Pyr started and he came to me as an up-​​and-​​coming author for his debut sea­son. He did every­thing he could to get The Prodigal Troll in front of read­ers, and I’m very grate­ful for the chance I had to work with him. With the new series, it’s a sit­u­a­tion where my agent and I were talk­ing with Chris Schluep at Del Rey from the start. Del Rey pub­lishes Naomi Novik, Harry Turtledove, Greg Keyes–it just seemed like a good fit. Luckily, they agreed!

Thanks again to Mr. Finlay for tak­ing the time to answer my ques­tions. I hope that you all check out his books. I can’t rec­om­mend the first one enough, and the sec­ond title is sit­ting in front of me as I type this, taunt­ing me.

Recommended: The City and The City by China Miéville

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

When I stum­bled upon a copy of The City and the City at Barnes and Noble on Saturday after­noon, I knew my week­end was doomed. Ever since Perdido Street Station, and despite the dis­ap­point­ment of The Iron Council, Miéville is still pos­si­bly the most excit­ing author work­ing today for me.

This book is not a New Cobrazon book. It is not out­right fan­tasy in any way, actu­ally. But it’s still fan­tas­tic in a more sim­ple sense of the word. The story is essen­tially a police pro­ce­dural, but one set in the kind of city that is dis­tinctly Miévillian.

If there is a com­mon theme among Miéville’s work, I would say that it is “the city as char­ac­ter.” Because even here, the city takes the fore­front. Bas Lag, also, in most of that series. China has a preter­nat­ural sense for cities, and for what makes them tick. As some­one who has never lived in an urban cen­ter with more than 100,000 peo­ple, I find it utterly fas­ci­nat­ing. It’s as exotic as the Far East to me.

The cities of Bezel and Ul Quoma are utterly unique, at least to my expe­ri­ence. I won’t even say another thing about them, because learn­ing about them as I did, with lit­tle pre­con­cieved notions, was a great way of expe­ri­enc­ing the book. Trust that things are not all that they seem in the open­ing pages. This is no bog stan­dard police pro­ce­dural (and that it would been fine if it was). This is some­thing more, dis­tinctly from the author who gave us one of the best cities in fan­tas­tic literature.

Am I dis­ap­pointed that this wasn’t another book set in his wilder, more fan­tas­ti­cal uni­verse? Before read­ing it, yes, I was. Now that I have read the book, no, not even a lit­tle bit. This new place will have much more main­stream appeal, and any­thing that sells more books for Miéville makes it that much more likely we’ll get more fan­tasy novels–at least I hope so. Miéville clearly has break-​​out poten­tial with the main­stream, and if I have a fear, it’s that the money will be so much bet­ter, he would be a fool not to go down the less fan­tas­tic road and to its broader audi­ences. Everything I have read about China indi­cates that he would never aban­don sci­ence fic­tion and fan­tasy entirely. So I have to go on faith that he won’t.

But even if he pulls a Lethem, I’ll fol­low him wher­ever he goes. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Read: Lamentation by Ken Scholes

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Full dis­claimer:  Ken is a great guy, some­one I con­sider a won­der­ful friend.  One of my regrets about not liv­ing in Portland (despite hav­ing wanted to for about 8 years) is that I don’t get to hang out with him and his wife more often.  Ken’s suc­cess is well-​​earned.  We first met at a Norwescon a few years ago, and Ken was just get­ting started again seri­ously with his writ­ing.  He’d sold a few sto­ries, not many.  We hit it off and I asked him to send along some­thing to the Fortean Bureau, which he did, and we bought it.  And a cou­ple of oth­ers.  I loved Ken’s short sto­ries.  I sup­pose that is to tem­per my com­ments com­ing next.

I enjoyed Lamentation.  However, for me at least, it suf­fers from over­hype.  It’s a good book, but so much energy was poured into call­ing it a great book that  I had unre­al­is­ti­cally high expec­ta­tions.  I don’t mean to damn it with faint praise, and I’ve thought long and hard about whether I wanted to admit that I didn’t froth over the book, because I want noth­ing more than to see Ken suc­ceed.  So lis­ten, I did like the book. I do rec­om­mend that you read it.  You are liable to love it.

Anyway–It’s very inter­est­ing on sev­eral lev­els to me.  Ken’s very good at what he does, so let me expound on how and why.

One aspect that I really like is that it’s a breezy kind of epic fic­tion.  I read the book in 2 days.  I rarely get to cut through a book that fast (although this is the first book that I’ve read since being laid off).  The book rarely dragged which is rare for this kind of fan­tasy for me.

A lot has been said about the world build­ing, which I started out dis­lik­ing and slowly grew to find more inter­est­ing over time.  It felt at first to me that not enough logic and fore­thought went into the com­bi­na­tion of echos of our world’s cul­ture.  As the book devel­ops, I see that more is going on, and I became more inter­est­ing.  I really liked how the his­tory of what had hap­pened echoed through the events of the book.   I think Ken han­dles this excel­lently.  World build­ing can eas­ily bog down this kind of fan­tasy.  Look at Tolkien, who I con­sider an inter­minable bore when it came to all his descrip­tions of land­scapes and Elvish his­tory and singing.  Ken fleshes out his world, but does it deftly, much like every­thing else he does in the book.

I do think the book suf­fers a lit­tle from too many points of view.  I found the con­cept of many of the char­ac­ters inter­est­ing, but their insights rarely struck home with me.  I spent much of the book wait­ing for a char­ac­ter who would sink his teeth into me like Tyrion from Martin’s books.  However–Martin’s books are like 5 times longer and I don’t think this is a mat­ter of skill so much as it is a mat­ter of time.  Ken’s got 4 more books to do this, and I’m def­i­nitely going to give him a chance to develop these char­ac­ters even further.

Okay, I’m enter­ing into spoil­ers ter­ri­tory next.  Behind the cut.

Continue read­ing ›

Book 2009 #3: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I can’t help but think this book would have had a big­ger impact on me if I had read it before Obama was elected.  It’s a great overblown rant against all the hor­ri­ble things DHS has done in the name of pro­tect­ing us.  It’s a decently writ­ten book with mod­er­ately inter­est­ing geek char­ac­ters fight­ing the good fight and using wire­less to do it (sound­ing sus­pi­ciously famil­iar?).  So Cory’s hot­but­ton issues show more than a lot of other writers–I don’t really mind because I share most of those inter­ests myself.  I wanted to like this book more than I did, and I liked it quite a bit, but the res­o­lu­tion is what even­tu­ally made me put it in the “not sure” pile.  I’m going behind a cut to talk about more in case you don’t want the end­ing spoiled. Continue read­ing ›

Book 2009 #2: The Devil You Know by Mike Carey

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve been aware of Mike Carey for some time now, as the writer of a good run on the Hellblazer comic (which you prob­a­bly only know of as that abor­tion of a movie Constantine) as well as the writer of Lucifer (which I wasn’t a big fan of.  Nothing wrong with it really, just not my bag).  As far as I know, this is Carey’s first novel, and it’s a very good one.

Felix Castor is an exor­cist liv­ing in London.  In his world, it’s just some­thing you’re born to do, or not.  And he was born with the capac­ity.  Felix has some friends, some bad his­tory, and no money.  Sound famil­iar?  Felix is your arche­typ­i­cal down-​​on-​​his luck pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, only he gets rid of ghosts instead of solve mys­ter­ies.  At least at first, but even­tu­ally you know he’s gonna solve a mys­tery.  And he does, and it’s quite satisfying.

I often gripe about the mem­o­ra­bil­ity of SF/​F char­ac­ters by chal­leng­ing peo­ple to name ten mem­o­rable SF/​F char­ac­ters by name.  Then I ask them to name ten char­ac­ters from the works fo Charles Dickens.  It’s an exercise–in what, I’m not sure, and I’m pretty sure John Joseph Adams put me onto it.  In any case, Felix Castor has an inter­est­ing name, so he’s got one foot out of the “for­get­table char­ac­ters” grave already.  Through the course of the book, you come to like this schmuck.  He means well. He screws up a lot, he gets the everlov­ing shit beaten out of him (then he gets laid–the gumshoe karmic bal­ance restored), and even­tu­ally he solves the mys­tery and every­one is happy.  Sort of.

If you like hard­boiled detec­tive sto­ries, then you will like The Devil You Know.  If you like super­nat­ural thrillers that don’t nec­es­sar­ily involve peppy blonde women with super­nat­ural tat­toos on their lower backs (per­fect for the book cover), then you’ll prob­a­bly like this as well.  It’s out in paper­back, and a sec­ond book in the series is cur­rently out in hard­back. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make the wait.

Book 2009 #1: Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The first book I have read for 2009  prob­a­bly shouldn’t count.  I started it in 2008.  But I set the rules and I have decided that it is books fin­ished in 2009 that count.  Maybe  I will finally get through War and Peace after all this time.  Unlikely.  The Russian authors have rarely done much for me.  Although, now that I think about it, Crime and Punishment gave me some nasty night­mares in high school.  Something about a bloody ham­mer. No bloody ham­mers here, but there sure was a lot of blood in general.

So I read the rather long titled Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America by Brian Francis Slattery. I picked this one up after hav­ing seen the really inter­est­ing cover a cou­ple of times at the book store and read­ing the back copy.  I wasn’t quite sold, but then Cory over at BoingBoing posted a glow­ing Doctorowian review and­con­vinced me to give it a shot.  Speaking of  Cory, I think I’ll put Little Brother up on the chop­ping block next.  I’ve been mean­ing to get to that for a while and I sus­pect the­mat­i­cally it’ll go down well after the six course meal of this book.

Sheesh, that’s a lot of words with­out actu­ally talk­ing about the book itself isn’t it?  I was talk­ing with Nick Mamatas about this one and he said he thought it read like bud­get Pynchon.  I’ve never read any Pynchon but I trust Nick knows what he’s talk­ing about.  I’m actu­ally look­ing for­ward to read­ing some Pynchon now based on that com­par­i­son.    (Finally, I address the book itself, eh?)

Yeah, I liked this one for a lot of rea­sons.  The prose is wan­der­ing and wild and full of words that go together like choco­late and peanut but­ter.  Just some great writ­ing here, and it breaks rules of POV and such in lovely ways that just make every­thing slightly sur­real, and yet still grounded.  This is sci­ence fic­tion, but there are ghosts.  Are they metaphor­i­cal? I guess you could say that.  If this weren’t genre, you wouldn’t even ask that ques­tion though.

Post eco­nomic col­lapse America sounds a hell of a lot more ghoul­ish than I imag­ined it per­son­ally.  For one, Slattery sees slav­ery com­ing back.  I had a hard time buy­ing that at first but it does make a kind of grue­some sense.  I hope he’s wrong if things ome to that.

The main char­ac­ter here is really America (post col­lapse, but our his­tory as well).  Everyone else, espe­cially the pro­tag­o­nists, are just sup­port­ing cast.  That’s not to say they aren’t well-​​characterized.  I’ll prob­a­bly remem­ber Marco in par­tic­u­lar for years to come. But I like a book with a broad char­ac­ter like that once and a while.  It’s some­thing I would love to pull off some day, as I work to grow as a writer.

And every­thing here is so fuck­ing cool.  It’s almost Beats cool.  The Slick Six are very slick, very suave and I think there’s almost a comic book atmos­phere at play here.  They’re larger than life in some ways, par­tic­u­larly Marco (espe­cially Marco).   It’s so weird to me that Slattery has made his post-​​collapse America seem cool, but it really is.  Bursting with weird­ness and cool.  There’s a scene in par­tic­u­lar that I am think­ing of, involv­ing a con­fronta­tion between Marco and an assas­sin that is just great and so so cool.

Also, the villain’s name is the Aardvark which may be more ridicu­lous than cool, but I liked that.  What kind of vil­lain goes by that istead of the Hammerhead or the Wolf or some­thing suit­ably fright­en­ing?  Aardvark is not a word that strikes fear in any­one unless you hap­pen to be an ant.

This book will stick with me for a while, I think.  I am def­i­nitely look­ing for­ward to the next one by Slattery.  I may even read this one again, more care­fully this time, to enjoy the prose at my leisure.  I rec­om­mend this one if you like post-​​apocalyptic fic­tion, gonzo style road trip nov­els, or ninjas.

Some Recent Reading: Michael Chabon and Adam-​​Troy Castro

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I thor­oughly enjoyedThe Yiddish Policeman’s Union .  The com­bi­na­tion of alt-​​history, exotic-​​to-​​me jew­ish and Alaskan cul­ture, and noir detec­tive thriller was just the kind of thing I needed to read right now.   But more than the con­cept, I was engaged by the char­ac­ters of Landsman and Berko Schemets.   Science fic­tion has been accused of not hav­ing mem­o­rable char­ac­ters, and I sup­port that opin­ion.  I can name the num­ber of mem­o­rable SF/​F char­ac­ters on one two hands.  It takes both my hands and feet just to name the mem­o­rable char­ac­ters from Dickens.  There’s a def­i­nite dif­fer­ence there. For the strong char­ac­ters alone, I’m inclined to say this is more lit fic than sci fic.

The sec­ond book I read in October was Emmissaries for the Dead by Adam-​​Troy Castro.  This was a free­bie at WorldCon, snatched up at the same party I got the Chabon book.  I for­get the pub­lisher hold­ing that party, but I owe JJA for get­ting me in.  It was the best event I attended at the con, and not just because I got eight books out of it.  I had some nice con­ver­sa­tions with some really sharp people.

As to the book itself, it was trans­par­ent to me that this is a fresh­man out­ing.  I’ve been read­ing Castro’s short fic­tion for some time, but I don’t think he has found his foot­ing in the novel realm yet.  I picked this one up because it too had a noir murder-​​mystery pitch on the back cover, but with the added appeal of a strange con­structed ecosys­tem with sen­suwunda appeal.  Unfortunately, the narrator’s per­son­al­ity grated on me.  Andrea Cort, but I don’t know that I will remem­ber her six months from now. I don’t want to go into too much detail about this book because I would rather you read some of it your­self and decide whether it’s for you than go on my opin­ion.  It undoubt­edly suf­fers from fol­low­ing so closely my read­ing of the Chabon, which is a lit­tle unfair.  But I fin­ished it, which is more than I can say about the last half-​​dozen SF nov­els I’ve tried to read.