Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman was another nominee for this year's Andre Norton award like David Levithan's Every Day that I read a few weeks ago. I enjoyed that one, but I think this is the better of the two.

The kingdom of Goredd is living in a time of peace many years after a war between the humans of the lowland countries and the dragons who live in the mountains surrounding them.

All is not well though. The human countries fear the dragons and anti-dragon groups are rabble-rousing as the anniversary of the human/dragon peace treaty-signing approaches. There is even support for the anti-dragon sentiment amongst the nobility of the country and a part of the religious community that is fervently anti-dragon.

The dragons themselves are coldly unemotional and don't understand the irrationality of human society even though they can take human form and participate in it. In fact, they have their own issues with an internal group of gestapo-like Censors who are empowered to do mind-surgery on dragons that they feel have been tainted by human emotion.

Seraphina is a musical prodigy who is struggling with the attention her talent brings her and that she needs to keep an important secret about herself: she is half-dragon. This secret becomes critical when she is involved with the ruling classes of both species.

There are many things to love about these books. Both societies, Goredd and dragon get some attention and you get some idea of what the other human countries of the plains are like as well. The way that religion is approached here is very good with it being seen as a source of intolerance as well as spirituality. The belief in the Saints of this religion is at the core of social life in Goredd and this clearly comes through in the text. Fantasy world-building often neglects this aspect of culture even though not a single human culture has evolved without it.

Politics is also at the core of this book and it's clear that the societies of both these cultures have a strong influence on the way they approach the treaty. If I have an issue with these books, it's that I have trouble seeing how the treaty has lasted this long when the people in charge of each society are so clueless, although the brief tale on how the treaty came to be would make an interesting novel itself.

One other thing I thought was well done was the understated romance subplot. Unlike many of these supposedly YA novels, this isn't the main story; prevention of war and survival is. And that's as it should be.

Overall I quite enjoyed this although it was very slow to start with and I felt that it went to pieces a bit at the end. Pacing issues mainly and when Seraphina is revealed you're left wondering what all the big deal was. Looking forward to the next one.

Currently Reading: I just finished Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson and I'm currently reading To Walk the Night by E. S. Moore.

Podcasts: Science Fiction and Fantasy (Part One)

Between a reasonable commute time and a kitchen well away from the family television I get a fair bit of time each day to listen to podcasts. Predictably, many of the podcasts I listen to concern science fiction and fantasy reading. (Science and politics round out the rest.)

The topic is relevant to the blog, as these podcasts are often the reason a book gets added to my to read list or gets bumped up.

A case in point is The Writer and the Critic, an Australian podcast that reviews a couple of books every month (except for a recent hiatus). The format is a conversation between horror and fantasy writer Kirstyn McDermott and podcaster and critic Ian Mond over books they have selected to read and review. It's an interesting podcast for me because they have such a different taste in books. Kirstyn has a real taste for dark and complicated and Mondie is a bit of a snob (of the school of it was hard to write, it should be hard to read).

This month's reading were Some Kind of Fairytale by Graham Joyce and Feed by M. T. Anderson. Some Kind of Fairytale is a magical realist novel set in rural England where a girl disappears for twenty years and returns looking much the same age and with a bizarre story.  The tale deals with how the various people in the community deal with her return and with all the different levels of belief, from one character who knows she's telling the truth to complete disbelief even when faced with incontrovertible evidence. The story isn't about being kidnapped by fairies as such; it's far more about faith, belief, love and being touched by things a bit beyond the ordinary. It's also very literary, so probably isn't for everyone. In term of the podcast I'm reading it for, Ian Mond is going to love it because it's a literary book that leans towards the fantastic, and Kirstyn is going to love the story's dark side.

Feed, on the other hand, was harrowing. It's one of these heavy-handed dystopian future science fiction books, this one warning/critiquing the ubiquity of internet culture, advertising and consumerism. In this future nearly everyone in the USA is connected to the internet via a direct brain implant which they have little control over and pipes continuous and uncontrollable advertising directly into there heads. The main character is a vapid teenage boy who reads like the absolute worst caricature of a modern teenager but is nevertheless better than most of his friends. He meets a girl who is one of the few people who still has some idea of what life is like without the feed. It gets a bit tragic from there as both the society and the girl collapse in horrible ways as the book grinds on. It's heavy-handed, but still brilliant and therefore very unsettling. Unfortunately, I think it falls to one of the classic issues with dystopian books in that I don't think that this is a plausible path for our society. It's a bit like the Hunger Games - I don't think you can get there from here.

I'm also a fan of the SF Squeecast, a panel discussion between a group of speculative fiction writers including Lynne Thomas, Paul Cornell, Seanan McGuire, Catherynne Valente and Elizabeth Bear and usually including guests. That's a formidable list of highly awarded writers and the mission of the panel is to "squee" about things (books, television, movies, etc) that the panelists love. It's a pleasantly positive approach to reviewing science fiction and fantasy and it has placed many a book on my to read list including Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis.

I'll add the rest of the science fiction and fantasy podcasts in the next post.

Currently Reading: I'm way behind with my blogging. I've recently read Seven Wonders by Adam Christopher (good, but with some major structural issues that made it quite difficult to read), the Cold King by Amber Jaeger (nice little self-published version of Beauty and the Beast), In the Company of Ogres by A. Lee Martinez (not his best) and Black Wings by Christina Henry (average urban fantasy). I'm actually reading Seraphina by Rachel Hartman.

Earth Strike by Ian Douglas

Earth Strike  is the first in  Ian Douglas's latest military science fiction series, Star Carrier.

The setting is the early 25th century and humans have developed an advanced technology base along the lines of the GRIN singularity (Genetics, Robotics, Information, Nanotech.) Humans have also encountered aliens who appear to be part of a galactic hegemony (ruled by the mysterious Sh'daar, but administered through various client races) that prohibits technological development past a certain point, and they have made a demand that humans come under their control. War follows.

The story follows the star carrier America through various view points, including the America battle group's Admiral Koenig, a fighter wing commander, an alien commander and the main protagonist Trevor Gray, who starts off as a fighter pilot in this one. The plot itself is fairly simple, with the first half of the book dealing with a conflict at Eta Boötis where a group of marines have captured specimens of the Turusch va Sh'daar, the Sh'daar client race that is currently prosecuting the war against humanity. The second half of the book deals with the Earth Strike of the title as the Turusch striking at the Sol solar system.

I'm not a huge fan of military science fiction. Some of the most common features of the sub-genre grate, and many of them are on display here, including:

• Politicians are the true enemy

• Civilians are naive, undisciplined and uncaring of the issues faced by the military (a civilian oversight officer in the first part of the book wants to leave the entire population of a colonist world to die, as long as the people the ship has come to rescue are saved)

• The service as the true home and family of the protagonist

• The noble chain of command, with the exemplary "old man" Captain/Admiral at the top, but he's not appreciated by his superiors. The only ones who really understand work under the old man, and they can do no wrong.

• The screw-up low ranked soldier whose personal growth is mirrored by his increasing rank

It terms of a tedious checklist (as well as unbelievable and one-dimensional), this genre can be as bad as paranormal romance. Where this sub-genre does shine is where it's subverted, as in The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. This one is no Forever War.

All that being said, I still really enjoyed this book. It is what it is, and the execution is just brilliant. The science in it is top-notch and mostly believable. The author has thought long and hard about space combat where relativistic effects are involved. (You'll want high school or first year university physics under your belt for this one.) The technology used with nanomaterial reconfiguration, spacetime manipulation, singularity control and gravitic projection, while fantastic, is both internally consistent and consistent with how we think those things would work if we could do them. The alien combatants are interesting too, with an interestingly alien point of view which you get to follow along with a bit and lots to explore in later novels with other Sh'daar client species and the Sh'daar themselves.

Currently Reading: Feed by M. T. Anderson

Blood Trade by Faith Hunter

Blood Trade by Faith Hunter is the sixth book in her popular Jane Yellowrock urban fantasy series. The series follows Jane Yellowrock, a Cherokee skinwalker who makes a living as a vampire hunter and security specialist. At the start of the series she comes to New Orleans to work for a senior vampire figure to hunt a declared rogue and she basically makes her home there in the following books.

I found the setting to be much like early Anita Blake, and the characters do share a lot in common. Both are mysterious powerful supernatural people, both have vampire hunting as an occupation, both have complicated love lives and both seem to spend their lives mired in vampire politics.

To discuss this novel I have to spoil the rest of this series, particularly given the previous novel (Death's Rival) was a major turning point in the story so far. Death's Rival featured the forced bonding of Jane with Leo and his heir while being held down by George Dumas. That's a massive betrayal by two thirds of her love interests right there, and the other third being PsyLED agent Rick LaFleur who Jane accused of trying to murder her at the end of the last book. Did I mention the complicated love life? The other main outcome of the previous book was Jane having shrugged off the bonding to Leo, only to have her Beast gladly take it on, and that she is now outed to most of the people she knows as a skinwalker.

So this book picks up a month or so after Death's Rival, and in classic Jane style she's busy avoiding her problems, this time by returning to Natchez to deal with the aftermath of the previous book (and to deal with some of the loose ends from there as well). This is an "unsanctioned" trip to the edge of Leo's territory. She's still bound to Leo, although it's not clear that Leo knows this as he appears to be giving her space.

While this book neatly wraps up the aftermath of the previous book in terms of plot, it's strictly treading water in terms of Jane and her life, and it's a bit of a let down considering the massive events of the previous book. But I guess it's very in-character for a protagonist who raises personal issue avoidance to an art form. But that's still frustrating as the central issue of the personal betrayal of her employers is just not dealt with at all.

Very much looking forward to the next one, where I hope we're going to start seeing some resolutions to some of these personal issues.

Currently Reading: Feed by M. T. Anderson to round out the rest of my Writer and the Critic podcast reading. Some Kind of Fairytale by Graham Joyce was quite brilliant and it's a very Writer and the Critic sort of book so it will be interesting to see how much they gush over it.

Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain by A. Lee Martinez

I don't understand why I don't hear more people talking about A. Lee Martinez. His books are incredibly imaginative, wickedly funny and deeply humanist ... especially when his characters aren't. Human that is. In the case of Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain we're talking about a genius mad scientist squid from Neptune and a moralistic bird/lizard soldier from Venus.

Why aren't you reading this book right now? If you're in any way like me, you'd be hooked at "genius mad scientist squid".

In the books of his that I've read Martinez has taken a genre trope and run with it, injecting morality and humanity into places where you don't expect it. In Gil's All-Fright Diner it was urban fantasy with the story being told from the point of view of a werewolf and a vampire on a cross-country drive. In my favorite of his, Chasing the Moon, it's the the Lovecraftian concept of eldritch horror from beyond reality and In the Company of Ogres he skewers fantasy beautifully.

In this one, he takes on classic science fiction pulp. The entire solar system is peopled with intelligent alien species, even including the Sun with intelligent clouds of magnetized helium plasma. The Earth itself has many intelligent species including molemen, the Sasquatch nation, Atlanteans as well as humans. All of which were conquered years ago by Emperor Mollusk, who has since retired.

This book is full of all the accoutrements of mad science, with death rays, robots, time travel, dinosaurs, disembodied brains, exoskeletons and alien invasion, and while that's all great fun, it mostly takes a back seat to the interaction between Mollusk and his bodyguard/archenemy Zala which is just chock full of snark and occasional moments of affection and understanding. Not just beautifully written dialogue, but gleefully written as well.

In the end, I really enjoyed it. I didn't like it quite as much as Chasing the Moon as the bad guys in this one are really just mustache-twirling caricatures (as they have to be, given the genre) and usually the author makes his antagonists much more interesting that that.

Did I mention the giant rampaging radioactive brain of Marie Curie?

Why haven't you read this book yet?!

 Currently Reading: I'm getting really behind in my blogging. Since I read this one I've read Faith Hunter's new Jane Yellowrock book Blood Trade (good, but not as good as the previous one) and the first in Ian Douglas's Star Carrier series, Earth Strike (quite good military SF with a very hard SF bent). Next I'm going to read Some Kind of Fairytale by Graham Joyce so I'm ready for the next Writer and the Critic podcast.

Daughter of the Sword by Steven Bein

Daughter of the Sword by Steven Bein is a great read. Happily it's also the first in a series called the Fated Blades. This is a magical realism novel set in modern-day Japan with historical segments set in various eras of that country. 

The main story follows Oshiro Mariko, a driven policewoman in the prestigious Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and her involvement with a small group of ancient swords that bend destiny around them. Mariko's story is alternated with short stories from different eras of Japanese history demonstrating the ways that each of the swords works.

The author is a professor of Asian history and philosophy and it seriously shows through. There are hints and insights into Japanese culture and history (particularly of the samurai class) all the way through, including elements on the role of women as samurai which I'd never heard of before. For instance, anyone familiar with RPGs or other medieval Japanese books has probably heard of naginata (the European equivalent would be a glaive) which is a long rod with a huge curving blade on it (in-line with the rod, not like a scythe). What I'd never heard of is that it was the weapon of the female samurai and in Japan it is still considered a woman's weapon. The text is peppered with details like that.

October 2013

The historical stories are also really interesting, given the author's background, although the main reason for them being there is to illuminate the nature of each of the swords. The swords are as varied in their nature and abilities as they are physically different.

The main story is basically a police procedural and Mariko's struggle to catch the villain of the piece is at least as interesting as her struggle with the extreme sexism of modern Japan.

I thoroughly recommend and it I'm really looking forward to the next one.

Currently Reading: I just finished Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain by A. Lee Martinez (not quite as good as his previous one Chasing the Moon, but that's not faint praise as Chasing the Moon was one of my favorite reads of 2011) and I'm about to start Blood Trade by Faith Hunter.

Hugo Award 2013 Novel Nominees

Continuing with the awards season, this week featured the other big one: the Hugo Award nominee announcements. The Hugo Awards are given at the World Science Fiction Convention which this year is LoneStarCon 3 and are nominated and voted for by members of the World Science Fiction Society. That's anyone going to WorldCon in that year and anyone that's paid to get an affiliate membership (which is good value as you get the Hugo "packet" which amongst other things includes all novels that are nominated). As these are given by popular vote, the nominees tend to skew towards the more readable books so you can get some real shockers like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire winning in 2001.

The Hugos give awards across a wide range of science fiction (including some great podcasts that I'll talk about in another post), but as usual, I'm primarily interested in the novels. So, the nominees for the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel are:

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed and 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson which I already talked about in  my discussion of the Nebula nominees. Suffice it to say that I think both are very deserving, but I don't think either will win, even though I think 2312 is the best book in the field. You've also got to hand it to Saladin Ahmed with nominees for two extremely prestigious awards for his first novel.

While we're on the subject of the Nebulas, it's a small surprise that N. K. Jemisin's book didn't get on this list, but it's no surprise at all not to see Caitlin Kiernan's. It just goes back to this award being by popular vote, and while I can see that the Drowning Girl is incredible and worthwhile and would be a critic's favorite thing, I just don't think it's much fun to read.

Blackout by Mira Grant (pseudonym of Seanan McGuire). This series has been a bit of a darling of the Hugos with all three getting a nod in the years that they came out. (And I can just about hear the guys from the Incomparable podcast screaming from here), and it's also the only one of the field I haven't read yet. All I can say is that I haven't read a Seanan book that I didn't like and she's good enough that I have this zombie series on my to read list ... and I hate zombie books.

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold is the latest (14th!) in her highly awarded Vorkosigan series. It's an interesting departure from most of the rest of the series because it follows Ivan, a bit player in most of the books and usually someone smart enough to stay out of the action. One of the things Bujold likes to do with these books is to muck around with genre, in that the series has included action romps, love stories, comedies of manners, war stories and murder mysteries. This one has a bit of a few of those, but it's mostly a romantic comedy. I quite enjoyed it, but it's far from my favorite in this series.

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi is the novel I actually expect to win. In many ways it's just as much a love letter to science fiction as last year's winner, Among Others by Jo Walton and John Scalzi is beloved by science fiction fans everywhere as well.

This one has an interesting premise, in that the characters begin to realize that they're world is a science fiction story, and that it's a badly written one, and that they're role is that of Star Trek "red shirts" ie., cannon fodder for bad plotting. It's good, heart-warming and a great light read, but I'm not sure that it doesn't do anything that the movie Stranger than Fiction did a while ago (and better).

As an aside, I was really disappointed that the second James S. A. Corey book, Caliban's War didn't make it on to the ballot this year. I thought it was superior to the first book in the series, and that one was good enough to get nominated last year in a really stiff field. There were quite a few others that I thought were good enough to rate a mention on this list too, including Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson (my review here) and Year Zero by Rob Reid.

Currently Reading: I just finished Daughter of the Sword by Steven Bein (brilliant) and I'm a couple of pages into Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain by A. Lee Martinez.

Cassandra Rose Clarke

I picked up the Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke, because "that sounds like your sort of book" as my eldest put it, but looking at other books by the writer I ended up reading the Assassin's Curse first. The Mad Scientist's Daughter was clearly going to be a bit of a downer, and the other book looked to be a bit of an adventure story so I went with that one.

The Assassin's Curse follows the story of Ananna of the Tanarau, a daughter of pirates in a nation of pirates. The book starts with her fleeing an arranged marriage, only to be pursued by an assassin hired by the family of the groom that she has spurned. Ananna is supremely competent and would be the match of anything thrown against her save magic, but at a key moment, a curse on the assassin saves her and condemns both the pirate and the assassin to the curse.

The main character is a delight. When she commits to fleeing her marriage she's all in, dropping everything and immediately making plans for her future, even though it appears that none of her dreams will now be possible. The assassin, Naji, persists on treating her as fragile (partly because of the curse), which she confounds at every opportunity. Other than in terms of magic and knowledge of the magical world, she is the more competent one in every respect.

Available in July
(grumble)

If I have a quibble with the book, it's that it completely fails to tell you that this is part one of a series. That's not something I mind if the series has distinct books (N. K. Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms leaps to mind), but this is just part one of a bigger book and leaves it without any resolution. I understand why publishers do it; it's for exactly the reason that I'm cranky about it: I wouldn't have read it until all the books were available. But, in my opinion, it shows a level of contempt for the reader that I personally find frustrating, and which I doubt was the author's intent.

That being said, it just whet my appetite for The Mad Scientist's Daughter which was an even better read (not as much fun though, but then I kind of expected that.) This one is more adult and science fiction rather than fantasy.

The story follows the titular character, Cat, as she grows up. She is the only child of a pair of cyberneticists, although her mother does not appear to be practicing. The story starts with Cat at 5 years old when her father brings home an android to live with the family. The android's name is Finn and he's much more human-like than any of the other robots that are nearly everywhere in this world.

Which brings me to the world-building, which is brilliant. Near future science fiction that attempts to be reasonably extrapolative is quite rare at the moment. A lot of it is like the Hunger Games, not too different from what we have now, but it takes quite a stretch to imagine how the world got like that. This one reminds me a lot of the sort of world-building you see in the Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (except that I don't get an urge to slit my wrists after reading it), only much more optimistic.

The world has been through climate change, and the worst of the Disasters as they are referred to with huge loss of life. Robots are everywhere. They need to be: there aren't enough humans. But all the things that need to be done to maintain a technological society have largely been done. For instance, Kansas is a desert, but it's also a state-encompassing wind farm.

Cat is utterly self-absorbed, which serves the world-building exposition well, because it's all so obviously backdrop. Effectively, everything and everyone but a select few characters, her parents, Finn and a couple of lovers, are nothing but backdrop to her life. The central story of the book is her trying to consign Finn to that backdrop because he's only a robot, and continuously and spectacularly failing to do so. She's also incredibly intelligent, but only interested in art. When she needs to apply her intelligence to something technical, something she wants desperately, it comes as easily to her as any of her artwork.

This is a beautiful and tragic love story that I recommend to anyone.

Currently Reading: The Valerie Dearborn books by Caroline Hanson (because, obviously after reading something as brilliant as these two, I need a sudden sharp drop in quality something lighter.)

Blood Oranges by Kathleen Tierney

Blood Oranges by Kathleen Tierney (who is actually Caitlin R. Kiernan) is nasty, brutal and compelling. Nasty and brutal in both terms of story and commentary on Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance, sometimes quite explicitly. Twilight gets a fair share of bile aimed at it for example.

Siobahn Quinn is a monster hunter and heroin addict, and after the first chapter, a monster and murder addict. She's both a vampire and a werewolf and has the worst attributes of both. She needs to feed as a vampire every few days and vampires in this world kill every time they feed. As a werewolf, she's the classic werewolf, essentially going furry and then waking up naked somewhere covered in blood and choking up body parts of which there is plenty in this book.

A lot of thought has obviously gone into deconstructing the genre, from the dodgy motives of the mentor figure, to the real consequences of taking out supernaturals and the fact that the murderous activities of Quinn are widely noticed among that community. As far as romance with the monsters, that's barely hinted at, including that vampires over a certain age "are as sexless as ken dolls".

Pack that in with Kiernan's brilliant writing and signature unreliable narrator (but nowhere near as bad as Imp, thank goodness).

Currently Reading: The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

With my eye surgery I've been left with a bit of a no-man's land of poor eyesight between about 20cm up to about a meter and a half out. So I don't need glasses for reading books or driving, but I do need them for working at a computer and it's been a bit of an effort to adapt, for long boring reasons, and I don't have much endurance for long stretches yet.

So, I've read quite a few books recently that I need to blog about.

Every Day by David Levithan was one of the nominees for this year's Nebula YA section (the Andre Norton award) and it had already made it on to my to-read list based on its interesting premise. The story follows an entity which wakes up in a new borrowed body every day. The body is age-appropriate; it seems to have been doing this from birth, and it's now 16 or so. I say 'it' because gender isn't a barrier. The book begins with the entity falling in love with a normal human girl and follows that relationship as the entity continues to move through other people. It's very strange, and moving in places, but the central questions about what the entity is and how it all works are only hinted at - there are no answers here. The book is stand-alone, but there is ample space for a sequel.

A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt which is the first book in the Alex Benedict series. I've been meaning to read this series for a while because four of the six books in the series have been nominated for the Nebula award, Polaris in 2005, Seeker in 2006 (winner), Echo in 2010 and Firebird in 2011. Tellingly, McDevitt has never received a Hugo nomination. Nebulas are awarded by fellow writers and Hugos are awarded by popular vote. The story follows a detective/history story around events of a 200-year old interstellar war between humans and telepathic aliens. I found this one profoundly boring. Even when actually interesting things happened they were written in such a way as to be dull. I may eventually give Polaris a go, but this one in no way recommends it and I felt it was the worst of McDevitt's that I've read.

Tempting Danger and Mortal Danger by Eileen Wilks, the first two books in the World of the Lupi series. This is one of those series that really blur the line between the Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy genres. The main characters (at least in these two) are Lily Yu, a human homicide detective and Rule Turner, a werewolf prince. Predictably, these two are mystically bound mates (eye-roll) which is a bit of a staple in Paranormal Romance books, but the narrative is very much police/FBI procedural which fits more into Urban Fantasy.

Either way, the world-building is interesting, with some good justification for the werewolves in this setting being how they are, and lots of depth to be explored. Wilks takes the action to a hell dimension in the second book and her take on demons and dragons is as interesting as her take on werewolves.

Not too bad, but I'm not sure if I'll bother reading the rest of them. I'm also a really turned off by the gender issues in these books. The werewolves are all male and basically irresistible to women, which is apparently a good thing for reasons that the book goes into. The werewolves are holy warriors in the service of an other dimensional goddess who makes her wishes felt through the women in the werewolves lives. So everyone gets a role - it's just that the roles are pretty much divinely ordained and split on gender lines. That sounds cut and dried, but it really isn't that simple as both Lily and her grandmother are pretty kick-ass. I just don't think that the author has thought some of this stuff through.

 

The City's Son by Tom Pollock is a superb Urban Fantasy with a very Neil Gaiman feel by way of Neverwhere. It's beautifully written, alternately between the titular demigod, the literal son of the Goddess of London Streets, and a young delinquent graffiti artist who seems to have been left or betrayed by everyone she's ever loved.

Here's a quote from the first chapter with Filius (the son of the streets) hunting the runaway spirit of a train in the London underground: 

"I hear the ghost of a steam-whistle, her mournful, obsolete battle-cry, and I hunker down low. Light starts to bleed through the mortar ahead of me, outlining two glaring, full-beam eyes. I hear the clash of her wheels, stampeding towards me on a path of lighting. The scream rises out of my throat to greet her, cursing her by all of her names: Loco Motive, Bahngeist, Railwraith—"

How could you not read this book after that? A word of warning though, this goes to some very dark places.

Currently Reading: Blood Oranges by Kathleen Tierney (pseudonym of Caitlin R. Kiernan of The Drowning Girl fame)

Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire

Anyone who listens to the SF Squeecast or follows Seanan McGuire on Twitter has a pretty good idea of her sense of humor. In the InCryptid books its on full display.

Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan Mcguire is the second book in the series following the cryptids of New York and Verity Price, a semi-professional ballroom dancer and crypto-zoologist. This one follows on neatly from the first, with Verity settling into her guardianship of the cryptid community just in time to be warned by Dominic that his bosses from the Covenant of St George are sending a delegation to commence a purge.

This is a fun book, but it's not without issues. It doesn't expand much on Discount Armageddon with mostly the same set of cryptids and characters. The Aeslin mice are brilliant (Dominic: "the God of Absolutely Never Smiling, No, Not Ever."), but a few of the gags are used multiple times in the book with much the same wording and that doesn't work as well.

This also appears to be the last Verity book (at least for a while) as she's continuing the series with a different member of the Price family. Seanan clearly loves writing in this universe as you can see from her Cryptid Field Guide complete with artwork.

Currently Reading: The City's Son by Tom Pollock

Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs

Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs is the seventh book in the Mercy Thompson series which is in a shared universe with her Alpha and Omega series (three novels and a novella). I originally got interested in this series because I came across a graphic novelization of Moon Called, the first book in the series. The art was pretty rough, but the opening scenes of the story has the main character rescuing a teenager from a couple of werewolf thugs, one of which she kills. I felt this was much like early Laurell K. Hamilton whose stuff had been the only Urban Fantasy I'd read that I really liked, so I devoured the whole series in a week or so.

Like many series in the Urban Fantasy genre, these just keep coming, even when the concept is played out. I had actually put Mercy in this category after the sixth book River Marked, but a major event in the universe that occurred in the most recent Alpha and Omega book Fair Game breathed a bit more interest into the world.

Mercy Thompson is a coyote skinwalker in a relatively typical Urban Fantasy world with werewolves, vampires, faeries etc., living alongside modern humanity. In this world the fae have been exposed to the world for some time and have an arrangement with the US government where they live on reservations. The werewolves have only recently been revealed to the general public and people still think that vampires are a myth. It's the werewolves that get the focus in both of her series. Mercy was raised by a werewolf pack (actually the werewolf pack, headed by the leader of all the werewolves in the US) and has a close relationship with a different werewolf pack and particularly with its Alpha.

That's pretty much it for a backgrounder of the series. Obviously, by book seven, things have moved on significantly. In fact, the series could have ended with a few loose ends by the end of the fifth book. The sixth covered Mercy's honeymoon, and while it did wrap up those loose ends, it moved the main characters away from the rich setting and supporting characters developed in the first five books and I felt it suffered for it.

The event that happened at the end of Fair Game shifted the politics of Mercy's world significantly and Frost Burned begins with what looks to be the US government moving to efficiently take out the werewolves in one coordinated strike. That's an interesting premise, and it may yet be taken up in the Alpha and Omega books, but there's more than the obvious at work here. I won't spoil it, but it's a nice return to the world and it's quite enjoyable. I do think the narrative focus for this world has shifted to the other series though.

Currently Reading: Every Day by David Levithan

In Other News: Today's probably the first day I've been able to stand to look at a computer screen for longer than 10-15 minutes so I should be back to posting a bit more regularly.

Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis

Charles Stross had Ian Tregillis as a guest blogger on his blog a little while back and in his introduction he compared this series strongly to his Laundry books. That's high praise in my opinion and when I read that Bitter Seeds is about an alternative World War 2 where the Germans are using people with super powers and the English have employed demon summoners to counter them, it pretty much got added to the top of my to read list.

Just as an aside, I do this a lot. Books often find there way onto my to read list at the top, including the one I'm reading at the moment. I try and counter this by not reading book after book in a series and forcing myself to read something random off the list at least once a week. That's actually how I got reading the Sara Creasy books from last week.

So Bitter Seeds is the first book in the Milkweed Triptych with the next one moving to the next era in world conflict with the Coldest War. The third book will be out later this year.

I thought this book was terrific. It presents the war with viewpoint characters on both sides. From the English you have Raybould Marsh, an SIS (WW2 MI6) operative and Will, a would-be demon summoner. On the German side you have Klaus, one of the Reich's supermen with the ability to walk through walls. His sister Gretel is a powerful precognitive and her visions guide the war down very different paths then the WW2 history most of us are familiar with. That's half the fun if you're at all familiar with the real WW2 events.

At the same time, it doesn't rosy things up at all. The tone of the first part of the book is upbeat when both sides are feeling like the war will be a short successful one, but things get dark very quickly. The methods that the Nazis use to control their pet supermen are brutal and produce people that are either broken, brutish or insane. The English are forced to pay ever more horrific prices in blood to get their demons to do what they want as well. The demons themselves are more like Stross's otherworldly super-intelligences.

Another first in a series that I'm looking forward to following.

Currently Reading: Well I was reading Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs (the new Mercy Thompson book) when I started writing this, but I've been convalescing after eye surgery so I've actually read that and another book since. I'm actually halfway through Tempting Danger by Eileen Wilks at the moment.

In Other News: The James Tiptree, Jr award was given this week and The Drowning Girl by Caitlin Kiernan was the joint winner with a short story collection by Kiini Ibura Salaam called Ancient, Ancient. Honorable mentions went to 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson and Up Against It by M. J. Locke (I guess I wasn't the only one who liked it) among others. I mention those because I've written about them in this blog before. One of the honorable mentions went to Elizabeth Bear's Range of Ghosts which is also on my to read list, so I guess I'd better bump that one up a bit.

Ironskin by Tina Connolly

So Ironskin by Tina Connolly was a nice quick read. It was already on my to read list, but I bumped it to the top with its Nebula Award nomination. I enjoyed it, and it has a very interesting take on the fey (but at the same time, a very dumb one, more on this later).

The story is set in an alternate magical England where humans coexist alongside dwarves and fey. The three races keep pretty much to themselves with dwarves (rather classically) being craftsmen and delvers under mountains and the fey being magical bodiless spirit lights who live in the forests. There was trade between the races, but things changed and the dwarves retreated and the fey went to war with the humans. Humans scarred by fey weapons became cursed and only by covering the curses with iron could the curses be contained. The war is over, but the ironskin remain.

Jane Eliot (the main character) is an ironskin with a fey curse on her face. She wears a half-mask strapped on whenever she's around others and because of it she finds it difficult to keep a job. When she sees an advertisement for a governess position for a child born during the war with special needs she assumes that the child is ironskin as well so she jumps at the opportunity. What she finds at the estate in the moors is a whole lot stranger, with the father of the little girl being a mysterious artist who is somehow taking the unattractive women of high society and giving them fey-like beauty.

I haven't read Jane Eyre which I understand this book is heavily based on, so I really have to judge it on its merits. Jane is a brilliant character; strong through the loss of her brother and parents and also from bearing her curse, but deeply sensitive as well. The little girl Dorie and her father Edward as well as the staff of the house are well-drawn characters. 

I have two big problems though. Firstly, I don't buy the relationship between Jane and Edward. Edward appreciates a governess who doesn't run screaming from his daughter, but that's about it for reasons these two would be attracted to each, particularly given that Edward is barely present in the house. Secondly, while the fey are fascinating and a very clever take on a fantasy cliche, as well as having legitimate reasons to be opposed to the humans, the author pretty much ruins the execution by having them as basically mustache-twirling villains by the end of it.

Regarding its nomination for the Nebula, I don't think it's going to get up. It's an enjoyable book with minor issues, but I don't believe it's at the level of some of the other nominees. However, I think it's also been nominated in the wrong category as it's fairly clearly a Young Adult novel and belongs in the already crowded Andre Norton award nominee list.

Finally, I was going to post a picture of the sequel, but I won't, because there's a great big spoiler for this book on the front cover, so I suggest you try and avoid that one until you've read this.

Currently Reading: Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis

In Other News: I finished Children of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy which I probably won't review here. It's a direct continuation of the previous story and any plot outline I could give would spoil the hell out of the first book. In short, as good as the first, but wrapped up a bit too neatly. The series could end here but there's room for a sequel.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente is the sequel to the wonderful The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. It's a few years after the events in the first book and September is now 13 and her father has gone to the war in Europe and her mother is working at a factory building airplanes.

The first chapter ends with September charging across the Nebraska prairie after a rowboat and into Fairyland, just as her mother comes out of the house in tears. These are the sort of profound images that Valente creates in her fiction which displays the issues I have with the Young Adult category. Many of the things that the author is alluding to are going to go over the heads of a YA audience and in many ways this book is more "Adult" than a book that appears on the Nebula award nominee list this year, Ironskin by Tina Connolly (yes, I've read this now, review in the works).

I also think it's criminal that this one didn't get on the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy nominee list, but I have not read anything else on that list as yet (although Seraphina by Rachel Hartman and Every Day by David Levithan are high on my to read list at the moment), so I don't really know where the benchmark sits.

This story deals with the aftermath of September losing her shadow to Fairyland-Below in the first book. Her shadow is now Halloween, the Hollow-Queen, and she's running rampant in the underworld of Fairyland, stealing the shadows of all in Fairyland-Above and their magic in the process. September meets many characters from the first book again (or their shadows at least) as well as some brilliant new ones.

It took me a while to get into the story, but I really appreciated it when I did. It explores themes around abandonment, betrayal and separation as well as reconciliation and as she says in the book, nothing is easy in Fairyland. This one (as well as the first in the series) is highly recommended.

Currently Reading: Children of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy

Nebula Award Novels 2012 Nominees

The Nebula Awards are selected by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) every year and constitute the one of the two most recognizable awards in science fiction and fantasy (the other being the Hugo Awards). There are many others to pay attention to including the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards and the World Fantasy Awards, but the Hugo and Nebula are basically the big ones.

While the categories for all these awards are wide ranging, I primarily care about the novels category. The Nebulas also have a YA category which I'm conflicted about. On one hand, it highlights the excellent work of more novelists, but on the other hand, I'm not sure that I'd be giving works like Railsea by China Miéville to anyone not capable of reading most of the things on the novel nominees list.

So the nominees for the 2012 Nebula Award (given in 2013 for works published in 2012) for best science fiction and fantasy novel are:

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed as I said in the Alif the Unseen post, I felt that this was an excellent fantasy book based in an ancient Arabian setting. The three main characters are equally fascinating, with an ancient sage and ghul hunter Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, a painfully young holy warrior Raseed bas Raseed and the young female tribeswoman Zamia who is a lion shape-changer. These three characters and an interesting supporting cast take on magic, murder and revolution in the well-realized city of Dhamsawaat.

Ironskin by Tina Connolly which I haven't read, but is now high on my to-read list. From what I've seen in reviews this book is a re-imagining of Jane Eyre in an alternate England in the aftermath of a war with the Fae. There are victims of the war who must wear iron covering Fae curses that scar their skin. The main character is a young woman who must wear an iron mask for the rest of her life for this reason. It sounds brilliant, but I'm wondering if it would be better with ninjas and vampires. I'll let you know when I read it.

The Killing Moon by N. K. Jemisin which is another book I really enjoyed from a brilliant author. Her Inheritance Trilogy were some of my favorite books in my 2011 reading. This is the first book in the Dreamblood series, with the second, The Shadowed Sun also published last year. One of the best things about Jemisin's series is that each book is a discreet story with mostly new characters but in much the same setting. This series is set in an analogue of ancient Egypt and centered around a religion/magic tradition based around dreaming, death and life force. It's really complicated, but this is one of the more nuanced approaches to dying and euthanasia that I've seen all wrapped in the trappings of a fantasy story.

The Drowning Girl by Caitlin Kiernan which I wrote about in my post on writing these book reviews. The book is written in the first person by the main character, Imp, a schizophrenic artist. She's not a little schizophrenic either; I'd describe her as barely functional, even in the saner parts of the narrative and it gets deeply weird in one part where she goes off her meds. The story also goes deep into gender/sexual identity issues as well as Imp is a lesbian, the other main character is transgender and the central figure of the mystery/ghost story/dark fantasy/whatever-the-hell-this-is story is bisexual. The whole thing rings very true as the author is transgender and is a mental illness sufferer. I heard her say in an interview that the book was harrowing and difficult to write. I get that; it's just as harrowing and difficult to read. Inarguably brilliant, but arguably enjoyable.

Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal. This is the other book on this list that I haven't read. It's the second book in the the Glamourist Histories with the first book, Shades of Milk and Honey nominated for the Nebula last year. The third book Without a Summer, will be out in April. This is very similar to Ironskin, set in an alternate magical historical England, but it's doing Jane Austen rather than Charlotte Bronte. Very weird that such similar books got nominated, but I guess I wouldn't have blinked if Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey had been nominated along with 2312 (below) and those two are just as similar.

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson. This is the only item on the nominee list for an award given by a science fiction writers group that is actually science fiction. I guess it's a reflection on book shelves and modern reading habits as well. The action starts with the city of Terminator on Mercury, a city that moves on rails around the entire planet, always moving to keep on the nightside of the planet. The story picks up with Swan Er Hong a typical citizen of the solar system in 2312, a hermaphrodite (as most people are) and over a century old but still quite young by the standards of the day. It just gets weirder and more imaginative from there. The plot is almost irrelevant; the point is to soak in the staggeringly complex world-building that the author has come up with here. Definitely my pick of the year and the novel I think most likely to win the award.

One more point - I feel like I'm living in 2013 when the nominee list includes four women (one of whom is African American, another of whom is transgender) and two men.

Currently Reading: The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente (It's taking me ages).

Song of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy

I've had the Song of Scarabaeus by Australian author Sara Creasy on my to read list for a long time. Long enough for her to have written the sequel which is now also on my to read list. It's billed as a science fiction romance novel, but I'm not sure I'd categorize it as such. More science fiction adventure with romantic elements.

Edie Sha'nim is a cypherteck, a programmer of advanced biotechnology  and the most accomplished expert in a particular type of biotech used for terraforming planets. She works for the Crib, a corpocratic organization which ruthlessly represses colonies on terraformed worlds by charging exorbitant license fees for the terraforming technology. If the colonies stop paying the fees, the terraforming stops and the local ecology crashes.

The book starts with Edie being kidnapped from Crib control by a group of rovers, essentially space pirates, who have supposed high ideals around supplying terraforming technology to the colonies without the Crib being involved. They're a grubby lot though, and there is a lot of interesting story around the balance between getting Edie's co-operation and keeping her under control. There's also a major theme of control of people with the presence of Serfs, indentured prisoners kept under control by the use of implanted punishment devices and drugs. One of these Serfs, Finn, an ex-special forces type and the other main character, gets "tethered" to Edie early on. The tether takes the form of an explosive in Finn's head that goes off if Edie dies or gets separated by too far from Finn.

There's plenty of action with the various groups trying to get control over Edie and her abilities, as well as eco-radicals who attempt to kill cyphertecks on sight and the fascinating setting of Scarabaeus with which Edie has strong ties. I felt it lost its way a little about two thirds in, particularly the plot points around the rovers after they visit Scarabaeus.

There's not a lot of romance in this one (as it should be - the characters are usually either fighting for their lives and freedom or half-dead; romance would be shoe-horned in at best), but you can see the framework being setup for the next novel. It also goes in strong with hard science fictions concepts and jargon very early on. Concepts like biotechnology, terraforming, cypherteck, whole-ecology engineering via programmable viruses. I was strongly reminded of Ann Aguirre's Sirantha Jax books, but in my opinion Sara does a better job. I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Currently Reading: The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson is the story of a young hacker living in a modern unspecified Arab emirate. He spends his time as a "grey hat" hacker protecting the internet presence of dissident groups from the increasingly scary State Security, and also wooing his upper class girlfriend.

When Alif's girlfriend breaks up with him he comes into possession of an ancient text which appears to have been written by the jinn of the Qur'an. With the State Security closing in with almost supernatural efficiency, Alif and his friends embark on a difficult adventure to try and escape them and links unfold between the jinn, the book, Islam and Alif's hacker work.

It's been a good year for fantasy and science fiction with Islamic settings/themes. The last novel in Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha series came out this year completing a brilliant trilogy with one of the most compelling main characters you'll ever read. That one is set in a far-future world settled by Muslim-descended people with a dependence on advanced biotechnology. Bugs basically. Their whole civilization is based on bugs, and not bacteria bugs, crawly ones ... and that includes medical technology. Sutures and bandages and medicines that are live insects. I know people that can't read this one beyond the first chapter. There was also the excellent Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed which is more of an Arabian Nights ancient setting with magic, but again in a Islam-based world.

I found Alif the Unseen to be a thought-provoking read for several reasons. The author is an American convert to Islam (she has written a memoir of conversion, moving to Egypt and marrying a Muslim) and her experiences shine through in this novel. The main character is a non-observing Muslim but his friend Dina is munaqaba (wears the niqab) even though her parents and friend object to her going veiled. She is essentially the perfectly devout Muslim woman against whom Alif's faith and actions are constantly measured. Of course, she is deeply devoted and deferential to Alif as well. Wilson also seems to inject herself into the book with one of the main incidental characters being a female American convert whose reasons for conversion seem to mirror the author's.

From a personal point of view much of the novel made me very uncomfortable. The explicit sexism, racism and class hierarchies presented as ordinary society in the emirate bothered me. They are presented without comment and I realize they're probably accurate representations of much of the modern Islamic world. For the characters it is just the milieu in which they move. Two of the female incidental characters in the book don't even get names; they are simply "the maid" and "the convert" in Alif's thinking. When Dina says something clever in the first part of the book he expresses admiration that she is "as smart as a man". And this is a smart well-educated boy who is active on the internet.

I can't work out whether she just wants to portray the main character as an immature sexist little s*** (which he certainly is) or whether she actually believes these are reasonable ways for a Muslim man to think about women. One of the central themes in the book is Alif's coming into wisdom through a renewal of his Faith, but none of his other attitudes see much movement despite him being saved time and again by other female characters and Dina handily outclassing him at everything but programming. It feels authentic; we're told in the media that this is the sort of behavior to be expected of Muslim men and quite frankly, that's my only meaningful exposure to them, but I was hoping that from a convert to this religion and culture that I'd see a different side of things. The book abounds with strong female characters though, and there's a difference between Alif being sexist and the book being sexist.

Then there's the religion issue. I am an atheist and my early education was as a scientist and I find big-F Faith troublesome at best. I get people who were born into a religion, I really do. I struggle to shed many of the prejudices that I was brought up with and that's without everyone in my family and community telling me not to question those beliefs. But to choose a religion, and to knowingly choose one that reduces your status simply because of your gender ... it seems like insanity to me. I saw a fascinating quote from Wilson, that choosing this religion for her was to choose interdependence over independence. Perhaps it's all a matter of degree, but I don't get that sentiment.

The discussion on religion is relevant, because this book is steeped in it. The fantasy elements are all directly out of the Qu'ran and both Islam and the concept of a holy text are key to the whole thing. The author's melding of coding with Islamic numerology is certainly in theme as well. So, given my point of view on religion, I had some problems here. To be frank, I have problems with books where the fantasy is overtly Christian as well; Passage by Connie Willis was one of these despite being a brilliant book. The issue for me is that one of the main elements of Fantasy is "What if this were true?" and I'm just not particularly comfortable playing that thought game in a world where, for billions of people, the response is "What are you talking about?! This is true!"

Even then, it's still a well-written interesting book, and one that deals with many things that don't normally get much time on  my reading list. I guess now I'd better put The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel on there for some equal time.

Currently Reading: Song of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy