Book Review: Quaternity

Howdy, partners!  As I pack my bags to head up north for SoonerCon, this seems like the perfect time to get back on the book-review wagon – and back in the spec-fic saddle.  This book here is special to me: it's not often I get to make friends with a fellow Weird Western author – and a real treat to read one whose knowledge so far surpasses mine.  If you're a fan of five-star, old-school, blood-spattered Western horror – BOY have I got a book for you!


Quaternity
by Kenneth Mark Hoover
Hell is Truth Seen Too Late! Before he became a U.S. federal marshal in Haxan, John Marwood rode with a band of killers up and down the Texas/Mexico border. Led by Abram Botis, an apostate from the Old Country, this gang of thirteen killers search for the fabled golden city of Cibola, even riding unto the barren, blood-soaked plains of Comancheria. And in this violent crucible of blood, dust, and wind, Marwood discovers a nightmarish truth about himself, and conquers the silent, wintry thing coiled inside him.

You know those old silver-screen cowboys, like Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger, who wore white hats and fought for justice and shot the guns right out of the bad guys' hands?

This is not that.

This is the polar opposite of that. 

In fact, we spend 80% of this book with the black-hatted desperadoes who are raping, murdering, and pillaging their way along the Texas-Mexico border (light on the rape, heavy on the murder).  If you are not up for skinnings, scalpings, hangings, beheadings, disembowelings, feticide, homicide, and a body-count to rival the Alamo AND Goliad, this is not the book for you.  If you are looking for a progressive vision of women and minorities, this is definitely not the book for you.

So now that we've got that out of the way: this is an exceptionally well-written book.  I can't emphasize that enough.  The style is sharp and spare –ideal for the stark, grim subject matter.  The language is pitch-perfect, not to mention immaculately researched: if you know your Sharps from your sofkee, this will be right up your alley.  (If you don't, you might like to keep Google handy: there is plenty of jargon, not to mention a handsome amount of Spanish, and the narrative will not coddle you.)  For me, this was a huge plus: I love a story that expects the reader to pull her weight, and an author with a truly masterful command of his material.  With that said, be prepared to do some reading between the lines, as the 'whys' of the venture are sometimes not as clear as the brutal, bloody 'hows'.

In short, Quaternity is a grisly old-western Odyssey, starring the apex of antiheroes in a world drenched in history and horror.  If you think you can handle that, saddle up and hang on.

My favorite bit:

Botis sat in a leather chair before the flames, dressed in rancid skins and wearing his black galero. His face was lit like a sword, and he was prepared to pass judgment on those men who had declaimed him. Buzzards sat perched in the high branches of tall juniper trees along the riverbank. The ground below was carpeted with a bed of their long, stinking feathers.

Botis picked up the tortoise-shell pince-nez with his customary dainty ease. He set them on the end of his nose and addressed the frightened congregation by the light of the burning church.

"I am Abram Botis," he said. "I ride with demons. I have come among you to judge all things past and future given."

Book Review: SCHISM

Hey, remember when I did book reviews? That was fun. Let's start doing that again. In fact, let's blow the dust off with a book that will blow your socks off.  You've heard me interview the author - now let's handle up on the story!

SCHISM
by Laura Maisano

Art therapy hasn’t done squat for Gabe Jones. A thousand sketches of his fiancée can’t bring his memory, or her, back to him. Nothing on Earth can. His past lies in another dimension, a world just out of sight.

Another student on campus, Lea Huckley, unknowingly shares Gabe’s obsession with the fourth dimension. The monsters from the other side attacked her parents and fled, getting her folks locked up in the loony bin. Proving this other world exists is the only way to free them. Lea and Gabe strike a deal to help each other, and together they manage to open a door to the world of Gabe’s true origin. She’d use him for proof—if she didn’t already care too much.

While Gabe tries to reconcile his feelings for Lea and his rediscovered memories of his fiancée, a much more sinister plot unravels. He uncovers his history just in time to become the unwilling lynchpin in a conspiracy to start a war. His memory holds the secret to the final riddle the would-be conqueror needs to get the upper hand. Gabe must protect the riddle at all costs, even if that means leaving Earth, and Lea, behind forever.

What if you weren't who you thought you were?

What if you were someone powerful and important, maybe even from another world?

What if something horrible happened to your family, and you felt it was your fault?

What if you had a long-lost sibling you never knew about?

What if you loved someone you couldn't possibly have?

What if you had to destroy one of your best friends in order to save the world?

What if you got a lot of people killed?

Y'know, if you're anything like me, you'd agree that any one of those questions could make for a stellar book –but in SCHISM, we are hitting ALL of them at eighty-eight miles per hour.  Hold on to your hats, buckaroos: you're in for a wild ride.

Before we get into it, I have to tell you that I am probably the worst possible reader for this book, because I'm not usually a YA reader, don't go in much for romance, and want my fantasylands to read like magical molasses – rich, thick, and slow.  By comparison, SCHISM is a double-shot of espresso in a giant oh-shit to-go cup.

So what useful things can I, the worst possible reader, tell you about this book?  Well, for starters, you are in no danger of nodding off: from chapter one, page one, strange happenings are afoot, and every next verse is less like the first: a little bit faster, and a whole lot worse.  It's a hell of a plot, with twists and turns that make me legit jealous.  In a lot of ways, that's a great thing: no time for heroes to sit around and angst for a hundred pages, no drumming your fingers waiting for some inevitable, predictable "twist", no pointless waffling of any kind.  I dare say there is not a word wasted anywhere.  For me, that was a mixed blessing: I love the story, but wish we'd had more time to stop and smell the roses.  I'm dying to know what's for dinner in that universe-next-door, what the fashions are like, what the cool slang is, how people get married and what you say when somebody sneezes.  Sadly, there is not a lot of time for sightseeing here: there are so many plot points, all falling one after the other like so many awesome disaster-dominoes, that we don't spend a lot of time on any single one.

I tell you what, though: maybe it's just my inner curmudgeon speaking, but Lea warms the cockles of my cold and withered heart.  Like, I love me a tough girl with a gun, but it is so refreshing to see a heroine who's smart, empathetic, generous, compassionate, honest, and indefatigably bubbly-fun.  (I mean, that's like all six My Little Ponies in one. Is that even legal?!)  To be sure: it's not all kittens and rainbows here – there is plenty for her to be afraid of and/or upset about – but I love that her eventually-more-than-friendship with Gabe is the solid emotional bedrock supporting all of the unholy supernatural shenanigans that follow. 

Yeah, actually, I think that's the best way for me to summarize it: there's a portal-hopping shape-shifting havoc-wreaking worlds-colliding epic story starting up here (and don't think you're gonna see the end of it without picking up the next book) – but right from the first page is a warm, sweet center that gives life to the whole thing.  Take everything else I say with a grain of not-my-usual-genre salt, but I can promise you that SCHISM is a hellraiser with heart.

My favorite bit:

It was stupid. What was she to him? Oh yeah, a college buddy. She was the loud, weird chick in the art class, not exactly his type. His type was Heather. Heather the beauty, the girl who seemed to sweat strawberries from her teeny-tiny pores. Lea couldn't compare to her alive, and now – a ghost was perfect. She could never live up to a ghost.

Book Review: The Golden City

Look, people. I know there's certain best-practices to use in a book review.  You want to give people a balanced analysis of the whole thing: the plot, the characters, the writing, pacing, worldbuilding, etc.  You don't want to just pick one thing and go nuts about it.  It shouldn't read like a third-grade book report.

Well, this one does, and I'm not sorry. Mainly because it took all my self control not to just write THIS BOOK IS MY MOST FAVORITE fifty times in purple crayon. I'm absolutely serious here: if you liked the characters in Sixes, if you enjoyed the worldbuilding or the fishpeople or the manners or the history, go get this one. Do it. I'll wait.

The Golden City
by J. Kathleen Cheney

For two years, Oriana Paredes has been a spy among the social elite of the Golden City, reporting back to her people, the sereia, sea folk banned from the city’s shores....

When her employer and only confidante decides to elope, Oriana agrees to accompany her to Paris. But before they can depart, the two women are abducted and left to drown. Trapped beneath the waves, Oriana’s heritage allows her to survive while she is forced to watch her only friend die.

Vowing vengeance, Oriana crosses paths with Duilio Ferreira—a police consultant who has been investigating the disappearance of a string of servants from the city’s wealthiest homes. Duilio also has a secret: He is a seer and his gifts have led him to Oriana.

Bound by their secrets, not trusting each other completely yet having no choice but to work together, Oriana and Duilio must expose a twisted plot of magic so dark that it could cause the very fabric of history to come undone....


I'm sorry, I can't.  I don't have any clever hook to put here.  I just absolutely love this book.

More specifically, I love Oriana.

Most-specifically, I did not realize until now how monstrously thirsty I was to see a heroine – hell, a character of any gender – who is what I can only call "dauntlessly plain."  Like, she's perfectly intelligent, but not a genius.  She's not "feisty".  She's not snarky, or witty, or gorgeous-but-doesn't-know-it. She's not even fearless – and with good reason, because there's plenty for her to be afraid of here.  Her only superpower, if you want to call it that, is her refusal to quit: somebody has killed her mistress, and now there's nothing for it but to smooth her skirts and go after them.

Oh, and also she's a sereia, with some awesomesweet fish-lady powers.  That's neat too.

But honestly, I would have loved this book just as much even if it had been straight-up historical fiction, because the characters are just so unrelentingly SOLID.  Oriana and Duilio and 95% of the minor characters are good, thoughtful, sensible people, the kind who have the wisdom and emotional maturity to understand when others have their best interests at heart, and reciprocate their trust.  And that's what keeps a classic trope from becoming a cliché. There are past tragedies, but they're not treated as Torturous Dark Secrets. There's slowly growing interest/attraction between the two leads, but no "what is this sudden fire in my loins" insta-love. There are human characters with human limitations, but nobody has to be an irrational idiot to make the plot work.

And like... maybe it's just cuz I'm reading from the perspective of a writer, but I can't tell you how much I admire that.  It takes absolute, iron-clad skill and confidence to do what Cheney has done here.  To spend your whole first chapter with nothing more dramatic than a pair of women packing clothes and counting petticoats – and yet make it an important, compelling scene.  To craft a relationship strong enough that neither character needs to go into dramatics to keep it interesting.  To take the "every protagonist must have a crucial flaw" rule and snap it over your knee.

Anyway, I know no book is perfect, and I'm sure there are legitimate nits to pick somewhere in here, but frankly I don't care enough to go looking for them.  The characters in this book have all of what I love most about the people in my own life – grace, grit, compassion, and maturity – and, as in my own life, my only real regret is that I didn't get to know them sooner.

My favorite bit:

"My people tend to think of selkies as..." Her lips pressed into a thin line.

Duilio raised one brow as he opened the carriage door. "As?"

"Well, rather savage," she admitted. "They choose to live on the sea rather than in homes, as we do."

He helped her up. "Anything different is barbaric, Miss Paredes. You should see the Scots."

Book Review: Under the Empyrean Sky

You know the thing, where you have some particular book on your to-read list for what feels like forever?  And then you finally get around to reading it, and end up just wicked pissed that it took you so long, because that means all these other lesser humans who beat you to it have been walking around with this story in their heads for MONTHS now, and who the hell do they think they are?  Well?  WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

(Asking for a friend.)

Under the Empyrean Sky
by Chuck Wendig

Corn is king in the Heartland, and Cael McAvoy has had enough of it. It's the only crop the Empyrean government allows the people of the Heartland to grow—and the genetically modified strain is so aggressive that it takes everything the Heartlanders have just to control it. As captain of the Big Sky Scavengers, Cael and his crew sail their rickety ship over the corn day after day, scavenging for valuables. But Cael's tired of surviving life on the ground while the Empyrean elite drift by above in their extravagant sky flotillas. He's sick of the mayor's son besting Cael's crew in the scavenging game. And he's worried about losing Gwennie—his first mate and the love of his life—forever when their government-chosen spouses are revealed. But most of all, Cael is angry—angry that their lot in life will never get better and that his father doesn't seem upset about any of it. When Cael and his crew discover a secret, illegal garden, he knows it’s time to make his own luck...even if it means bringing down the wrath of the Empyrean elite and changing life in the Heartland forever.

Confession: I haven't read a lot of YA.  I want to.  I mean to. But sometimes the ones I pick up just seem so checklist-y, so paint-by-numbers, that it's hard to sit back and let the story do its own thing.

And I'll admit, I had a little bit of the checklist blues here in the beginning of this one.  Hero.  Best friend(s). Love interest/triangle. Rival. Parental issues/trauma. And because this is a dystopian, we also have the Totally Evil Empire, propped up by Totally Evil People – well, all right, MOSTLY evil people – because, you know, evil.

But hear me out, now: cornpunk.

Seriously. Evil corn. Evil, out-of-control corn sucking the life from the soil and sickening the people who tend it.  Corn so unnatural that you can use it for plastics, fuel, or anything else, just as long as you don't eat it.  Corn that is literally not even food.

THAT is what I showed up for, and that is what this book delivered in sinister leafy spades.  (And in case you were wondering, yes, we're definitely tilting at real-world windmills here: when the villain's name is "Agrasanto", it's not hard to imagine which two mega-corporations the author's got in his crosshairs).  Regardless, you read something like this here...

"Cael wipes blood off his arms and swats away a stalk of corn that has bent down toward him.  They say the corn can't smell blood, but Cael doesn't buy it."

... and if getting the toe-curling tickle-shivers reading that is wrong, then dang it, I don't wanna be right.

And then there's the creepy bio-domes.  And the pollen-storms.  And the plant-cancer.  And I don't know exactly where, but somewhere around the hundred-page mark, I forgot to count tropes or guess what would happen next and just got sucked into a world of giant threshing engines, plastic-bubble ghost-towns, and a trail of mysteriously fresh vegetables that leads out from the corn-fields, and into an action-tastic, page-burning plot.

I've read some other reviews of this book, talking about standard dystopian tropes and not-so-fleshy characters, and I can see where that comes from.  I do like it when books are more 'challenging' on that front – you know, when the story's people and institutions are more complex, less absolute.  My hope is that this book is taken up with establishing what the next one will skew/reverse/muddle, and that we'll get some more shades of gray going a little further on down the road.

Regardless, I'll tell you this: I sat in cold bathwater for the better part of an hour last night, helplessly pruning up as I tore through the last hundred pages with wild, wrinkly abandon, and I'm only writing this now so that my review wouldn't be colored by anything in the next book.

Which I'm downloading right now.

Because corn.

The corn compels me.

My favorite bit:

Normally he'd talk to her. Light, polite conversation: Heard a twister hit Guster's Grove couple days ago, piss-blizzard's coming, Lane and Rigo are good, got a portion of squealer meat a few weeks back, Pop's okay, so's Mer, got a shuck rat for dinner, everything's pretty fine, don't worry one lick about anything. He'd feel like a real monster telling her all the things that are really going on. All the things he's feeling. Hey, Mom, I know you're trapped inside that thing you call a body, and while I got you here, maybe I could burden you with MY problems? How's that sound?

Today, though, he's got to hurry off. Got to get Mer to milk the goat and then head to market.

He kisses his mother on her brow, just where the tumors recede - he's not grossed out by them anymore, but he hopes she still has some sensation left beyond the cancerous margins.

Book Review: Wave

Just a quick one, as I'm heading off early today for a day-quest to Houston.  This book is one I read with one of my tutoring students - a singular memoir, from a singular event.

 Wave
 by Sonali Deraniyagala

On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously clenched against a reality that she cannot face and cannot deny; and then, over the ensuing years, as she emerges reluctantly, slowly allowing her memory to take her back through the rich and joyous life she’s mourning, from her family’s home in London, to the birth of her children, to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge, to her childhood in Colombo; all the while learning the difficult balance between the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her.

Y'know, I finished this book over a year ago, but I think I'm only just now understanding it.  The light bulb came on when I read Film Crit Hulk's essay on Gamergate.  Here is the relevant quote (de-capitalized for your reading convenience):

One of the first things we are taught in writing is that good stories are about character arcs.  People start as these flawed, incomplete persons. And through the story they make choices, learn lessons and become better people along the way, thus completing an arc.

True, yes?

And you would expect that from this book, even though it's nonfiction and the 'character' is a real person.  Because when you read the premise – here is the story of a woman who lost her husband, parents, and both children in the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004- you settle in expecting the only narrative we've ever been given about these kinds of tragedies.  Hope. Resilience. Healing. Human connection. Learning to grieve and then move forward with a renewed sense of purpose.

Well, this isn't that.  This is the story of a woman who, from the moment she's pulled from the water to the very end of the book (six years later), makes very little effort for herself and none at all for anyone else. She doesn't help look for her family. She doesn't console any of the other survivors, in those awful first hours afterwards. She just sits there, sullen and passive, and then lies there, angry and suicidal, and when she finally does rouse herself again, months afterward, it's mostly to harass and abuse the family who is now living in her parents' house.  Yes, there is progress, and yes, there are milestones, but no gratitude for the people who have helped her, and no remorse for the way she's treated them.

Here's Film Crit Hulk again, from the same essay:

Meanwhile, Happy-Go-Lucky isn't about the arc of the character, but instead the arc of the audience. Our main character, Poppy (Sally Hawkins), goes along her way trying to keep the best of her enthusiasm, and people constantly tell her to be more world-weary. To protect herself. To not be so trusting. But instead of Poppy changing, we do. We the audience. ... We are the ones who grow. We are the ones who see things differently and change our perspective. And the effect is quite profound.

And here I think is the Big Idea.  If the character changes, we can think "yes, well done" and finish the book and pick up another.  But when the character remains a fixed object, WE are the ones who have to move in their orbit – and we are rarely obliging. We don't tend to like being challenged, especially by our entertainment.

And this is a challenging book.  If you're thoughtful about it, you might very well finish with some excellent questions.  Why do we treat the bereaved as though they owe us something for our sympathy?  Why SHOULD someone have to be the picture of grace and gratitude when their whole life is gone?  How would this story be different if the author didn't have the luxury of lying in bed for months at a time, being cared for by relatives and keeping a house she can no longer bear to live in?

Like I said, it's a singular book, and while I can't say I enjoyed the act of reading it, it's been paying dividends ever since.

My favorite bit:

I kept going back to Yala, obsessively, over the next months. I scavenged the debris of the hotel. I searched, dug about, scratched my arms on rusted metal. I pounced on fragments of plastic, did this come from one of our toys? Is this Malli's sock? What I really wanted was to find Crazy Crow, the big glove puppet with unruly black feathers that we had given Malli for Christmas, the day before the wave. When he tore open the wrapping and saw it, how he'd lit up.
...
I never did find Crazy Crow. I stopped searching the day I found the shirt Vik wore on our last evening, Christmas night. It was a lime-green cotton shirt. I remembered him fussing that he didn't want to wear it, it had long sleeves, which he didn't like. Steve rolled up the sleeves for him. "There, that looks smart." When I found the shirt, it was under a spiky bush, half-buried in sand. I pulled it out, not knowing what this piece of tattered yellowing fabric was. I dusted off the sand. Those parts of the shirt that had not been bleached by salt water and sun were still bright green. One of the sleeves was still rolled up.

Book Review: Crimson Son

Ahh, you guys.  THAT was a time.  That was a weekend!

I mean, I've been to cons before.  ConDFW isn't the biggest, or the weirdest, or the wildest.  But I tell you what: to date, it's the only time I've gotten to watch an author axe-kick an editor.

In this corner, Tae Kwon Do (Russ Linton). In this corner, also Tae Kwon Do (Adrian Simmons).
Behind them, Krav Maga, Bartitsu, and Tai Chi, respectively.
FIGHT!

For more on the cathartic beauty of the Literary UFC panel, see Russ Linton's Dealing With Rejection Through Physical Violence.  For more on Russ Linton... hang out here for a sec.

See, I have to post this big-ass disclaimer here, because I need you to know a couple of things before we get into the book review.  The thing is, I know Russ. I like Russ. I liked him pretty good even before he ninja-name-dropped our way out of a parking garage and co-ran the Shootout at the Obscure Genre Corral with me this weekend.  (NOW I think he's just fucking fabulous.)

And one of the reasons I like him so dang much is because he posted this wonderful review of One Night in Sixes.  In our world, reviews are gold - and a review that highlights the specially wonderful parts of a book while also being honest about its "watch out for" and "you might not like this if" features is mithril-coated vibranium starmetal.

But that's what he did for me - and by gum, that's what I'm gonna do for him!  So here in all its fully-disclosed glory is my review of Crimson Son.

Crimson Son
by Russ Linton

His mother kidnapped, his superhero father absent, powerless Spencer Harrington faces a world of weaponized humans to prove himself and find the truth. Nineteen-year-old Spencer is the son of the Crimson Mask, the world's most powerful Augment. Since witnessing his mother's abduction by a psychotic super villain two years ago, he's been confined to his father's arctic bunker. When the "Icehole" comes under attack from a rampaging robot, Spencer launches into his father's dangerous world of weaponized human beings known as Augments. With no superpowers of his own save a multi-tool, a quick wit and a boatload of emotional trauma, Spencer seeks to uncover his mother's fate and confront his absentee superhero father. As he stumbles through a web of conspiracies and top secret facilities, he rallies a team of everyday people and cast-off Augments. But Spencer soon discovers that the Black Beetle isn't his only enemy, nor his worst.

I think I tweeted about this book once by saying something along the lines of "because when the Black Beetle invades your ice-hole, you grab your multi-tool and GTFO." And if your first reaction to that is "I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'm up for it!" then boy, have I got a book for you.

For me, this is my first foray into superhero fiction (though I keep meaning to lay hands on Landon Porter's Descendants series).  At first, I was a little leery: the Spider-Man movies have covered my RDA of angsty super-white-boys until about 2025 - and we all know there is no angst like teen angst.

In this case, it's coming from Spencer Harrington, the powerless son of the world's greatest hero (well, almost-powerless: that boy can shake off traumatic brain injuries like most of us can walk off a charley-horse.) But we start out here with an intriguing premise: what's it like to be one of the Aunt Mays and Mary Janes of the super-verse?  What kind of life can you have when you're every villain's dream hostage – and how do you avoid resenting the super-spouse or -parent whose need to protect you has basically turned you into their prisoner?

And yes, there is teen angst, and a few moments of willful buttheadery (I imagine living in permanent solitary at the North Pole doesn't really help the whole social-skills thing), and one or two terrible decisions. But as great as it is to ask the question, "how can a normal kid hold his own in a super-powered world?", I'm even more delighted with the author's answer: "by making friends, using his heart and skill, and relying on the help of good people – supers and not-so-much – to get the job done."  Think Big Hero 6, if Baymax were a giant homicidal bug-mech named Cuddles.

But as much as I like what's here in the story, I almost appreciate it more for what's missing.  There's no love interest, for one thing (which isn't to say there's no leading lady - and let me say here that I am SO THIRSTY for more stories like this, where guys and gals can have a rock-solid friendship, Captain-America-and-Black-Widow-style, without all the will-they/won't-they business!)  No DBZ-esque "I will defeat you with the power of my rage" special-snowflakery.  And apart from a lamentably vapid fat lady and one villain's penchant for Alec-Baldwin levels of petulant cruelty, no 'types', either.  The characters feel like real people – and more than that, they treat each other like real people.  Nobody is the axis of the universe, here. Nobody is unimportant.

So if you're wondering what the trade-off is for all the gorgeous comic artwork you don't get in a novel, I think that's it right there. Sure, there's still building explosions and car crashes and narrow escapes and super-gadgetry and possibly even a cape – but there's also that deeper stuff that characterizes (what I consider) the very best superhero stories, like The Incredibles and Watchmen. We have time to meditate on what happens to these super-people when they're used up and broken, and to the regular people who have to live in their shadow.  We have room to consider what separates a good parent from a good-intentioned one, and how to let go of somebody you shouldn't have had to lose in the first place, and why we keep wanting what we can't have. We have a super-verse where the heroes don't all wear spandex, and the villains aren't all bad people.

As it happens, this is a first novel, with some of the challenges that first novels have: I feel like it could be about 10% leaner, and I encourage you to give it 50 pages to really hit its stride.  But boy, if this is what a first novel can be - if this guy can pack this much action and drama and humor and heart into a freaking debut - then you definitely want to be caught up and ready before he drops his second.  I'll save you a spot in line.

My favorite bit:

I turn to the door. No keypad, not even a handle on this side. The seam around the door is so tight, I don't think a piece of paper could slip between it and the frame. Outside, Dad is playing ass-puppet for an Augment, and Emily is doing a good job as an Exorcist stand-in. In here, I've got no tools, no battle armor, and no underappreciated minions on my side.

I slump against the door. "We're fucked."

Book Review: The Transformation of Lawrence Croft

What's this?  Two blog posts in one week?  Have I gone mad?!

No - but I am going to ConDFW this weekend!  And to celebrate, I thought I would post the thematically-appropriate first entry in what will hopefully be a weekly feature: book reviews!  (See, all that about me going to read more wasn't just hot air.)

This is one I picked up at the last local con, from an author named Mark Finn, who absolutely floored me at his reading.  Around here, he's Kind of a Big Deal - and that was before we found out this week that he's been tapped to write for Conan. Seriously, seriously check this out.

The Transformation of Lawrence Croft
by Mark Finn

MagicCon is an ordinary fantasy/science fiction convention. Three days of comic books, anime, and X-Files jokes, which is exactly what Larry Croft and his friends D.J. McGuiness, Fred "The Turk" Terkington, and Burt Vaughn, are looking for. Unfortunately for Larry, a long-forgotten Roman god named Stercutus is primed to make a comeback, and this particular god's sphere of influence really stinks. What follows is a picaresque mash-up of Urban Fantasy and Fandom as worlds collide, friendships are forged, and confusion abounds in a city of secret magic and a sub-culture that Wants To Believe.

The first time I interacted with Mark Finn, we were both on a panel at a local sci-fi/fantasy convention. I was saying something about having gotten into fandom back in the heady days of AOL and dial-up modems and Sailor Moon e-zines.  He looked at me with a pained expression, rubbed his forehead, and said "Kid, you're makin' my tumors throb."

I tell you this because you need to understand one vital fact about this book: it could not have been written by anyone but a world-class geek, someone who has lived and loved the con scene for literally decades... and there truly is no school like the old school.

Yes, there are jokes and stereotypes large and small (and like the con-goers Finn pokes fun at, trending towards large.)  Yes, the four main characters are, with one happy exception, socially regressive nerdbros.  But it's comedy of the "King of the Hill" varietal: a loving, exquisite, self-deprecating send-up of the neighborhood, as only a local could write it. (And to be clear, that's a small n – the Neighborhood here is something else entirely).  It's Clerks nerd-banter with Bill and Ted comradery and Galaxy Quest-level misunderstandings. It's absolutely funny, but the humor doesn't come at the expense of heart.

I'm sure if I looked hard enough, I could find some nits to pick.  There are plenty of characters to keep track of, which was right up my alley, but may give some readers a mental CPU spike.  The group of women introduced near the end veer a little close to the Sex and the City school of cattery for my taste (though the fan-snubbing author-celebrity-vampire Jane Callow is an unvarnished delight). And I might wish that the narrative cast its aspersions with a little less omniscience: I'm okay with someone being a sloppy sadsack disaster - delighted, in fact! - but to me it's better when that's just one character's take, rather than the judgment of the universe at large. (Because then we-the-reader can take a page from the Book of the Dude.)

Regardless: it's no exaggeration to say that this is hands-down the most fun book I've read in at LEAST a year, and I will absolutely recommend it to anyone who has ever rules-lawyered their way out of a critical hit, worn their favorite Star Trek shirt a few too many days in a row, or smelled day-three con-funk and lived to tell the tale.  Don't miss this book - and if you're heading to the con this weekend, don't miss Mark either!

My favorite bit:

"Okay, oh Wizened Sage, who do gamers not like?" said Burt.

"Well, they can't afford to not like anybody, can they?" muttered Turk.

D.J. peered at the ceiling in concentration.  "Oh, I guess if you had to pick someone they didn't like, it would probably be the cosplayers and, uh, maybe the fanfic writers." The metaphor was falling apart, but as an intellectual riddle, it beat watching the hotel television.

"So, basically," said Burt slowly, "what you're saying is, the difference between a geek and a nerd is anyone who eats more paste than you two?"

"Yeah... hey, fuck you, man!"

The Great SFF Book Bonanza of 2015

Okay, y'all.  I have an ugly confession to make. I'm warning you right now: it's bad. It's real bad.

Are you ready? Promise not to be mad?

All right, here it is: I basically didn't read last year.

And before your monocle drops in the champagne, let me clarify: I DID read. I totally did. I read for work - let me tell you, I am now the James Wood of 10th- and 11th-grade Catholic school booklists - and for my friends, several of whom have manuscripts so amazing that my fists curl in disgust every time I realize that you guys can't read them yet.

But in terms of voluntary, published, pull-it-off-the-shelf-and-buy-it leisure reading - forget keeping abreast of new releases; I haven't even glimpsed a side-boob.

It is most definitely time to change that.

So this is where I throw myself at your feet and clasp your knees like a Greek supplicant and say "help me, benevolent literarian - deliver me from my prison of ignorance and squalor."  Would you, could you, pretty please with a cherry on top:

1. Recommend me a book, novella, or short story
2. of the sci-fi/fantasy/spec-fic persuasion
3. that was professionally published in 2014
4. and that you thought was terrific.

I know - it's a tall and oddly specific order. But here's the thing: the Hugo and Nebula nominations are open for a limited time only (and man, if anybody knows when the Hugo noms close, clue me in, because my and Google's best guess is mid-March).  And as someone who is now actually eligible to vote in both, I am anxious not to let some wonderful deserving Uncle-Ben masterpiece languish and die on the cold streets of collective indifference before I learn to use my powers for good.


AND SPEAKING OF DESERVING MASTERPIECES

see what I did there

If you are likewise of the SFF awards-voting persuasion, let me tell you about this amazing novel. It's called One Night in Sixes (but would have been better titled A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, if that bastard Eggers hadn't beaten me to it) and it is NOT ONLY Hugo and Nebula eligible, BUT ALSO a seminal entry in what is sure to be this year's hottest subgenre: epic fantasy literary Western culturepunk (or "rural fantasy" for short.)  Behold the stunning literary triumph that readers are calling "bad shit happens... then worse shit happens"! Marvel at what Publisher's Weekly hails as "murky" and GCE calls a "sweaty hot mess"! (The town of Sixes, that is.)  And if you like the sound of a slightly-wrecked Dark Tower-esque fantasy world with a funky, multicultural Deep Space Nine aesthetic, cowboy up and get you some.

PUT IT IN YOUR FACE.

(And if your gunnysack is coming up short on folding-money, hit me up. One Night in Sixes e-scholarship program available for a limited time.)

Okay, but anyway. Stories. Recs. Give them to me! And lest you think I'm completely helpless, here are the gems of 2014 I've already got jockeying for top spot on my TBR pile:

 Russ Linton - Crimson Son 

"Because when the Black Beetle invades your ice-hole, you grab your multi-tool and GTFO." I'm actually angry I haven't read this yet.  SUPERHERO BILDUNGSROMAN, GET IN ME.

Chuck Wendig - Blightborn

Because his dystopia is cooler than your dystopia. Because evil corn, that's why.

Beth Cato - The Clockwork Dagger 

Clerics and airships and murder and semi-rescued puppies and I KNEW HER BEFORE SHE WENT MAINSTREAM, dammit!

J.K. Cheney - The Seat of Magic

Her fishmen are sexier than mine. Her covers are colorier than mine. And her research - oh, let's not even talk about mine. Look, it's gaslamp fantasy with sirens in Portugal. Don't act like you're not excited.

Cixin Liu - The Three Body Problem

Confession: I don't know what this book is about. I don't WANT to know what this book is about. All I know is, 85% of my favorite people are completely over the moon about it, and I cannot wait to sit down and have the most amazing blind-date ever.






Okay. So those are my starter Pokemon. Think yours can compete with mine?  Prove it!  Put up your recs - my TBR pile can take anything you can dish out!

Women in Fiction: You're Doing It Wrong

Well, look: I just finished reading Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind, and won't bore you with all of the particulars (my review is over hither.)  But there's a lot to it, good and bad, and this blog is nothing if not a Sarlacc pit for fiction.

Anyway, I'll keep this particular digestive contraction short.  Here is the thing: writers of the world, you do not have to have women in your books.  Really.  There are some truly fine first-rate stories in which women are nowhere in the picture: the Old Man and the Sea was exactly that, Bilbo Baggins got there and back again with nary a lady in sight, and I'll spare you the Moby Dick reference.  In short, there is nothing wrong with sporting an all-male cast.

BUT (and boy, it's a big but.)  If you're going to feature women in your story, and you want my dollars and my readership, I would kindly ask that you balance out your stupid and/or submissive women with some of the other kind.  Think of it like fixing your carbon footprint by planting some trees. 

"But," you may say, "writing women is HARD.  The delicate-flower thing isn't PC anymore, but everybody gives you grief if you just make a man with tits."

BOY do I hear that.  So here's what you do: go watch Firefly.  Doesn't take long; they canned it after like one season.  Watch and learn, and then, get feminine.  You might even like it.

Sir? I'd like you to take the helm, please. I need this man to tear all my clothes off.

New This Week #3: Finding Misery

Well, this was an apt title to choose for today - I wouldn't say I've exactly found MISERY, but I did just find out that my submission didn't make it through this round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, so it's not exactly puppies and rainbows either.

Anyway, so Finding Misery, by Russell C. Connor.  This guy is another I’ve met through the book group; as before, I wanted to try at least one of his books, but I confess: ever since Pet Sematary scared the daylights out of my 12-year-old self, I’ve been too chicken to revisit the horror genre, which is Connor’s bread and butter.  (I do really want to try his Whitney at some point, though: the idea of setting a horror story in the aftermath of a hurricane, when the power is out and streets are flooded and looters are prowling through wrecked homes EVEN BEFORE the unspeakable whatever-it-is comes crawling up out of the sea, is pretty thrillsome just on principle.)

So I was delighted to find out that he had a new book just coming out, this one in something of a different vein.  I could sketch it out here, but let me put it to you the way that the book itself does: our man – earnest nice-guy underachiever Rudy Compton – just found out that his wife is cheating on him.  Again.  And in the aftermath, on his first and only night in jail, shit gets REALLY weird, REALLY fast.  I want to emphasize this opening part of the book, because for me, it’s what sells the whole thing.  Sure, there’s plenty of awesomeweird spec-fic supernatural stuff further in, but I wouldn’t have gotten that far if Rudy’s Earth-normal life didn’t hook me all by itself.  I think Connor’s winning strategy comes down to two things, really.

1.  Triggering the reader’s morbid curiosity / rubbernecker instinct.  Relationship drama (of the call-the-cops varietal) is always ugly, fascinating stuff, and packs an extra punch here because it’s as new and shocking to Rudy as it is to us – this is NOT his accepted norm.  Which brings me to:

2.  Casting Rudy as a true newbie in all this – sharp-witted and a little scrappy but also profoundly lost.  You can picture Ed Norton’s character in Fight Club without going far off the mark, and maybe that’s the best way to sum it up: in both cases, it’s the voyeuristically-detailed shambles of the main character’s life that draw you in, and the story just gets bigger from there.  

There's a few more points to make about this book, but all of them are over in my review, so I'll leave it here.  Apparently even the rejected entries get feedback from two reviewers though, so I'll probably come cast up my private shame here in the next day or so.  Look forward to it!

Hemingway said to never write about a place until you're away from it, because it gives you perspective.  But one look at that exposed metal toilet in the front corner of the cell reminds me I'm no Hemingway.

New This Week #2: That Weird City

This one is harder to write about, but I want to try and do it justice.  That Weird City, by Aaron Jacobs and C. Brian Hickey, is a collection of ten spec-fic short stories, which I hate for furthering the stereotypes of self-published work, and love for every other reason under the sun.

First, the beefs: there are typos and errors galore, and several of the stories desperately need to go back in the drawer for a substantial reworking. That first part’s easy enough to fix – one careful read-through by a good editor would have taken care of it. The second part, though, is what really showcases the difficulty of writing sci-fi and fantasy short stories. Of the four that fell flat for me, three were doing what would have worked PERFECTLY in novel-length fiction: setting up a fantastical scenario, explaining the rules of the magic system / super-technology, and then forcing the protagonists to duke it out within the given rule-set, often by doing something clever to overcome long odds and carry the day.

What sucks is that that tends not to work in short stories, because even if you’re efficient and canny in explaining how her Grass-type Pokemon beat his Fire-type Pokemon because she Pokevolved the Bulbasaur into an Ivysaur at the last minute and then used Overgrow to KO the Charmander… it still tends to evoke more of an “oh, okay” than an “ohmygod NO WAY.” I think that’s because after you’ve spent so many words setting that all up, and more words on top of that to describe all the resulting awesomecool special effects, you the short-story writer have very little space left to accomplish what the novelist still has chapters and chapters’ worth of room for: creating emotional investment in the character(s), amping up the tension and the stakes, and bringing the reader right to the edge of their proverbial seat before the first Pokeball is thrown.

The thing is, though, there is PLENTY of evidence in this collection to show that Hickey and Jacobs are black-belt masters at all of the above, and the simplest of their stories show it off the best. For example, there’s the one about the second-grader, whose monster under the bed is actually real. That’s it – that’s all the setup you need. It’s real, it’s under there, it wants to eat her, and let me tell you, by the time you get to the part where the monster is starting to ever-so-slowly tip the bed, your eyeballs will be RIVETED to the page.

And maybe part of the reason why that’s so gob-smackingly effective is because it’s scarier and more mysterious when you DON’T know all the rules. Maybe that’s the real advantage of the short-story format: for almost the entirety of your 10-30 pages, you can absolutely marinate the reader in the “strange happenstance” phenomenon that the novelist is obliged to start actually explaining after the first three chapters.

And at the end of it, that is why I will absolutely recommend That Weird City to anyone with a passing interest: it’s HARD to pull off a triple-lutz, and the fact that these guys occasionally fall flat on the ice in attempting it actually serves to underscore what an ambitious, talented, and profoundly entertaining program they’ve created.  Like I said in my review, $3 won’t buy you a better time anywhere.

Come back tomorrow for Finding Misery, in which Misery absolutely does come with the capital 'M'.

There was rioting, yes, in the first days after the announcement.  Rioting, and skirmishes, even a nuclear exchange somewhere in Asia.  It was all just a tantrum.  A species kicking its feet and flailing its arms, not wanting to be put to bed.

New This Week #1: Emperor Mollusk vs the Sinister Brain

Actually, I believe one of these came out two weeks ago, but nevermind: I have conquered no less than three books in the last seven days, and since they are all new releases from less-than-ridiculously-famous authors, I wanted to take a minute to showcase them for you, the discerning fiction enthusiast.

First up is Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain, by A. Lee Martinez.  Full disclosure: I met the author at my local writing workshop, and then went to find some of his books.  The only one I could immediately get my hands on was A Nameless Witch, which I read and for the most part enjoyed, but also had serious issues with (you can see my review over here.)  So I had tempered my expectations for this new novel, even in spite of its scintillating title.

Well, let me tell you: it lives up to the name.  This is a pulp-tastic Earth-and-space adventure with mutant dinosaurs and cheerfully voracious cyborg-centipedes and immortal mummy queens and loads more besides – and what really impressed me isn’t that it’s fun and colorful and creative all the way through, but that all of it is used to overlay a Deep Thought or two – pretty artfully, to my mind.  I guess my biggest regret with this book is that all of those neato-terrific creatures and setpieces are so transient: coming from a section of the bookstore where you can readily expect to spend a sequel or three with all the fantastic characters and conceits from the Discworld or the Hitchhiker’s Guide, glossing over these ones here in the space of a couple hundred pages (and really more like thirty apiece, since the narrative keeps us hustling on through) is like having only half an hour to tour the whole of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory: frustrating as hell, but what a great problem to have!

Tune in tomorrow for That Weird City, a collection of short stories for which 'weird' is just the beginning.

Mutant insects were eating Kansas.
Again.

Today's Special: Cream of Yesterday

Didn't get to do as much on the career-oriented do-list this week - there was just a monstrous pile of responsibility waiting for me when we got home from Houston - BUT:

--read Dresden Files 3!  Review is over hither: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/285555442

--went back to writers' workshop and read again, and it worked out just swell: it was a whole different group of people, so I got to read my same piece from last week over again (having fixed a couple of small things in the interim), and this time I did it slowly and without having a nervous aneurysm - to much better effect!  Overall it was much better received, but there was enough continuity in the criticisms from week 1 to week 2 to make it real clear what I need to do with this first bit.  One scene down... only 127 more to read!

--did some homework on the agents attending the writing conference in May, and picked out my top three choices for pitching.  I still don't know much about what the actual pitch itself should be like, but there's time enough to work on that.

I am aiming to put a lot more time into the reading/writing/posting sphere over this upcoming week, though it's hard to know exactly what to do next.  It doesn't make sense to rip back into editing the manuscript just yet, but I would not like to be idle, either.  Maybe the next job should be the language-construction stuff.  I can go bang out a neuter-gender for French regardless of what actual dialogue is going to get used in the book.

Well, the NEXT job is getting out of this chair and going to bed so that I can get up early tomorrow, fix breakfast, go hurry and clean my folks' house, come home, fix lunch, and get my ducks in order before my new class starts tomorrow afternoon.  But thanks for the foray into fantasyland, Internetizens - see you again ASAP!

Holy brillig and slithy toves, Batman.