Reviewed by Superwench83

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Not so in Blake Charlton’s world. In his novel Spellwright, not only can words break your bones, but they can chop off your limbs, stab your heart, and create all [...]]]>

Spellwright
by Blake Charlton
Tor Books
Hardcover – $24.99 (discounted at Amazon and elsewhere)

Reviewed by Superwench83

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Not so in Blake Charlton’s world. In his novel Spellwright, not only can words break your bones, but they can chop off your limbs, stab your heart, and create all sorts of mayhem. Combined with a classic fantasy plot and a sympathetic hero, this high-concept idea becomes a story that is utterly fresh, while retaining that familiar fantasy genre feel.

Even if you read Spellwright for nothing else, the magic system alone makes this novel worth your time. This is a book for language lovers. A magic system based wholly on the written word. But not the written words as we know it. In Spellwright, magicians use their bodies to form their spells, forging letters from muscles and rolling them down the arm and off the hand. Different languages affect the world in different ways. One, for example, is a physical language. It can be used to create solid barriers, where the words act as densely-packed molecules to form physical objects. And with a magic system built around the written word, spellcasting requires proper spelling. It’s like HTML and other computer languages—one wrong letter can alter things enormously. Except that faulty HTML generally isn’t lethal.

In a world where magical power depends on a magician’s ability to spell, someone with a spelling problem is someone with a disability. Such people are called cacographers in Spellwright. And that’s one of the things I really found interesting about this book. It examines both the way our society views people with disabilities and the way they view themselves. Even more interesting is that Blake Charlton knows firsthand what his cacographer protagonist is feeling. Severely dyslexic himself, he spent his school years in learning disabled classes and struggled with reading until he discovered fantasy books. His personal understanding makes Spellwright a poignant look at the life of those with learning disabilities.

The protagonist Nicodemus Weal’s struggle is a sympathetic one, and the grace with which he handles it makes him endearing. The only real complaint I have with this book is that I wish the secondary characters had been as endearing as Nicodemus. I felt that they lacked the appeal which Nicodemus had because their conflicts weren’t as personal as his. While likeable, they didn’t inspire the same love as Nicodemus did.

Spellwright is a story with a prophecy, a magician, and a dragon. It also gives whole new meaning to such words as “ghostwriting” and “purple prose.” I loved being able to read a story with such a classic genre plot without feeling like I’d read this book a hundred times before. It’s like painting a beige room red—it’s the same room, but with a whole new look entirely. Spellwright is a wonder-filled and exciting read, and I’m very much looking forward to the next book.

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky – a palace above the clouds where gods’ and mortals’ lives are intertwined.

There, to her shock, Yeine is [...]]]>

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
by N.K. Jemisin
Orbit Books
Trade Paperback – $13.99
Epic Fantasy

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky – a palace above the clouds where gods’ and mortals’ lives are intertwined.

There, to her shock, Yeine is named one of the potential heirs to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with a pair of cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother’s death and her family’s bloody history.

But it’s not just mortals who have secrets worth hiding and Yeine will learn how perilous the world can be when love and hate – and gods and mortals – are bound inseparably.

Here’s a novel that’s making a big splash. And quite excitingly, the author is a woman. I’ve been on the lookout for debut epic fantasy authors by women, because there were so few (actually, none that I knew of) that came out in the last year or so. Now, this week, I have two to announce! Plus, this part of the Inheritance Trilogy. As in three books. Not an unending mega-series. Throw that in with the intriguing blurb, and I must get a copy.

The River Kings’ Road
by Liane Merciel
Pocket Books
Hardcover – $

A fragile period of peace between the eternally warring kingdoms of Oakharn and Langmyr is shattered when a surprise massacre fueled by bloodmagic ravages the Langmyrne border village of Willowfield, killing its inhabitants — including a visiting Oakharne lord and his family — and leaving behind a scene so grisly that even the carrion eaters avoid its desecrated earth. But the dead lord’s infant heir has survived the carnage — a discovery that entwines the destinies of Brys Tarnell, a mercenary who rescue the helpless and ailing babe, and who enlists a Langmyr peasant, a young mother herself, to nourish and nurture the child of her enemies as they travel a dark, perilous road…

Odosse, the peasant woman whose only weapons are wit, courage, and her fierce maternal love — and who risks everything she holds dear to protect her new charge… Sir Kelland, a divinely blessed Knight of the Sun, called upon to unmask the architects behind the slaughter and avert war between ancestral enemies… Bitharn, Kelland’s companion on his journey, who conceals her lifelong love for the Knight behind her flawless archery skills — and whose feelings may ultimately be Kelland’s undoing… and Leferic, an Oakharne Lord’s bitter youngest son, whose dark ambitions fuel the most horrific acts of violence.

As one infant’s life hangs in the balance, so too does the fate of thousands, while deep in the forest, a Maimed Witch practices an evil bloodmagic that could doom them all…

I already have a copy of The River Kings’ Road by Liane Merciel, the other female author of an epic fantasy, mentioned above. And I’ve already read it. As I’ve mentioned previously, the idea of a nursing mother involved in a fantasy quest was a strong hook for me. Plus, I love epic fantasies. I plan to post a review this week, but in the meantime, you can see what Robert thought.

How to Knit a Love Song
by Rachael Herron
HarperCollins
Trade Paperback – 13.99
Contemporary Romance

Abigail is more than ready for a change when she inherits a cottage from her beloved mentor, knitting guru Eliza Carpenter. Leaving the oppressive city for the greener pastures of a small California beach town, she intends to turn her cozy little windfall into a knitting shop and spend her days spinning, designing, and purling. But she’s not going to be welcomed with open arms by her new neighbor. Eliza’s disgruntled nephew, the gorgeous Cade, now owns everything surrounding Abigail’s ramshackle new home, and he views this sexy city girl as an unwanted interloper.

But chemistry working overtime is drawing two very different people closer than they ever thought possible. And when the past that Abigail thought she’d left behind comes calling, she’ll have to somehow learn to trust her handsome adversary with much more than just her heart.

I’m not sure how to classify this one. It sounds like a romance, but I’m cautious of labeling. Suffice to say, it’s a love story. I think it’s hilarious that her mentor’s nephew must endure this “hole” in his newly-inherited land. The reading of the will alone sounds like it would be great fun.

Warrior Ascended
by Addison Fox
Signet Eclipse
MM Paperback – $7.99
Paranormal Romance

Charming, proud, and impulsive, Leo Warrior Brody Talbot is fighting what may be his final battle. Enyo, the Goddess of War, plans to fulfill an ancient prophecy to destroy humanity by harnessing the dark power of the Summoning Stones of Egypt. There’s only one person who knows enough about the stones to help Brody stop her-beautiful museum curator Ava Harrison.

Never in all his centuries has Brody met a woman who enthralls him like Ava. But, bound to protect her, he struggles to deny his passion as they are drawn into a dark and dangerous final reckoning between good and evil.

The description on the author’s website provides a lot of backstory, so be sure to visit if you’re interested. It looks like there’s twelve novels planned in the series, which is called Sons of the Zodiac. Each novel will concentrate on a sign of the Zodiac.

~*~

I have more debuts on my calendar, but since I want  to post this on Tuesday morning, I’ll just stop here. As always, I’d love to know if any of these interest you.

- Read Part 1 at SFSignal -

Part 2: The New York Times Book Review Hates YOU, [...]]]>

For the Love of Pete, Don’t Mix Your Genres;
Or… The New York Times Book Review Hates YOU, but I Don’t;
Or… Why Where Your Book Gets Shelved Determines Your Intelligence, Work-Ethic and Value to Society

- Read Part 1 at SFSignal -

Part 2: The New York Times Book Review Hates YOU, But I Don’t.

We have just seen how we, the prejudiced book-buyers, are at least partially to blame for the state of the publishing industry. But why are we so prejudiced in the first place? Simple, we have been taught to be prejudiced! By whom, you may ask? Well, by everyone, of course. As readers we tell each other that the greatest strength of all, the most important thing to be, is critical – and by this we almost always mean deeply, embarrassingly prejudiced. I don’t know that we mean to do it. But we do. We take sides. EVERYONE takes sides – including both publishers and reviewers. I’m not sure why publishers do it. I have some theories, but nothing that makes sense from a business perspective. As for reviewers, they do it because they are human beings, and so labor under a host of imperatives and misconceptions that arise both as a result of the needs of their peculiar business and their prejudicial upbringing as readers.

Let’s start (and more or less end) with the BIG reviewers, publications like The New York Times Book Review (I choose that rag because it’s my hometown nest of vipers, and because it’s a good representative, not because they are the only such publication), henceforth to be called the NYTBR for laziness reasons. What a great many of us (maybe all of us) know is that the NYTBR is deeply conservative in their absolute fealty to that aforementioned monolith, ‘literary’ fiction. They throw a bone to the imaginative types every once in a while – likely to keep us from kicking their doors down – but at heart they are deeply prejudiced against fantasy, sci-fi, horror, YA, romance and all the rest of the so-called ‘genres.’

Don’t believe me? Just for fun, let’s see what the NYTBR thought of The Name of the Wind, a book that was all the buzz of the fantasy world just a couple years ago. It won awards, was almost universally praised by readers and online reviewers, and given all sorts of stars by pre-publication reviews like Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. So what did the NYTBR think? Hmmm… You know, they don’t seem to have reviewed that book. It was on their best-seller list… but no review. Still, they can’t review EVERY book. Even good ones have to get left off once in a while. So let’s make it easier on the poor NYTBR. I know; I’ll link to their very best review for any book by Janny Wurts. She’s got so many books. Surely they’ve reviewed at least… What’s that? Not even one review? But she’s an almost universally admired fantasist! Obviously I’m being too tricky. Let’s try a really easy one. Let’s look for the NYTBR of the first Harry Potter novel. Hooray! We found a genre novel that the NYTBR seems to have found worthy of reviewing! http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/14/books/children-s-books-199338.html I feel good about this. I really do. Maybe the NYTBR isn’t quite as prejudiced as I thought.

But wait, Harry Potter debuted in this country in October of 1998, and they didn’t review it until February of 1999, after it was already a huge success overseas, winning awards by the bushel, and vacuuming up piles of cash. You don’t think the old gray girl printed a review so that she wouldn’t seem totally out of touch? I mean really, how rare is it to have a book four months old getting reviewed by the NYTBR? It must happen all the time, right? No? But not never, surely. Only for books they somehow missed the first time around? But how in the name of Thor did they miss Harry? He was GREAT! Everyone knows that now. Even they know it NOW, it seems. So how did they miss it back in October of 1998?

The answer, of course, is that Harry Potter is a part of two genres that the NYTBR is prejudiced against, namely fantasy and YA. And the NYTBR is not alone. The simple fact is that ‘genre’ work is ghettoized by big print media. It’s not that there’s a lack of excellent science fiction, YA, romance, fantasy or horror being published – I think even the editors of the NYTBR would agree that there most assuredly is – its just that those types of works are not really eligible for those types of big national reviews. The exception, of course, being ‘genre’ works by established ‘literary’ stars like Cormac McCarthy. The NYTBR loved The Road, and well they should. I loved it myself. It was probably no worse than the fourth or fifth best post-apocalyptic novel I have read (none of the others won Pulitzers, however). But let’s face facts, it is a sci-fi novel as sure as anything.

So what’s wrong with big print media focusing on ‘literary’ fiction? Remember the accusations our friend Sonya Chung made? It’s so much easier to be a writer of ‘imaginative’ fiction, right? The ‘literary’ types need their big print reviews or else they’d dry up and blow away. Is this correct?

Let’s be honest, fantasy readers are not one whit more likely to pick up a fantasy novel by a writer they have never heard of than your ‘literary’ type is to pick up a novel by a writer she has never heard of, regardless of the quality of the book. But without a big voice backing them, the kind only big print media has, how exactly is the average reader supposed to hear about new books and new writers in the realm of imaginative fiction? The internet does huge service in that regard (thank god), but it’s a crapshoot at best. Even the most visited sites have only a fraction of the readership of the NYTBR, and are more often than not staffed by a tiny group of dedicated reviewers, nowhere near the numbers necessary to give each and every book a shot. The one way in which internet reviewers truly have it over big print media is that they for the most part do what they do for love, and so are not as irreparably bound in by prejudice as the NYTBR and its ilk. Sure they have specialties, but as they are more like Mom and Pop enterprises there are no corporate sponsors who will cry if they decide to go outside their normal milieu.

Well, now THAT is a horrendous accusation! Am I suggesting that big print media is somehow bought? That they are beholden to some faceless corporate sponsor? I am not. The corporate sponsors are anything but faceless. You need only get a copy of any of those big reviews and glance at the advertisers to get a taste for who really owns those publications. So who are these advertisers? I bet you already guessed it! The publishers themselves.

If you’re like me, the whole sickening nature of these big print reviews is starting to come into focus. But there is one more major player – as usual, the most major player – the identification of which will go that much farther toward explaining why the NYTBR hates You. And that is $$$$$$.

I am going to admit something which may surprise some of you. I used to work in publishing. I worked for an agent. It was a good job, with lots of free books, an inside view of the industry, and the opportunity to converse with loads of talented, dedicated people who all cared about the same sorts of things I cared about (and still do). But one of the things I learned while working at the agency is that book advances are not equal, and really confusing. And this is where the whole pot begins to bubble over.

You see, the bigger publishing houses pay huge advances to the ‘literary’ types. I can remember, all too often, high six-figure advances for first novels. FIRST NOVELS! Unless you’re hugely famous and a proven money-maker, you are not going to get that type of advance for any sort of ‘genre’ novel. But we don’t even need to use those huge six figure advances to see where the problem lies. Let’s imagine that our friend Sonya Chung (the ‘literary’ apologist we so enjoyed eviscerating above), got an advance of $20K for her forthcoming first novel (A lot of my genre friends are salivating, I know – and believe me, in the world of ‘literary’ fiction 20K is NOTHING). If she gets 10% (the standard royalty rate) of the sale price of every book sold at a cover price of $25, she would have to sell eight-thousand copies just to earn her advance (royalty rates do escalate as you sell more copies, but this is a good place to start). If we believe her rhetoric, that ‘literary’ books are so underappreciated and undersold, how in the name of heaven is she going to sell 8000 copies? And what if she has to sell enough to earn back $60K? Or more? How many books do those six figure advances have to sell? The mind boggles, and I think we can all agree that her publisher had better get busy making sure that we all hear about her book pronto!

Of course, that’s where the NYTBR comes in. They may not be willing to review books by relatively unknown fantasy writers like Patrick Rothfuss or Janny Wurts, but they review first novels by ‘literary’ types all the time! (A recent example: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/books/review/Thomas-t.html?ref=books) They have to! If they don’t constantly turn out a stream of information about the ‘literary’ newcomers, the publishers are going to go broke! And then who will buy ads in their publication?

The worst part about this is that, during the six years I spent working at the agency, there were only a handful of times when these ‘literary’ works actually managed to earn their advances. I won’t name names, but suffice to say that there are biggies in the field of ‘literary’ fiction who have likely never received a royalty check, and never expect to. Which means, undoubtedly, that the big ‘genre’ writers – folks like Dean Koontz, Nora Roberts and Dan Brown (the very writers Sonya Chung so damns) – as well as a whole army of struggling lesser-known imaginative writers, are in essence subsidizing the losses incurred by all those poor ‘literary’ types like Sonya Chung! And she has the gall to hate us?

You may ask yourself, why don’t the publishers simply stop giving out those huge advances to unknown, underperforming and underwhelming ‘literary’ writers? Then ‘literary’ fiction could take its rightful place as one genre among many; the NYTBR and its brethren could begin to review based on quality rather than prejudice; and as readers we could all hope that the cream of real literature might rise to the top, regardless of what color cow the milk came from. You know the strangest part? Holding back the huge advances would, in the long run, help the vast majority of the ‘literary’ writers as well, most of whom find themselves laboring under ever-growing records of low sales and losses, which even the publishers begin to see as odious (making future books that much more difficult to get published at all, regardless of quality. Remember this, oh hopeful writers, ALL failures are ultimately laid upon the head of the author!). It sounds so easy! So why don’t they just stop giving all those debilitating advances? Now that is a question I can not answer. In fact, no one can. No one knows the answer to that question. At any rate, don’t expect it to happen anytime soon. Nor should you expect the NYTBR to begin to see the light of openness, impartiality or artistic achievement in the ‘genres.’

So let’s all give a big hand to our master-mixologists, John DeNardo, Tia Nevitt and John Ottinger, as well as to all of their fellow philosophers of the fantastic, fun and imaginative, for keeping some tiny spark of hope alive for the new ‘genre’ writer. Without them, frankly, our side would be sunk.

And just to finish this topic off completely, keep in mind that there are ‘genres’ where the problems of prejudice and publicity are even more acute. Fantasy does pretty well for itself, all things considered. Think what would have happened in the present climate to some of our classics? JD Salinger died the other day. What do you think would have happened to his classic novel, The Catcher in the Rye, if it came out tomorrow, labeled and shelved as YA? What would have become of our poor friend Huck Finn, if he’d been published last year? Would the NYTBR give either Holden or Huck the time of day? You can bet your life that it would NOT.

This brings me at long last to that bit of advice I promised for all the up and coming writers hoping to make a first sale. I offer no writing tricks, only a word of warning about what to write if you hope to get published and sell a big pile of books . . .

- Read Part 3 and Official Comment Thread at Grasping for the Wind -

Links to Buy page at IndieBound

Justin was born in Boise, Idaho in 1974. He graduated from Boise State University with a degree in philosophy, and from Columbia University with an MFA in fiction. He is the author, most recently, of Year of the Horse, an all-ages fantasy-western that tells the story of sixteen-year-old Yen Tzu-lu, the child of Chinese immigrants and one of a band of treasure hunters brought together from every corner of the continent to recapture a stolen gold mine. Leading Tzu-Lu and his gang is the gunslinger Jack Straw, a figure who is as much legend as reality, as much magic as lead. Ultimately, this band of outsiders finds it must learn to live together, trust and care for one another. If they make it across a wild continent, they’ll be rich; if they don’t, they’ll surely be dead. Get your copy at Indiebound (why not support your local store?), BN.com, or Amazon.

Justin is roughly six feet tall, weighs somewhere around 185 pounds (often more, to his chagrin), has dark-brown hair and eyes, and suffers from near-sightedness, motion-sickness, and a tendency to get angry at airport personnel. His wife, Day Mitchell, a licensed master social worker, is trying to help him overcome this last item, but finds the going hard.

He can be contacted via justin-allen.com.

~*~

If you have comments or flames for Justin, he will be hanging out at Grasping for the Wind. Don’t leave them here unless you just want to talk to me.

I want to send some kudos to Angry Robot Books. They have [...]]]>

I’m back in full blogging mode again this week, after reading a novel, getting most of a Debut Showcase prepped and arranging for an author guest post. So all of that is coming this week, plus I’ll reveal the source of a recent distraction.

I want to send some kudos to Angry Robot Books. They have something called the Robot Army for book bloggers. And I’m a member.  Want proof? Here it is:

I wanted to send them kudos for building a site specifically for the blog reviewer, and for making everything so easy on us. Here (well, not here, but at a secret web address), I can order ARCs, download ebooks, read sample chapters, find author links, get author images, get author bios — it’s wonderful. Right now, I’m digging through their site, author by author, picking out the debuts, so I’m sure to come across something I’ll want to read.

I just finished reading Liane Merciel’s The River Kings’ Road, and I’ll have the review this week. Next, I need to dive right into Angelology byDanielle Trussoni, because it just came out last week. And after that, I’ll be tackling another urban fantasy (can you believe it??) because Shadow Blade by Seressia Glass looks pretty danged good. And after that, I have a Caleb Fox book called Shadows in the Cave, and after that, I really want to finally read Ken Scholes’s Canticle.

It’s a good thing I like to read!

So don’t forget to stop by tomorrow for a slightly controversial author guest post (which I’m co-hosting with two other blogs), on Tuesday for that Debut Showcase, on Wednesday for my review of The River Kings’ Road and on Thursday for a different kind of review.

Here are short reviews [...]]]>

I’ve read two ebooks recently. This isn’t something I usually do, but I did want to try out the experience. Neither of these authors expected a review when I began reading. I don’t normally do reviews of ebooks, and that hasn’t changed, for now, because I still don’t have an ideal reader.

Here are short reviews of both.

Survive My Fire
by Joely Sue Burkhart
Drollerie Press – $2.49

Sensual Fantasy

Survive My Fire is a dreamlike voyage through a land of shapeshifting dragons, poisoned sands, acid lakes and a volcano that — rather than lava — spews pure despair.

Chanda is a dragon, cursed by the gods and her own actions to remain in this form until she meets an impossible set of conditions. Jalan is a warrior who must slay her in order to remove the curse on his land.

Survive My Fire has a fantastic opening – it begins with the moment Jalan comes to slay Chanda, who only wants to eat him. I cannot do justice to the wonderful voice of this novel, so here is the opening paragraph:

A foreign scent intruded while I slept. A warrior. Miles away and on foot, he wouldn’t reach my lair until dusk. Sweat and musk, muscle and pride. Oh, how tasty, how divine a feast.

Right away there is a mighty battle, which ends when Jalan survives long enough to take advantage of her only weakness — a weakness similar to his own: during the nights of the full moon, Chanda the dragon becomes a woman.

The attraction between Chanda and Jalan is immediate. The opening chapters of this story has a number of sex scenes, some of which can get a little racy and even violent. But there is never rape; it’s more like dominance. Normally this would turn me off, but Ms. Burkhard wove it so flawlessly into the plot that I cannot fault her for it. The plot centers absolutely on Chanda and Jalan. All other characters are minor. Both Chanda and Jalan grow quite a bit as a result of their love for each other. Due to the short length of the story ( which is a novela rather than a novel), this works out fine. The presence of any other character would have made the story longer.

The voice is what captured me in this story, and what held me throughout. It is otherworldly, surreal and utterly engaging. It had to be, because Chanda — at first — seems so evil. Absent a connection to her, the reader needed another reason to keep reading. Here, both the plot and the voice do a terrific job.

Call of the Sea Gypsies
by J. G. Paine
Cobblelestone Press – $3.99

Erotic Romantic Fantasy

Forgive the lack of cover; it was a bit too naughty for me to post here. Just click through the publisher site to see it. I know the author will forgive me; she’s a dear friend and knows I’m a bit prudish. Ms. Paine asked me to read this when she sold it simply because she wanted to share it with me. The only thing that really makes it explicit is the naughty language — and yes, it is very naughty. But there is only one sex scene, along with a couple of sexy dreams.

Marna has lived away from the sea for years because in her heart she knows something within is calling her there, and it frightens her. But now she has returned because her grandmother has died under suspicious circumstances. As soon as she arrives back in Grey’s Harbor, trouble greets her. Several locals start pressuring Marna to sell her grandmother’s house. Her old childhood friend is also here, Morgan, and she is unsure whether he is still a friend or not. There is certainly something strange and intoxicating about him, and he never, never takes off his gloves.

And what of the old man who seems to be watching her?

Call of the Sea Gypsies is about the mythology around selkies. Ms. Paine especially played on the sensual nature of selkies, and wove it into a transformational sex scene near the end. Ms. Paine’s background is in writing mysteries, and it shows because a mystery is at the heart of the story, and it resolved in a way I never guessed. Ms. Paine’s writing style echoes the contemporary nature of the story – transparent and invisible, never intruding.

I didn’t know what to expect when I started reading Call of the Sea Gypsies. Maybe I have a skewed impression of what erotica is all about. But I enjoyed the story much more than I expected.

Reviewed by Superwench83

“The family of Dashwood had been settled in Sussex since before the Alteration, when the waters of the world grew cold and hateful to the sons of man, and darkness [...]]]>

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
by Ben H. Winters
Quirk Books
Trade Paperback – $12.95
Author Article – “How I Wrote Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters”

Reviewed by Superwench83

“The family of Dashwood had been settled in Sussex since before the Alteration, when the waters of the world grew cold and hateful to the sons of man, and darkness moved on the face of the deep.” So begins Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters, and a fine beginning it is—setting us up for a mannerly, man-eating tale full of wit and wonder.

When their father is eaten by a hammerhead shark, the Dashwood sisters and their mother are forced to leave their home behind, for it is their brother’s inheritance. In a world where the ocean has crept inland and even the gentlest sea creatures have acquired a taste for human flesh, a home with proper defenses round the perimeter is a must. The Dashwoods’ new home on Pestilent Isle has such defenses, but it is a strange place, and becoming stranger still. Nonetheless, it is a home, and they are pleased to have it. Now the sisters only need suitors who can protect them from giant octopi and devil-dolphins. In their world, such a man is one to swoon over.

If you think it sounds absurd to mash a Jane Austen novel up with a nautical horror tale, you’re right. It’s absurd. And brilliant. Far from ruining Austen’s clever prose, the startling contrast of manners and monsters makes her social commentary even more biting. I have so many favorite lines from the book that I can’t even begin to quote them all.

The book’s basic plot is the same as in Sense and Sensibility: It is about the Dashwood sisters’ trials in love. But there is much more, just as the original is more than a romance. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters has an amusing yet disturbing undercurrent, blending delightful wit and a feeling of unease about what darkness lies beneath the surface. While the casual mentions of “the giant tuna that had lately tried to consume her mother” or “taking appropriate enjoyment in every opportunity to dine upon the hated foe” are humorous, there is also a strong sense that terrors unknown are just around the bend.

Only Margaret senses the deeply unsettling air of Pestilent Isle. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters expands this youngest Dashwood sister’s role, which I enjoyed because Margaret seems like almost an afterthought in the original story. Marianne is too absorbed with herself and Willoughby to notice anything amiss, but Elinor’s strange visions of a five-pointed star add to the unease. These flashes of foreboding lend Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters a very different kind of suspense than what the original story had.

Yet despite all the gloom, there is a sense of wonder in this book. Best of all is Sub-Marine Station Beta, an undersea city where the streets are canals and tamed sea creatures replace gondolas as the usual transportation. Beneath this dome of glass, residents must wear Float-Suits at all times. These suits act as breathing and floatation devices in case of emergency. This city is accessible only by submarine, but it is worth the trip, for Sub-Marine Station Beta is home to a host of sights, such as museums and the famed Kensington Undersea Gardens. Such inclusions almost lend Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters the feel of a steampunk novel.

The only issue I had was that some of the added storylines weren’t resolved as adequately as I would have liked. There was never a clear answer as to what caused the Alteration, and I felt that this was the one explanation that needed to be given. The focus of this book is Austen’s original story with some new settings and twists, and I understand that a long passage devoted to the Alteration’s origins might have taken away from that. But I still feel that there should have been more closure on some of the added fantasy elements.

If you’re not familiar with Sense and Sensibility, you can certainly enjoy Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and you probably will if you enjoy both classic literature and fantasy. But Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is definitely an experience which is best appreciated if you’re familiar with the original work. It is amazing how well the new bits of text blend with the old, and you’ll only be able to enjoy that if you know Sense and Sensibility. Ben Winter’s writing masterfully captures Austen’s own style so that his additions fit into the original text almost seamlessly. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters has all of that Austen charm, but is a venture into uncharted literary seas.