janicu's book blog

Speculative Chic year-end roundup

janicu — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 23:07:46 GMT

If you aren't a reader of Speculative Chic, the other blog I contribute to, here's a run down of what I've posted there this year.

My review of Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

I reviewed Ancillary Mercy, the third and final installment of the Imperial Radch trilogy, over at Speculative Chic as part of our series on 2016 Hugo nominees. I may not have reviewed Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword (books one and two) anywhere -- and that needs to be rectified at some point, but I have read them. I'd say Ancillary Justice blew my mind, and the other two cemented Leckie as an author to keep reading.

My review of Super Extra Grande by Yoss

Super Extra Grande was an impulse read picked up from the library based on the back blurb and the slim size (I can't often commit to longer books anymore). It's about a veterinarian that specializes on ginormous space animals, so of course I wanted to read it.

A Geekish Gift Guide - this year instead of posting my usual bookish gift guide, I created a "Geekish" one inspired by my fellow contributors over at Speculative Chic. From SFF movies and TV to gaming and banned books, we have a wide range of interests. This was a fun one to put together. Hope you enjoy!

Finally, I talked about a few of "My Favorite Things" over the year:

Subterranean Press’s signed limited editions of the Imperial Radch Trilogy

Mr. Robot

Masque by W.R. Gingell

Valley of the Dragons (1961)

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

My favorite halloween blogger, artist mypapercrane

Dramaworld

Koko Takes a Holiday by Kieran Shea

janicu — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 18:55:58 GMT

Koko Takes a Holiday

Kieran Shea

The Premise: (from the back blurb) Five hundred years from now, ex-corporate mercenary Koko Martstellar is swaggering through an early retirement as a brothel owner on The Sixty Islands, a manufactured tropical resort archipelago known for its sex and simulated violence. Surrounded by slang-drooling boywhores and synthetic komodo dragons, the most challenging part of Koko's day is deciding on her next drink. That is, until her old comrade Portia Delacompte sends a squad of security personnel to murder her.

Read an excerpt of Koko Takes a Holiday here

My Thoughts: Koko Takes a Holiday is the latest book I've read, picked up at the library based on the cover alone. It looks like pop art, mostly grayscale with big orange stripes, a pop of yellow and blue, and Koko, front and center, holding a gun and staring into your soul. If you look closely there's things going on in the orange stripes, like explosions and a giant shark chasing a surfer. I really like this cover, but to be honest, once I looked past it, I worried this wasn't the book for me. When I actually read the back blurb and saw "brothel" and "boywhores" and "sex and simulated violence", plus saw that all the quotes were by male authors (and the Library Journal), I was a little worried about what I was stepping into. Was this going to be all action and glorification of sex and violence that I would just not be able to connect to? Am I just the wrong audience? I began reading with trepidation.

First of all, yes, this is a story that is visual and violent; a science-fiction action blockbuster in words. This is what I "saw" whilst reading the first few pages: it starts with some black-and-white static, a one minute promo for The Sixty Islands with a fast-talking announcer telling us we can have it all and destroy it all, then fade into a darkened bar where someone is cleaning up the "red scrambled eggs everywhere" and the voice over is an earnest "boywhore" telling us that the two dead guests had it coming. A handful of pages later the bar/brothel is in flames and Koko is a fugitive. Koko, the action hero of this adventure, is exactly as the cover promises, a larger than life bad-ass. She's introduced as madame in a manufactured, over-the-top "paradise", but once the guns begin blazing, her mercenary background comes to the fore. A veteran of many missions for multinational conglomerates, she is familiar with guns, seedy characters, and staying alive. Realizing that her ex-commander and friend, now Vice President at the Custom Pleasure Bureau, Portia Delacompte (the very person who helped fulfill Koko's dream of running a bar), is behind the order for her execution, we've got the set up for the story -- a shady corporate executive, betrayal, and a brutal pursuit against the backdrop of spaceships and floating cities.

There is definitely this casual violence, high technology, and hectic pace in a corporate-run world that makes me think of Sin City, Robocop, Johnny Mnemonic, and Strange Days...very cyberpunk. This could be one-note, but while this mostly centers on Koko, the third person narration does rove to other characters, like the hired guns after Koko, Portia Delacompte's ambitious but terrified assistant, and Portia Delacompte herself. The way the narration moved from character to character felt well-timed so I never felt like I needed to put the book down for a little bit (which I do very easily these days), so I finished Koko in one continuous gulp. We're also introduced to Jedidiah Flynn, a Security Deputy suffering from Depressus on the atmospheric floating barge, the Alaungpaya who meets Koko while she's on the run. I felt like his inclusion in this story bumped up the storytelling a few points. When the perspective changed to this straight-laced guy who recently found out he had months to live, Koko Takes a Holiday revealed a character-driven storyline that I tend to gravitate to. The attitude toward Depressus (a form of depression affecting some suborbital residents) made me pay closer attention to the dystopian aspects of the world-building. That's when a lightbulb came on regarding the casual violence and commercialization of death in this world and how the evil megacorporations were the true "bad guys" of the story.

When it sunk in that the violence was pretty much part and parcel of the cyberpunk package (don't ask me why it took me so long to get this), it turned off my questioning why it was there, and I appreciated how good the writing and the world building were. What I really liked was the inclusion of Depressus (trying to remember the last time I read a book that included a struggle with depression and am coming up blank), and the glimpses into the points of view of the main antagonist, Portia Delacompte, and the contract killers. I enjoyed the details of Portia's burning ambition, like joining a religious organization and following all its self-flagellation rituals in order to fit in with the rest of management.

What I wish had more oomph was the plot. When you strip away the world, the plot centered around a "bad guy eliminating a obstacle", and when we find out the reason behind this, I felt disconnected from it. I was already inured at that point: more evidence that the antagonist is despicable was unsurprising. Something that went a little deeper would have made this story more memorable. I think that if this was more of a character-driven story, I would have accepted the weak plot, but it wasn't - besides Flynn, who felt flawed and human, everyone else was interesting but still felt like they were representations of their roles, not individuals.

Overall: This is well written, the type of writing where after a while, the words just disappear and my imagination takes over. I never felt a lull where I was tempted to take a break from reading, the point of view cleverly switched from Koko's desperate run to the frustration of the bounty hunters to the ambitions of Portia Delacompte and stayed fresh. Despite this, the plot didn't give me any surprises, I wanted more connection with the characters, and the strength of the world buillding and writing wasn't enough to overcome these issues. This means that overall my reaction to Koko Takes a Holiday is, "It was OK".

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell: "I enjoyed the fast ride."

What I’m up to

janicu — Sat, 27 Aug 2016 20:54:08 GMT

I'm around, really I am, but this blog is on semi-hiatus as you can tell by the non-updates. :\
I make no more promises on when I'll be posting again (I feel pretty challenged and rewarded by my work, and that's really great except for that pesky work-life balance). HOWEVER, I did join a group speculative fiction blog on a part-time basis. Check it out:

Speculative Chic Logo Design by Gregory White

This is a fanzine formed by a fellow blogger I have "known" and been online friends with for years (you may know her as calico-reaction on livejournal). She's brought together a great group of fellow bloggers and writers and fans of speculative fiction and we all contribute to talk about all things in the "Speculative" arena, like movies, TV, games, and books. It's a lot of fun.

I'm mostly contributing to the "My Favorite Things" posts every few weeks, where I talk about some new-to-me Science Fiction or Fantasy related thing that I'm currently loving, but also wrote the first review I've written in a really long while (I reviewed Anne Leckie's Ancillary Mercy as part of our series on Hugo Award nominees). You can see my posts here.

Hope you take a look and like what we're doing over there!

Bookish Gifts IV

janicu — Sun, 07 Dec 2014 21:01:00 GMT

Don't worry, I'm still around! The reading has been going at a glacial pace (sigh), but I've been gearing up for the Holidays, watching A LOT of Christmas movies, and trying to find the right gifts for everyone on my list. Which led me to spend time this weekend scouring the internet to create another Bookish Gifts post. Hope you enjoy! If you're new here and would like more of this sort of thing, I have three other Bookish Gifts posts, plus Jane Austen, Mystery, and Dystopian editioned ones. :) (Click the images for larger versions).

1. Cake Book - Cherry (€69.00) 2. Mini Alice Bookmark Set ($6.95, sale: $4.86 - other designs available) 3. Eternal Paper Wedding Bands, Custom Made (€460.00) 4. Graphic bookends - $62 5. Victorian Whale Bookends ($68) 6. Reading is Sexy 100% corn mug - $12 7. Cats and More Cats Strand Tote $14.95 8. Jane Austen Fan Club pin; Reading Fan Club pin ($6 ea) 9. Book Map - £25

10. Bibliophile tea light sample pack ($14) 11. Books and Coffee Card ($4.50) 12. All I Want to Do Is Read (set of 5 postcards $7.50) 13. Writing London and Writing Manhattan Literary Guides (£4 ea) 14. Letterpress Bookmark Collection (set of 3, $4) 15. Library Letter ($20 ea) 16. Men's Fragrance Sampler ($16) 17. Babylon Candle ($15) 18. Book Nerd Engraved Charm Necklace ($8.95)

19. 1" Book Geek Buttons (choose 5 for $2.50) 20. Jane Austen quote screenprint "We Are All Fools in Love" ($96) 21. Ideal Book Shelf (many options! from $34) 22. Tiny Black Book brooch ($20) 23. Classic Paperback Print (£10) 24. Tea and Books (The Greatest Love Story Ever Written) Mug ($13.28) 25. How-to Temporary Tattoo (set of 2 for $5) 26. I'm Reading Right Meow Strand Tote (also in pink $14.95)

27. Antagonist and Protagonist necklaces ($13.99 ea) 28. Once Upon a Time book necklace (£70) 29. I Read Dead People pencils ($7.50 for a 3-pack) 30. Book Pillows (Classic & Holiday from $9.99) 31. Let's Bring Back Lost Language Edition ($19.99) 32. In Bloom Book Collection (4 Kid's Classics with matching bookmarks - $64) 33. Library Stamp Sweatshirt (women's $40; men's - black $42)

Black Dog by Rachel Neumeier

janicu — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 01:07:48 GMT

Black Dog

Rachel Neumeier

This is a review of a book provided to me by Strange Chemistry (the YA imprint of Angry Robot books).

The Premise: The Toland siblings, Natividad, Alejandro, and Miguel, have fled from their home in Mexico, all the way across the United States, and have just reached their destination in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Their father's old enemy, Malvern Vonhausel, still stalks them despite already destroying their village and murdering their parents. Now the siblings are making a desperate gamble: that Dimilioc, a stronghold for shapeshifters called black dogs, will take them in. They have very little to convince Dimilioc's Master -- only that their father was once a Dimilioc wolf, and that Natividad is Pure. Their father told them that Dimilioc protected the Pure, but it never tolerated strays. Miguel may be granted amnesty because he's human, but Alejandro is black dog and may not be treated so kindly.

Read an excerpt of Black Dog here

My Thoughts: Before reading Black Dog, the other books I'd read by Rachel Neumeier were two-thirds of The Griffin Mage Trilogy, and House of Shadows. These are all straight fantasy, and for some reason (probably my own obliviousness), I thought Black Dog was the same. I didn't realize that until I began reading it that this is urban fantasy. This was not a bad thing. It felt nice to be surprised that Black Dog was Neumeier's own riff on werewolf mythology. The world is not far off from our own as it is now, but Neumeier alters all we know by setting Black Dog right after a war. This war is one that is not necessarily fully explained, but what we do know is that it has wiped out all vampires, and vampire magic happened to hide the supernatural from regular people. It also has the devastating consequence of Vonhausel tracking down the Toland family and slaughtering everyone in their village. Black Dog opens in the midst of the siblings' flight from home, with the plan to be taken in by the group of black dogs that their father once belonged.

Black Dog is narrated in the third person but focuses on Natividad and Alejandro, and as you would expect when a supernatural murderer is after you, this story has a desperate edge. First there is the fear of getting caught before they reach Dimilioc, and then there is the stress over what to say that would most likely keep them alive once they get there. After that the challenges just keep coming. So this has a quickly moving plot, but beyond that, the world building and the characters kept me engaged as well. The Tolands' Mexican upbringing is part of the narrative (the dialogue is peppered with Spanish), and that mixed with their having to grow up quickly kept these characters real and vulnerable.

What black dogs and the Pure are, are organically introduced as necessary. It isn’t difficult to catch on that a “black dog” is a shapeshifter that turns into a monstrous dog, but Neumeier throws in her own touches, from the superficial (like their black fangs and claws, intense heat, eyes of “fiery gold and red”, and black ichor of their wounds) to the fundamental (that they are two separate selves, one human, one shadow, housed within the same body). The Pure, which Natividad is, is more difficult to grasp. Natividad demonstrates that she has powers that she uses to protect and hide her brothers from their pursuers, but as the story moves forward, it becomes clear that’s not all she’s useful for. Adding to the mystery is the strange relationship the black dogs have with the Pure. Black dogs are drawn to the Pure, but while one half of their nature wants to protect them, the other wants to destroy. It’s not certain that even the Pure and the black dogs know how they are linked.

The Dimilioc wolves believe in protecting the Pure. In fact, they are prized, which is one of the reasons Natividad and her brothers have decided to go to them. Here is where things get sticky though, because Natividad is willing to sacrifice herself in exchange for her and her brothers’ survival (“I’m not a puta; I won’t lie down with them all. But if you take us into Dimilioc, I will take any one of your wolves you say”). Whether Natividad really has any agency is one issue, that she is only fifteen years old (while the youngest of her options seem to be in their twenties, there are men much older than that here), is another. I suppose I should feel better that it’s one of the youngest who is most aggressive in the pissing contest over Natividad, but when you are fifteen, a five or six-year age difference is significant. Any further romance or consent would be questionable. On the other hand, things don’t progress far enough for me to really question what is happening. All this is sort of there, in the background, percolating, while the Toland siblings deal with more immediate life or death situations. Yes, there is attention and Natividad isn’t immune, but there is the sense she wonders whether it’s real. I feel hopeful, because of the thoughtfulness of the writing, that when this series continues I won’t be disappointed by what happens to Natividad. I am not completely against a romance, but I’d feel better if Natividad got to grow up first. I also wonder whether the controversial romance is deliberate. It’s interesting when you pair the situation with Natividad’s nature, which involves a lot of placating of the black dogs and defusing aggression with teasing jokes made at the right moment. I also noticed a mirroring of Natividad’s situation in another (male) character. Needless to say, I’m very interested in finding out where this is going to go. Unfortunately, Strange Chemistry has been discontinued, but it sounds like Rachel Neumeier still expects to be able to publish the sequel, Pure Magic, one way or another.

Overall: Every time I read a book by Rachel Neumeier, it becomes my new favorite by this author. I think this is because of a mix of super thoughtful writing plus an element of surprise. Black Dog is no different. This was the kind of read that you gobble up quickly, with a lot of life-threatening action squeezed into the space of the few days, but it was the quieter moments between the life-or-death situations, where the characters are planning and anticipating and arguing, that lingered long after the book was closed. For those looking for no more than action and adventure, you will find it here. For those looking for something deeper – Black Dog sometimes made me uncomfortable in a way that is never resolved. Depending on how things go, I think this series has the potential to be more subversive than you’d initially expect.

Buy: Amazon | Powells | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Bunbury in the Stacks @ Tor.com – “Black Dog is, like the characters within its pages, frightening and beautiful and solid right down to its core.”
Chachic’s Book Nook – “Rachel Neumeier made a successful foray into urban fantasy with Black Dog.”
On Starships and Dragon Wings – “I was excited to get to know some characters a little different from the typical young adult cast, but I was completely unable to connect to them for reasons I’m honestly still not able to pin down.”

Bookish Gifts: Dystopian Edition

janicu — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 22:48:56 GMT

I have a little bit of breathing room this week--enough that I've indulged myself and spent some time working on a post (I KNOW. It's a miracle). There are reviews that need to be finished, but I've been in a nostalgic mood and I've been thinking about high school and the books that I had to read in English class. There was a lot of Shakespeare (tragedies more than comedies, plays more than sonnets), Chekhov, Steinbeck, angry young men, slavery, racism, social criticism, and coming of age. It would drive me crazy that my English teachers (who were actually English, but I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it), would pick works with such heavy themes. I can appreciate my education now, but back then, there were very few books that didn't get tainted by having to analyze and discuss the ever-loving bejesus out of them. One of those few was Nineteen Eighty-Four. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." In honor of high school English class, I went looking for merchandise that bows to one high school staple: dystopia.

(As usual click the Bookish Gifts tag for more posts, and on the images to embiggen).

1. Lord of the Flies poster ($15) 2. 1984 pouch ($12) 3. A Clockwork tote ($22) 4. Doubleplusgood necklace ($30) 5. 1984 t-shirt ($24) 6. Thought Criminal tote ($12) 7. Lord of the Flies brooch (about $13)

8. Fahrenheit 451 6x6 print ($12) 9. China Glaze Capitol colors set ($42.30) 10. Big Brother wall clock ($30) 11. Fahrenheit 451 11x17 print ($25) 12. Hunger Games Katniss Black Label Collector edition action figure (price varies) 13. Moloko Plus mug ($18) 14. Hunger Games

15. Soma sticker ($2.64 - other products w/ this design available) 16. Soma Print ($15 - other products w/ this design available) 17. 1" Brave New World buttons ($11 for a set of 10) 18. The Giver Quartet 20th Anniversary boxed set ($45.26) 19. Animal Farm tote ($18) 20. V for Vendetta mask ($3.12) 21. V for Vendetta graphic novel ($11.29) 22. Mockingjay pin ($8.90, also available: a gold plated version)

Book Expo America, 2014

janicu — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 19:49:08 GMT

I've been on vacation for a couple of weeks (Paris, London, Bath) because my brother just got married in Paris, and boy do I have a lot of bookish things to talk about the trip, but since there are 1600 pictures I need to wade through to write that post up, I'm going to talk about BEA first.

What BEA is and my experience this year: I've talked about Book Expo America (BEA) here in the past, but for those not in the know, it's a trade show that focuses on books. Since 2009 there has been a Book Bloggers Conference (now called the BEA Blogger's Conference) affiliated with BEA. If you have a BEA Bloggers badge, you can go to BEA. BEA has been limited to industry professionals, (and in the past few years, to book bloggers as well), but last year they opened up one day to the public with a "Power Readers" day. This year Power Readers got rebranded into BookCon, but more on that later.

Although I signed up for the BEA Blogger's Conference, I ended up not going. It was on Wednesday and didn't feel comfortable taking time off mid-week when I'd just taken time off, and I haven't exactly have had much time to blog either. This is also why I didn't RSVP to any invitations to publishing parties. In the end, I just went to BEA on Friday and Saturday, and I made up for my time off on Friday by working on Sunday.

I think this year was the year that I was the most laid back about BEA - I didn't have the same "I can't sleep" feeling the night before (although jetlag may have had something to do with it), and I only looked at what books would be available the night before. What ended up happening was that my list of books to get was 2 to 4 books per day, so I had a lot of free time to wonder around and just stand in lines for books that sounded interesting and to try to get a few books for other people. The downside of this is that not having a lot of books I specifically wanted made me have more time to wander and more time to get more books ("Well, I have nothing else to do, may as well go to that galley drop...", "OK, I guess will take that book you are offering me", "Excuse me, what are you in line for?")... this was a terrible strategy for keeping books out of my house.

However, because I only went 2 days, I had a lot more energy on the floor this year than previous years, which includes that energy I need to be sociable. I'm practically a mute elsewhere, but I feel safe striking up a conversation at BEA. I met Asma of A Reading Kobocha waiting for a Holly Black signing, Emily of Oktopus Ink while in line for Alex London, Stephanie of Views from the Tesseract in a line for John Scalzi, and Celia of Dragons Den Publishing while waiting for a couple of RWA signings. I also got to see a few old faces - Kate and Alyssa and Mr. Raging Bibliohol, and fellow YAckers Nicole and Sandy. And that's not including everyone I randomly talked to or shared a cab with or sat next to on the shuttle back to Grand Central. I also got to have dinner with YAcker Heidi because real life overlapped with online life and we have a friend in common who lives in Manhattan (related: we have a system to send books to each other via people we know, aka our book mules).

When I was in London, I felt very American because I could hear myself whenever I said, "It was awesome", but "awesome" is what I think about talking to book people at BEA. The only downside of enjoying their company is missing their familiar faces when they aren't there. There were a lot of bloggers that didn't come to this years BEA that I missed.

Anyway, picture time.

Signings:

Lev Grossman signing The Magician's Land

Holly Black signing The Darkest Part of the Forest

Seen on the floor:

Crap Taxidermy promo

The Penguin Book Truck

Lego Star Wars figures for Star Wars Reads Day III (@ DK Publishing)

Let's Get Lost car (@Harlequin)

Out of Print booth

Fahrenheit 451 matches (@ Out of Print)

BEA versus BookCon:There seems to be some murmurings about BookCon and how it's changing BEA online. I like the concept of the public getting to experience BEA, but I did find the crowds really crazy / anxiety inducing. I would go to the BookCon side of the floor only when I had to, and go back to the BEA side when I needed to breathe. Here's some comparison pictures. I guess that's all I have to say about it. BEA is on the left, BookCon is on the right.

The Haul: Finally, these are the books I ended up with.

Guest Post & Giveaway -- Sharon Lynn Fisher: Writers Are Magpies

janicu — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 15:05:57 GMT

Today I have a guest post from Sharon Lynn Fisher, author of Ghost Planet, a science fiction romance which had a premise I loved, which is that everyone that lands on Ardagh 1 eventually has the ghost of someone they once knew attach themselves to them. She's also the author of the recently released The Ophelia Prophecy that takes place on Earth in the aftermath of genetic research gone awry. The Manta, products of human and insect DNA experiments, are now the dominant culture, and this story is about a Manta and a human getting thrown together and the resulting clash and fallout -- another great premise. I was quite excited to hear from Tor about hosting a stop on her blog tour, and actually very pleased she picked the question I'd asked about world building. Enjoy.

(Tor has also offered 3 copies of The Ophelia Prophecy to give away to 3 readers of this site, so check that out at the bottom of this post).

I’m going to start off this post with the terrific question provided by Janicu:

I imagine that writers, like a lot of creative people, are like magpies that save little bits of something from the world, internalize it, and remake it, rearrange it, add a whole lot of their own magic, and voila. What would you say are little pieces of inspiration that went into the making of this new story? (If you wanted to mention ECHO 8, I wouldn't mind hearing about that too)!

World building is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I’ve mentioned in a few interviews how I used to hate it. I found world building really intimidating, and thought of it as the stuff that happened between bits of “real” story (action, dialogue, romance).

I have since become disabused of that oversimplified understanding. World building is so much more than descriptions of setting (though that part is pretty important too). It fuels just about every other aspect of the story. It helps develop character and motivation. Drives creation of the plot.

But moving on to this magpie thing, because Janicu really hit on something there.

Connemara Abbey (image courtesy of Sharon Lynn Fisher)

In my current release, THE OPHELIA PROPHECY, I built settings based on real-world locations. Places I had visited and wanted to return to. Sanctuary, the last human city, is located in the otherworldly landscape of Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. After Asha, the heroine, is abducted from Sanctuary by the hero, Pax, their next stop is Connemara, in County Galway, Ireland. Connemara is one of my favorite places on Earth (based on what I’ve seen of it so far). Dramatic and often bleak landscapes, and a living sky, constantly shifting from sun to rain to wind. You can feel its history. You can almost hear the voices of the people who’ve lived and died there. No wonder Ireland produces such amazing writers.

Granada Alhambra (photo by Javier Carro, distributed under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license)

But the real showcase setting of OPHELIA is the Manti capital in Granada, Spain. The Manti are the human/praying mantis transgenic organisms that all but destroyed humanity with a targeted plague. I needed a location suited to them — exotic and sensual, with a complicated history. This Moorish city is charming just as it is, but I depicted the fictional version as enhanced by the Manti to included living, organic architecture inspired by Gaudi structures I’d seen in Barcelona (and then finished it off by layering on some political and religious conflict). One key location, a tavern called Debajo, was inspired by an image I came across on the Internet. A stone, squat, clearly medieval building situated among the more graceful architecture of the Albayzin. This tavern peddles a drug inspired by a flower I saw and learned about on a trip to Costa Rica.

Colman School (image courtesy of Sharon Lynn Fisher)

As my hostess mentioned ECHO 8 — my third book from Tor, due out early next year — I’ll say a word or two about that. That book is set in current-day Seattle, and also on an alternate Earth that has been devastated by an asteroid strike. The primary location is an old school building visible from I-90 on the way out of Seattle. I used to drive past the circa 1900 building with its boarded-up windows and thought what a shame it was that someone was going to tear it down eventually. But they didn’t. It was renovated and converted to an African American history museum, with affordable housing on the upper floors. For ECHO 8 it became the Seattle Psi Training Institute. Another key location is the creepy decommissioned ferryboat, Kalakala, which has a very colorful past. I once lived in a tiny house on a dock on Lake Union, near downtown Seattle, and this massive derelict was parked there for a time. I always wondered about it, and when I started writing ECHO 8 I did a bunch of research, and it became a setting (and almost a character) in my book.

Kalakala (photo by Barnaby Dorfman, distributed under a CC BY 2.0 license)

But the book of mine that best illustrates the magpie idea, I’m working on now. I don’t want to say too much about it yet, as it’s still in the earlyish stages, but it’s set in Portland and features an artist heroine and a physicist/warrior poet hero. The heroine, Neve, IS a magpie. She collects bits of garbage she passes on the street, and she turns them into art books. She sees meaning and beauty in discarded objects as ordinary as a dry ballpoint pen or a popped balloon.

Magpie (photo by Adrian Pingstone)

Writers are just like that. It can be things or people or places or even garbage. They are captured and cataloged every day of our lives. And they decorate our mental landscape. I remember one day I was walking down a busy street in downtown Seattle, near the Pike Place Market. I saw a woman walking toward me carrying a box. As she came closer, I saw she was wearing a fairy costume, and she looked annoyed. As she passed, I noticed her wings were in the box. There she was, a whole story walking down the street in broad daylight. And nobody seemed to see her but me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A Romance Writers of America RITA Award finalist and a three-time RWA Golden Heart Award finalist, SHARON LYNN FISHER lives in the Pacific Northwest. She writes books for the geeky at heart—sci-fi flavored stories full of adventure and romance—and battles writerly angst with baked goods, Irish tea, and champagne. Her works include Ghost Planet (2012), The Ophelia Prophecy (2014), and Echo 8 (2014). You can visit her online at SharonLynnFisher.com.

GIVEAWAY:

Enter here, easy peasy:

Enter at specficromantic.com

Rules:

This giveaway is for U.S./Canada only

Contest ends: Wednesday, April 30th.

One entry per person please!

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

janicu — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 16:26:35 GMT

The Dream Thieves

Maggie Stiefvater

The Dream Thieves was one of the more coveted YA books at BEA last year, and rather difficult to get (the publisher gave out the time to grab the book only to those who specifically asked, and then handed them out so quickly they were gone in 10 minutes). I was hoping to get an extra copy for book blogger friends who only asked for this one book, but I don't think I had any luck. Anyway, this came out September 2013, and was another pick for the YAckers. They had a lovely chat about The Dream Thieves which is up online now. Of course, being the reprobate that I am, my contribution to this chat was something along the lines of "I'm still reading it, you guys talk about it without me." This was the right thing to say because it took me a whole month to read this book, mostly thanks to the day job sucking away my time and attention, but I do wish I could have talked about it with the gang because I have the sneaking suspicion that I am the outlier again when it comes to this series. I've actually refrained from looking at the chat before I finish this review because I'm afraid of how far off my opinion is going to be.

This is the second book of The Raven Cycle. If you haven't read the first book yet, I recommend you read my review of The Raven Boys instead of this one, because possible spoilers for that book lie ahead.

The Premise: Despite the freedom of summer break, a newly awoken ley line, and Ronan's unveiled talent, the search for Glendower is no easier than it was before. Shady characters have appeared in Henrietta, drawn by the power spikes from its ley lines. The trail runs hot and cold as energy grows and dims without explanation or clear source. Similarly, the all is discordant amongst Blue and the Raven boys. Noah disappears and reappears with each dip and surge in energy. Ronan toys with more dangerous pursuits. And a lingering tension hovers between Adam, Blue, and Gansey that threatens to fracture the whole group.

Read an excerpt of The Dream Thieves on scribd (or pdf: here)

My Thoughts: When I look back at my review of The Raven Boys, I had problems with the fragmented focus – there are a lot of characters, each with their own individual back story, and it was difficult for me to tell who the main protagonists were and where the whole story was going. Then I reminded myself that despite having trouble with the meandering storyline, I loved the characters, enjoyed the writing, and would road trip to Henrietta in a heartbeat. I said to myself that this was the cost of set up when there were multiple characters involved and a dreamy supernatural backdrop to explain. And because the framework was taken care of in The Raven Boys, it seemed a reasonable expectation that I would fare better with The Dream Thieves.

Unfortunately, I had very similar issues with The Dream Thieves that I had with The Raven Boys. I don't know what else to do but sigh over this, but before I go into why this book didn't set my heart aflame, I want to point out it might do just that for someone else by reiterating what I said when I reviewed The Raven Boys: "If you are one who can sit back and enjoy a character-driven story with lovely prose and you don’t need to know where it’s all going, this will do quite well." If you are one of those readers, this story is made of words that are simple yet arranged in very pleasing ways. It has characters who you want to follow around and learn what makes them tick. And yes, there is magic.

"In the shower, Adam scratched a thumbnail across his summer-brown skin. The line of his nail went from white to angry-red in a moment, and as he studied it, it struck him that there was something off about the flow of the water across his skin. As if it was in slow-motion. He followed the stream of the water up to the showerhead and spent a full minute watching it sputter from the metal. His thoughts were a confusion of translucent drops clinging to metal and rain trembling off green leaves.

He blinked.

There was nothing odd about the water. There were no leaves."

If that's enough for you, you can probably skip the rest of the review and go enjoy the book. Otherwise be prepared for my kvetching because I really wrestled over what exactly didn't work for me. This was a review more to work out my own demons than anything else.

I feel a little despondent that what this book has going for it wasn't enough for me, but ultimately it comes down to what kind of reader I am, and like I said when I reviewed the first book, I need structure. It doesn't have to be all business right away, and The Dream Thieves started out promisingly with a continued search for Glendower and tantalizing hints about Ronan’s ability, but as I read on my enthusiasm slowly waned. I was surprised by the introduction of a morally ambiguous "heavy" (appropriately named The Gray Man), but he seemed interesting so I read on. By mid-book, I felt like things were moving slowly, but I was still hopeful I could like this story if I could just get some answers, such as what Declan really knew and where things were going. A bit after that mid-way point I began to question. Three-quarters of the way was where I realized I wasn't going to get that direction I was hoping for and I was officially frustrated. Of course the last few pages of the book is where the story takes off, but by then I wasn't as engaged as I wanted to be.

Thinking back on it now, if I had approached this as a side-story that was about Ronan and not a "traditional" sequel to The Raven Boys, my expectations would have been calibrated properly. Because I thought there would be progress with the Glendower search, it didn't compute when the search was mired and another mystic concept, the Greywaren, was thrown in as if out of no where. Things were happening, but to me it was a slow inching trek toward an unknown destination, and I was in a frustrating place where I didn't know if what I was reading was taking me anywhere. In my mind I was in the second book of a series feeling like I actually hadn’t gone beyond the set up stage of the story.

What compounds my problems with direction and plot is that this is a multi-character story with multiple focuses. Ronan has a bigger role in this second book (which I expected, based on the title and the cover), and I was looking forward to it because he's so enigmatic in The Raven Boys, but because every chapter was a short flash on a single character before moving onto the next, his voice was one of many. It was easy to forget that this was "Ronan's book" when the focus moved away from him so often. While Ronan’s power to bring dreams to life is explored, two new characters (the aforementioned Gray Man, and Kavinsky - an obnoxious street-racing-fellow-student) are introduced, and Blue, Gansey, Adam, and Noah continue to have their own problems. Not to mention what all the women living at 300 Fox Way get up to. Again I was reminded the first book, where the fragmented focus made me unsure of who the main characters were. In the end, the characters that get the most page time (Ronan and The Gray Man) were the characters I was happiest with because there was enough pulling back of the veil to see their inner workings, even if I wasn't completely satisfied with their particular story arcs (that's a whole other thing that goes into spoiler territory though). As for almost everyone else, it was as if there were too many characters for there to be more for the reader than to touch their outside edges, let alone grasp them whole.

Where I really felt this was with Adam, Blue, and Gansey, whose interrelationships are complicated by romance, rivalry, class, and a curse. What we got of them only makes the loss greater: subtle scenes between Gansey and Blue, a raw honesty between Blue and Adam, and tests of friendship between Adam and Gansey. Despite this, I had only my own guesses to things like why Adam's character was so alien (more angry than vulnerable) from what he once was. I can't help but feel like I'd trade one or more of the minor characters' space in The Dream Thieves for more Adam, or Blue, or Gansey.

I know, I know. Due to my (faulty?) wiring, even though I kept thinking of certain wonderful bits and pieces of this book long after it was finished, I was just too bothered by all of the above for The Dream Thieves to be a hit with me. I'm sure I'm in the minority in this.

Overall: My reaction is the dreaded "I wanted to like this more than I did". While I found a lot of things to like about The Dream Thieves, for each aspect about this story that I enjoyed, there was another that really didn't work for me. One problem was my expectations and that I was approaching this story thinking that it was a continuation of The Raven Boys rather than something that was more of a companion piece that intertwines into the greater whole. Another was that I just don't do well with a lot of characters and an unfocused destination. Since I had similar issues with The Raven Boys and hoped I would fare better in this book, The Dream Thieves rated lower than The Raven Boys on my visceral reaction scale, but would probably rate higher if I could repress my feelings and look at this with more neutral eyes. I suspect I would like this book more the second time around now that I know what I'm getting.

Buy: Amazon | Powell’s | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Angieville - "If you're looking for a story worth living and breathing, The Dream Thieves will take you there."
Book Harbinger - "When somehow the Raven Cycle comes to its impossible, filled-to-the-brim-with-potential conclusion, we’re in for a treat."
Bunbury in the Stacks - "I am unable to find all of the proper words needed to express my love of book two of The Raven Cycle"
YAckers discussion

Yup yup, everyone liked this more than I did. I will go hide now.

Bookish Gifts: Mystery Edition

janicu — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 04:23:49 GMT

I was about to begin another general Bookish Gifts posts (any excuse to window shop online), but suddenly I was searching for things with a certain detective novel theme. I think it is because I am in the middle of watching the latest Sherlock (don't tell me what happens). Anyway, there's something comforting in reading a mystery: you always find out who did it in the end, but you get to have fun guessing along the way. Nancy Drew was my gateway into reading, way back when. I will always have a soft spot for Agatha Christie and Dick Francis too. And of course I'm a fan of the modern-day screen adaptions of Sherlock Holmes (I like the movies, and both Elementary and Sherlock). What are your favorite mystery series?

1. The Big Sleep and Murder at the Vicarage mugs (£8.95, AU$14.99, US$9.95) 2. Poirot Mustache stud earrings ($60) 3. Green Popular Penquins (AU$7.99-$9.95) 4. Detective Novel scented candle ($10) 5. Nancy Drew Drawer Pulls ($40) 6. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson felt dolls ($80) - also available Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot ($45 ea). 7. Sherlock Holmes in The Hounds of the Baskervilles, a Baby Lit sound primer ($8.99) 8. Whodunnit applique pillow ($101.29) 9. 221B button ($2.56)

10. The Complete Sherlock Holmes box set ($59.99) 11. Nancy Drew Pillow Cover ($38 to $41, depending on size) 12. Hardy Boys Pillow Cover ($35 to $45, depending on size) 13. Crime Classics phone wallpaper (FREE) 14. Nancy Drew Girl Detective Doll ($149) - other versions available, see link. Also The Hardy Boys and Dick Tracy) 15. The Complete Adventures of Tintin (from about $100) 16. Red Herring Greeting Cards ($2.40 ea) 17. Nancy Drew Taxi Wallet ($49) 18. Question Mark Ring ($13) 19. Private Eye perfume oil ($15)

20. The novelist & the detective (set of 6 pencils - $8) 21. Tiny gun necklace ($15) 22. Secret Message Writing set ($9.59) 23. Secret Decoder Ring, Pig Pen Cipher ($15) 24. White's Books Fine Edition Sherlock Holmes: His Greatest Cases (from $23.82) 25. Pipe pin badge ($8.56) 26. Agatha Christie 1" buttons (set of 10 for $11) 27. Nancy Drew with redesigned covers ($6.99 ea)

Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley

janicu — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 16:40:15 GMT

Graffiti Moon

Cath Crowley

I think it was two (or was it three?) years ago when Graffiti Moon was enthusiastically recommended on almost every YA book blog I read. It's been on my mental "one day" list for a long time, but I never actually got around to buying myself a copy (I think it was a combination of wanting a paperback edition and preferring the Australian cover to the American one). Finally, I had my chance to read it through Holly of The Book Harbinger. Thanks Secret Santa!

The Premise: (from the back blurb) "Senior year is over, and Lucy has the perfect way to celebrate: tonight she's going to find Shadow, the mysterious graffiti artist whose work appears all over the city. Somewhere in the glassy darkness, he's out there, spraying color, spraying birds and blue sky on the night. And Lucy knows that a guy who paints like Shadow is someone she could fall for -- really fall for.

The last person Lucy wants to spend this night with is Ed, the guy she's managed to avoid since punching him in the nose on the most awkward date of her life. But when Ed tells Lucy he knows where to find Shadow, the two of them are suddenly on all all-night search to places where Shadow's pieces of heartbreak and escape echo off the city walls. And what Lucy can't see is the one thing that's right before her eyes."

My Thoughts: This is a story told from mostly two points of view: that of Lucy, celebrating the end of year twelve with her friends Jazz and Daisy, and that of Ed, a high school dropout who has a few hours to kill before he and his friends Leo and Dylan plan to break into the school. Ed and Lucy know each other, but between them lies a gulf filled with awkwardness. They had one date that ended in humiliation, and neither of them have quite gotten over it. For Lucy, it cemented her belief that outside of books (and the possible exception of her obsession, Shadow), looking for a kindred spirit amongst the local boys only leads to disappointment. For Ed, their date was yet another demoralizing event in a long string of demoralizing events.

It's not really anyone's fault. Lucy doesn't know a lot of things about Ed because he never confided in her. And Ed is so used to hiding the truth that it's led to a spectacular failure of a date and his dropping out of school. It doesn't help that Ed and his mom were barely scraping by before he lost his job. Now he's worried about the rent and making decisions out of desperation rather than good judgement. That brings them to where they are now: Lucy and her friends with nothing more pressing on their minds than a night of fun and possibility, Ed and his friends going along, but keeping their secrets.

What follows is a read that hit the sweet spot: not too short, but not overly long; sweet but not fluffy; predictable in a comforting way, but also utterly different from anything else I've read. And just the right amount of humor to keep everything going. I couldn't help liking Lucy and Ed immediately. Lucy with her instant friendships and her take-no-nonsense edge, and Ed, who is a little bit lost and deserves a break. Most of this book was just Ed and Lucy talking, and their banter is pretty great, but also reading what each is thinking about the other as we switch back and forth between them makes their interactions even better. Ed's unease with hiding things from Lucy makes for some parts particularly poignant.

The book that Graffiti Moon is probably most compared to is Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Music is to Nick and Norah, as Art is to Graffiti Moon. When the shared interest in creativity comes with a night-long adventure on the town, bumping into ex-girlfriends, and skirting from trouble, it's no wonder that the two books are considered similar. But the similarities are superficial. These stories hit me in different ways. I feel like Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist has a young adult world that's separate from authority figures and responsibility; it exists within an intimate sphere and is about the magic that happens when people develop a connection. In Graffiti Moon, that frisson is there too, it's just that here the characters aren't so separate from their day-to-day lives. This is particularly true for Ed, who is constantly struggling to just get through life because he worrying about money and helping his single-parent mother who's making her way through nursing school. Ed's mind is always in quiet turmoil, and there's this tension in watching someone who knows better start to take the wrong turn.

I think that what really got me with this book was how being a dreamer and using creative expression was portrayed so positively, beyond just being the common denominator between Ed and Lucy. My sister is the artist in the family, and I can tell you that going to the MoMA with her is a whole different experience than going with non-artist friends. Because of this, I just loved reading Lucy geeking out over art. And I loved that art could change Ed's life in a real, not just metaphorical way, if only Ed would let it. I also loved that Ed and Lucy have parents and mentors who encourage them instead of dissuading them. It was nice to read the interactions between Ed and Lucy and those adults. I loved all these things because every time either Ed or Lucy think about something that inspires them, their words became particularly poetic. It made me root for them to keep this.

Overall: Really good. I think this one will have wide appeal -- its writing is unassuming and accessible, but if you want depth you'll find it. Also this is one of those books that pleasantly lingers. It could be because of the beautiful artwork painted with words, or because certain things here make you ruminate afterward. I found myself thinking about how Graffiti Moon was about the juxtaposition between imagination and reality and when I saw that theme I couldn't stop thinking of examples: in the way Lucy and Ed's lives became the basis for their art, in Lucy's expectations of Shadow versus the truth as Ed knew it, and in the way art affected both their lives. It was nice to think about art and life for a little while.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:

Inkcrush - 5 stars ("Somehow this book perfectly captures how I felt as a teen - that big dreaming scheming place in my head")

need_tea - B+/A- ("My initial reaction was perhaps a bit tepid, liked it but it wasn’t that great, but over time I thought about it some more and my opinion of it rose")

Bookchilla - 4/5 ("Lucy & Ed’s story unfolded very nicely and wrapped up in such a feel good way")

Bunbury in the Stacks - ("My experience with Graffiti Mooncould be summed up using a number of variations of the sentence: “I don’t like _________, but I liked it in this book.”")

Angieville - ("GRAFFITI MOON is a gem--a breath of fresh air.")

Guest Post: Rachel Neumeier on Under the Radar books

janicu — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 17:35:10 GMT

Hi everyone! I'd like to introduce Rachel Neumeier, author of the recently released Black Dog (watch this space for a review soon), as well as The House of Shadows, The Griffin Mage trilogy, The Floating Islands, and The City in the Lake.

I love hearing recommendations from other readers, and today Rachel has a fantastic list of books that might not have gotten the attention they deserve. There's a few here I've not heard of that I have to get my hands on now, and I can tell you she's not wrong about the books that I have read.

Thanks for inviting me over to Spec Fic Romantic – it’s a pleasure to be here!

I’ve been writing a good many guest posts about Black Dog lately, so this time I’d like to try writing on a topic that’s slightly removed: I’d like to share with you a handful of my favorite books that should be right at the top of your TBR pile, but that you might not have heard of because they are old, or have been “flying under the radar,” or are simply outside your normal reading range.

These days, I think many of us get most of our book recommendations from blogs and Twitter. Certainly I do, especially now that I have a Kindle. One enthusiastic recommendation from a blogger whose taste matches mine, and I may very well just pick the book up immediately. Naturally, following book-review blogs leads to a huge TBR pile and promotes some excellent books, but I suspect it also leads to a concentration of social-media attention, so that a handful of new releases pick up the lion’s share of notice. Often those books are great and deserve every bit of the attention they get, but all too often an equally great title languishes because it didn’t happen to get that initial buzz. And, of course, anything published before the social media Phenomenon is simply out of luck. With all the new, shiny titles hitting the shelves, it’s almost impossible to generate buzz for anything published more than a year ago, much less more than a decade ago.

On the other hand, blogger recommendations can lead you straight to titles or authors you wouldn’t ordinarily try, which is an unmixed blessing.

So, here we go. I think that anyone whose taste runs toward character-driven stories with beautifully drawn settings ought to consider trying the following titles.

1. I thought I’d start with the oldest. How many of you have ever read anything by Rumer Godden?

Godden wrote a whole lot of books from 1936 right up through 1997, an amazing career that ended a trifle in advance of the social media explosion. In This House of Brede was published in 1969. It is not fantasy. It is not adventure. It is not a romance. It is a contemporary novel (not actually contemporary anymore, true, but set in our world).

I read mostly fantasy, with some science fiction, mysteries, and historicals thrown in. I don’t read many contemporary novels. But this one? This one is simply one of the best and most powerful novels I’ve ever read, of any genre.

For those who particularly enjoy YA, Godden’s Thursday’s Children is one you should really look up. Especially if you love dance. I don’t know anything about ballet, but this perfect little novel had me completely enthralled with the story of a gifted boy who tags along with his sister to ballet class. Read it the first time for pure enjoyment and a second time as a character study, because the depth of characterization is amazing.

2. The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson is a true contemporary published only a year or so ago. This one is a good example of a single blogger recommendation leading to an out-of-the-usual purchase for me. Ana at The Book Smugglers raved about this book, so even though it’s a YA contemporary, I picked it up. It is a very intense book and you should have a box of kleenix handy when you read it – but you should read it. And then go back through and read all the scraps of poetry:

At 4:48 pm on a Friday in April / my sister was rehearsing the role of Juliet / and less than one minute later / she was dead. / To my astonishment, time didn’t stop / with her heart.

This is a story about grief and recovery, but it is also a story that celebrates friendship, family, and love. I think absolutely everyone should have this title right at the top of their TBR pile.

3. I really don’t read many romances, so this next one, a contemporary romance series set in Paris, represents an even greater departure from my normal reading range. In fact, this is another example of a series I tried solely because of a blogger’s review. But, whether romance is your first love or not, you just have to try Laura Florand’s Chocolate mysteries.

The first is The Chocolate Thief, which is light and fun; the series deepens as you go on. My favorite is the third, but all of them are wonderful. Florand can make any character sympathetic; it’s amazing. The poor little rich girl? Yep, sympathetic. Anyone could learn plenty about characterization and using backstory to deepen character from this author. Luckily, she is a fast writer and has brought a good many titles out over just the past couple of years.

4. I do like mysteries and read a fair number of them, but one mystery series that has completely faded from view is the “Dolly” series by Dorothy Dunnett. You’ll also find them referred to as the “Johnson Johnson” mysteries. I think a lot more people have read Dunnett’s fat historicals – which I like a lot – than have even heard of her mysteries. Dunnett wrote these in the seventies, but they’ve all been recently republished under different titles.

I discovered this series when I was just starting to think seriously about writing, and I found Dunnett’s technique fascinating. Every book in this series is told in the first person by a different young woman, but the real protagonist is arguably Johnson Johnson himself – famous painter, owner of the yacht Dolly, and perhaps a bit more than he seems at first glance – whose point of view is never shown to the reader.

5. RA MacAvoy wrote a good handful of fantasy novels in the eighties, of which one of my favorites is Tea With the Black Dragon. This is a wonderful little gem of a novel, with just the most subtle fantasy elements laid into what seems on the surface a straight contemporary. I mean, is Mayland Long really a dragon or isn’t he? (Personally, I’m positive he is.)

Plus, Tea is one of those vanishingly rare stories where the romance involves middle-aged people. How often do you see that, right? I can’t really talk, because most of my protagonists are young, too. But I really enjoy seeing a great story where one of the central characters is an older woman.

6. While on that topic, anybody who hasn’t read Martha Wells is missing out. Her standalone fantasy Wheel of the Infinite is a great story, with wonderful worldbuilding – wonderful everything, actually, but Martha Wells just excels at worldbuilding. This one has a Southeast Asian feel to it. Plus, the main protagonist in Wheel is an older woman who is at the height of her power and basically doesn’t ever need to be afraid of any ordinary threats. How often do you see that in a fantasy novel, right?

Wheel has been out for more than a decade, but Wells’ more recent Raksura trilogy, starting with The Cloud Roads, was only completed in 2012. Again, spectacular worldbuilding, this time of a world that is completely unique among fantasy settings. You trip over an ancient city built on an immense turning platform, or whatever, everywhere you go. The nonhuman shapeshifter protagonists are equally unique; these are not just funny-looking humans who sometimes have wings, but a different species with their own body language and ways of thinking.

Plus, people, let me tell you, you really don’t want to miss the giant zombie sea serpent.

7. I wonder how many people know that Jacqueline Lichtenberg wrote two books as Daniel R Kerns? Hero was first published in 1993 and Border Dispute in 1994, and it’s a crying shame Lichtenberg didn’t go on to write half a dozen more. I don’t know whether to call these books space opera or military SF, but either way, if nonhuman protagonists appeal to you, these slim little novels will make you stand up and cheer. It’s not that there aren’t humans in these books, but the protagonist, Indiw, certainly is not human. His confusion at human behavior is endless, and Commander Falstaff is certainly equally confused by Ardr behavior. I don’t know of anyone who has ever done this kind of culture clash better than Lichtenberg.

8. Speaking of military SF, Tanya Huff’s Valor series is amazing. If military SF doesn’t normally appeal to you, well, pick up Valor’s Choice and see if that doesn’t change your mind at least for this one series. Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr is a wonderful protagonist, smoothly handling her superior officers so that she can do her best by her mission and her people. I don’t know what inspired Huff to make the protagonist a sergeant rather than the commander, but it was an excellent choice. Every book stands pretty well on its own, but there’s also plenty of room in this five-book series for another installment, and I sure hope Huff has one in the works.

9. Nick O’Donohoe wrote a handful of widely disparate books in the eighties and nineties, of which the best, if you ever thought you might like to be a veterinarian, is the Crossroads trilogy. The first book, and probably the best, is The Magic and the Healing. If you’d like to know how to repair the horn of a unicorn or diagnose gout in a griffin, this is the series for you. The veterinary medicine is well done (says my vet, who borrowed these books from me), and the actual story is top notch as well. I have a soft spot for The Magic and the Healing, which demonstrated to me the difference between an author declaring a character is smart when she is actually stupid as a post; and the author actually writing a smart character. Obviously, this is book offers an example of the latter. BJ Vaughn is one of the most perceptive characters I can think of, in her quiet way.

The griffin in this book also directly inspired the griffins in my Griffin Mage trilogy. Though O’Donohoe’s griffin is actually nothing at all like mine, he made me fall in love with griffins.

10. I don’t usually read self-published books, but enthusiastic reviews from The Book Smugglers and from Heidi at Bunbury in the Stacks made me pick up And All the Stars by Andrea Höst. That one was good enough that I went on to pick up Höst’s Touchstone trilogy. And that was so good it was my top read of 2013 and led me to pick up the rest of Höst’s backlist.

Lovers of romance should particularly look for her Medair duology and And All the Stars, both of which offer stunning plot twists that will leave you absolutely dumbstruck. Everyone should read the Touchstone trilogy, which is a wonderful portal SF story that explores issues of technology and privacy while following the battle of, um, psychic space ninjas against extradimensional monsters. Sort of. Anyway, Cassandra’s voice is wonderful, the slow-burn romance is wonderful, the setting is wonderful, and this trilogy (plus the Gratuitous Epilogue) belongs right at the top of everyone’s TBR pile.

So there you go, ten excellent authors that might not be the subject of a lot of current buzz, but are well worth a look. I hope you’ll look up one or two of them no matter how many new titles you have cluttering up your TBR piles. Enjoy!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Rachel Neumeier started writing fiction to relax when she was a graduate student and needed a hobby unrelated to her research. Prior to selling her first fantasy novel, she had published only a few articles in venues such as The American Journal of Botany. However, finding that her interests did not lie in research, Rachel left academia and began to let her hobbies take over her life instead.

She now raises and shows dogs, gardens, cooks, and occasionally finds time to read. She works part-time for a tutoring program, though she tutors far more students in Math and Chemistry than in English Composition.

Bookish Gifts: Jane Austen Edition

janicu — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 02:39:55 GMT

I've been thinking of doing a bookish gift post that had a specific fan theme, and since it's the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice I spent this weekend surfing the web for Jane Austen themed doodads. It should be no surprise, knowing how popular Jane Austen is, that I found a lot of Jane Austen themed objects. This is even with me making sure I wasn't repeating bookish gifts I had featured here before. Enjoy. (Click pictures for enlarged views).
.

1. Jane Austen bandages ($5) 2. Jane Austen Literary Chocolate (set of 6, €25) 3. Pride & Prejudice Hollow book safe ($62) 4. Jane Austen - Pride & Prejudice illustrated postcards (set of 5 - about $10) 5. Replica of Jane Austen's ring (£130 in gold, £60 in silver) 6. Pride & Prejudice Literary Transport mug (£7.95) 7. Made You Book sweatshirt ($42.99) 8. Pride & Prejudice peacock cuff ($40) 9. Pride & Prejudice book scarf ($42)

10. Totes Adorbs pillow ($20) 11. Persuasion Book Purse ($55) 12. Jane Austen Bust (£18.00) 13. Austen hand drawn quote bookmarks ($12.51) 14. Jane Austen Book Titles Tote ($23.63) 15. Mr Darcy Literary T-shirt ($24.95) 16. Baby Lit Board books - Pride & Prejudice (counting); Sense & Sensibility (opposites) ($9.99) 17. PBS: The Complete Jane Austen Collection DVD combo ($111.99)

18. Cozy Classics Board Books (Emma and Pride & Prejudice - $9.95 each) 19. Pemberley Rose Soy Candle ($12) 20. Jane Austen Silhouette necklace (pendant is laser cut in acrylic) ($19.90) 21. Pride and Prejudice pouch ($12) 22. "I Dearly Love a Laugh" quote pendant ($37.39) 23. Jane Austen mini button ($3) 24. Jane Austen library travel tin candle ($8) 25. Jane Austen graphic novels - Marvel classics (retail price between $15-$20 each) 26. Jane Austen stamp set (£5.30) 27. I Heart Darcy tote ($20) 28. From the Desk of Jane Austen - 100 postcard set ($20) 29. Gail Wilson Jane Austen inspired doll ($595 finished, $125 kit, extras from $10)

30. Penguin Clothbound/Hardcover Classics (about $20 each) 31. Persuasion mug, Pride and Prejudice mug (£8.95) 32. Jane Austen/Mr. Darcy cookie cutter set (about $16) 33. Persuasion book clutch (other Austen covers available! - 60€) 34. Jane Austen and modern day DVDs: Lost in Austen and Clueless ($4-$10) 35. Jane Austen font (free for personal use) 36. Jane Austen and Bollywood DVDs: Bride & Prejudice, Aisha (Emma adapation), and I Have Found It (S&S adaptation) ($6-$15 each) 37. Jane Austen quote pencils (6 NZD)

Hope you liked these! If you're interested in more of this kind of thing, check out the bookish gifts tag. P.S. There are so many Austen-inspired books I could have put here but I restrained myself. And if they existed, I would have included pre-order links for The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Austenland. Next time.

House of Shadows by Rachel Neumeier

janicu — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 15:00:08 GMT

House of Shadows

Rachel Neumeier

This is a review of a book provided to me by Orbit books.

The Premise: In the town of Lonne, in the country of Lirionne, a merchant dies, leaving behind his eight daughters. The women can't own their father's business, and without their father, they're destitute. The only path is for the oldest to marry so her husband could own the business and let her level-headed sister run it. This way they should make profit in a few years. The only problem is that no marriage can take place without a dowry. To save their sisters, two of the women volunteer to be "sold". Karah, the second oldest and everyone's favorite, secures a remarkable price at Cloisonné House, the best keiso house in the candlelight district. Eccentric Nemienne, the other sacrificing sister, turns her oddness into an asset when she goes the Lane of Shadows to become a mage's apprentice. Meanwhile, a bard named Taudde is caught in Lonne (in violation of the the treaty of Brenedde) and is forced by his captors to carry out their agenda. As war looms between Lirionne and its neighbor, Karah earns a protector in Leilis (a young woman who is not a servant but also not a keiso) against the jealousy of the other deisa, Nemienne explores the mage's house and is led to unexpected places, and Taudde struggles to escape the conspiracy he's been entangled in.

My Thoughts: House of Shadows is a multi-protagonist story where the point of view cycles between three main characters. The first chapter's focus is on the sisters and their decision to sell two of their number, the second's on Leilis of Cloisonné House, and the third's on Taudde and his difficulties. Because of the rotating points of view, it takes a third of the book (about 100 pages) before a unified plot makes itself known. (This review is going to talk about the threads, but not necessarily explain how they interweave because I try not to give away specific details on plot if it happens after page fifty).

There's always the danger with multiple protagonists that I'll end up invested in one character's storyline and want to skim everything else. At first I was afraid this would happen here because I really liked Karah and Nemienne's storyline. The death of a merchant father, the eight sisters--each with their own unique ability, and the necessary sacrifice to sell their loveliest and their strangest, infused the story with a fairytale quality I wanted to explore. I saw Beauty and the Beast in the sisters trading themselves in for their loved ones' comfort. I wanted to dive into a story that revolved around their training to be a keiso and a mage. The shift to Leilis, a servant who is not really a servant was a surprise, but she was still in the same orbit as Karah, and smooths Karah's transition into the House, so it wasn't a bad shift. Also, Leilis is mysterious and I wanted to figure out what was behind someone who could be unobtrusive and also navigate the in-house politics of Cloisonné. It was when the the story moves to Taudde in the third chapter that I struggled the most. That's when I really had to accept that the focus wasn't just on the two sisters forging new lives. On the other hand, with Taudde, the the scope of the story widened from personal drama to political intrigue. This wasn't the story of two sisters that I was expecting, but the world building combined with wanting to know what was going on lured me forward.

What I liked about the world building in House of Shadows is that you can feel the influence of other stories on it, but it still remains distinct from them. I've already mentioned fairy tales when I talked about the sisters' story, but there's also hints of it elsewhere: an unexplained curse, enigmatic animal guides, a man with an iron will. The sense of fairy tale also compliments how the magic of Lirionne is described. Lonne seems to be seeped in magic, yet most of the city is totally unaware, so when it is encountered, it's strange and secret. I felt like there was a sense of wonder and mystery because here was something complex and unpredictable. The best example of this (and my favorite) is the mage's "oddly outsized" house built into the mountain, where rooms may move and hallways stretch and bend. I love the "magical buildings that grow at will" trope.

Another influence I could see was Japanese culture -- appearing here as the keiso, Neumeier's version of geisha, with an emphasis she says, on "their roles as artists and high status women". Beautiful, respected, and independent thanks to their artistry, keiso are sought after and could even marry, becoming "flower wives" to wealthy men (their sons would be acknowledged by their fathers). I liked that this suggests a different kind of world building than the default Western-based one. The cover reflects that, depicting a girl with with Asian features, but in the book, race is actually hazy: Karah has blue eyes, "creamy skin", and "clouds of twilight hair", Leilis has "storm-gray eyes" and hair "so dark it was almost black", while another character has "dark eyes" and "straw-pale brows", his hair, "a shade lighter". That this story nods at Japanese culture, but it's only a facet of the world building, not all of the world building, is good too.

Overall: This was a nice multi-protagonist story and bonus: it's standalone, which isn't too common in Fantasy (the ending leaves the door ajar for further adventures, but I haven't heard any news about a sequel). The one complaint I have is that I wouldn't have minded getting to know individual characters more, but it didn't feel like there was room for that and to have the plot threads interweave so neatly and so well-synchronized. Character development is a big part of my personal scoring system, but I loved the world building, so in the end this fit into a middle-ish "liked" category for me.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
The Book Smugglers - 8 (Excellent)
Bunbury in the Stacks - " I enjoyed the fairy tale beginning, but it was from halfway through to the end of this book that I was truly glued to the pages and unable to put it down."

In which I suck at blogging

janicu — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 03:23:59 GMT

I don’t think it comes as that great a surprise to anyone that follows this blog that it’s been in a quiet state for the past few months. I had the best intentions at the beginning of the year to balance the blog with the new job, but somehow at the end of the work day I’ve used up all my enthusiasm for things that require brainpower. I want nothing more than surf tumblr and check my TiVo queue. Ah, sweet laziness, I wallow in thee.

Some of this is that I have to focus on the new job and I should be using my grey matter for that, but some of it is just getting into a funk from not posting for a while. Things were better: after BEA and the BEA Blogger Con, I got some of the enthusiasm back, and I was posting again and visiting blogs I like.

Then this summer I was put in a leadership role at work. On one hand: Kick-ass opportunity. On the other hand: I am figuring out the work-life balance all over again now that my role changed. There are so many more meetings, so many more decisions, so much more email, so much more responsibility. And I’m new at this. Sometimes at the end of my day I just think, “I am exhausted!” but I think once I adjust I will find the balance again. I swear, I see land in the horizon! It’s just not something that happens overnight.

I haven’t read that much this year. Reviews are taking me longer to write than they used to. I feel bad about that. I’m still working on it. I’m pretty stubborn. I like this space of mine online. I am keeping at it. Consider this post a declaration: “I’m still here.”

So if you have any lovely tips on work-life-blog balance, I would love to hear them. I KNOW I’m not the only one who has had to deal with adjusting to a new job, and I wonder what other people do to get blogging in. Work on the blog super-duper early in the morning? Super late at night? Write up a ton of posts in the weekend and schedule them for weekdays? Write partial posts on your smartphone? I need to learn the ways.

Giveaway: Thirteen by Kelley Armstrong

janicu — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 02:17:35 GMT

To celebrate the paperback release of Thirteen by Kelley Armstrong, the final book of the Women of the Otherworld series (available August 6th), Plume has offered a copy for this blog's readers.

The gripping, epic finale to the bestselling Otherworld series
A war is brewing and the first battle has already been waged. After rescuing her half brother from supernatural medical testing, Savannah Levine—a young witch of remarkable power and a dangerous pedigree—is battered, but still standing. The Supernatural Liberation Movement took him hostage, and they have a maniacal plan to expose the supernatural world to the unknowing.
Savannah is fighting to save her world as witches, werewolves, necromancers, vampires, half-demons, and all the forces of good and evil—including the genetically modified werewolves known as hell hounds—enter the fray. Uniting Savannah with Adam, Elena, Clay, Paige, Lucas, Jaime, Hope, and other denizens of the Otherworld, Thirteen is a thrilling conclusion to this blockbuster series.

To enter, fill out the form on my wordpress blog

Rules:

This giveaway is for U.S./Canada only

Contest ends: Sunday, August 4th.

One entry per person please!

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

janicu — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 19:55:50 GMT

Fangirl

Rainbow Rowell

Fangirl comes out in September this year. This is an early review on an ARC I received at BEA.

The Premise: It's fall semester of freshman year, and Cather (aka Cath, the Less Adventurous Twin), feels lost amongst the other undergraduates. Her sister Wren has basically abandoned her ("if we do this together, people will treat us like we're the same person"); her dad is home alone and Cath worries about that; her roommate Reagan is scary, and comes with the too-friendly Levi, who is in their room all the time. All Cath wants is to be left alone to work on her massively popular and novel length Simon and Baz fan fiction, Carry On, but college is getting in the way, and college is hard.

My Thoughts: Reading Fangirl is a comforting exercise. It's one of those books where you open it's pages and don't notice the words because it takes no time to be engulfed. What's more, nothing extraordinary may be happening on the page -- moving into the dorms, briefly meeting a new roommate, saying goodbye to relatives, but there is an engrossing quality to how the characters reveal themselves through their everyday interactions. Well, sort of everyday. It's not every day you move away from home and have your support system disappear. Titular character Cath thinks that college is hard, but I think the real issue is having to do it alone. Without her twin Wren at her side, Cath is too anxious to even go to the cafeteria by herself and lives off a stash of energy bars rather than find out where it is. She sits in the bathroom stalls quietly crying while the other girls in her hall are meeting one another. She is a quintessential introvert, her mind focused on an inner world, and who doesn't like to get out of her comfort zone. Her sister may call her 3 year (now long distance) boyfriend an "end table", but Cath is content with things being as they are.

You know where this is going. Cath can't have the world stay safe and easy, and it won't pause for her. Eventually she has to interact with others and be absorbed into new people's orbits, and no matter what she does, other people and their lives affect hers. First (and most obvious) to impact her is her sister's desertion, a strange flip in loyalty that leaves Cath floundering, but her sister is not the only family member that can rattle Cath. In college itself, Cath can't avoid her roommate Reagan or the ubiquitous Levi, but then there's also people from her classes like Nick from Creative Writing and the assortment of new acquaintances Cath picks up because she doesn't want to be rude.

What I liked though, is that Cath got to stay herself while having to accept change. This is not a story with the moral that being introverted does you no good; it's perfectly fine to be that way. In fact, one of my favorite parts of the story is Cath's private world and her devotion to the Simon Snow series. Fan fiction is so popular now, it's practically mainstream, but I don't think I've ever heard of a story that embraces that subculture the way that Fangirl does. I don't think of myself as part of that subculture, but even I know about 'slash' and 'ships', and there's a certain joy in recognizing that Simon Snow is a riff on Harry Potter. Obviously (points at book blog), I get the whole fan and being into books thing, and any time Cath waxed poetic about characters she loves, or I read excerpts of Simon Snow or Cath's fan fiction (placed like intermissions between chapters) and recognized elements, I grinned internally. I loved how this is important to Cath's life and reflects as such in her conversations and relationships. Simon or simply, "stories" and "storytelling" is shared ground between Cath and others and there are a lot of scenes where it is the bridge between minds.

For all of Cath's fangirl-ly-ness I connected with Cath while also not really connecting with her. The introverted, wanting-to-be-alone parts I could understand, but some of her more extreme coping mechanisms (like not bothering to find the cafeteria and essentially starving) I could not. It doesn't matter though. What matters is that even if I didn't always understand her, I always felt for Cath. It was the same for the secondary characters who didn't always make the best choices but managed to make me care about them. This is what I want New Adult fiction to be--not a marketing term that means sex, but an extension of the coming-of-age tale into a post-adolescent bracket. Fangirl captures the awkward unsure side of tasting independence for the first time.

The last thing I want to say about Fangirl is that it is surprising. There were some things that I was expecting, but in the end, this story made it's characters a lot more complicated than I thought they were going to be, and thus bucked all my predictions. This includes a blossoming romance that I thought was going to be smooth and sweet but defied me by being almost painfully uncertain instead (and was the better for it). If you think you know what's going to happen after reading the first 50 pages, you'd probably be wrong. The plot is essentially about relationship growth, and every single relationship Cath began in safe little boxes and mushroomed out to be unique and nuanced and entirely different beasts from which they began.

Overall: Really, really, good. I found very little to complain about, and when I did, it was always a personal reaction to a character's actions and no reflection on the actual writing or story -- not worth going over in this review. And it actually seems to get better the more I reflect on it after finishing it. I hadn't read anything by Rainbow Rowell before but it hasn't missed my attention how many fans she has in the book blogging community. I waited in line for a copy of Fangirl because of the hype, and it was a very long wait. I can tell you now: it was utterly worth it.

P.S. How about that cover? I felt proud of myself for recognizing the artwork of gingerhaze.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Not yet as far as I could tell (I searched amongst my book blog friends), but if I missed yours, let me know.

Thief's Covenant by Ari Marmell

janicu — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 13:55:52 GMT

Thief's Covenant

Ari Marmell

The Premise: Adrienne Satti was an orphan that was adopted into the aristocracy, an unlikely rags-to-riches story that turned sour when she became the sole survivor of a horrific massacre and had to disappear. Now she is a thief called Widdershins that regularly gets in trouble - both with the law and with her own guild. Unfortunately people are still looking for Adrienne Satti, and maybe one day someone will figure out that Widdershins and she are one and the same. Oh, and she is the only worshiper of the god Olgun, and he lives inside her head.

My Thoughts: This is a book that I bought for purely shallow reasons: the cover pleases me. I like the use of the white background, the title placement, and the unexpected figure hanging from a ceiling beam. It does have a bit of a young adult feel (young woman on cover seems to equal YA these days), but I didn't really realize it was YA until I looked it up on the publisher's website. Despite just wanting this book because it's so pretty, I didn't pounce until I found a nice used copy because of on-the-fence (not really stellar, but not hating it either) reviews from reviewers I trust.

So. Thieves, guilds, remarkable orphans, and a pantheon of gods that can directly communicate with their worshipers (if they so wish to). These are very well-worn tropes of fantasy and they form the building blocks of the world within Thief's Covenant. I don't really find this a bad thing, it's comfort food if it's not new-to-you, and fun if it is. What I think this story does differently is that injects an entertainment to everything. What I mean by that is: no matter what grim thing is happening on the page, the prose manages to veer off into humorous territory. You can start a scene where grim Guardsmen are examining the grisly remains of a dozen aristocrats, the floor positively awash in blood, when the focus shifts to the rafters above them where a whisper-conversation is taking place between Adrienne and her god Olgun. They're both in shock because, well what kind of secret cult keeps written records?!

I liked the humor to a certain extent. When the jokes were gentle elbow-nudges, I was on board, but it could get rather slapstick-y, which is less of my cup of tea. Either way, there's enough lightheartedness in here for me to appreciate the entertainment. One running gag was how basically everyone was after Adrienne/Widdershins but she always manages to one-up them. The Guardsmen are after Adrienne for one reason, and Widdershins for another. The Finder's Guild are after Widdershins for her general cheekiness, and there's a third group that just wants to find Widdershins/Adrienne to kill the survivor of the massacre. The whole book makes me think of a hall of doors chase scene mixed with elements of 'Home Alone'. Whenever Adrienne is caught, I feel like she always turns it around, leaving her captors worse off.

What is surprising is how this type of humor is juxtaposed with violence. That's where my one real complaint about the story stems from -- strangely, more because of how the secondary characters suffered than for the violence itself (although that was also jarring in the midst of what is mostly a caper). I felt like with so many throw-away characters, no chance for something deeper than a set of archetypes as the supporting cast. I would've enjoyed delving further and seeing their relationships with Widdershins develop. Maybe the point is to keep Widdershins isolated, or to add grit to the story. I don't know, all I know is I wound up feeling unfulfilled, and questioning if how things played out was how it had to go. The humor and adventure in the story mostly balances out this ruffled feeling, but didn't erase it entirely.

I have the second book of this series, False Covenant, on the to-be-read pile. I plan to read it soon.

Overall: The world building is typical fantasy fare and the secondary characters don't really get the development they could, but the prose and humor evens things out so what you are left with is something that falls squarely on middle ground. I would recommend this as something to try if what you're looking for is simply entertainment.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
The Book Smugglers - Joint rating was: 6 (Good, recommended with reservations)
Bitching, Books, and Baking - 5 beaters (out of 5): "There are WORDS in them thar pages! Glorious, well thought-out WORDS!"
Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell - "The ever so cool Widdershins made this my fav Marmell book to date"

Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell

janicu — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 03:03:39 GMT

Man in the Empty Suit

Sean Ferrell

This review is based on a finished copy of the book sent to me by SOHO Press.

The Premise: Every year, a time traveler travels to the same time and place: the Boltzmann Hotel, Manhattan, 1st of April, 2071, and celebrates his birthday with different versions of himself. It's a tradition he started when he was eighteen years old and invented his time travel raft. On his thirty-ninth birthday, the party is different. This time he discovers what the elder versions of himself have been hiding from the younger ones - that there's been a murder, and the victim is his forty-year old self. Unfortunately, no one over forty can remember exactly what happened, and they are panicked. The time traveler has to solve the murder before he becomes the victim.

My Thoughts: I loved the convoluted mystery implied by the premise of Man in the Empty Suit. With one man the center of everything - the future victim, the investigator, and all the suspects, I thought I was going to experience something very surreal, like an M.C. Escher image where everything loops cleverly back to the beginning. This story starts promisingly down this vein, but doesn't quite complete the circuit.

This is how it all begins in the first fifty pages: the time traveling narrator enters the hotel and he's persuaded to go above the third floor (a rule he had previously not broken) with an older version of himself. Then the older him sneaks off by taking the elevator back down and is found dead despite being supposedly alone in the car. Suddenly our narrator is surrounded by the older contingent of his birthday party, the Elders, who are all 'helpfully' giving him information about the murder and laying the whole problem in his hands. Our narrator, surrounded by himself has to mentally nickname his future selves based on their distinguishing features: Screwdriver, Yellow, Seventy, the Body. They all form a sort of secret club within the party, helping the narrator as he scrambles from the body to the ballroom and up and down the floors, trying to find clues while keeping his younger selves ignorant. This was all very weird, in an awesome way, but then all of a sudden there's this paradox thrown in. And then a woman.

Somehow, the focus is taken away from the murder, and what I'm reading isn't really a murder-mystery. This is more like a strange tale that examines this one character, his relationship with himself, a woman, Time, and whether everything he's doing is predetermined or if he can change his fate. In theory I should be having a great time, but in reality I found myself sort of drifting through the pages. This wasn't a difficult book to read (I was never confused about what was going on), nor did it drag, but I did feel like there wasn't really a point to everything and the plot was just muddling along. I think if I was the sort of reader who could be content with what I got, which was personal growth, independent agendas, and time travel strangeness, I would have fared better, but my problem was that I had expectations that weren't met. That this was a murder-mystery, first of all. If that wasn't going to happen, I would have settled for some clever Möbius plot. Neither really panned out for me, and this left me discontent. For a long time after I finished Man in the Empty Suit I wondered if I had actually missed some vital piece of information that would have satisfied these expectations, but I have flipped back and forth through the last hundred pages and haven't found it yet. Maybe I should be satisfied with the quiet and reflective ending instead of wanting a flashier one, but I'm not. To me, the way the story ended revealed that there was no plan. I felt like this story was pants-ed and not plotted, and it bugged me.

If plot is something that doesn't quite work for me, sometimes the characters make up for it. In this case, our narrator (he never gets a name by the way, which I actually like), isn't the easiest to relate to. I mean, who is the type of person to use their time-traveling raft to do nothing really special but study history, not for humanity, but for his own curiosity, and who likes to spend his birthday (for years and years!), with no one but himself? He's so self-involved, that he wants to be the center of attention at the party where all the attendees are himself:

"Thoroughly frozen now, I rubbed my skin dry with my palms and then pulled my new clothes out of my travel bag: a suit, the Suit. At last my turn to wallow in the shit of self-adoration.
[...]
Every year the entire party -- all my selves-- paused in respect when the Suit made the Entrance into the ballroom. All my other visits to the party were tainted. I always tried too hard to be the center of attention, even with myself. Especially with myself. But the Suit was beyond that; everyone paid attention to him without any effort on his part at all. A few times I tried to get close to him, to get a sense of when I might be him, but I had never been able to get his attention. It was as if he were attending a party to which no one else was invited."

This self-absorption is reflected in every character that is him. Granted, the younger members of the party are immature in obvious ways (drunk throughout the party, or openly resentful), but while the Elders are more concerned about the welfare of the group, they are still selfish in their own ways. And does our protagonist grow in this book? Well he's forced to go through a period of growth and eventually sees his own flaws, but it takes him a long time. So long that I spent most of the book not liking him.

Maybe this review sounds like a rant, but I'm trying to work through what's not working because there's something here, something that could be really good, but it's not enough. I'm really close to having some undefinable list of personal requirements met that would leave me satisfied, but this story and I, we didn't quite click.

Overall: My expectations led me astray on this one. I wanted one thing (crime solving, or time travel awesomeness), but I got something else (I'm not sure what to call it). The way this story bucked expectations is a positive, and I don't think I could say I've ever read anything like this, but in the end I'm more of a feeler than a thinker when it comes to my reactions to things, and I just wasn't getting what I wanted out of this story.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Book-Off

janicu — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 02:54:26 GMT

One of my favorite people in the world (and partial originator of the 'janicu' nickname) came to New York City last week over Memorial Day Weekend. Besides our usual (the MoMA: all six floors, and then food), we visited Book-Off, which is at 49 W 45th St, just a a short walk from Grand Central.

This place is magical. Basically it is a used book store, but it's a Japanese chain so there are a lot of Japanese books and manga there. There used to be a Book-Off about 10 minutes away from me in Hartsdale, NY but that was a short-lived venture - probably because there were a lot more books in Japanese than English and I don't think very people really knew it was there. But this Book-Off, the one in NYC? It has plenty of English books. It has rows and rows of used DVDs and CDs in the front, a huge sale section in the back, magazines to one side, and then a floor below with Japanese books and manga, and an upstairs balcony with I think non-fiction (but don't quote me because I was just glued to the fiction shelves, salivating and petting bindings). Also many books are on sale for $1. MANY MANY books. The books that are not on sale: about $2.50 for a paperback and $5 for a hardcover. It's not too shabby. I also prefer it over the Strand when it comes to its selection of genre fiction: SF&F and Romance in particular. The Strand does have a bigger YA section and general fiction section, but I think Book-Off beats the Strand's prices because all the books at Book-Off are used.

You can open the drawers on the bottom of the shelves and there are more books!

Anyway, if you happen to be in New York City, I'm just saying this place exists.

Book Expo America Recap, 2013

janicu — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 03:23:38 GMT

This past Thursday and Friday I was at the annual Book Expo America held at the Javits Center in New York City. I also attended the BEA Bloggers Conference (formerly the Book Bloggers Conference) on Wednesday. Here's my (supah long) report of these things.

BEA BLOGGERS CONFERENCE:

BEA Bloggers is a book blogger convention affiliated with BEA. You may or may not recall, but last year I had a horrible time dealing with registration for the BEA Bloggers Con, and after that I was rather disappointed in the conference itself. That was the year the convention was bought by Reed and it felt like the new management didn't really understand book bloggers and it led to there being a ridiculous amount of promotion to a captive audience amongst other blunders. This was not really what I'd paid money to have to deal with, and from the posts online there were a lot of book bloggers that shared my disappointment. Thankfully Reed Exhibitions seemed to be listening, sent out surveys to book bloggers, and set up a conference advisory board to make this year's conference better. Even with this, I dragged my feet when it came to registering again this year. I only live a train ride away and I can afford to go (I know I am very lucky to be in my situation), but last year honestly drained me. On top of that I've been neglecting book blogging because of my full-time job. I finally decided to go a week before the conference itself, but a lot of bloggers who went last year told me they were skipping the BEA Blogger Con if they were coming to BEA at all.

So with that optimistic preamble, how was it?

I think it was a lot better than last year. This time I had minimal problems registering (I had the page open too long and it didn't register me when I hit submit, so I had to redo it all. It also hiccuped and sent me back to the main BEA registration page, not back to the BEA Blogger Con registration page), I felt like the con was more about book blogging than it was about promoting things to book bloggers than it was last year, and I also felt like this year I learned something from a couple of the panels that I attended. On top of that there seemed to be more effort to represent the different genres of bloggers in the panels with a YA and adult blog track, genre fiction like Romance and SFF were better represented, there were more book bloggers on panels about book blogging, and it felt like the way the sessions were timed at 45 minutes this year allowed for more sessions and decent breaks between them.

On the other hand, there is still room for improvement. I'm not convinced the keynote speakers fully understood book bloggers (maybe we should do away with the keynote speeches - I'd personally be OK with having the time to talk to people over breakfast/drinks instead), I had some trouble deciding what sessions to attend because all I had was a title and no description, and there were still a few comments by some non-book-blogger speakers that made me pause. Most notable for me were remarks about "being nice". I'm going to say I think their hearts may have been in the right place but I was wincing internally. Between the opening keynote speaker's comments on negative reviews and a couple of other offhand comments in other sessions (from mostly non-book blogger panelists) telling bloggers not to post on controversial topics for page views and not to fight with authors on social media, I left the con wondering a little bit about how book bloggers are seen by those who are in the publishing industry. In my mind the comments suggest a disconnect from the book blogger's perspective. There could be some validity to the speakers' comments, but reviewers have been targeted for critical reviews that were not attacks on an author, posting on controversial topics is not necessarily a bid for attention, and as for fights over social media--there are always two sides to every story. Maybe I'm feeling defensive of being a book blogger and I'm taking some comments and seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but this was food for thought for me after BEA. Anyway, putting that aside, I really did feel a lot better about the con compared to last year - but last year set a pretty low bar. If I don't go next year it would be more about having gotten what I can out of this con rather than anything else. That said, there are bloggers who were more disappointed than I was.

The opening and closing keynotes and the Ethics Panel Luncheon were events that was shared universally by all attendees, but in the morning and afternoon there were sessions where there was a choice between two options. In the morning there was a YA focused track and a non-YA focused track (which they called "adult") to choose from, .and in the afternoon the sessions were more about general blogging topics.

These were the sessions I attended:

Opening Keynote (Will Schwalbe)

Adult Editor Insight Panel (other choice: Young Adult Editor Insight Panel)

Adult Book Blogging Pros: Successes, Struggles and Insider Secrets (other choice: Young Adult Book Blogging Pros)

Ethics Forum Luncheon

Blogging Platforms (other choice: Taking Your Online Presence Offline)

Extending the Reach of Your Blog Online (other choice: Book Blogging and the "Big" Niches)

(I skipped the Closing Keynote with Randi Zuckerberg)

Opening Keynote: I saw that there was a camera set up but I am unable to find the video online, but I found a nice recap from a fellow blogger here that I thought hit the highlights. The general feeling I came away with was that Schwalbe had a genuine enthusiasm for books and for how reading connects people. He had some poignant things to say about the book club for two he had with his mother after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he talked about the different definitions of success in publishing with a story about connecting to one reader at a book signing, but he also said a couple of things that I don't think he realized were a bit touchy for his audience. This included talking about the affect that "negative reviews" have on authors with advice such as "keep in mind the human beings behind these books". I wish I could find the video so I could just link to it and ask people to watch and decide how they feel about what he said. Overall it was a nice speech and I thought Schwalbe's earnestness very likable, but his comments about negative reviews have me mulling days later. OK, let's move on.

Adult Editor Insight Panel: This turned out to be a buzz panel where each of the editors discussed books they were particularly excited about this year. Joshua Kendall of Mulholland Books talked about two books: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes (who won the Arther C. Clarke award for her Zoo City), about a time traveling serial killer ("imagine Silence of the Lambs written by Margaret Atwood"), and S, a book by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst which he says reorients your experience as a reader (he compares it to House of Leaves) and is a book about storytelling. There will be 20 to 22 pieces of ephemera related to S and the first one is a postcard from Brazil (see picture below). Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books discussed Jo Walton's What Makes This Book So Great, which is a collection of selected tor.com essays by Walton in which she rereads books and discusses them; Twenty-First Century Science Fiction, a collection of science fiction stories; and The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White, a supernatural procedural centered around a society with special powers and a goal to make the world a little bit better a little bit at a time. Mary-Theresa Hussey talked about The Returned by Jason Mott, which is about people who have died returning to their families, and Sarah Beth Durst's first adult trilogy which begins with The Lost, and is about a small town in the desert where missing things go - this includes the heroine, Lauren. Out of all the books discussed, I was most interested in Sarah Beth Durst's and Jo Walton's, so they're going on my "what to watch for" list.

Adult Book Blogging Pros: Jim Hines was the moderator here, with bloggers Mandi Schreiner from Smexy Books, Rebecca Joines Schinsky of Bookriot, and Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books making up the panel. I was excited by this one because the panel was full of actual bloggers, and two of the blogs were Romance, which I felt was a genre that is hugely popular and strangely underrepresented at this con in previous years. This was a fun session and I thought the panelists had some good advice, notably from Sarah Wendell: "your opinion belongs to you, no one should tell you it's not valid". Also Jim Hines specifically joked about being in front of book bloggers and holding back from pitching his books. I thought this showed awareness for staying on topic and why the audience was there that was refreshing. Another thing I thought was a good takeaway was their discussion on social media and how it didn't always have to be about books - that just linking to your posts on twitter isn't enough. They recommended being multidimensional and not being afraid of being vulnerable because people will connect to you (Sarah of Smart Bitches said she just has rules about what she won't talk about - like the mafia, don't talk about the job, don't talk about the family).

Ethics Forum Luncheon: I think a couple of years back there was a rash of posts about FTC disclosures and we've had previous sessions on this at BBC, so I wasn't unfamiliar with the topics at this forum, but this is still a useful panel nonetheless. Jane Litte of Dear Author moderated a discussion with Richard Newman of Hinch Newman LLP and Professor Geanne Rosenberg of Baruch College. First the speakers went over their credentials, then they discussed what the FTC guidelines for bloggers were. Basically you must disclose if you got a free product to review or are compensated in any way. It should be noted that the FTC is more concerned about reviews that are falsely positive in order to sell a product rather than reviews that are not positive. Disclosure should be clear and conspicuous. After this there was some discussion of ethics and conflicts of interest (something that gets in the way of or appears to get in the way of clear, unbiased, independent opinion), and then the floor opened up to questions. I wish I could say I paid more attention, but I'm afraid I zoned out after a while. :\ ETA: I meant to link to this Book Smuggler's post in which they pointed out some of the problems with this panel which includes calling ARCs "free".

Blogging Platforms: This might have been one of my favorite panels because the women who were in it (Rachel Rivera of Parajunkee, Evie Seo of Bookish, April Conant of good Books and Good Wine, and Stephanie Leary - a Wordpress consultant) went into some more technical detail of the day-to-day differences between some of the more popular blogging platforms (specifically blogger and wordpress were compared, and then the differences between wordpress.com versus wordpress.org were discussed). I have a wordpress.com site because I cannot be bothered to deal with self-hosting, keeping code up-to-date, dealing with security and backing up my blog that is involved with wordpress.org, so this panel cemented my continuing laziness, but may eventually get fed up with some of the plugins I can't get on the .com end. There was also an interesting discussion of useful-for-book-blogger wordpress.com plugins, including one for star-ratings. Plus I'd always been curious about blogger so it was interesting to have it's pros and cons laid out even if I'm not really ever going to move there.

Extending the Reach of Your Blog Online: I was seriously waffling over sitting in on this panel until the moderator busted out a laptop and we realized that a powerpoint presentation was happening. It was a long day and I needed some visual aids in my life. The panelists were Mandy Boles of The Well-Read Wife, Malle Vallik of Harlequin (moderator), Eric Smith of Quirk Books, and Robert Mooney of Blogads. Basically this session was about using social media in order to drive traffic to your blog. Mandy Boles started by saying she thinks that the next big thing after twitter and facebook is instagram because it is on its way to having 100 million users within 3 years. She talked about how she uses Instagram, and then moved on Vine, which is like Instagram except users share 6 second long videos. She recommended using the availability of hashtags in both these social platforms to get yourself noticed. [FYI: both of these social apps are geared towards Apple customers, and I am anti-Apple, so for those of you like me: Vine just became available on android this week]. Eric Smith talked about how offline events can produce traffic online - for example he has something called the Geek Awards that has created traffic for his blog. Finally Robert Mooney recommended using Stumbleupon because 'stumbles' last a long time, while on twitter you post a link and the effect of bringing in traffic is only a temporary blast. He also recommends Reddit but cautions that you can't just jump into the Reddit community, you have to be a "good citizen" and "do your research" before you dive in.

BEA: THE HAUL, THE PEOPLE
I attended BEA on Thursday and Friday (I thought about also going Saturday but I was pretty pooped by then). As usual it was pretty crowded and crazy, but this year I think I had a better time dealing with it. It helped that there weren't that many books that I HAD to have so I wasn't really rushing around. There were some long lines though - I think I waited up to an hour to get a couple of books signed. I didn't really go straight to the most crowded areas when BEA first opened it's doors so maybe I just wasn't looking at the right time, but to me it didn't seem like there were as many books out on the floor as before. It might be that there just was less Young Adult and Science Fiction & Fantasy out though because a couple of people told me they thought there were more books this year. I did feel like it was a lot harder to get extra copies of books. I was trying to get certain YA books that other bloggers asked me to look out for, but the publishers were pretty strict about the popular titles.

Anyway, here's my haul. I tried, but I have a hard time saying "no thanks" when someone hands me a book. This means there's a couple of YAs in here that I'm debating if I'll keep because I don't really know what they're about (The Wolf Princess and Catena in case you were wondering). The total is: 19 books, 1 sampler book, 1 novella.

As usual, seeing blogger friends was the best part, so I was happy I got to spend some time walking around with Stacey (USAToday's HEA and Heroes and Heartbreakers), and with Heidi (Bunbury In the Stacks). It was brief but I finally met Alyssa of Books Take You Places. I also met Andrew of Raging Biblioholism (he writes lovely reviews, you should all mosey over to his blog and check them out).

I saw a few other bloggers briefly through the days (Ana and Thea, Elizabeth, and Memory), but I wasn't able to find everyone I knew who was there. I have to say I was really missing a few bloggers that I had connected with at previous BEAs who decided not to come this year - it felt strange not to see some of my fellow YAckers and Kristen of Fantasy Cafe. BEA wasn't the same without them, but thank goodness for the Internet.

Overall, I was exhausted after three days, but BEA did it's job in making me feel re-energized about reading and blogging, so this means I'm probably going to be posting more regularly around here and visiting and commenting on other book blogs again. Watch this space. :)

Giveaway: Shadow of Night (paperback edition)

janicu — Wed, 15 May 2013 01:59:23 GMT

To celebrate the publication of Deborah Harkness' Shadow of Night in paperback on May 28th, the publisher Viking/Penguin has offered a copy of the book, along with some alchemical symbol buttons to give away to a reader of this blog.

A Discovery of Witches introduced reluctant witch Diana Bishop, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and the battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Harkness’s much-anticipated sequel, Shadow of Night, picks up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending. Diana and Matthew time-travel to Elizabethan London and are plunged into a world of spies, magic, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the School of Night. As the search for Ashmole 782 deepens and Diana searches for a witch to tutor her in magic, the net of Matthew’s past tightens around them, and they embark on a very different—and vastly more dangerous—journey.

To Enter
Please go to this page at the specficromantic blog to enter!

Rules:

Sorry, this contest is just for U.S. addresses this time

One entry per person please

Contest ends Wednesday, May 22nd (midnight EST)

Guest post for FantasyCafe's Women in SF&F Month / Interview for Emma Larkins' Writing Life

janicu — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 02:06:38 GMT

Today I'm excited to be at FantasyCafe's Women in SF&F Month for the second year of this awesome event. Last year I talked about some of my favorite female SF&F authors. This year I wax nostalgic about some of my first reads in this genre that were by women writers. Head on over to find out what they were, and please tell me what your firsts were too. I'm curious!

I was also recently interviewed by Emma Larkins, a writer who interviews different people on her blog about their perspectives on the writing and publishing community. She was interested in asking a book blogger's perspective, so I'm over there answering questions about what I like to read, how I blog, issues I run into while reading, and things that don't work when approaching me for a review.

Bookish Gifts III

janicu — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:19:27 GMT

My mind is so pooped at the end of the day by my new job that I'm not quite there yet with the mental fortitude and discipline I need to write reviews (I really am working on that though). Strangely, I seem to have no problems surfing the web and playing with MS Paint. I've been having a grand ol' time putting together another Bookish Gifts post, where I collect cute reader themed things for your favorite book nerd (or for yourself). Here are the fruits of my labors. (As always, click for bigger versions of these pictures, and check the "bookish gift" tag for my previous Bookish Gifts posts).

1. Bookshelf Bandit Tote in Jane, Caterpillar, Anthony (see also Alice, Scott, Louisa;$17.99) 2. Penguin Drop Caps ($22 ea) 3. Stacked Paper Wallpaper ($198/roll) 4. Demeter fragrance in Paperback (from $6) 5. Vintage Book Vase ($39-$69) 6. The Definition of Darling Wallet ($52.99) 7. Vintage Book iPhone Charger ($68)

8. Libraries - Where Shhh Happens mug (£9.95) 9. Lumio Lamp (available for pre-order for Oct 2013 - $125) 10. Gold Bird Metal Bookmark (£4.00) 11. Customizable Wool Felt eReader Case ($44) 12. Reading Fox Bookends (€39.00 / about $51.70) 13. Bracket Bookends in velvety black (€34.00 / about $44.70) 14. Book Bookend (€19.00 / about $25.19) - many other styles of bookends available 15. Buttons: Second Breakfast and Weasly is our King ($1.70) 16. Chipboard Classic novel bookmarks ($1 each)

17. Bookrest Reading Lamp ($85) 18. Engraved 'Words are for Nerds' pencils (£3.50/ about $5.51, set of 3) 19. Lowercase Scarf ($58. Also available in Uppercase, Numbers, & Helvetica) 20. 2b Or Not 2b Pouch ($20) 21. Egar Allen Poe Art Doll ($120) 22. Bookworm Plush ($6.99) 23. Ring hand carved from a book ($17) 24. Bookworm Statement Socks ($10.99) 25. Novel Tea ($12.50/box or $2.50/pouch) 26. Furst Edition Sweatshirt ($50) 27. Hanging Book Rack ($210 fullsize, $110 MINI. All available in different finishes)

Dark and Stormy Knights anthology

janicu — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:34:52 GMT

Anthologies are basically perfect reading when you KNOW you're going to be interrupted by relatives. With that thought in mind, I picked this one up while on vacation in Sedona and read it in between all the madness of the Christmas season. (Yes, I know it's been a few months since Christmas.. still working on that review backlog).

Dark and Stormy Knights

edited by P.N. Elrod

Dark and Stormy Nights is an anthology of 9 urban fantasy stories with the theme of "knights" who do some questionable things for the right reasons. So basically urban fantasy heroes doing what they usually do, which is work in the grey area. I liked that the theme is so wide open, and that the anthology had a bunch of authors I have read and liked. Here's a breakdown of what we get, followed by my brief (non-spoiler) impressions of each:

A Questionable Client by Ilona Andrews (also found in a 2-novella ebook here)

Even Hand by Jim Butcher

The Beacon by Shannon K. Butcher

Even a Rabbit Will Bite by Rachel Caine

Dark Lady by P.N. Elrod

Beknighted by Deidre Knight

Shifting Star by Vicki Pettersson

Rookwood & Mrs. King by Lilith Saintcrow

God's Creatures by Carrie Vaughn

A Questionable Client by Ilona Andrews - Kate Daniels, a member of the Atlanta Mercenary Guild is offered a bodyguard job when two of her peers back out. This is a prequel the Kate Daniels series, which means it doesn't require you to know anything, but fans of that series will enjoy learning the back story on how Kate met Saiman, a minor but unique character. I always understood that Saiman creeped Kate out from the beginning, and why that is is explained here. Lives up to what I expect from Ilona Andrews, currently my favorite writing duo. Link to an excerpt

Even Hand by Jim Butcher - A powerful man agrees to protect a woman and child against a supernatural pursuer. This is set in the Harry Dresden universe, except the narrator is John Marcone. I haven't read any of the Harry Dresden books, but I gather this narrator is not Dresden's ally. He's not a good guy, but he does have his own set of rules, and it was refreshing to hear a story from a character on the other side and who is sharp in a scary way. This was another strong story in the anthology and really hit the sweet spot in character development - I just loved the ambiguity in this one.

The Beacon by Shannon K. Butcher - This is a story about a weary hunter named Ryder Ward who kills Beacons - people who (through no fault of their own) attract monsters called Terraphages into our world from another dimension. The latest Beacon is a young girl with a single mother and Ryder feels wretched about his choices. This sounds like an original story though the Terraphages sound like the Synestryn of Butcher's Sentinel Wars series. Although Shannon K. Butcher is known for her paranormal romance, this didn't go there (although it did feel like there was the set up for it). There was something about these characters that I didn't warm to - I think they just felt very standard issue: single mother in a small town, adorable child, tortured hunter, but I felt like there was a spark for something more there if this was a longer story.

Even a Rabbit Will Bite by Rachel Caine - This is another story that didn't feel set in a bigger universe, but I really enjoyed the world building which was nice and comprehensive in such a small space. It's about Lisel, a centuries-old woman warrior who has managed to survive and become the last living Dragonslayer, and she's just been informed that her successor has been chosen (by the pope, as these things are). A young girl knocks on her door the next day. I loved this one for the characterization and dialogue. The grumpy old-school Dragonslayer ("Get your ass inside") viewing the new guard with exasperation ("glowing with youth and vitality and health and a smart-ass attitude") but having to train her anyway and maybe gets proved wrong was a fun concept. One of my favorites.

Dark Lady by P.N. Elrod - The Internet tells me that Dark Lady is part of the Vampire Files universe because its narrator, Jack Fleming is the star of that series. This didn't bother me, all I needed to know was that Jack was a vampire, owns a nightclub, and on occasion helps out people, and this was explained in the first three sentences. This was a very noir-style story with a damsel in distress, a mob boss, missing money, and thugs galore, set in 1930's Chicago. What I liked about this one was that there were surprises and a puzzle which is unexpected for the story length. Link to an excerpt

Beknighted by Deidre Knight - An artist named Anna gains a patron in order to pay for "living gold" which she needs to unlock a man from another world through her artwork, but there's something that makes Anna question her patron's motives for backing the project. This was another story that had more of a paranormal romance tint to the writing than an urban fantasy one. I found the concept of the living gold, Artist Guild and patrons in the context of artists actually "unlocking" things within their paintings interesting in theory, but the execution was confusing. It could be a reading comprehension fail on my part, but I just had trouble connecting some of the dots.

Shifting Star by Vicki Pettersson - Skamar is a woman made flesh by the focus of her creator, and her job is to protect a certain teen girl. This means investigating the abductions of girls around her age, working with a human, and dealing with human emotions. This is just as gritty and violent and a little bit heart rending as the rest of the Signs of the Zodiac series, and it focuses on side characters, but I think it would be a little difficult to follow the concept of the Zodiac, tulpas, and who Zoe Archer is unless you've read other books in this world. One of the darker stories in this collection.

Rookwood & Mrs. King by Lilith Saintcrow - A suburban wife comes to Rookwood, asking him to kill her husband, who is already dead. This is another short story of the pulpy vampire detective variety, except a more modern-day version and a damsel in distress who is a lot faster on the uptake than she might be given credit for. I liked the plot of this one, but I wish the story would have been from Mrs. King's point of view instead of focusing on Rookwood's interpretation of events.

God's Creatures by Carrie Vaughn - Cormac is called to deal with a killer that has gutted some cattle. It is clearly a werewolf losing the battle against bloodlust, and it won't be long before it moves to human prey. This is another story set in a bigger universe (Kitty Norville), but Cormac is a secondary character and on a side trip so you don't need to have knowledge of the series to understand what is going on here. The concept of hunting a werewolf was straightforward, but God's Creatures adds a human element and ambiguity to the whole enterprise that I liked. Link to an excerpt

Overall: As urban fantasy anthologies go, this is probably one of the strongest ones I've read. The reason for that is there seemed to be a concerted effort (for the most part) not to lose the reader with world building details they wouldn't know. I think we've all read stories set in a world related to an author's series and been lost before. It seemed like most of these were written from the point of view of a side character, or set the story before their series begins, or are original stories not related to some bigger world. This made things more accessible, which was refreshing to see. Also keeping things cohesive: no romance and stories that all kept with a theme of doing deeds for the "greater good" that don't always leave our heroes looking entirely pure. A very solid lineup.

Buy: Amazon | Powell's | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Temporary worlds book reviews - "although there are a few stories that didn't work for me, I feel as if the good content outweighs the bad in this anthology"
Calicoreaction - Worth the Cash: "On the whole, it's a very solid anthology with stories that stand on their own two feet even if they're set in established universes"