The nominating process was really fun. But now it’s time to look at everything in the voting packet and read as much of it as I possibly can. And it’s. . . intimidating. I’m slowly making my way through the “big” categories, short story, novelette, novella, novel, even Campbell award. I count myself very lucky that I’ve already read a few of the novels, two of the Campbell award nominees, and a two of the novellas. VERY LUCKY. Even with a head start, will I be able to get through everything I’d like to read by the end of July?

Let’s find out.

my voting plans will stay a secret, but as I get through categories, I’ll publish my thoughts, link to earlier reviews, and we can generally discuss.

There’s two really good reasons I’m doing short stories first. Actually, three really good reasons:

they’re all available online for you to read for free
they’re all pretty short
there’s only three of them

And the nominees are:

Immersion, by Aliette de Bodard
Mantis Wives, by Kij Johnson
Mono no Aware, Ken Liu
and here’s what I thought of them:

Immersion by Aliette de Bodard

Quy lives on the independent space station Longevity, and these days her family’s restaurant, Sister Hai’s Kitchen, depends mostly on tourist dollars. The immerser technology is an overlay people wear. it’s a little like a veil, a little like cosmetics, it affects how you see the world, and how others see you. Educated on a Galactic station, Quy is often called upon to interact with the restaurant’s wealthier customers. An immersed woman is what they expect, someone who speaks their language, who understands their customs, and Quy knows how to navigate the interface and give the customers what they expect. Meanwhile, Quy’s sister, Tam, spends her afternoons tinkering with the immersion technology, trying to learn how it works.

The immerser is aptly named, it allows you to be immersed in a culture, with tips on dialect and slang, and offers natives an avatar that helps them look comforting, more familiar to tourists and others of the Galactic political majority.

Interspersed with Quy’s story, is that of Agnes. Written in the rarely used second person perspective, Agnes depends on her immerser for nearly everything. She’s a stranger in her own skin, almost fighting with the immerser to see who is the imposter, who is the foreigner.

It was funny to me, and telling, that the default avatar provided by the immerser is tall and pale, a Caucasian ideal of beauty. Typically used by tourists in foreign lands to learn about the culture, get smartphone-esque tips on restaurants, how much a cab ride should cost, where the safe hotels are, the immerser was a tool designed with the best intentions, and we all know there those lead. This is a story about assimilation and post-colonialism, with heavy undertones of the changes we make to ourselves to be accepted by others.

But how much assimilation is too much? Where is the line where you lose yourself?

Mantis Wives by Kij Johnson

It’s a fact of nature, female mantises often kill and eat the males during mating. Such is the strange ways of nature that the body of the male becomes needed calories to sustain the female during pregnancy. But what if that first step, that first sentence, wasn’t necessary? what excuses could the females then offer for the killing of their mates? The killing thus becomes a “difficult art”, with specific steps and movements to define the art.

The story then, is a description of the lethal things wives do to their husbands, sometimes indirectly causing their deaths, perhaps as a way of avoiding blame. Everyone willingly goes into a destructive and abusive relationship. The husbands know what will happen to them, yet they never resist. And when offered love and safety, they still choose pain and death.

No named characters, no agency, nothing to grab onto or relate to, and no less poetic in spite of it. Morbid and visceral, and metered like it’s own formal dance, this reads like a very short, yet very hopeful love story.

Mono no Aware by Ken Liu

A resident of the generation ship Hopeful, Hiroto is the last of his kind.

During the journey, he reminisces about his early childhood in Japan, about the lessons his father imparted on him, about how he ended up on the ship in the first place. A technician for the solar sail, he spends a couple of days each month teaching the ship’s teenagers about his Japanese heritage. Being the only Japanese person on board, he agrees that he has a duty to teach the young people about other cultures from Earth. It’s no easy task teaching Go to high schoolers who are used to playing video games. There are a few phrases translated into Japanese, as Hiroto spends time with his girlfriend Mindy, whose first language was Spanish. She has fun melding the Japanese, Spanish and English.

When something goes wrong, his life grows as tenous as the molecule thin solar sail. In the game of Go, there are no heroes.

Language is a beautiful, fickle thing, and I am continually fascinated by it. So many phrases have generations of meaning behind them, depths and weights that too easily become meaningless in a vacuum. The title of the story is explained as meaning “A sense of the transience of everything in life”. I found a sense of peace in that.

The portions of the story that take place on the generation ship, have a hard scifi feeling to them, but then it seamlessly shifts to Hiroto’s youth, to his poet father, his conflicted mother, the descriptions of a few kanji characters. With asides on language, handwriting, and the lessons learned from our parents, this could only be a Ken Liu short story. It packs quite the emotional punch.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I found additional meaning in the pronunciation of the title. It’s too easy to read it phonetically in English, and think maybe it means to be aware of the one person, perhaps aware of yourself. But the correct Japanese phonetic pronunciation of “aware” is ah-wah-reh, and the entire titles means a sense of transience. Isn’t there added balance to having an awareness of the transience of one’s self?

- Yesterday I reconnected with a good friend from high school, and also with a few other friends I haven’t heard from in a long time.

- I have a dinner date with my hubby later this evening.

but wait! there’s more!

Ready for a photo dump of everything else that’s got me smiling big today?

Went to the garden center to get a few more things for the garden, they had a carousel of topiary animals! I asked if I could take a photo and they said “we encourage it!” . It had a lion, a seahorse, a dinosaur and a horse.  how cool! And it’ll just look better as the summer progresses, because all the grasses and other plants will root and grow taller. by the end of the summer the animals will be completely green.

So now my balcony garden looks even nicer with some trailing accent things. not so much dirt showing. I wish the basil would take off though.

Parsley, Dichondra (I think), Basil, Ivy, Zinnia w/Hypoestes and vine-y things.

Zinnias looking happy with their new non-flowering friends

almost the whole gang! Lavender and friends, green onions, Dahlia, Sun Coleus (with some done Snapdragons), gangly Tomato, and Gerbera Daisy.

Close up of super bright and happy Gerbera Daisy. Photo doesn’t do it justice, it’s fire engine red!

in food and drink land, these made me smile too:

J.K. Scrumpy is to Woodchuck like, well, like Southern Tier is to Bud Light.  I’m a beer snob and proud of it!

J.K.’s Farmhouse Summer, J.K’s Scrumpy Cider, and Southern Tier Creme Brulee

and Mochi!  Green Tea Mochi (rice pounded into sticky dough, stuffed with green tea paste) brings tears to my eyes every time I eat it.  It’s really dense too, so you’re not hungry for like 12 hours after eating one.

Green Tea Mochi. this stuff is a-freakin-mazing!

now it’s your turn. What’s making you smile today?

Scroll to the bottom for info on how to enter into a giveaway for this brand new book. note: Giveaway is open to residents of the United States only. Sorry, international shipping is killer, and not in that fun vampire way.

LRR: Did you always want to be a writer?

ML Brennan: Writing is always something that I’ve really enjoyed, going all the way back to a very young age, but I didn’t think about it seriously as a career path until late high school, and even at that point I came at it sideways. Thanks in a very big way to The West Wing, I decided that I wanted to be a political speechwriter, and I headed to college with the intention of going into writing and political science. I lost interest in going into politics around my second year, but at that point I was majoring in writing, so I decided that a better career option would be to become a lawyer. I pursued that all the way into my first year at law school, which was the point when I finally just gave in to the inevitable and realized that what I really wanted to do was write fiction. So I left law school and headed into an MFA program.

So I guess the short answer is that while writing has always been a big part of my life, the idea of actually being just a writer was something that I really struggled with and against – largely because I grew up in a household where money was very tight, so I’ve never had a very romantic view of the life of a struggling artist. I envisioned having a secure career and writing in my off-hours. That ended up not happening – my day job that pays the bills is pretty unreliable and the pay fluctuates hugely, but it does give me the time I need to write.

LRR: Who are some of your favorite writers?

ML Brennan: Gosh, that would be a very long list! Emma Bull, Brandon Sanderson, Anne Bishop, Sharon Shinn, Sheri S. Tepper, and Orson Scott Card are all longtime favorites. Lately I’ve really been enjoying Cassie Alexander’s Edie Spence series, and I got a sneak peek at debut author Django Wexler’s incredible military fantasy The Thousand Names, and I can tell you that I’m already dying for the sequel!

LRR: Give us the quick rundown on Generation V.

ML Brennan: Sure! The elevator pitch of my book is that Fortitude Scott has a useless degree, a minimum-wage job, a cheating girlfriend, and a roommate who stiffs him on the rent. And he’s a vampire… mostly. But when a little girl is kidnapped, suddenly he’s the only one who is willing to try and do something about it, so he teams up with a wise-cracking shapeshifter and heads off for a rescue mission that will very likely kill him.

A lot of what I was trying to do in this book was explore the ideas of heritage and responsibility – Fort is a vampire who doesn’t fit in with the rest of his family because of the empathy he has toward humans. He’s afraid of whether growing up will involve losing that empathy, but at the same time it will mean becoming stronger and faster, which right now are traits that he very much lacks and needs!

LRR: How can someone be “mostly” a vampire? Isn’t that something that’s fairly cut and dry?

ML Brennan: In the majority of vampire fiction the vampire is a human who has been transformed into a vampire, and through that transformation process they are now ageless, immortal, and undead. I’ve always found this kind of idea a bit problematic – for one thing, a creature that reproduces just through a tiny blood donation? Talk about a population explosion! For another, a character that never gets older and will never die – that’s a fairly static character with very few outside pressures. I was never interested in writing about an immortal character.

The big change that I made for my vampires is to make them a separate species. These aren’t transformed humans — they have a lifecycle that includes growing up, old age, and ultimately death. They also have a reproductive cycle that is rather finicky and difficult, and it gives a good reason why vampires haven’t just overrun the planet – in fact, my vampires are a species in total crisis, and right on the edge of extinction.

Fort being “mostly” a vampire refers in a large way to the fact the he is very young. In a species that can live 600 years, and who don’t reach complete maturity until 250, Fort is walking around at 26. One of the ways that I viewed my vampires was like alligators – an alligator has a very long growing period. Once they are fully mature, an alligator is basically the toughest animal in its environment – but when it is young, it’s pretty much just a dinner bell for most things around it. Fort’s mother and two siblings are full-size alligators, while he’s just this little yearling. At the point that this book begins, Fort’s older sister can punch through walls, while Fort would get beaten in an arm-wrestling contest by most humans. What this really did for me as a writer was that I had protagonist who was outclassed in power by just about everyone around him – that means that he can’t solve the problems he faces by punching his way out. Fort has to outsmart his opponents, or make allies, or find unusual solutions to the issues he faces.

LRR: Generation V also features a shapeshifter out of Japanese folklore. What was your inspiration for that type of supernatural creature? What kind of research did you do for her?

ML Brennan: I love shapeshifters in fiction, but the one that is usually seen in urban fantasy is the werewolf. I really enjoyed the challenge of rethinking the classic vampire, but I didn’t want to do the same thing with another UF staple, so I wanted to bring in a type of monster that filled that kind of shapeshifter niche that I had, but gave me a chance to do something newer and interesting. To a certain extent I was also aware that a lot of the kinds of folklore and mythos that are usually seen in UF tend to be Eurocentric, and I wanted to have a wider cultural basis. All of this led me to the kitsune, which is a lovely piece of Japanese folklore about a fox that can turn into a woman. If you read Japanese fairy tales, there’s an incredible flexibility in the way that kitsune are presented – sometimes they are the villains of the story and must be driven out. Sometimes they are helpful creatures that, once done a good turn by the hero, will loyally assist the hero later. And other times they are simply tricksters that have a wildness and an unpredictability that I really enjoyed. That was the interpretation that I used when I created my kitsune character, Suzume Hollis. She is an unpredictable prankster who has a solid dollop of self-interest, and isn’t going to go out of her way to endanger herself for anyone outside of her own family. She’s a powerful character, with a strong physicality, and she is also entirely comfortable with who she is – all of these were traits that contrasted with my protagonist, but the two of them end up forming the beginnings of a real friendship.

In terms of research – I did quite a bit. Since I unfortunately don’t speak Japanese, I was limited to secondary or translated sources, but I read as many Japanese fairy tales as I could – my favorites were The Moon Maiden and Other Japanese Fairy Tales by Grace James, and Kwaidan: Ghost Stories and Strange Tales of Old Japan by Lafcadio Hearn. I also read several books by Western authors that were analyzing both the myth of the kitsune and its place in Japanese culture – the best of these were Fox by Martin Wallen and The Fox’s Craft in Japanese Religion and Folklore by Michael Bathgate.

LRR: Complete this sentence: If you like _______, _______ or _____, you’ll love Generation V.

ML Brennan: If you like fresh urban fantasy, non-typical characters, or Star Trek jokes, you’ll love Generation V.

LRR: Now that Generation V is out in the wild, what other projects are you working on?

ML Brennan: I just put the finishing editorial touches Generation V’s sequel, Iron Night, which will be published by Roc in January 2014. The reception and reviews for Generation V have been really warm, so I’m very hopeful that people will enjoy Iron Night. I’m also putting together notes and ideas for the third Fortitude Scott book, which I’ll be writing over the summer.

LRR: Any plans for a book tour, or local book-signing events? Any upcoming Convention appearances?

ML Brennan: Big news is that I’ll be attending ConnectiCon in July, and WorldCon at the end of summer.

LRR: I’m a nut for bookstores, and bookstore experiences. What was a great experience you had at a bookstore?

ML Brennan: I love bookstores – some of the most amazing reading experiences I’ve ever had started by running my hand over a line of fresh new books in a bookstore and finding something new. When I was a college undergraduate, I was living in Pittsburgh, and one of my favorite ways to spend an afternoon was to catch the 61-C bus and go to the Forbes/Murray intersection. Right next to the movie theater on Murray was a beautiful two-story Barnes & Noble, and I spent many happy hours browsing the shelves and reading books in the café there. The last time I visited the city, the Barnes & Noble was gone, and I was absolutely heartbroken.

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Well, I’m intrigued!  and wouldn’t you like to be the first person on your block to read this brand new urban fantasy!

The giveaway is being hosted at my sister-site, Bookstore Bookblogger Connection. Click the link and head over there to entry.  Give away closes at midnight, eastern time, Wednesday June 19.

Giveaway is only open to residents of the U.S.    Because international shipping bites, and biting is only OK from sexy vampires.

photo yanked from wikipedia

I started reading Iain M Banks just over  a year ago. So recently that I’m not even sure I can call myself a fan.  But fan I quickly became of the man who reinvented Space Opera. I was hooked a hundred pages into Look to Windward. A few books later, Use of Weapons (which shouldn’t be your first Culture novel) shattered me into a million peices and allowed me entry into a hallowed and secretive club of readers who had been equally shattered. We had each others help to put ourselves back together even though some pieces would be lost forever.

Mr. Banks, you have changed me. You have shown me a path towards what is possible, and for this Sir, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.  A light has gone out in the Culture, and this time more than just a few Drones have taken notice. Imagine all those people on all those Orbitals, suddenly sad, and not knowing why. Of all the billions of beings in The Culture, why should one person matter? Because when you’re the one reading the story, or living the story, it fucking matters. that’s why. Your Culture books are more than escapism, more than transportive. They are simply more.

It’s only June, and I already feel like I’ve lost too many people this year. I didn’t have the chance to thank them, to tell them how I felt, to tell them what their works and actions meant to me. A grief counselor gave me a letter template, a self guided exercise to help us articulate why that person was so important to us. It’s a one-way conversation that helps you through the grieving process.

Lesson learned.  Nothing is forever. Sometimes promises are broken with no hard feelings. I need to tell people how I feel before it’s too late. I need to write those letters now, before it’s too late.

I’ll let you in on a little Use-of-Weapons-eque secret: this post isn’t really about Iain Banks.

this post is about how to cheat time.

Time steals everything from us, but more so because we willingly give it the power to. This is my request, to anyone reading this post: Write those letters now.  Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, do not wait.  Did someone have a positive influence on your life? Did someone unknowingly help you through hard times? Let them know.  I suggest writing a letter because I am shit at verbal communications, and a letter allows the person on the receiving end some time to process what you’ve just said.  Written communication means less awkwardness later.

This is not permission to start stalking someone. Do not mail people dead chipmunks as a token of your love, and I better not see any marriage proposals on twitter.  Just send them a letter or an e-mail. These are the people who deserve far more than “thanks for being there for me” or “omg I love your books, when is your next one coming out???”. Tell them WHY their existence in your life was important to you.  Cheat time.

published in June 2012

where I got it: gift from a friend, and it’s autographed! I have the bestest friends in the world!

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This is the second novel in James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse trilogy, so there will be spoilers, some major,  for the first book in the series, Leviathan Wakes (review here).  Ok, so spoilers is bad news. but the good news is, I think you could start with Caliban’s War first, and then read Leviathan Wakes, and be a-ok.

Picking up about a year after the events of Leviathan Wakes, the landscape of Caliban’s War is more a dark new world rather than a bold or brave one. Holden and crew are sitting pretty in their stolen martian warship, renamed Rocinante, and doing escort duty and pirate hunting for the Outer Planets Alliance. It’s boring, but safe. Relatively speaking. Holden is safe so long as he’s awake. Because when he sleeps, he dreams only of the horrors of Eros.  His relationship with Naomi has finally settled into something called a relationship, but she’s getting sick of the “new” Holden; The Jim Holden who shoots first and asks questions later, the one who acts too much like the late Detective Miller. But how could anyone come through the events of Eros unscathed?  I was fascinated by Holden’s tacit denial of how he’s handling what he went through by not handling it. His PTSD is the white elephant in the room. Maybe he’ll think twice next time before he decides to play hero. Yeah right.

Meanwhile, we watch as on Ganymede two seemingly unrelated events unfold: a handful of children go missing,  and a superhuman crerature slaughters  platoons of UN and Martian troops, leaving one survivor.

Unrelated my ass.

At least that’s what Chrisjen Avasarala believes. A high ranking politician on Earth, she pushes and pulls and manipulates, getting Earth governments to move in the directions she needs them to go.

Remember the thing at the end of Leviathan Wakes? I get the heebie jeebies just thinking about it, I don’t even want to justify its creepy existence with what everyone in the book calls it, so I’ll just keep on calling it “the thing”, thank you very much. It’s been doing something on Venus. Scientists aren’t quite sure what, they don’t even know what they’re seeing, let alone what to watch for.  As all eyes are on the disaster unfolding on Ganymede, something that looks disturbingly like what happened on Eros. George R R Martin had it right the first time: you’re marching the wrong way.

There’s action happening everywhere in Caliban’s War – on Earth, on Ganymede, travelling in between, and elsewhere. So it’s helpful to get multiple points of view. Chapters are split between the POVs of Holden, Avasarala, the Martian Marine Bobbie Draper, and Ganymede biologist Prax Meng.  Prax is desperate to find his missing daughter, Bobbie would like to know what killed her fellow marines on the surface of Ganymede, Avasarala would like to win in the game of politics, and Holden would really like to keep his crew from getting killed.

Of the new characters that are introduced, Avasarala is probably the best developed. She’s a grandma, a wife still mourning a dead son, one of the most powerful politicians on Earth, she is a force to be reckoned with. She’s all of those things all in the same moment. She expects great things from the people she works with, has no patience for bullshit, and swears like a sailor (no wonder Amos approves of her).  The mask she wears to work is all hard edges, demands, and hard to earn compliments. But at home, with her husband, she’s a bundle of vulnerabilities. I see myself growing up to be a lot like her.  Strength isn’t always physical. New characters Bobbie Draper and Dr. Prax Meng get plenty of attention and development too (we wouldn’t have a central plot without Prax), but Avasarala was my stand out favorite.

If you enjoyed Leviathan Wakes, you will love Caliban’s War.  If I listed everything I enjoyed about this book, we’d be sitting here until next week.  Similar to Leviathan Wakes, the plotting, pacing, characterization and dialog are spot on perfect. Striking a balance between space opera, adventure, and horror, if you’re looking for a new science fiction series to get hooked on, look no further because this is it. This series is everything you’ve been waiting for, everything you hoped all these summer scifi blockbuster movies would be – action, humor, politics, betrayal, and some brilliantly fucking terrifying alien technology that humans would of course, never do anything bad with. Of course they wouldn’t.

I do need to voice one complaint: Caliban’s War is a little too similar to  Leviathan Wakes. Everyone wants to kill Jim Holden because he won’t keep his stupid mouth shut, there’s a missing girl, there’s a secret lab that’s doing terrible things, Mars and Earth and the Outer Planets Alliance are all looking for any little reason to start a shooting war, allies will be found in the damndest places, and someone is going to get shot in the head at the end because by the time a diplomatic solution shows up, we’ll all be dead. It was frustrating how many of the plot points felt recycled. And yet. And yet the characters, dialog and pacing were so damn good I simply didn’t care.   Although Corey better give me something completely different in the 3rd novel in the series, Abaddon’s Gate (out right now!), otherwise I’m going to start thinking he’s a one trick pony.

Luckily, there’s a lovely little twist at the end of Caliban’s War that indicates exactly what I’m hoping for: something new and different and unexpected is to be found in Abaddon’s Gate.

Available July 2013

where I got it: received review copy from the editor (thanks Mike!!)

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What kind of stories will you find in Clockwork Phoenix 4? Only those are that are magical, imaginative, heartwrenching, just plain bizarre, forward-looking, backward-looking, biological, romantic, hopeful, darkly funny and openly frightening. All the words that describe the best speculative fiction you’ve ever read apply. In fact, if this isn’t the epitome of speculative fiction, I don’t know what is.

Mike recently did an interview with me over at BSBB, and I asked him about the job of an editor. Among other things, he described it as being similar to being the director of a play. Did you recently see a play or a movie that was more than the sum of its parts? How about a musical that was only 2 hours long, but seemed to have weeks of song in it? That’s what Clockwork Phoenix feels like, like time has been frozen, allowing Allen to cram far more beautiful strange things than the laws of physics should permit in less than 300 pages. Allen is a dude who really, really knows how to direct.

I used to always read anthologies in the order the stories were presented. I started liking anthologies much better after I decided I’d read the stories in any damn order I wanted (usually starting with the shortest). I know Mike Allen put these stories in this particular order, for a particular reason, and by reading them out of order it’s like I’m going through his carefully curated museum backwards. To be even more contrary, the order I’ve reviewed a handful of stories in isn’t the order they were presented in either.

I’ve not read much from most of the authors in this collection, so I greatly appreciated the “Pinions” section in the back, where each other offers a short bio, and more importantly a little snippet about how their story came to be. It was very nice to read that Corrine Duyvis is an arachnophobe.

Here are my thoughts on a handful of selected entries. This is just the smallest taste of what awaits you within these pages. Where available, click on the author’s name to visit their website.

The Old Woman With No Teeth by Patricia Russo – The Old Woman has hired someone to transcribe her story, but since he keeps getting things wrong she interrupts and tells him what he aught to be writing down. Their interaction is hilarious, but her story starts out sadly. The Old Woman is very lonely, and wants a family. She goes into the city to find orphans who might want to be adopted, and instead finds another population that is in more dire need of being wanted. It’s a little jarring how the story goes from a fantasy-feel to a matter-of-fact feel, but in the end it all works out.

Beach Bum and the Drowned Girl by Richard Parks – what happens when two story cliches meet each other? Beach Bum is the mysterious guy the female protagonist always meets in the story, maybe to fall in love with, maybe to learn something from, maybe to be hurt by, maybe just to watch. Drowned Girl is the dead girl the investigator always finds, the mystery to be solved, the child to be saved. And who knows? Maybe Beach Bum and Drowned Girl can help each other out and learn from each other. It couldn’t hurt to chat with another cliché, could it?

The Canal Barge Magician’s Number Nine Daughter by Ian McHugh– Behra’s father keeps her sisters around, but she’s the only one who survived. The ninth daughter, her father speaks through her mouth to better focus his magic. Quite at odds with her violent and ruthless home, Behra exudes hope and innocence. She has no idea how powerful she really is, which is perhaps why her father keeps her imprisoned on the barge. He’s a cruel and disgusting creature, what causes a man to do what he did to her sisters? Behra cares only for her half-brother Chiufi, and perhaps for the little porcelain golem who has the power to change her life.

Trapweed by Gemma Files – I always like me a Selkie story. After an ill-fated swim, the selkie Ciaran finds himself aboard a ship captained by a sorcerer and manned by sea creatures forced into human form. With his skin held hostage, Ciaran stays aboard and learns to be a sailor. A fast paced and creepy story from beginning to end, I really wasn’t sure if Ciaran would survive to the end. Captain Jerusalem Parry’s use and misuse of his ship and his crew make spending a day on the Flying Dutchman sound like a vacation. An unlikely ally and a anomalous island lead to a very a satisfying conclusion. We get a few hints of Captain Parry’s past, and I’d happily read an entire novel about him.

What Still Abides by Marie Brennan – I read this, but I swear to you, I heard it too. Written nearly in meter, this story moved forward not by sentences and paragraphs, but by heartbeats and counted breaths. Incredibly transportive, it has an Old English feel to it, with thanes and eorls and a wight that gains strength from the blood of mortals. This is the story of a haunted grave, and of the twisted start of a new religion. It felt like a bedtime story gone horribly wrong. Marie Brennan blew my mind earlier this year with her A Natural History of Dragons, I think I should get used to that blowing minds is simply what she does. Looking back at my review for the third volume of Clockwork Phoenix, it surprises me not at all to find Brennan’s entry was one of my favorites.

Lilo Is by Corinne Duyvis – this was one of the last stories I read, and I wish it had been the first. An unplanned pregnancy is made all the more complicated by the fact that the child’s father is a spider demon. Lilo’s mother loves her, who wouldn’t love their own child? But Lilo isn’t like other children, she has hidden arms and hidden fangs, everything she inherited from her father is hidden. Lilo’s poor mother is helpless when it comes to helping the little girl learn how to make beautiful webs, or learn how to control her natural hungers. Her mother wants Lilo to feel loved and accepted, and isn’t this what everyone wants for their children? But her mother doesn’t know how to help her little girl, because she doesn’t know how to be part spider. If you’ve ever felt the need to help someone and didn’t know how, or paced helplessly as a loved one went through something you couldn’t protect them from, you need to read this story. I’m arachnophobic, and I read this story twice, even after it brought tears to my eyes the first time. I felt so terrible for Lilo’s mother. How many times did my parents not understand what I was going through, how many times was I unable to articulate what I was feeling?

The Bees Her Heart, The Hive Her Belly by Benjanun Sriduangkaew– Futuristic and surreal, and filled with words that felt like bubbles popping on my tongue, this is certainly one of the best stories in the volume. Sennyi is dying, and instead of being a burden to her family, she opts instead to have a small animal take the place of her heart. In exchange she’ll be a subject of the cyberneticist who invented the technology. Hoping for a bird, she receives a nest of bees instead. You’d think it would be strange to have the buzzing of bees instead of a heartbeat, but Sennyi adapts beautifully, even having additional modifications made to her body to ensure the comfort of the hive. When Sennyi goes on her search for the cyberneticist the bees prove to be surprisingly useful. This is certainly one of the strangest, most unexpected stories I have ever read. Sriduangkaew’s prose is balanced and comforting, strange but inviting, it feels like a sunset trapped in amber.

My favorite thing about Clockwork Phoenix 4 is the pure diversity of what it contains. While the subject matter of each entry was completely different, each pushed and pulled at me, each transported me. Each was it’s own universe, it’s own experience. I suppose that’s why the cover is blue? Clockwork Phoenix 4 is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Hubby is a History Guy, so our next stops included Winchester VA, Harper’s Ferry, and Antietam.  We drove up and down lots of mountains.  Even you’re not into history, if you live anywhere near Shenandoah Valley, you should visit. It really is the most beautiful place on Earth.

Why don’t you enjoy these photos while I go finish piles and piles of laundry?

Winchester, VA.  Geographically important during the Civil War, the town changed hands more than 70 times.  The Courthouse served as a hospital and prison during the Civil War, and much of the graffiti has been preserved. It’s now a very small museum. Winchester has got to be the nicest town in America. Every time we pulled out our tourist map, some local walked up to us and asked if we needed directions anywhere, if we needed help with anything. Everyone was so friendly and polite!

It was used as a Courthouse and Hospital during the Civil War. The front area was gated in and was used as a prison. It’s a museum now, and you can ring the bell!

Masonic Temple in Winchester. What an amazing facade!

This is the public library. the PUBLIC LIBRARY of Winchester!!!!

Next stop was Harper’s Ferry. It’s built into a mountain side, and the entire village is hills, hills, and more hills. I suggest leaving your car at the Visitor Center and taking the shuttle in, as there is very little parking in the town itself. We spent so much time at the Armory Historical area, that by the time we decided to shop a bit, most of the stores were closing. We also went during the week, which meant half the shops weren’t open.  There are staircases and steep alleyways everywhere. I can’t imagine trying to get up those uneven steps in bad weather.  Another very friendly town, someplace I’d love to spend more time in.

Nice greeting at Harper’s Ferry.

Hand carved steps up to the Church in Harper’s Ferry. these stairs go up about 6 flights and they are steep and uneven.

Last stop was Antietam. Whatever you do, don’t use Google Maps to find this place, it directed us to someone’s driveway in nearby Sharpsburg. Also, there are NO signs in Sharpsburg. Not quite as friendly or welcoming as Winchester. But, the government has purchased all the property around the Battlefield, and they have rebuilt the original buildings as much as possible. For a very small fee, you can do a driving tour (what we did), or a guided tour. The best thing about it all being government property is that you can coast down the road at 10 mph, and no local is tailgating you because they need to get to work. The area is much hillier than I expected. Visiting Antietam was a humbling experience.

At Antietam. A photo of the Dunkard Church, with the rebuilt Church in the background. I really began to feel the gravity of the situation at this point.

The Burnside Bridge. I’m standing about where the Confederate sharpshooters stood as they picked off Union soldiers.

This is where the Union started. See why it was so hard to get across the bridge?

I have a ton more pictures, but this isn’t a photo blog, you know? If you want more, let me know in the comments, and I’ll e-mail you the shutterfly link.

One of my favorite scenes from the whole place!

Looks like a mermaid castle, right? a bit hard to tell which way is up.

Looking straight up.

they’re people!!! tell me you also see granny on the left and bearded grampa’s profile to the right of her? or am I just nuts?

Hope you got your hardhat on, that thing looks like it could fall at any moment.

Any guesses yet? Here’s some hints:

There was a wishing well (all proceeds go to charity)

There was a live musical performance!

This was the view from the parking lot. my ears popped a lot on the way.

any guesses?

I did get a smidgen of reading done. but not much.

published in 1987

where I got it: library

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I wish I’d read War For The Oaks years ago. I wish this had been the book that had introduced me to Urban Fantasy. People, this is what Urban Fantasy can be. This is what it should be. Lyrical and funny, shadowy and mysterious, War For The Oaks grabbed me on page one and never let go. I kept trying to read bits and pieces of it out-loud to my other half, who kept telling me to quit that, because he wanted to read it next.

The novel opens with last show of Eddi McCandry’s band. Her boyfriend Stuart is a mess, the band isn’t playing what the bar patrons want to hear, a both a band break-up and a romantic one follow in quick succession. Good thing on both fronts, or Eddi would never get the chance to start an even better band with her best friend Carla.

When a Phouka shows up in her life and announces he is her new bodyguard against the Unseelie, Eddi tells him to get lost and threatens to call the cops. She might be recently unemployed, but she’s not crazy. It’s funny, because we’ve all read urban fantasies, we’d all know a pooka or a Sidhe when we see one (or at least like to think we would), but Eddi doesn’t. She’s never read an urban fantasy novel before, and she doesn’t know how these stories go.

War is brewing between the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Violence is a hobby of the fae, as they heal fast and rarely die. But when death is necessary, when a battle truly matters, they bring a mortal onto the battlefield. For an hour, an evening, or months at a time, so long as the chosen mortal is alive and breathing on the battlefield, all the present fae are momentarily as mortal as you or I.

Eddi is their chosen mortal, and no matter what anyone says, this isn’t an honor. She’s a tool towards the destruction of creatures she doesn’t understand, and who don’t understand her. Also, the Unseelie would like nothing more than to simply kill her before the war begins.

It takes the Phouka a little while to convince Eddi that he’s not an escaped mental patient and that her life really is in danger. But there are other fae infiltrating her life as well, most of whom mean her no harm. Again, we’ve all read urban fantasy before, so we know what to look for. But Eddi just thinks some of her new acquaintances are weird and a little shy.

War for the Oaks wears the armor of an urban fantasy, but on the inside, it’s a tale about empowerment wound around a love letter to the fashion and music of the 80s. If you grew up in or around Minneapolis, you’ll recognize plenty of landmarks, even those that have been renamed, and I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the Phouka’s physical appearance and fashion choices remind me of a certain musical prodigy from Minneapolis who was fond of lace cuffs and high heeled boots.

Once the characters are introduced and the plot gets going, there’s no escape for Eddi. I wasn’t able to put the book down, so there wasn’t any escape for me either, and I was fine with that. The fae war begins on May day, and could last until All Hallow’s Eve. Her life is in danger every moment she spends away from the Battlefield, and the formal battles must be scheduled by the fae courts, who have trapped themselves in old patterns of ceremony and manners.

 The world building is very slow, and while that was fine for me, it may frustrate some readers. On more than one occasion, Eddi demands that Phouka tell her exactly what is going on. Nearly every time he responds with vague answers and half truths. You’d think that would stall the story, but it does the exact opposite. I’m practically begging Emma Bull to tell me more, I found myself turning pages faster than I could read them.

 At first blush, War for the Oaks raised a few redflags for me, blaring with urban fantasy tropes that usually annoy me, like the requirement that random fae creatures speak in over-ornamented language, a character’s surprise identity which wasn’t a surprise at all, and the dreaded love triangle. Uggg, a love triangle? Are you kidding me? But that’s the power of Emma Bull. I was looking forward to what strange combination of floral themed phrases would next come out of the Phouka’s mouth, I didn’t mind that only Eddi was surprised by a reveal, and even the romantic plot failed to bother me as I’d expected.

I tend to avoid love triangles like poison ivy. Even in movies, they too often feel contrived and forced, with romantic leads all but screaming “I’m the romantic lead!!!” when they walk into a room. And that’s how Bull got me. No one in this book is interested in a relationship, Bull doesn’t set anyone us as a romantic lead, nothing ever felt like a plot device. The relationships that developed felt the opposite of contrived. They felt like a subtle change of seasons.

There’s so much I’ve left out of this review. So much more I want to tell you about War for the Oaks. I may gripe on Urban Fantasy, but I do love a well told faerie tale. I love how every author gives a slightly different spin on things while staying true to “the rules”. But more than that, I love when an author chooses their words wisely (and Emma Bull does), and the reader can interpret everything how they choose. I don’t want to tell you the best parts of this book because I want to you to come to them fresh, without my interpretation of them. Let it be like the first time you saw a favorite painting in the flesh, or the first time you heard a particular piece of music played live.

 There’s a reason Emma Bull has the following she does. There’s a reason so many fans judge other works of Urban Fantasy against War for the Oaks.

Do yourself a favor and just read it this book. Even if you don’t love it as much as I did, at least now you’ll know what everyone’s been talking about all this time.

Other great folks involved in TBR Topple include Lynn’s Book Blog  and Over the Effing Rainbow. Maybe we can all help each other out.

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Here’s what I got:

Some of the books mentioned below I’ve already cracked open to see what tasty morsels abide within, others I, umm…. haven’t. But I will!  I hope!

From the library:

War for the Oaks by Emma Bull, recommended by My Bookish Ways, it’s magical realism/urban fantasy. Kinda Charles deLint-esque?

Mastering Communication at Work – yes, this is something I’m reading for work.  You know how must business books are drier than dust and make you want to die of boredom? This one isn’t. It’s readable, interesting, has a bunch of exercises to do. I’ve read the first 2 chapters and flipped through the rest. I wish I’d read this 10 years ago.  A bit heavy to read all in one go, but I may need to buy a copy of this.

Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner – a shared world anthology, ummm… thing? I haven’t even had a chance to crack it open yet. I wonder how many times I can renew it from the library?

and an ARC for review:

Clockwork Phoenix 4, edited by Mike Allen – I’ve read three or four of the short stories in here, been very impressed so far.  The book doesn’t come out for a few weeks yet, so I’ve got a bit of wiggle room!

there’s these too:

Kushiel’s Dart by Jaqueline Carey – this seems like one of those books you can’t put down once you’ve picked up?  I’m not sure how many book there are in the series, but finding book 1 was not easy!

Consider Phlebas, by Iain M. Banks – this is the first Culture book, but it gets mixed reviews. I did get through about 20 pages of it, got frustrated, picked up Banks’ The State of the Art, and did much better. this may go back on the shelf for now.

When the People Fell, by Cordwainer Smith – ya’ll know I love me some Cordwainer Smith, and three cheers to Baen Books for publishing this ginormous short story collection! This is the book for my local scifi book club that meets next week. I’ve read like 3 of the stories in here so far, all very, very good. Smith rights a damn good love story (betcha didn’t think I was gonna say that, did you?). This strikes me as more a “pick up every few months and read one or two entries”, than “blast through in a few days and read every page” type book.

Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson – got this out of the library like 6 years ago, LOVED it! Now I finally own a copy and read at a leisurely pace. Also, it’s a paperback, so it doesn’t weigh nine hundred pounds. unlike the hardback from the library!

Caliban’s War, by James S. A. Corey -  I loved the first one, not sure why I’ve waited so long to read the second. It looks like a really big time commitment.  And it’s autographed. I’m afraid I’ll damage it.

Survival, by Julie Czerneda – been hearing great things about this series. It has lots of science. A friend said “read it just for the aliens”. I do love me some aliens that aren’t just humanoids painted blue!

So that’s the plan.  dabble in these and see how I do, right?

and then my TBR Topple got sabotaged:

- I picked up Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks planning to just read 20 or 30 pages.  that was 2 days ago. Now I’m half way through it, and am planning to stay up way past my bedtime to finish it. This is seriously fan-fucking-tastically good.

- This beauty showed up in the mail:

The photo doesn’t do it justice. This anthology looks like a wedding gown with gold trim and a bouquet with streamers the color of an aurora.

- also, this showed up through Interlibrary Loan:

I won’t even show you the awesomely cool shit I bought at John King Books last week. And did I mention I discovered Paperback Swap?

TBR topple? I am TOAST.