tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72861924146843372512024-03-14T06:34:37.685-04:00Red Pen Reviewsredpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.comBlogger111125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-63588718335919085852017-04-12T22:23:00.002-04:002017-07-16T23:20:50.826-04:00UpdatesHello there!<br />
<br />
It's been a long time since I've updated, so I wanted to drop a line to future editing clients and online rovers.<br />
<br />
The bad news: as you can see, I haven't been updating this blog in a long time.<br />
<br />
The
good news: that's because I have a full-time writing and editing job!
Most of my time is going to that and to broader leisure reading, so my
review schedule wasn't really sustainable. <br />
<br />
The relevant news:<br />
<ul>
<li>I'm still accepting freelance editing work. </li>
<li>My timetables are a bit longer now than they used to be (about two weeks for a shorter book or three weeks for a longer one). </li>
<li>My rates are listed on my Editing page. </li>
</ul>
Drop me a line at lcownbey@gmail.com if you have an editing inquiry or want to get in touch.<br />
<br />
Happy reading! redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-51478583282899912772015-12-15T16:27:00.000-05:002015-12-15T16:27:09.473-05:00Newt's Emerald<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1iL4xxto-nlz4T6iNZHyD68ryMNBjU3rhYzOV-NKgxpzDhH7ZsNBossKtfCRIPHYE8L-vstEo1fPtDbhgTiJj5Pk6P_vsoqAMUR58NbNTFYwgERiEURxaRe84TS_KiBjbK2j5he_xuwQU/s1600/newt%2527s+emerald.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1iL4xxto-nlz4T6iNZHyD68ryMNBjU3rhYzOV-NKgxpzDhH7ZsNBossKtfCRIPHYE8L-vstEo1fPtDbhgTiJj5Pk6P_vsoqAMUR58NbNTFYwgERiEURxaRe84TS_KiBjbK2j5he_xuwQU/s320/newt%2527s+emerald.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3 stars</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Compact (291 pages in hardcover)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Publication: </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">October 13, 2015 from Katherine Tegen <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Books</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Premise: </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lady Truthful<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, nicknamed Newt, is pr<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">eparing for her debut in <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">society when her family's <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">most precious possession, the Ne<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">wting<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ton<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Emerald, is stolen. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">none<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, really-- implied threats of se<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">xual ass<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ault, maybe?</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation: </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you're <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">short on <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">magical Regency <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">novels or are determined to read all of G<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">arth Nix, this is <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a fun way to spend an afternoon. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Try <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">it from the library or buy it<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> when it comes out in paperback. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><br />
<a name='more'></a><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What makes th<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">is qui<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ck and charming:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nix manages to maint<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ain a light and humor<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ous tone for most of the book-- the dialogue <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">is full of qui<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ps and banter, and <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">most of the secondary character<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s excel at being just quirky enough to be fun without distract<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ing from the main plot</span></span>. The hunt for the stole<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">n <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ne<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">wtington <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Emerald adds some <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">intrigue and genuine danger<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> (often overwhelming scenes of parties <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">or other light moments), but <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the book is <i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">fun, </span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">skating through obstacles in a way that makes it <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">easy to just keep turning the pages. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The magic could be more detailed, but it<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> threa<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ds through the background </span>and adds all sorts of <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">subtle</span> details<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">-- the soc<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ial use of glamour <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">at fancy parties is great, a<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s is the wonderful exp<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">lanation of Napoleon's imp<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">risonment, which I won't spoil for you. It adds a good sense o<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">f richness to the world, and Ne<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">wt's own small powers over the weather and nearby animals are often c<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">rucial to the plot. The traditional powers among families and carried in magical artifacts that are either still in circulation or locked away in museums also adds a sense of age that y<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ou don't see in most Regency<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">-insp<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ired fantasy<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, better<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> balancing the adventure <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and romance elements</span>.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Truthful's aunt, the Lady Badgery, steals every scene when she sweeps onto the page, and I would cheerfully read several prequels about her younger life. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Disguising Ne<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">wt as a man and providing the g<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">lamour (attached to a false mustache) is her idea, and <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">her many friends, enemies, and e<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">xploit<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s show up <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">in<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span> tantalizing hints. She has a forceful personality, strong magical gi<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">fts, and a keen enjoyment of the whole situation even when it's dangerous, which helps main<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">tain <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the light and frothy tone that Nix is building. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The red pen: </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The biggest problem <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">here is that the book is <i>too </i>quick. Nix mentions in the afterword that he was inspired by the works of Georgette Heyer<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">-- Truthful's love of adventure mirrors<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> that of several Heyer heroines<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, but t<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">his plot feels more compressed than any of those, part<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ly because it doesn't have<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> much in the way of secondary plots or time for the characters to make plan<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s and reflects instead of leaping <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">from one situation to another. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Th<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">e book could have comfortabl<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">y been another 100-150 pages longer and been much <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">more engaging, with time <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">for more character interactions and development <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">for people who aren't the main couple (<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">mostly Newt, since Charle<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s's characterization comes more sl<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">owly) </span></span></span>o<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">r <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lady Badgery. Nix mentions in the author's note that this was originall<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">y a book within a book,<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> something to co<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">nvey clues for a larger mystery, which explains a lot-- the initial take would have been much shorter and not needed to stand on <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">it<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s own. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This version has been reworked into something longer, but it still feels like the bare bones of a larger story<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> with a <i>very </i>compressed climactic scene. The adventure of retrieving the Emerald has some good moments, and the romance shows flashes of being <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">fun, but there's just not enough time for either of them to full<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">y shine, which makes the ending unsat<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">isfying. The plot threa<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ds are tied off, but it feels more like a series o<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">f checked boxes than an earned resolution<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">W</span>e<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">'re <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">told to worry about the Emerald, and <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">we're told</span> the reasons for tension between Newt and Charles, but there's no peril from the jewel <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">until the end and not visiting Charles's p<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">erspective</span> really limits <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">how much you can <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">care abou<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">t the romance. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Keeping the<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> story so short means that parts of it are predictable-- with so little space, <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">there are fewer distrac<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ting details and no secondary plot to divide the reader's attention. Pred<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">icting when the disguise will slip<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> or what New<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">t's feelings are is easy even from a chapter or two out<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. For a str<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">aight<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">-up romance, the predictability would work; <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">f<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">or something wrapped in dan<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">gerous plots and secret identit<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ies, it doesn't. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The verdict: </b><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Newt's Emerald </span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">desperately needs to be longer to carry off everything that it's trying to accomplish<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, but it's fun neverthe<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">less. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Enjoyed this<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">? Try:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">~An<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">y Geor<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">gette Heyer novel, or several. <i>C<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">otillion </span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">is beyond charming, and <i>The Corinthian </i>and <i>The Masqueraders </i>both <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">feature <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">female leads who aren't afraid to wear pant<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s in the good cause of having adventures. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">~<i>Soul<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">less </span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by Gail Carriger. It's more expl<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">i<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">cit<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> about the supernatur<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">al and has more dark moments, but it's well<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">-executed and gives itself the space it needs to really work. </span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span> </span> </span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-76014207730796390712015-11-10T14:00:00.000-05:002015-12-15T14:50:42.193-05:00Steelheart<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE44NMz3Pn8x6xad95WwEjDgZCV4l6n4mZIu8EsEzGUAXH8ZEYT8yvsBXLGnWk4EHkxLrHaXusDHg72oSh0_e7e_H4ArCIyhby79k32dY4yLBe_MWNWd7cvGTdKgpVgwWauszH60oGKBCJ/s1600/steelheart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE44NMz3Pn8x6xad95WwEjDgZCV4l6n4mZIu8EsEzGUAXH8ZEYT8yvsBXLGnWk4EHkxLrHaXusDHg72oSh0_e7e_H4ArCIyhby79k32dY4yLBe_MWNWd7cvGTdKgpVgwWauszH60oGKBCJ/s320/steelheart.jpg" width="210" /></a></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3.5</span> stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> A bit longer than average but uses space well (381 pages in trade paperback)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Publication: </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">September 2013 from Dela<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">corte books</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Premise: </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">David Charleston remembers <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the day when Steelheart, a powerful Epic who r<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ules the ruins of Chicago</span>, killed his father<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ever since then, <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">he's been learning <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">everything he can about Epics so he can get vengeance for this father. When he finds the <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">R<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">eck<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">oners, an organization devoted to killing the Epics, they agree to let him help</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a few death<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s a<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">re <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">on the <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">gritty side, but nothing too dramatic. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation: </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you're looking for a smooth blend of superhero fiction and dystopian adventure, this <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">may b<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">e your thing, but fair warning that it's never heard of subtlety. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mild <b>spoilers </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">follow, but I'll try to <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">keep them to a minimum. </span></span> </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What makes this w<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">orld richly <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">textured: </span></span> </span></span></span></b> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The w<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">orldbuilding fo<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">r <i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ste<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">elheart</span></span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, as <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">usual for Sanderson, is striking. We learn early on that lots of people have been given powers after a red comet rises in the sky; in most universes that <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">focus o<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">n superheroes, powers go to many people, all of whom use them <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">fo<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">r good, evil<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, or <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">their purposes<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">-- there's a <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">hero for every villain, or at least an even enou<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">gh mix tha<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">t neither can win once and for all. In this near-future world of the Epics, however, everyone with powers uses them to steal, <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">hurt, or even kill. Some people hold out hope that the heroes will come one day, but ci<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">vilization has coll<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">apsed into a wastel<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> with small p<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ockets r<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">uled by whatever Epics in an area<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> choose to band together an<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">d <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">exploit or ignore the <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ordinary people. Quiet desperation is the order of the day, and <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the or<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">dinary past see<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ms <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">more li<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ke a distant dream than something that happened in <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">anyone's lifetime. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">All of this helps drive home <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">both how high the stakes are for the Reckoners<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> and how <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">little hope they have of shifting this balance of <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">power. They've kille<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">d a great many Epics, but the <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ones who are the most powerful and the most dangerous to ordinary people, the ones who r<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">u<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">le cities, are also the h<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ardest to kill. The Reckoners can take out some of their opponents, bu<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">t taking out the bigges<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">t threats exposes all of them to risk of discovery, so they pick whatever targets they can and vanish back into the night. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thus far, <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a lot of their hesi<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">tation has been because killing many Epics with invulnerab<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ility requires knowing their weakness<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, the one thing that will weaken th<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">at Epic enough to be <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">vulnerable to other threats. Sometimes they can fig<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ure it out with research, which is a large part of what David's been doing, but Epics will kill to <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">hide their weaknesses. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>When David tell them that he's seen Steelh<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">eart bleed, however, t<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">he unit that found him agrees to take greater risks and join him in his quest for <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">vengeance. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sanderson is always good with imagery, bu<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">t this book is particularly cinematic<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. After a while, you start to really see the steel walls everywhere, people keeping to the shadows, the endless night that serves as another symbol of Steelheart's power. David is an observant narrator, and we get <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">plenty of vi<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">vid details <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">through his eyes<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> to establish that the power of the Epics shapes every moment <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">in the lives of Newcago <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">cit<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">izens. The <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Epics play to the reader's expect<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ation of sup<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">erheroes at fi<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">rst</span>-- they have odd powers and wear unusual clothes and give themselves names str<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">aight out of Marvel of DC's B-list. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the mind's eye, they're just thrilling opponents until <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">we hear about the body <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">counts, or about what casual atrocities they've committed. Lots of YA dystopian n<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ovels are tr<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">endy right now, but this one stands out <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">as having <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">some of the best movie potential<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, especially given the number of well-sta<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ged fight scenes <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and the dramatic climax. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sanderson captures the best of several gen<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">res, and I was <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">eag<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">er to read the sequel.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The red pen: </span></span></span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For all the layered power levels of the Epics, <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">David's own character is both flat and overpowered</span>: he's excellent with a rif<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">le, excellent at lying to dangerous people despite having almost no practice at it, and better at researching the Epics than <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">an entire organization of researchers with more mon<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ey and resources and years of l<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ead time<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. To some extent I think<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> that's<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span>a teenage wish-fulfillment issue of wanting to be better and smarter than <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the ins<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">titutions that hold you back, but <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">it<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> doesn't quite work with the rest of book. There's an overall<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">hope for people to rise</span> up against the Epics, for the Reckoners to keep the dr<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">eam of rebell<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ion alive, but David comes of<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">f as more o<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">f a speci<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">al snowf<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">lake than a member of a team of the face of a movement.</span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span>Sanderson tries to give him a personality of sorts, but he ends up feeling <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">like a generic teenage boy</span>: he's smart and nerdy<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> and not good at impressi<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ng Megan, a tough and beautiful R<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">eckoner around his own age who captures his infatuation instantly. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Megan develops a decent personality before too long<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, and Prof (the head of the cell) is also interesting in ways that <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">would involve spoiler<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s to explain</span>, but the rest of the <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">secondary characters <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">are <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">overly</span> two-d<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">imensional. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Abraham and Cody make a good duo of the quiet one and the funny one, with occasional grace notes of backstory, but both also end up overshadowed b<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">y David tripping his way into useful information.The <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">problem is even worse for Ti<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a, the team's research ex<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">pert, wh<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">o mostly spends time being awed by his collection of notes.</span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Some parts of it fit, and I absolutely b<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">uy that he has some of the best pictures and information about the Epics in <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the city where he's spent his whole life-- if he wants revenge o<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">n Steelhe<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">art, he needs to know how to take out the other Epics w<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ho <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">help <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">control the city</span></span></span></span></span>. Past that, though, he also has top-drawer <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">information about Epics in other places and overarching theories that the Reckoners have alleged<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ly never considered. He's<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> already the most motivated and idealistic i<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">n some ways, and the<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> narrative still keeps pushing th<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">e idea of him as a visionary in a way that just doesn't flow. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">D<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">avid's </span></span>only qui<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">rk is the <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">lazy and</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> awkward "I'm bad at metaphors<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">." He makes odd comparisons <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(which are actually similes, as no one <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">points out until book two) out loud, and I can't figure out if it's supposed <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">to be end<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">earing, socially awkward<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, or both. It might be <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">bea<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">rable if he was <i>consistently </i>awful at them, but he makes a lot intelligent and image<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ry-rich <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">comparisons in his head.<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> The<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> whole bad at metaphors thing only ari<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ses in group conversation<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s, particularly to set him to to blush in front of Megan. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The narra<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">tive</span></span> just trying to hard to <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">make him seem cute that it's off-putting. It seems like a small thing, but it was<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">barely<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> amusing </span>the first time and continues to be painfully unf<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">unny and forced for<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> the rest of the book. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">R<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">eading this is un<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">deniably f<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">un and does a more interesting job <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">than some of the usual superhero fare, but <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the main character is just too conveniently gifted <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and annoying </span>to be <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the right Everyman for this universe. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> The next book in t<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">he Reckoners series is <i>Firefight</i>. It will followed by book three, <i>Calamity</i>, <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">on February 16, 201<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">6. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Enjoyed this? Try: </span></span></span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">~The fusion of dystopian fiction and superheroes works well partly because it's unique, but I'll update this as soon as I think of something. </span></span></span><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></b> </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-44906063856791221372015-11-07T14:30:00.003-05:002015-11-07T14:31:54.759-05:00Author interview: A Vanishing GlowEarlier this week I posted <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-vanishing-glow.html">a review</a> of Alexis Radcliff's <i>A Vanishing Glow</i>. She's been kind enough to offer an interview to dig more into worldbuilding, the writing process, and even offer some advice for self-published authors who are seeking buzz and reviews for their books.<br />
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Without further ado, here's Alexis!<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>The way you blend magic into technology is intriguing on several
levels. How do you envision the religious reaction to the widespread use
of mystech crystals for ordinary things? Are ordinary people less awed
when machines can get the same (or better) results that divis can?</b><br />
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As
far as the ordinary people are concerned, mystech is a gift from the
gods to make their lives better and easier. It represents the real,
ongoing, and obvious presence of a divine being for them, so it bolsters
their faith rather than weakening it. But you're right that even gifts
from the gods lose their sheen of wonder after a few decades of
widespread use. People in Ghavarim have grown complacent in the everyday
use of divine power. This will play heavily into the next volume, when
the momentous events of the first two volumes will have dramatic and
lasting impacts on how the people view their relationship with the gods.</div>
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<span class="im"><b>Which scene or character was your favorite to write?</b></span></div>
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I
love Atandre Teneri, the tortured Lord Commander of the Crimson Fist.
He doesn't even get that much time on the stage, but he touches so many
of the characters, both directly and indirectly, in ways that are going
to ripple through society and change the course of their history.
There's a scene early in the book where Nole tells Jason that Atandre
Teneri doesn't strike him as a legendary figure, and by the end of the
series I expect that readers will wholly disagree with that assessment.</div>
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All
of the scenes with Nilya and Verse were also a lot of fun to write. I
love their banter, and their interactions felt very real and easy for me
to get down. Jason was a lot harder. As you (and others) have noted, he
comes off as a little bland and dense at times in the book. He was a
challenge for me because I was trying to portray him as being out of his
depth in Adaron to set him up to be awesome later, and I might have
succeeded a little too well with that. The events at the end of this
book will have lasting and profound changes on him, though, so I'm
excited to see how people react to the character arc I've got planned
for him in the next few volumes.</div>
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<span class="im"><b>I enjoyed the way you bounced between two major POV characters and two
minor ones. Are you going to pull in more eyes—maybe a different
Westerner after we’ve seen so many of them act with greed?</b></span></div>
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I
do plan to introduce a few new POVs as the story unfolds, and I think
that 4-5 total POVs is just the right number for a book of this size
without being overwhelming. It's important to remember that <i>Nilya</i>
is a Westerner, though she might not seem like it at times. She's a
lower/middle-class Westerner, and the lens through which she views her
world is very distinctly Istkherian.</div>
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I'd
like to get more women into the story as pivotal characters, too.
Kinsey is an obvious choice with how involved in Adaron politics she is,
and the Lady Sil Valkor has a younger sister who's going to be very
interested in what happened to her older sibling. We also haven't heard
much at all about Jason's mother, who is going to be more involved in
the next volume.</div>
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<span class="im"><b>Tell us more about the social systems of sexuality in this society.
People take same-sex bedfellows in adolescence, apparently don’t have
sex in early adulthood, and then graduate into opposite-sex
marriages—people who retain homosexual preferences in adulthood are seen
as childish, while those having heterosexual sex outside of marriage
are scorned as “breedlusts.” It’s a fascinating dynamic, and I’d love to
hear more about how you came up with it, or how you see it developing
in future books.</b></span></div>
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So
many people ask about this! It's actually been really fun coming up on a
take on this that I hadn't seen done before. The whole social system
hangs on one simple idea: That any sex which could result in a child is
sacred, and should only occur with the blessing of the gods. In this
society, they've never developed strong cultural mores against same-sex
relationships because there's no chance of procreation there, and sexual
encounters between two people of the same sex are looked upon as sort
of akin to masturbation. This is why teens, with their raging hormones,
are encouraged to seek a same-sex partner out (though of course many
don't). It developed as kind of a "safe" societal alternative which
allows them to explore their bodies, learn to navigate relationships,
and address their need for intimacy without risking a pregnancy. Most
people play along because there are <i>strong</i> social taboos against
out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Then, there's also a culture of arranged
marriages. People come to love their significant other with time and
work, because it's the thing that's expected of them.</div>
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Obviously,
people's lived experiences don't always match up with society's
expectations, though. Girls sometimes get pregnant, men <i>and</i> women
are labeled as "breedlusts" and ostracized. Some people (strongly
attracted to the same sex) chafe at the idea of leaving their
bedfellows. And some never do. I think future books will continue to
play with this idea of how individuals within a society often step
outside society's approved mold and have to find a way to make their
life work anyway. The social framework is one of the things that makes
this world really unique, in my opinion.</div>
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<span class="im"><b>You obviously put a lot of work into publicity for the novel and got
lots of reviews. As an editor, I have a lot of authors asking me how to
do that. What advice do you have for great writers who aren’t quite sure
how to promote self-published work?</b></span></div>
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The
hardest thing to do, in my opinion, is to get over your fear of
reaching out and asking people for help. I think people are so afraid of
being seen as desperate, or pushy, or of just getting rejected in
general. But if you're an indie, you need to get over that and be
willing to pitch your book to a lot of people for the sake of your
business. People might turn you down, and some people might even be rude
about it, but plenty of people won't. Some of them will help you,
whenever and however they can. And the ones who don't or won't might
have a million reasons not to <i>other</i> than the self-conscious ones you're probably afraid of. Amanda Palmer talks about this in great detail in her book <i>The Art of Asking</i>.</div>
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I'd
also suggest that you really need to roll up your sleeves and get ready
to work. I'm extremely active on social media, and I reached out to
hundreds of bloggers and reviewers to talk about my book directly. <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">It's not easy to drum up a list of reviewers and book bloggers in your genre. </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">I hunted leads for hours each day for almost an entire week, until my hands were cramping and my eyes were blurry. </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">You
need to be professional, be courteous, and have a great pitch. You also
need to respect their preferences, book tastes, and their policies. And
then you also need to be okay with it if they say no, and courteous
even if they don't like your book.</span></div>
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<span class="im"><b>What are you writing next? <i>A Vanishing Glow </i>is obviously begging for a sequel or three, but do you have something else waiting in the wings?</b></span></div>
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Oh
my gosh, Laura. There's so fun stuff coming that I can hardly keep up
with my own schedule! I have a short horror collection coming out soon,
titled "<i>Click and Other Stories</i>." If you check out my Wattpad
account (@Lexirad), I have the first one of those up for people to read
right now: a creepy story about a blind, echolocating hiker in the
mountains of Montana. Then I also have a novelette planned in the same
universe as <i>A Vanishing Glow</i> which gets into more of the history
of the Federation. There will be lots of familiar faces in that, and I
expect readers will enjoy it quite a bit. </div>
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I'm planning the next volume of the <i>Mystech Arcanum</i> series, tentatively titled "<i>A Reaping of Souls</i>,"
I'm almost finished working on another novelette which is a modern
scifi love-story revolving around virtual reality and immortality, and
in 2016 I expect to roll out the first book of a completely different
series I'm starting which will be about superheroes in a comic book-type
setting. Oh! And I almost forgot about the audiobook version of <i>A Vanishing Glow</i>, which is in production now and should be out before Christmas. <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">So yes, I'm a busy lady, haha.</span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><b>Thanks again for joining me today! We'll be look forward to those other projects, and with all that cross-genre writing, it sounds like there's something for everyone. </b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><i>Alexis
Radcliff is an author, gamer, unashamed geek, and history junkie who
spent the better part of a decade working in tech before dedicating
herself to her first love, literature. A VANISHING GLOW, her debut
novel, is the opening book in her MYSTECH ARCANUM series, an exciting
blend of steampunk and flintlock fantasy with mature themes.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><i>Alexis
lives and works in the Portland area with her adorable (if surly) cat
and her equally adorable husband. When not writing, she spends her time
reading, running, playing way too many videogames, and thinking too much
about everything.</i></span></div>
redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-59458303496153626592015-11-02T00:28:00.002-05:002015-11-07T14:57:39.724-05:00A Vanishing Glow<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'm excited to introduce my review for <i>A Vanishing Glow </i>by Alexis Radcliff<i>. </i>The author provided me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review, and she's also being gracious enough to offer an interview later in the week to talk more about worldbuilding and her writing process. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3.5 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Moderately long<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> (343 pag<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">es, feels longer in ebook format)</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Publication: </b>Self-published via Fatecaster Press October 1, 2015</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Premise: </b>In a world ruled by the rising technology of magic turned into mystech crystals, Jason Tern is<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> thrust into <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">political struggle that al<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">l his combat experience <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">never prepared him to face. Far across the country, a young engineer finds her resolve and her ideals tested as she plays her own role in unraveling the plot that threatens to destroy them both. </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> graphic physical injury</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you're interested in steampunk, high fantasy, or unconventional sexual mores, this might be for you. There are some grim moments of injury and guilt, but it's to advance the story rather than for cheap horror. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>What makes this world ripe for exploration: </b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've read plenty of steampunk and high fantasy, but this one stands out for its sharp and unusual worldbuilding. Where many authors choose to put magic against technology, Radcliff merges them in an unusual way. Divis (priests of the divine) can use the divine power of numen, but they can't do a lot of things at once without becoming exhausted. The Mystech Forge pulls that power into the concrete form of mystech crystals that can be used to power large devices as well as individual construct limbs that fit onto amputee stumps that can function much like real arms or legs. There's broad prejudice against constructs, and not just because they look different. They can lift more and move faster than people with normal limbs, so they're able to take over more jobs, which obviously generates the resentment and unrest that drives the book. Nole Ryon, the crown prince, is determined to protect the people and limit the power of the greedy elite, but it's a tangled situation with layers that look like they'll extend far into the sequels. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The sociology of how this society manages sex is also fascinating. People take same-sex bedfellows in adolescence, don’t seem to have sex in early adulthood, and then graduate into opposite-sex marriages; </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">people who retain same-sex preferences in adulthood are seen as childish, while those who have opposite-sex outside of marriage are scorned as “breedlusts.” Authors occasionally take the Spartan example of (usually) boys having relationships with older same-sex mentors and then moving away from that in adulthood, but I don't think I've even seen a whole society built on this particular age-based shift before. It makes for some unique character struggles of identity and desire and what having that thwarted does to people, and it's a breath of fresh air in a genre brimming with orthodox love triangles. I'd love to see more of how this plays out in future volumes, especially with a neighboring society that's much more relaxed about who can openly be in a relationship without sticking to the slums or the shadows. Radcliff clearly put a lot of thought into this and why it developed as a religious and cultural directive, keeping the struggle for these people feel focused, real, and very human. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nilya, one of the lead characters, is a demolitions expert with the Crimson Fist, the military force that isn't <i>quite </i>an army but isn't far off from one either. She's smart, impatient, impulsive, and a little too willing to pursue her goals regardless of the cost...but also afraid to chase after what she wants the very most. She could easily be a cliche or a piece shoved from plot point to plot point, given how driven by guilt and fear she is, but her process of learning to own her decisions and move based on what feels right really drives the smaller arc. She doesn't deal as directly with the high-level intrigue, only brushing against it, but through her eyes we see how this land is really working and relate to her even when she can't face or forgive herself. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is hard to discuss in detail without running afoul of my spoiler policy, but this book is <i>not afraid </i>to kill or maim characters when the narrative calls for it. Some of the major deaths are genuinely surprising, and that really helps with the feeling of mounting chaos and the impression that this society is fragile enough to collapse if anyone just pushes hard enough. </span></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The red pen: </span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The political situation is smooth and varied once it gets going, but the early chapters come off as slow and dense with exposition after an initial engaging scene. Dumping so many names and political motivations at the start makes it hard to care about them and to remember what's relevant later. Part of the fun of political intrigue is getting lots of little hints leading you to a conclusion about who's pulling the strings, and this didn't quite deliver. We figure out that one major character is a pawn partway through, which ups the stakes nicely, but the journey from the villain being revealed to the story jumping on to the next thing is small. Between that and the way we're given a bundle of characters and Jason Tern's suspicions that "this ones smiles and seems self-interested, he must be behind all this" but little more in the way of substantive sources of suspicion, the political intrigue doesn't quite keep pace with the broader tension. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It also leads to some of the book's least realistic scenes-- when Jason needs to meet the other Lords Regent and learn about them, he meets one quite naturally and more or less trips over all the rest without having to spend time with lower-ranked nobles at the same gathering. He has a list of people to meet, he meets them in rapid succession starting with the most trustworthy, and the rest of the ruling class is set dressing. Given how rich the technology and sociology are, it's surprising to see the upper echelons of society itself so thinly represented. There are promising glimpses of how ordinary citizens feel about the way the East and West have been struggling, but I'd like to see that fleshed out in future volumes. It's hard to give sufficient time to every angle without making a book too long and bulky, but a few major characters could have showed up much earlier to smooth out the ending and more background one-off characters would have been nice; it's hard to share a character's fear that danger could be coming from anyone when there are only so many named characters who could be responsible. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jason himself also doesn't quite carry his own weight. I like that he's politically clumsy and solves problems by charging at them headfirst-- it's realistic for someone who's spent time away from society, and he definitely suffers the consequences of not thinking before leaping in. Unfortunately, he just doesn't pop in the way Nilya does. I can't think of an exact parallel for her character, but Jason slides too easily into the grim and determined warrior-detective slot, and it's hard to care what drives him besides justice. He just doesn't <i>change </i>fundamentally; he kicks himself for mistakes, but he keeps making very similar ones, and some major disasters knock him down while others barely graze the surface of his resolve. I think that the climax of the book will make for a lot of growth in the sequels, but right now he's a touch too bland, even when we're digging into the traumatic past that makes him tick. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> Once you get past the first few chapters, this is well worth the read. The world is rich, complex, and about to change dramatically in the next books; if future volumes can live up to and surpass this one, <i>The Mystech Arcanum </i>will really be a series to watch. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Prospects: </b>More volumes are coming, and I'll update this with more information after the author interview goes live. </span></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Enjoyed this? Try:</span></span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">~The closest resemblance is probably Jim Butcher's recent <i>The Aeronaut's Windlass</i>, a magic-and-steampunk adventure that's equally prepared to be grim and delve into an unusual world of magical crystals. I haven't done a review of it yet, but stay tuned for a guest post announcement. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">~Brandon Sanderson's <i><a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-way-of-kings.html">The Way of Kings</a> </i>hits a similar note of intrigue, trying to find treachery in the ranks, as well as channeling naturally occurring magic or divine energy into usable forms for quite mundane uses. It's more of a doorstop and far slower to get some momentum going, but once you realize that humanity is ill-prepared for a hidden threat (as you do in <i>A Vanishing Glow</i>), the ending really comes together. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">~<a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2012/03/strange-affair-of-spring-heeled-jack.html"><i>The Strange Affair of Sping-Heeled Jack.</i></a>
The spin on steampunk technology is different, and it's rooted in more
familiar historical twists, but the way new devices are transforming
everyone's lives strikes a similar note, and the stakes are just as
high. </span></span></span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-10154700982153582032015-10-20T17:18:00.002-04:002015-10-20T17:18:51.630-04:00Movie Reviews: The MartianOpening weekend got away from me, but I really enjoyed seeing <i>The Martian</i> so soon after reading the book and wanted to talk about it.<br />
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<b>Rating:</b> B+<br />
<b>Run-time: </b>Quite long (141 minutes)<br />
<b>Release date: </b>October 2, 2015<br />
<b>Adaptation faithfulness:</b> high<br />
<b>The verdict:</b> If you love science-focused sci-fi and have the patience for the impressive run time, this one is absolutely worth it.<br />
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I'm doing some compare-and-contrast <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-martian.html">with the book</a>, so brace for spoilers.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>Why it was worth seeing on opening weekend: </b><br />
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Above all else, this movie is <i>gorgeous </i>and nails the feeling of being all alone on an entire planet, and of how incomprehensibly vast space is. The long shots of Watney trudging along with the rover drive home the lonely majesty of the place, and I could have watched that alone for hours. The crew also did a good job with the zero-gravity shots; they look effortless and normal, not like the centerpiece of the special effects. The sets are lovely even for ordinary things, and the NASA control rooms are so realistic that the eye just sort of glides through them. <br />
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The movie sticks closely to the book's formula of explaining the variables of the problem one at a time to reflect Mark's thinking on the subject until he manages to hit on a solution. The problems arise in a realistic way, particularly the wonderful internal explosion when he's trying to create water. I'm impressed at how <i>exciting </i>even the most mundane stuff seems-- in the book it works because of the way Watney wrestles with these concerns, but in the movie you can see his giant ink calendar on the walls and more viscerally understand how long he needs to last and how precious even one day of food and life is. Matt Damon does a good job with Watney's snarky personality, for the most part, and there are even a few new lines that could have been in the book: "Mars will learn to fear my botany powers" definitely got the biggest laugh in my theater. <br />
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The short version is that I enjoyed all the ways that the movie stuck to the book, the casting was solid, and you can really tell that NASA collaborated on the movie. On the whole, I did enjoy myself; it's hard to see how to address most of the problems I did have without arguing for a four-hour movie. <br />
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<b>The red pen: </b><br />
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It felt like the movie was simultaneously trying to cram in too much word-for-word adherence to the book and not quite hitting enough. This meant that some characters got a little shortchanged, and for all my complaining that some of the characters sounded too much like Mark in the book, the tinkering in tone for the movie made some of them come off as bland instead. Annie Montrose, the press director, was a particular disappointment. In the book, you can feel her ire seething off the page, but in the movie she's been dealt a hand of "someone in this scene needs to look scared and sad: let's go with the only woman in the room" and has much less scope for threatening people. The actress was fine, but the script didn't give her a lot to work with.<br />
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For the most part I thought that the cuts worked well-- the dust storm looming over Watney in the book is suspenseful in a broad way because it adds shape to his long journey, but it's also resolved with minimal fuss and takes a lot of time to explain, which makes it perfect to cut from a movie. Unfortunately, time constraints meant losing one of my favorite parts: when Watney is working on the rover, he accidentally destroys his connection to the NASA staff who have been keeping him alive and sane and thus has to make the long cross-country journey without any ability to call for help. He walks into some dangerous situations and is totally isolated, and NASA can only watch and hope and worry that their next satellite shot might reveal his corpse. It's tense, dramatic, and comes off as one of the most psychologically rich portions of the book. In the movie, that connection never breaks once it's established, which does a lot to ease the mental strain on Watney. It might have added more time down the road, but once it's two hours and twenty minutes....eh, go for the extra ten minutes and pull in more panic.<br />
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The resolution, much like in the book, is abrupt, though movie adds the frankly stupid detail of Commander Lewis doing the manual rescue despite having less experience because she feels guilty and allows that to compromise her reasoning. Anyway, Watney gets back on the ship, he reunites with the crew, fade to black...but the movie adds a brief epilogue about Watney teaching future NASA recruits and saying that space is unforgiving but if they solve enough problems, they get to come home. It's certainly <i>one </i>part of the book, but the thematic focus at the end is on how much humanity cares when one person is lost, since Mark's ingenuity still would have ended with him dead if another nation hadn't cannibalized its own space program, if his crewmates hadn't left their families alone for another year and a half....if more people along the line had chosen budgets or pragmatism or the good of the many over saving him. It's a little thing, but the ending would have been better ending just after the rescue or showing Mark with his parents or just marveling at the sound of a crowd after so long alone. <br />
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<b>The verdict: </b>Go see it, preferably on a big screen to appreciate those gorgeous special effects. It's long enough that I wouldn't see it twice in any reasonable timespan, but I'm absolutely glad I did.<br />
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<b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b><br />
~<i>Apollo 13</i> definitely has the same "be a good engineer to live" vibe to it, and it's also a space rescue, though over a much shorter timespan. redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-22573093502510920892015-10-01T00:26:00.001-04:002015-11-07T17:05:51.114-05:00The Martian<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And we're back, this time with a shorter review style that will hopefully make this work better in the long run. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 4 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> A bit longer than average but uses space well (381 pages in trade paperback)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Publication: </b>originally in 2011 via Andy Weir's blog, now available in trade paperback from Broadway Books</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Premise: </b>Mark Watney was thrilled to be on the Ares Three mission to Mars...until the dust storm led his team to believe that he died there and they left him behind. Now he has to survive on a planet inhospitable to life and hope that he can let anyone know that he's alive. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> lots of swearing</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> This is amazing from start to finish. Read it if you're willing to put up with some slight slowness at the beginning-- believe me, it pays off. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Very minor <b>spoilers </b>for the book, but nothing that you couldn't pick up from the movie trailer or from the cover copy of some of the movie tie-in editions (no specific events spoiled). </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Bonus this time around: I'm seeing the movie this Friday and plan to do a short review of that this weekend as well. Here's hoping it lives up the book.</span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Why this book put me on a sci-fi kick again: </b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mark Watney's voice absolutely makes this book from the very first sentence. He survives being stranded and an inch away from death on the strength of gallows humor and raw ingenuity, rarely allowing himself to linger on the possibility of death. Weir establishes that Mark is lonely and stir-crazy and sometimes scared-- he even cries once, and the rarity of that reaction demonstrates just how much he's been leaning on that sense of humor to survive. It works especially well when he's alone on the surface of Mars and realizes how large the planet is and how <i>alone </i>he is-- you can really feel the solitude and silence of the dust storms in some scenes, almost taste the bleakness.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He gets agitated over the scientific limits of what he can do (his initial plan to grow food was the one place where the science wasn't holding my attention just yet), but he also jumps into one thing at a time and somehow managed to get me interested in atmospheric gas composition for the one and only time in my life. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Andy Weir plays very fair on these ingenious points-- Mark doesn't solve any problems by inventing new scientific principles or discovering that Mars secretly does have running water (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/28/nasa-scientists-find-evidence-flowing-water-mars">well, it does now, but Weir didn't know</a>.) Instead, he does a lot of very careful math and recycles every bit of useful material he can find, often taking risks that NASA safety procedures would never allow. It makes the view of Mark in his inflatable habitat all the more compelling, since he could die at any time and keeps running into obstacles presented by a dangerously barren environment. When something goes wrong, it's because a piece of technology fails, he's miscalculated something, or the environment reacts in a way that he simply didn't notice at the time. After reading a lot of space opera, it's refreshing to see something hold itself so strictly to the rules of our reality. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Just when Mark's voice is getting lonely, the narrative cuts back to the NASA team on Earth as they try to figure out what went wrong and whether they can retrieve his body. The scientists are desperate to save him but also have to fend off the whole world's attention when everyone <i>else </i>learns that Mark Watney is alive and stranded. I love the way they manage it: everyone from the interns to the director of the Mars operations to the assorted scientists on staff has something to add, but many of them also clash with each other. Even in moments of glowing teamwork, they have substantive disagreements about what to do and how to present their decisions to the public. These people <i>feel </i>like real scientists, complete with tinkering and personality quirks and complete absorption in the work they do better than anyone else could. I admire the stylistic decision to only give real conversation time to people directly involved in the rescue efforts, with everyone on Earth contributing to a sense of background tension-- it keeps the story from getting bloated with reaction shots from everyone who might possibly be relevant. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The red pen: </b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This one's hard to pin down because I have very few concrete complaints, just a general hesitation when I was thinking about giving it four and a half stars. (Nothing gets five stars unless I am struck dumb with its celestial beauty.)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The issue, though, is that almost everyone entertaining in the story starts to sound a bit like Mark Watney after a while-- funny, sarcastic, prone to swearing. It keeps the dialogue moving quickly, and it's effective for characters who <i>don't </i>usually sound that way (Commander Lewis springs to mind) because it's a point of emphasis. For the most part, though, there's not a lot of differentiation in character voices. The moments where people do sound completely like themselves absolutely shine, but Weir doesn't have quite as deft a touch with characters of other types, or with giving people senses of humor that don't sound like Watney during the particularly good zingers. This is a story of one man and also a story about humanity, but the intermediate level of other people as <i>people </i>could use work; if everyone matched the personal edge that crewmate Johansson has in one memorable scene, this could work as a group drama as well. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> I haven't read a lot of hard sci-fi lately, but this hooked me at maybe twenty pages in and didn't let go. It's intelligent, beautifully researched, and funny, with emotion dropped in sparing enough notes that every tense moments resonates. If you like science fiction at all, give this one a try. </span></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Enjoyed this? Try:</span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">~Cory Doctorow's <i><a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/05/little-brother.html">Little Brother</a> </i>takes a similar approach to explaining technology (though that focuses on computers rather than botany and physics). The narrator is interested in teaching, and the details are pitched at the perfect level for the technologically inexperienced reader to mostly follow along without feeling like reality is being dumbed down. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-20642556555563349962015-06-25T00:05:00.001-04:002015-06-25T00:05:12.733-04:00Let's dust this thing offHi there!<br />
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I've been poking back around on here and realized that I last posted almost a year and a half ago, right before NaNoWriMo took over my life for a little while. I bounce back from that every year, but this time a good distraction appeared-- my existing editing work with Spencer Hill really stepped up, freelance clients popped up everywhere, and this blog took a backseat to writing detailed stuff for authors.<br />
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But book reviews have been calling my name recently after I had great luck with several books a in a row, two of my biggest projects are off with the almighty superheroes who do the layout work, and I'd like to see what I have time to write again these days. The break has really brought home what I do and don't miss. <br />
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The long reviews were draining me a little-- sometimes I had great points for what worked that I really wanted to talk about and the shortcomings were a struggle, and sometimes the book was so awful that I had four easy paragraphs of issues and almost nothing nice to say. With my old format, I felt compelled to hold things to the same length for each category in the interest of fairness unless the book was over four stars or barely scraping one, but I think it led to some clunky posts. <br />
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I do miss the "this is why this works and what other bit doesn't" approach, but for some books it's just one thing that kept me riveted and the only thing I really want to talk about. Going forward, the goal is more free-form reviews at a schedule of more like "when I feel like it, but maybe twice a month" and some posts about the inside aspects of editing. The past few years have taught me a lot about tightening up my critique and jumping blind into styles and genres I didn't feel comfortable editing before, and I'd love to dig into that. <br />
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If you have questions about how to ask for what your book needs, editorial pet peeves, or anything in that vein, drop me a line or hit me up on Twitter @redpenreviews. redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-80241701166935260962013-10-24T14:00:00.000-04:002013-10-29T03:03:54.070-04:00Romulus Buckle and the City of the Founders<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9qJQ_FhifhA2IxjKHJBXoasal-GTlC4TV8ZF7Vl_pQwt5b0A1a-4DU7VfprM4jCwYZ2t-FYukAZHSCBYk2c51Y4yfALvweySpwEmYj5TPJCiLX1qMHpMjFs77IxoEeSR6F9RNUWjxfKfC/s1600/romulus+buckle+and+the+city+of+the+founders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9qJQ_FhifhA2IxjKHJBXoasal-GTlC4TV8ZF7Vl_pQwt5b0A1a-4DU7VfprM4jCwYZ2t-FYukAZHSCBYk2c51Y4yfALvweySpwEmYj5TPJCiLX1qMHpMjFs77IxoEeSR6F9RNUWjxfKfC/s320/romulus+buckle+and+the+city+of+the+founders.jpg" width="213" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 2 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Lengthy and detailed (446 pages in trade paperback)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> July 2, 2013 from 47 North</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise:</b> The world has ended, and a new one covered in snow has risen to take its place--humanity has fractured into rival factions that war with each other as well as the Martians. The mysterious Founders, who live in a city surrounded by the deadly mustard gas, have kidnapped several faction leaders in the middle of negotiations. Romulus Buckle, captain of the <i>Pneumatic Zeppelin</i>, has set out on a rescue mission to save them or die trying. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> deaths in battle, maybe xenophobia. This one is pretty tame. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you're hard up for new steampunk or different spins on steampunk setting, this could be fun for you. If not, the dialogue and scattered character introductions make it difficult to stay engaged. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What gives this one a fun swashbuckling air:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The story opens on Captain Romulus Buckle of the airship <i>Pneumatic Zeppelin</i>. When the aliens invaded three centuries ago and stopped electricity from working, humanity had to revert to older technology to survive. The setting makes for fascinating reading--people struggle to survive in the new snowy world, with each faction resorting to different methods. The Alchemists are quirky but scientifically gifted, putting together robots without the aid of modern precision tools, while the mysterious Founders hoard their strange devices and refuse to let people in or out of their city. People live close to the edge of life and death and seem to have settled into a routine of distrust and petty feuds, which makes sense given how difficult it is to share information. The narrative shows the roots of several feuds while also focusing on the rules about how strangers are treated-- there's just enough trust there to use as a foundation without alliances seeming like a foregone conclusion. We don't see too many groups at first, but the shape of the political system allows for plenty of expansion in the sequels and nearly infinite avenues for betrayal, even if the leaders of these groups have almost no dimension so far. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Richard Ellis Preston Jr. has absolutely done his research on how this technology would work-- we hear about everything from ballast ratios to water reserves to how to survive in clouds of gas, and all of that gels together to make the world seem mechanically plausible. The conveniences of the old world are forgotten; cars rust quietly after the supply of rubber from the tires has long since been harvested, and light comes from fire or bio-luminescent organisms that can be shaken to glow. There are some explosives, but they're dangerous and unreliable, and long-distance messages are sent via carrier pigeon. It makes for the impression that these people are working with the highest level of technology that's possible with electricity gone instead of floundering messily to the next step in an industrial revolution, and that can give this world an odd sort sort of a charm. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The narrative shines most brightly in individual set pieces, short scenes that carry only one mood and let the world flow around them. When the zeppelin is soaring through a cloud of mustard gas with engineers stationed on the outside to keep any floating mines from hitting the ship, everything flows perfectly. You're left with the impression that this ship is the only thing in the world, one fragile bubble that could perish at any moment without the unified efforts of the whole crew, and it's sad to see the scene end. The action scenes are also a lot of fun, since Preston varies up the settings considerably and uses the zeppelin to his advantage. People fight with pistols and swords and fists, doing so underground or in the midst of toxic gas or in the open space of what amounts to a fragile bag of flammable gas that will go down if it's damaged too severely. There are even a few good scenes on the <i>outside </i>of the zeppelin, with Buckle and his crew having to calculate the dangers of winds, ice, and flying menaces with only safety lines to prevent them from falling to their deaths. No two fights feel the same, and the narrative's fast perspective-jumping style works best when it's showing large battles from multiple angles to demonstrate just how chaotic a large fight can be when you're not zeroed in on the newest threat in front of you. Most threats are also explained as they appear rather than far in advance, so the warning about what could be out there in the sky comes as a hinted outline and then a risk assessment that reinforces the dangers more thoroughly than the dozens of reminders about how easily the zeppelin could explode can ever do. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Romulus Buckle himself shoulders much of the weight of the narrative and is thus one of its most glaring problems. He could get away with being only eighteen but also being a crack shot, consummate swordsman, great pilot, master of hand-to-hand combat, and shrewd commander; the problem is that he tries to do all of them at once. During one battle, he starts on the bridge, runs down to the engines, starts repairs and routes water, gets into a duel with boarding forces, nearly falls out of the ship, and runs back to the bridge to steer the ship himself despite the risk if he collapses and loses control of the wheel. He shrugs off Balthazar's complaints about a captain abandoning his command, but it's a valid point and jolts the narrative as well-- imagine Captain Kirk (who is not a bad analog here) leaving the bridge mid-engagement with the Romulans to help Scotty with engine repairs, check on sickbay, fight off invaders with his bare hands, and then run back up to the bridge with severe injuries to take over the piloting. That is how ridiculous this is. It might be forgivable if it happened in just that one absurd sequence or if he was the only point of view character, but it's chronic and accompanies constant reminders that he always eats last and takes every single risk that he possibly can to avoid putting his crewmen in a bad position. Larger-than-life heroes can work, but Buckle does so much that it's impossible to take him seriously (especially in the giant hat that apparently plugs into the ship--the bridge crew has these for no apparent reason and it's bewildering). </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If Buckle was the only character with a point of view segment to himself, this could work, but the point of view changes after almost every chapter....and those chapters tend to be under ten pages, sometimes under five. Most of the major crew members get at least a few chapters here and there, and they all spend so much time explaining things that it ends up being hard to care who they are beyond "the Martian" or "that Russian engineer with the hat." These people (especially the women, you don't even know) tend to get two paragraphs or so explaining how attractive they are with their hair and their magnetic gazes and their nifty weapons, which again wouldn't be a problem if it didn't happen <i>incessantly</i>, including for one minor character who passes someone a note and has no other role beyond being very pretty but not noticing because she's busy keeping an eye on her pigeons. The descriptions of the zeppelin at least end up having some bearing on the plot, but the personal descriptions just....hang there and occasionally help provide weird sexual tension, frequently between people who were raised from childhood as adopted siblings. Taken together, the first quarter or so of the book feels like very brief chunks of action tucked in between long tracts of description about the people and technology, so it plods. As the action speeds up and we know the characters better, the pacing <i>should </i>improve, but for some reason the exposition morphs into the characters mentally explaining their deepest motivations and insecurities before we jump into someone else's head two pages later. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The language could have gone in almost any direction, since we're looking at post-apocalyptic steampunk set roughly three hundred years from the present day, but the direction it chose was not on the same continent as anything that made sense. In one scene, Buckle sees statues of famous scientists and we learn that the names of Newton and Galileo, among others, have been lost to history. It's decent shorthand to establish that this timeline has drifted far from its roots, but the things that do survive seem to have been chosen at random. For example, Max the Martian is described as having eyes like mood rings, because it makes sense that a trend from the 1970s involving cheap tiny trinkets has survived into the annals of human knowledge and that scientists who discovered the reaches of outer space from whence the Martians came are forgotten. That in itself could be glossed over, but the conversational style is a blend of Victorian-era formality and clumsy modern slang. And the sewers feature "floating chunks of something that looked like Spam." And helmets are described as being ancient Greek in style while long poles are compared to jousting lances. And people say "this party is crashed," "just peachy,"and "bring it on," among other modern utterances. This world is a wonderful idea, but the execution comes off as the author liking zeppelins and wanting steampunk without fleshing out the more human aspects of the narrative. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One final complaint: naming your zeppelin the <i>Pneumatic Zeppelin </i>is like naming your starship the <i>Warp Drive Starship</i>-- acceptable only if it's the first and only one of its kind, which this conclusively is not. Given how ridiculous half the human names in this book can be, one entertaining ship name shouldn't be too much to ask. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> There's so much potential here, but all the separate pieces seem to just hang there without ever producing a coherent whole. because the narrative can't decide if it's trying to be steampunk action-adventure pulp or something more nuanced. It's certainly possible to add depth to explosion-heavy books, but this is less blended and more just erratically bouncing between ideas and character background so quickly that it's hard to care about any of them individually. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects: </b>Book two of the <i>Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin</i> is <i>Romulus Buckle and the Engines of War</i>, which will be released on November 19th. I'd guess that this will be a longer series, but I haven't found anything to confirm that yet. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~Cherie Priest's <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2012/08/boneshaker.html"><i>Boneshaker</i></a> tackles steampunk in America from more of an Old West perspective, but the meticulous attention to technology is similar. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~<a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2012/03/strange-affair-of-spring-heeled-jack.html"><i>The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack</i></a> (by Mark Hodder) is straight-up bizarre, but Burton makes a far better swashbuckling action hero than Romulus Buckle does, in large part because he has the life experience to make his improbable skill set make sense. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~If you're after steampunk with science as well as a dash of the supernatural, Gail Carriger's <i><a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/02/soulless.html">Soulless</a> </i>is a brilliant piece of mystery-adventure-comedy. </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-75177611577722629132013-10-17T14:00:00.000-04:002015-09-30T23:16:34.163-04:00Blackbirds<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Take a close look at the cover on this one if you pick up a copy in person, and then another look after you finish the book; it's extraordinarily detailed.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt9l_hqgc00k53SNgFe7cvxmZfvMWbSmK_GwS0rWq6ozo8yhz1KtuajrfNtxFroTi-KBAif2geppy8JCwpvcsgTfVQ89ri9g1pn4jUuTLXCNOxOfcCCVwx7ATS2B3vKOcrIgam5bIEo8k9/s1600/blackbirds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt9l_hqgc00k53SNgFe7cvxmZfvMWbSmK_GwS0rWq6ozo8yhz1KtuajrfNtxFroTi-KBAif2geppy8JCwpvcsgTfVQ89ri9g1pn4jUuTLXCNOxOfcCCVwx7ATS2B3vKOcrIgam5bIEo8k9/s320/blackbirds.jpg" width="211" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Fast and snappy (381 pages)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication: </b>April 24, 2012 from Angry Robot Books</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise: </b>Miriam Black has been drifting across the country for years, trying to run from her visions. Whenever she touches people, she sees how they're going to die, and seeing that dozens of times a day has taken her close to the edge of madness. When she sees that a truck driver is going to die in thirty days while he calls her name, she's forced to decide whether she wants to fight a losing battle against fate again.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> sex with very dubious consent, gore, torture, dismemberment/mutilation, violent miscarriage</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you're looking for something dark and sharp-edged without an ounce of glamour, this may be exactly your cup of tea. The secondary characters don't always live up to Miriam's strength of presence, but it's a fun quick read. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What gives this one the grit of everyday life:</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The story opens on Miriam picking a fight in a grungy hotel room just before the man with her dies. She's calm as she narrates what's going happen to him and pragmatic when she goes through his pockets for money to get er to the next stage of her wandering adventure. Her personality is the grimy-bright thread holding everything together-- she can feel old and defeated as she drinks to forget in one scene and playful a chapter later when she rambles on about her the symbolism wrapped up in her choice of hair dye. She swears twice a sentence on average, which may turn some readers away, but it matches what we slowly learn about her history over the course of nightmares and a lost interview about her powers. When she makes bad decisions or can't cope with basic interactions because relaxing around people is more than she can handle, it feels utterly realistic given her past and the way she's had to adapt in order to cope with it. This works particularly well when she's having sex with a con artist and, in one memorable scene, experiencing his death even as they throw each other around-- the scene structure works against how her power is described elsewhere, but it makes for a compelling look at just how damaged she is and how little faith she has in her own ability to change herself or the course of fate. Miriam can be mean and capricious and disillusioned, but there's a vein of black humor and a stubborn urge to struggle against fate underneath all that; taken as a bundle, it's impossible not to end up rooting for her. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The death visions themselves are never less than vivid and often seem stellar, driving home the way that the end of life is unpleasant and final-- seeing it happen over and over again has drained Miriam of illusions and soft edges. She sees people die in car accidents, or in hospital beds, and even the ones with similar circumstances manage to carry some imprint of personality to set each death apart. She might be accustomed to it and want to be callous, but she can't quite manage it when each death is distinctive and impossible to prevent. Her fatalism can seem dramatic at first, but as the story progresses, it seems impressive that she hasn't simply let her sanity fall over the edge. The entwined motifs of fate and death make for an excellent Experience has taught her that trying to save people only causes their deaths, but she can't help reaching out to Louis and wanting to save him anyway. She makes choices that move with and against her own nature according to the mood of the moment, all braiding together for a contradictory look at how she both sees herself as one of fate's many tools and is determined to retain that last inch of free will for herself. Her motivations are a realistic blur-- she smokes, drinks, swears, and sleeps around as a way of forgetting as well as because she just enjoys herself and because it's a release from her upbringing, not for any central or easy reason, and that helps her edge away from the mold of typical female protagonists in this genre.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Chuck Wendig's style seems <i>immediate</i>, and that lends itself well to tight pacing-- he writes in present tense and Miriam doesn't know the time of her own death, so there's an extra thrill when she risks life and limb in the moment. Whether she's fighting or diving through highway traffic, the adrenaline almost rises off the page. It's hard not to keep turning pages with so little dead space; every detail matters and there's no room for sequences of pacing and introspection. The fight scenes feel fast and brutal, with everyone involved taking a realistic amount of damage and dealing with the bruises and broken bones afterwards. They're properly messy, resolved not with elaborate martial arts moves but with sheer speed and brutality. It helps add to the tone of the world that Wendig is establishing, particularly when Miriam is being kicked around and refusing to let that pain, or any other problem, control her. Even when action scenes are part of backstory and we already know who lives and who dies, they still shine, and that makes it easier for the narrative to slide from one point of view to the next that might illustrate something useful. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Miriam's personality influences every aspect of the book, but that doesn't always leave much space for the secondary characters to shine. Louis Darling, the trucker whose death Miriam desperately wants to prevent after he shows her kindness, is particularly underwhelming. He's nice and has a troubled backstory (because almost everyone in this book seems to have undergone deep emotional trauma), but that seems to be the whole of his character beyond the various permutations of "nice." He doesn't like people who hurt women, he's kind of uncomfortable with Miriam but attracted to her anyway, is happy to offer lifts in his truck....he's essentially a Boy Scout in a big rig who helps Miriam out, and that's just not enough to sustain the time and focus that he receives. His existence is centered on Miriam's; even his past is a story that he tells by way of apology, and when he's deciding whether to help her out, he leans towards the best interests of a woman he barely knows and who has warned him away from getting involved with her rather than his own. He reads like a man's idea of a woman's fantasy of the perfect supportive man rather than a real friend, and that makes it hard to care whether he lives or dies. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The villains of the piece are better, but not consistently so. Frankie and Harriet, the first two we meet, work for Ingersoll, a hairless and preternaturally calm psychopath. Harriet has quite a few note-perfect moments, especially when she's telling stories-- her own past shines, but so does her account of cats eating the corpse of their owner. She's gloriously unbalanced and relies on the calculated sadism that made Ingersoll seek her out, but when the room is crowded she starts to seem cartoonish. Frankie is fussier, less obsessed with gore and thus more capable of making clean kills without toying with his victims, and his banter with Harriet shines so well that he seems lost and unfocused without her there to anchor him-- in the end, it's not even clear why he's in this uniquely brutal line of work. The real sticking point, however, is Ingersoll. He's good enough at planning to pull together a crew and stay one step ahead of anyone trying to oppose him, but writing a villain with icy calm as well as a habit of boiling people's bones to put bits of them into his bone-divination pouch requires a flawless balance that the narrative can't quite find. In some scenes he's a mastermind worthy of Hannibal Lecter, and at other times he's busy toying with his victims for the hell of it instead of getting what he needs and putting bullets through their brains. He falls into melodrama at about the point when he starts explaining his childhood to Miriam and never quite manages to come back from it, though his detached way of talking does make a good foil for her profanity-laden rage. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If the visions of death and the scenes of skating close to it mark the high points, the more general pieces of description fall flat by comparison. There's a fair bit of rambling about cockroaches in addition to the more overt gore involved in seeing people tortured, but not all of it fits together. One thug's story of how she cut her husband up and ran him through the garbage disposal is the perfect way to demonstrate that she's not quite right in the head, but scenes like the torture of a minor character who appears only in that scene feel too foo forced. Gore can make for a good grace note sometimes....if it doesn't feel like the narrative lens is hovering over the scene to establish that this is seriously and the villains are really awful people. It might work better if this was executed as a horror-esque movie (and it went through several drafts as a screenplay), but it manages to flop over the line into feeling overdone and cheesy rather than genuinely horrifying. The story has more than enough darkness to hold its own without resorting to shock value, and trying to throw too much gore in flat doesn't work, especially late in the book when anyone with a weak stomach has long since gone elsewhere. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> <i>Blackbirds </i>comes off as a great narrative experiment that draws on one character's bright-but-rough personality and electric pacing to hold itself together, but the overall structure and secondary characters can't quite hold their own weight. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> This is the first in a series, which continues in <i>Mockingbird </i>and <i>The Cormorant</i>, which is slated for release on December 31, 2013.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try: </b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~For an entirely different take on death from the same publisher, try <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-corpse-rat-king.html"><i>The Corpse-Rat King</i></a>. The main character spends the entire book as a demi-dead creature and, like Miriam, spends a fair bit of time trying to understand what it means to be alive and how to be the one running your own life when the odds are stacked against that. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~<i><a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/06/prince-of-thorns.html">Prince of Thorns</a> </i>partakes of similar darkness with far less fatalism, and Jorg's approach to the idea of destiny is about as far from Miriam's as it's possible to go. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-37245489173300233432013-10-10T14:00:00.000-04:002013-10-11T02:43:03.122-04:00The Way of Kings<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I reviewed <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-rithmatist.html"><i>The Rithmatist</i></a>, Brandon Sanderson's young adult debut, for YA Summer a few months ago. I normally try not to do the same author twice in a year, but Misanthrope and Smartypants have been swearing up and down that this one is great for months, so I finally caved....and am very glad I did.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not to be confused with <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-way-of-shadows.html"><i>The Way of Shadows</i></a>, which is both half as long and half as interesting. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 4 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Well into "imposing tome" territory (1258 pages)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> August 31, 2010 from Tor Books</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise:</b> The world of Roshar is controlled by the highstorms that destroy the landscape even as they bring light and magic and by the long-forgotten secrets that place everyone in danger. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> battlefield gore</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you have the resolve for 1200-odd pages and don't mind a slightly slow start, give this one a try. It looks like this might be able to pull off a cast-of-thousands epic fantasy without slowing to a crawl-- the action is glorious, the world manages to be alien but comprehensible, and Brandon Sanderson has a deft touch for writing about ideals without becoming trite. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What makes this epic fantasy properly epic:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The story opens on nine cryptic figures abandoning the tenth of their number and then skips 4500 years to the present day, which is a fair indicator of this book's scope. Sanderson has gone to great lengths to create a world that's <i>different </i>from every near-Earth clone with magical seasoning out there, and it's fascinating to untangle how the highstorms (which produce the stormlight of the series title) have shaped every aspect of life on this world. Storms of water and magic that can sweep up boulders and trees as they move rage across the landscape with some frequency-- both Roshar's ecology and cultures have evolved to deal with that, though regions farther from the origin of the storms seem to follow more normal patterns. The storms tear at the earth, so grass and other plants can retract into the ground. Animals need to be sturdy to survive these conditions, so most of them seem to come with carapaces or antennas, calling to mind crustaceans rather than mammals. These tempests aren't without their blessings, however; gemstones of any size left out in the open will become infused with Stormlight, which glows brightly and can also be used in some types of blended magic and technology. These glowing gemstones are placed into the heart of small clear spheres that are the currency of the realm, so people can use their currency for illumination, and vice-versa. It's an elegant mechanic, one that lets pieces of worldbuilding follow each other more logically, and there's abundant room for this dual magic-technology to expand in future volumes. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Three of the four primary character arcs balance beautifully well. Kaladin, once a captain called Stormblessed and now a slave, carries the lion's share of the point of view, but the Kholin lord Dalinar and
his son Adolin between them manage to balance out the views of how this war on
the Shattered Plains is really going. These brightlords see the larger
shape of strategy and fate of the realm, while Kaladin catches only
glimpses of that while he measures the cost in human suffering. Adolin's struggle is to some extent dictated by Dalinar's, since he is the head of their house, but he's willing to fight against his father on one page and at his side on the next out of love and exasperation and loyalty. The two of them carry some of the best action scenes in the book, since the powerful Shardblades and Shardplate make superhuman feats possible, but they also provide the book's moral center. Dalinar dictates that his family follow the Codes, ideals for life and war taken from an ancient book called <i>The Way of Kings. </i>He blames himself for the death of his brother, King Gavilar, and believes that he could have saved him if he's gone along with what seemed like madness at the time. These Codes for the treatment of comrades and officers and the enemy twine together with the half-lost oaths of the Knights Radiant who once protected humanity to form the roots of an honor system with more resonance than the personal codes found in so many other books. Many other protagonists won't kill children or steal from the innocent, for example, but these are closer to full life philosophies that will doubtless show themselves in further permutations as the series develops. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The action sequences....really, words don't do many of them justice. The full-scale battles are gripping, especially the Battle of the Tower (trust me, you'll know it when you get there), but the world provides for many other types of tension. Kaladin spends time facing the raw power of a highstorm, Jasnah Kholin has no problem turning people to pillars of flame with her Soulcaster if she feels that it's justified, and Dalinar's visions uncover entirely different types of enemies. After the first dense action scenes, Sanderson demonstrates the rare gift of making these fights easy to picture while also showing something about the characters involve. They fight as they do for a reason, always, and their internal landscape is linked to the external struggle. Once this book gets started, it's genuinely exciting, and the second half in particular absolutely flies by. Kaladin really deserves the bulk of the action he gets-- it's easy to get frustrated with the way he lingers in angst and despair, but his backstory makes it clear that he absolutely has reason to feel that way and that it's in fact a miracle that he didn't kill himself before the book started. He hits one emotional low after another but continues to pick himself up, sometimes with outside help and sometimes without it, and in the end it's hard not to admire the way his response to giving up is eventually "well, I'm already here in this pit and am not stepping up because I'm afraid. That's not a good enough reason." He has the best crazy plans, the best action scenes, and only doesn't have the most potential to draw the most loyalty because he and Dalinar came out in a tie. His journey from here is going to be at the heart of the series, and Sanderson absolutely chose well in making it so. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Fascinating though this world can be, the entry to it feels too slow at times. The first chapter of the book proper deals with a magical assassin going after a king, so there's no way this should be dull, but it almost manages. This assassin spends most of his narrative space trying to explain exactly how his Lashing magic works and what he's doing with his Shardblade. It works, after a fashion, but it bogs down too much in vocabulary to the detriment of that sequence's tension. Some of the next few chapters have the same problem as they try to cram too much worldbuilding into too little space. To some extent it's necessary to the story, but it becomes troublesome when it's paired with Kaladin and Shallan's early fussing. While their later journeys are both intriguing (more on Shallan later), these framing chapters (roughly the first two hundred pages) consist largely of introspection and hints at backstory rather than much forward motion. It makes for something of a slow start, which ultimately ends up being forgivable given what an excellent payoff the <i>last </i>two hundred pages are, but it's still a bit daunting to realize that over half the length of some books is devoted to worldbuilding, plot, and development of characters who are compelling but not honestly that nuanced. Is it worth the wait? Absolutely. But the early pacing is slow to the point of plodding, and that makes it harder to tune into the later action. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One problem with such a long series is that of juggling the characters who are going to be important and deciding who needs to be introduced at which point. Sanderson has gone the route of at least sketching out many major players in the first volume, but the arcs don't always line up. Kaladin, Dalinar, and Adolin do a good job of covering the battle on the Shattered Plains and enacting the masculine ideals of society, but Shallan's arc has to cover a separate kingdom outside of Alethkar as well as the feminine pursuits of art and scholarship. This could have worked out nicely, but after the first quarter of the book, Shallan's sections start to take up far less space and she gets only enough action to advance her own plot with various exposition crammed in. Given how many secrets she's carrying and how many secrets about the world she and her mentor are trying to uncover, that makes her narrative the weak spot. She's a strong enough character to hold her own if she's given more space in the sequels, but many of her revelations (as some for the world as a whole) slot into place in a rushed fashion after the book's climax. After the somewhat rambling introductory segments, the later ones feel so compressed that the big revelations don't quite have time to breathe. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The overarching issue of <i>The Way of Kings</i>, however, might be described as allocation of detail. Sanderson has clearly put a great deal of thought into how the world works and what role these characters have to play there, and in some places it works well: though Dalinar and Adolin, for example, we learn about the Shards, how Alethkar was created, how honor and politics intermingle, how the Alethi people see themselves and foreigners, and how the war of the Vengeance pact is being conducted. Pieces with slightly less contextual anchoring end up feeling wobbly. Soulcasting, for example, involves the manipulation of matter using gems that are cracked and broken after the power expenditure, but the underlying power and system behind it remains hazy. Religion is also something of a weak spot. We know that the religious followers of Vorinism once tried to institute religious rule and were struck down, so now they occupy no governing positions and instead work to help each person seek the Almighty. The issue is that it ends up sounding like a roleplaying game system-- people have Callings, though which they seek their Glory, and after great accomplishments they can Elevate....though we have no idea what this means or how it occurs. Magic and spirituality matter to the shape of this universe, but instead of full explanations or just enough to be useful in later books, the scraps of detail fall into a shape that's unclear at best and frustratingly vague at worst. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The characters tend to follow a similar pattern, unfortunately. Most of the secondary cast seems to exist as contrast background noise, making cowardly decisions to demonstrate how honorable the protagonists are in such an environment or being helpless so the protagonists have something to protect, while those very protagonists sometimes waver but never seem to be in danger of moral ambiguity. Brightlord Sadeas and Jasnah Kholin show promise as figures of good intentions wrapped in ruthlessness, but he's a lone grey spot in a cast of stark black and white. These people have to struggle to make decisions, true, but thus far they're drawn in bold, quick strokes instead of thinner lines. That can be a strength, given how much attention the plot needs, but whether most of these characters are capable of truly surprising us remains to be seen. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><b>The verdict:</b> Getting into <i>The Way of Kings </i>can be difficult at first when Sanderson piles on too much world-specific vocabulary at once, but it's absolutely worth the wait. Once the action gets going, the world takes on a life of its own-- every character and nation and system has a rich history, and we see enough little flashes for that to be intriguing instead of mind-numbing. The prose is straightforward, unmemorable on a line-by-line basis but excellent for its intended purpose of telling an excellent story without getting in the way. This is the right way to kick off such a long series, and it's going to be hard to wait for the sequel. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> This is the first book in <i>The Stormlight Archive</i>, Brandon Sanderson's epic fantasy project. The series is planned to be <a href="http://brandonsanderson.com/euology-my-history-as-a-writer/">ten books long</a>, and the second book, <i>Words of Radiance</i>, is slated for release on March 4, 2014. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~The early books of the <i>The Wheel of Time </i>sometimes carry this sense of scope, but the worldbuilding frankly isn't quite this intricate. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Have a look at the full cover painting by Michael Whelan!</span></span><br />
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redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-67811797767676345872013-10-03T14:00:00.000-04:002015-10-01T00:30:26.844-04:00The Night Circus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA4-w_YWMq_oZkppQDDRMuDVVuqLxIxThv2Nw2ffW3JtdKfSA0AG2f0_1KZPRn31e1fBvV00KBd-hfTCeetCGe864iT695qVY2TS521X_pSTiliJt_71JeB7p16v-BccWeuOq1vjlBM9zY/s1600/night+circus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA4-w_YWMq_oZkppQDDRMuDVVuqLxIxThv2Nw2ffW3JtdKfSA0AG2f0_1KZPRn31e1fBvV00KBd-hfTCeetCGe864iT695qVY2TS521X_pSTiliJt_71JeB7p16v-BccWeuOq1vjlBM9zY/s320/night+circus.jpg" width="210" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3.5 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Long and leisurely (516 pages in trade paperback)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> September 13, 2011 from Doubleday</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Premise: Two young magicians were bound into a competition they didn't understand as children. As adults, Celia and Marco find that the staging ground of their competition is a circus constructed of marvels in black and white. They draw people into their game, both deliberately and not so, and aren't sure how to find a way out. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> child abuse as magical training</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you're looking for something dreamlike and beautiful, this may be your cup of tea, but it's only fair to also mention that this book doesn't have action scenes as such. It's slow and elegant and puzzling, but trying too hard to make it fit with logical sense is a disservice to the book.</span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What makes this one beautifully easy to see:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Right from "The circus arrives without warning," Erin Morgenstern has a gift for vivid prose, especially in her descriptions of the Le Cirque de Reves itself. The chapters are interspersed with short second-person segments from the perspective of a visitor, with the first focusing on how the circus looks during the transition from day to sunset to night proper, when people can go inside. The language comes off as lush without being purple, which is rare trick, and throws in appealing scents and sounds to draw these scenes up and off the page. The circus is the main character in the way it draws everyone into itself, taking on a life of its own once it's created. It begins as a casual suggestion from one magician to another, pointing out that a public venue would add a new dimension to the contest between their student-players. Mr. Alexander, the elder magician, enlists the help of a creative team and ensures that they are obsessed with the making every detail of the project perfect. Hector Bowen, who performs magic in public and calls himself Prospero the Enchanter, is delighted by the potential for flashy competition. The circus creators are eclectic, from Chandresh, the wealthy creative force who pulls them together, to Poppet and Widget, the twins who are born when the circus opens and grow up to do a kitten acrobatics show. The intricately detailed circus prose ends up being the best way to assemble such a broad cast in a way that makes each of them distinctive, and the narrative never lingers on one character for long; most chapters are only five or ten pages long, so there's ample room to see experience it from the perspective of creators, workers, and new visitors alike. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Finding the emotional center of the story brings us back to the circus once again; many of the circus's repeat visitors are <i>reveurs</i>, or dreamers, people who travel across the world to follow the circus. They are drawn to this experience as they are to no other, and that helps anchor the experiences centered on it. Marco and Celia, the reluctant competitors, plan to be adversaries but end up falling in love. Morgenstern doesn't devote much pagetime to their relationship as such, but they compete by changing and controlling the surface and end up making tents or alterations to impress each other even before Celia is certain of her opponent's identity. It's more complicated than a the average love story, since they can't end the competition and even thinking about leaving the circus puts them in unbearable pain, but being the focal point of each other's lives for so long makes it impossible for them to look beyond each other. When Celia receives proposals of marriage before joining the circus, she says only that she is already married and looks at the scar of a ring that burned into her finger and bound her to the contest. It would be easy for them to hate each other or for the love story to be trite, but they have a meeting of the minds and a slow courtship of art that makes their first kiss literally explosive. Their magic is connected to the emotions and they're bound together, so merely brushing hands can make the lights flicker or make the physical world respond. Their romance isn't the focus of the story, but it more than holds its own weight, which is rare in a novel juggling so many subplots.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Both the romance and the plot work in large part because of the way magic edges into real life. A circus that stays open at night is unusual but certainly possible, even if the train carrying it works partly by magic. The illusionist at the circus is using real magic in plain sight, but the enchantingly beautiful clock at the front gates was produced through purely mechanical skill. It doesn't quite seem like magical realism, but there are hints of a steampunk aesthetic in the magic: Mr. Barris, the circus's engineer, is willing to build complex creations that can be enhanced with magic. The circus is mysterious enough to mask even the most blatant magic as part of aura of illusion, with real people moving at a glacial pace as living statues without resorting to magic while spells are required to anchor many of the central tents. It's hard to separate out what's caused by magic and what's just the effect of the attention that goes into the circus's presentations, but the final effect is that the circus itself is both the nexus of people feeding magic into it and a source of magic in itself. This roving place has become the defining experience of nearly every character's life, whether they chose that or not, and it causes pain and imprisonment and madness without relinquishing an ounce of its beauty or fascination. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Beautiful though the prose is, the underlying story doesn't always make sense. Morgenstern is juggling upwards of a dozen point of view characters who appear out of chronological order, which can be lovely as we get to see how the circus has spread into the lives of the people who created it, but it also means that many chapters deliver half-answers at best. The creation of the circus works as both a creative effort and a magical construction, with those involved each contributing to something that they cannot fully understand or control, but it almost seems to stagnate once it's up and running. No one working there wants to leave, and the peculiar halt in almost everyone's aging is barely discussed; on the whole, the slowly building tension that's supposed to carry the plot forward doesn't seem evenly present. Although the characters are under increasing strain as the competition becomes more draining, there's no real sense of urgency until far too late in the book. We hear some cryptic remarks about the timing not being right for things to work out favorably, but then events rush together without making much sense: the characters have known for a year that things are getting worse, but we don't know what they've been doing besides worrying. At any given time, most or all of the characters seem to sense that something is wrong, but only a few of them even know who to ask about it, let alone how to attempt to make a difference. With more definition of exactly what the problem is, this could be a wonderfully suspenseful structure, but as it is the tension isn't focused enough to evoke anything but aimless anxiety. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We know that two magicians have been competing for centuries to determine whose magical practices are superior and that they use apprentices as their proxies instead of engaging directly. It's never clear on exactly what the debate is, however; Hector Bowen is fond of spectacle while Mr. Alexander seems to prefer sticking to the shadows in a more methodical approach, but the nature of their struggle is never clear. For all the black and white visions of the circus, the morality of the participants is far from stark; it's great to see a story like this without an easy villain, but the lines are so muddled that nearly everyone is the same half-innocent grey. The stakes of the contest aren't revealed until the book is more than half over, with Celia and Marco just knowing for a while that the contest will end when it reaches completion. Celia has more raw mental control while Marco has been taught to work with structures and systems outside himself, but there's no simple summation of what Prospero and Mr. Alexander are trying to prove to each other, and that can make the plot too tangled. The competition just exists, and while it's interesting for the players to not know the rules, the readers are left so much in the dark as well that it's hard to even be properly curious-- without decent hints to serve as foreshadowing, the knowledge just falls into place with little fanfare or dramatic tension. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The philosophical differences between the two magicians might be clearer if the magic system itself followed visible rules, but it doesn't seem to. Magic follows bloodlines to an extent, since Hector was so confident in offering his own daughter as a player, but some magic is also possible for anyone with enough training. It can create illusions or cross great distances, though it seems to excel most at binding people and things together, but it's hard to be sure how the magicians are accomplishing things. We get hints, like when we see Marco's magical notebooks or Celia explains what it's like to heal herself, but for the most part things....just happen, with the only universal constant that big magic drains the energy of the person using it. This can sometimes work to the plot's advantage, as when Isobel uses a tarot card and her partial understanding of magic to help stabilize the circus and the reader doesn't know whether it's working or not, but it can often come across as magic working in a way that's convenient to the plot, particularly at the climax of the book. When thing finally do pivot and change, it's at the instigation of a
character who has had little to do with the competition so far and with
the help of another character who has even less involvement. There's some vague exposition about what the circus needs in order to force a sudden and dramatic conclusion, which feels almost like cheating after so long spend weaving the threads of these disparate characters together into a whole. A plot so intricate certainly has the room to foreshadow a big ending, but this one is too close to coming out of nowhere. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> Though I sometimes wanted <i>The Night Circus</i> to make more sense than it did, it's beautiful: the prose is elegant and intricate and vivid, simply every positive description I can find for imagery that fully engages the senses without leaning on heaps of adjectives. It's not on my list of universal recommendations, but it rewards patience and rereading with lush detail and so many characters rotating the point of view that it's hard not to catch new things with time. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> This is very solidly a single novel that would be ruined by a sequel, but here's hoping that Morgenstern writes something else down the road.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~<i>The Gypsy </i>by Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm has a similar framing of magic with specifics hidden behind the myths and ideas framing the conflict. It moves more quickly and has more action, but it manages to create a similarly elegant tangle of disparate points of view coming together into one story. </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-790229759876758722013-09-26T14:00:00.000-04:002013-09-26T14:00:05.511-04:00Love Minus Eighty<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYZ8hp9iJYDjgD4rshYhi00SkKktaldeZIcjInWyw3G1zfNb6w6Heqn78SyLF2-ZdUtspAOuyVfiIZvagzoDaA_fFGfeTklDLSPHgTjQtbJ72ooma9JiqDeHfGD7omECfAYjoxgCrtSwro/s1600/love+minus+eighty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYZ8hp9iJYDjgD4rshYhi00SkKktaldeZIcjInWyw3G1zfNb6w6Heqn78SyLF2-ZdUtspAOuyVfiIZvagzoDaA_fFGfeTklDLSPHgTjQtbJ72ooma9JiqDeHfGD7omECfAYjoxgCrtSwro/s320/love+minus+eighty.jpg" width="216" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> On the long side (403 pages in trade paperback)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> June 11, 2013 from Orbit Books</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise:</b> In the year 2133, people are connected to each other constantly via systems that bring them all the information they could ever want and then some. They also flee the fear of death by buying cryonic insurance, which ensures that their corpses will be frozen and others will have the option to revive them in the future. It's a narrow chance, but some women are offered an uncomfortable and different way out. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> implied sexual coercion, coerced marriage as indentured servitude</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> The interpersonal relationships are all over the map, but no one gets either a perfectly happy ending or a simple helping of just desserts. I suspect that the novella was better, but this was an intriguing read. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Spoilers for about the first fifty pages of the book, but the point I'm discussing tends to make it into any detailed summary text. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What gives this one cold fear and warmer connections:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The narrative opens on a woman named Mira being temporarily revived to go on a "date" with a man she's never seen before. He explains that she's been chosen for Cryogen's "bridesicle" program. She had insurance and got into an accident, but she was also beautiful, and that makes her a good prospect for revival. Some wealthy men are willing to pay the millions necessary to have a woman revived and locked into a lifetime marriage contract, so they go on short but expensive "dates" with women who can only be returned to life if these men agree to it. Cryogen has been shifty (or careless, rather) about obtaining consent from these women, and the segments from Mira's point of view richly illustrate how terrifying it is. The women here have only seconds to think before they're badgered, and at any time their visitors can simply end the session and send them back to being dead, with no thoughts in that numb in-between state. They start to want to stay alive at any cost, and the sorts of men who come for dates want essentially a trapped personal prostitute, so they coax or coerce the women into dirty talk and promising sexual favors. It's humiliating at best and cruel at worst; the women know that they'll be going into a living hell if they sign marriage contracts, but at least they'll be out in the world again instead of locked in cold drawers where they can only move their faces and never see the sun. Will McIntosh really digs into the fear, and that helps anchor the narrative.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Three different characters carry the point of view at different times: Mira gets a few chapters here and there while she's awake, but the bulk of the action is carried by Rob and Veronika. I'll address Veronika later, but Rob carries a story arc that ought to be overdone and trite but miraculously isn't. After a dramatic breakup with the attention-seeking Lorelei, Rob has a few drinks and then gets behind the wheel to drive anywhere, just away. He hits Winter, a woman who was out jogging, and kills her instantly. She is, however, just beautiful enough to be pulled into the bridesicle program even without insurance. Rob feels that he has to visit her and pay his respects, so he saves up and takes out loans for a "date." She is naturally terrified of going back to being dead, so she asks Rob to promise to come by and just talk to her when he can. He could feel guilty, and does-- she could hate him, and sometimes does. But over the course of their visits, they end up finding a meeting of minds. They can't touch while she's frozen and won't be able to touch even if she's revived and forced into a marriage contract, so their conversations tend to come back to life, simple happiness, and whatever connection they can find. It's moving even when it's cheesy, and almost impossible not to sympathize with both of them for being so very flawed and earnest about their mistakes and dreams. The way other characters occasionally call Rob a saint can be grating, but he very nearly lives up to the label. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Rob's quest to find enough money to keep also ends up illuminating quite a bit about this society as a whole. Class systems are part of almost every society, but here it's more overt: the wealthy live in High Town, where they are safe and have access to plentiful resources. Those who can't afford that live in Low Town, which is more cramped and literally overshadowed by the soaring architecture of High Town, or out in the suburbs. Moving farther from the hubs of wealth also means losing some edge of technology. Those who can afford to do so are plugged into the feeds of others, watching other lives, and carrying on several conversations at once via subvocalization. At times it's hard to believe that so many conversations are going on, given how hard to can be just to conduct a phone conversation while someone in the room is trying to get your attention, but for the most part the split attention is quite realistic. When a simple toll can get you a direct view of the pyramids or the surface of the moon through your screen, why fixate on the mundane tasks necessary to your own life? McIntosh avoids any platforms about how people need to give up technology to be happy, or about how social connection undermines real bonds: instead, he shows how it can save lives or destroy them, inject joy or misery as people struggle to find happiness in a world that seems to offer it everywhere, and the world feels more realistic as a result. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The interpersonal relationships at the heart of the novel often work quite well, but the larger worldbuilding is shaky in a way that might not have been as obvious in the more compact novella. The bridesicle program itself may be the biggest sticking point-- while the fear on the inside is truly compelling, the framework is less so. It makes sense that CryoGen might want to make money from some its more beautiful frozen people, but no company with this much money should be this bad at planning. Most obviously, the women are called bridesicles and don't seem to have a more respectful official name for marketing spin. One character mentions that the rates on date-visits are kept deliberately high so that relatives and people who can't afford full revival are less likely to show up, but why not make money on the micro-transactions of people paying a few thousand once every month or so to see their dead friends or spouses? If the rates are artificially high, why hasn't Cryogen given most of the women even the most rudimentary orientation about what to expect from their visitors? Reviving them for a few minutes of talking makes good sense, and the scenes only seem to be set up this way to provide smooth exposition for the reader? Why aren't there groomsicles or more female clients? The characters address this for all of a page and mention that women are just less drawn to the weird power play inherent in bridesicles and there aren't many lesbians, but this is a frustratingly pat answer that can be countered with "bisexual people exist." Are there really no wealthy women who want trapped male or female lovers, no wealthy men who happen to be gay or bisexual? If security is supposedly so tight, how does one character smuggle in communication and recording devices on multiple occasions? Cryogen does a decent job of filling the role of big evil corporation, but it's not competent enough to register as an actual threat for more than a few chapters at a time-- it exists in a way that's convenient to the plot and no more. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Mira makes for an incredibly compelling character because she's so emotionally alive while unable to so much as turn her head to the side, but the characters out in the real world don't always live up to her example. Veronika, a dating coach who specializes in teaching people how to present themselves to find the best possible match, straddles the line between interesting and flat. When she's talking about her field, she glows: she knows how to work the numbers and how to predict how a relationship will go on a more human level, and yet she's in love with the best friend who seems to have no interest in her. It's an old trope that those best at giving romantic advice are the worst at taking it themselves, but for Veronika it works because she's self-aware enough to reach for analysis instead of just moping. The problems arise when she changes, sadly enough: she's been furious for years because her last lover left her and married her sister, and she's been in a sort of stasis. Her attempts to change and seek adventure seem as though she's forcing herself to be charming and quirky; she refers to herself as sarcastic and a touch bitchy, but her words and action only rarely bear that out. She's more likely to come across as nervous and fussy, a bizarre mixture of lonely lady with romance novels, successful businesswoman, and teenager with a journal. Nathan, the best friend in question, is flashy and handsome and ultimately shallow, adding a few connections between characters without having any real dimension himself, and that can make some of Veronika's chapters tiresome to read. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lorelei, Rob's ex-girlfriend and later the nexus for many character connections necessary to plot development, is a mixed bag. She's a rising celebrity who lives her life under the constant eye of her people, who seem to clump around her at least several hundred at a time, and that means that she has to create drama to keep her viewers coming back for more. Sometimes this works really well, like when she pulls back to realize that she didn't know what she was doing in a passionate moment that played well with her viewers, or in the rare moments when she admits that the line between what's real and what's cleverly staged has blurred for her. In other places, she's too much of a trope, the beautiful woman who can snag all the men and attention she wants but feels somewhat hollow inside as she's cruel to the people who care about her. She could have been excellent in her role as the embodiment of connection and split attention, but her potential for genuine emotion is barely present, which is bothersome when everyone else in the story seems so open with emotion. All the half-pieces of connection seem to make people more desperate for something real, so they come off as almost childlike in their trembling optimism while Lorelei floats on in a cloud of media attention. Giving her more depth or presenting her attention-heavy life as a more fulfilling decision could have rounded out this cast of characters, but she's just....not quite as intelligent, not quite as present, and that underlines the pervasive goal of finding a love interest in a way that's detrimental to the story. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b><i> Love Minus Eighty </i>weaves the characters together so tightly that it's easy to see how connected by technology this world is, but it ultimately doesn't leave the impression that it could. The characters spend too much time focused on romance-- even when they point out explicitly that romance is only one part of life or try to reach for comfort with friends and family, a compelling enough emotional moment has them dropping all that to pine over their desired partners. It makes the tone of the novel slightly fluffier than the subject matter warrants in places, but I'd certainly try more books from the same author. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> This reads as solid on its own, but one of the ideas from the novella that was scrapped here was developed into a novel called <i>Hitchers</i>. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~Syne Mitchell's <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/01/technogenesis.html"><i>Technogenesis</i></a> doesn't deal with the cryonic element, but it does address reliance on technology and what a meaningful connection is from a different and intriguing angle. </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-44479134611010777102013-09-19T14:00:00.000-04:002013-09-19T14:00:02.862-04:00Sixty-one Nails<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoIiToRGXuf6YmsUvq-GqJc2ZcsSFoSoe8uKS6Z50Og_VTXQFkXGN6_Ww-MTnDrLB2kGNcuB4RCwgwG-3SBWaPL222UIqIeCKvS8xo8kmEVVM7HfwLVm5a5TnUmsn3j2ASWMKoRgAiqGk_/s1600/sixty-one+nails.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoIiToRGXuf6YmsUvq-GqJc2ZcsSFoSoe8uKS6Z50Og_VTXQFkXGN6_Ww-MTnDrLB2kGNcuB4RCwgwG-3SBWaPL222UIqIeCKvS8xo8kmEVVM7HfwLVm5a5TnUmsn3j2ASWMKoRgAiqGk_/s320/sixty-one+nails.JPG" width="210" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3.5 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Hefty with detail (519 pages)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> November 2009 in the UK; August 31, 2010 in America from Angry Robot Books</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise:</b> Niall Petersen is living an altogether ordinary life until he almost dies in a tube station. When he dazedly tells a strange woman who calls herself Blackbird that he's from London and not "the other lands," he wakes up to stream of things he can't quite believe: most importantly, he's descended from the Feyre and has to start running before members of the Seventh Court hunt him down and kill him. He's thrown into a new world only a breath away from the one he's always known, and he may even learn to appreciate it if he can live past next week. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> magical horror (nothing too graphic)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you're looking for more magic in London or have a soft spot for Fae types, this may be your thing. It doesn't carry as much tension as it could with the exposition-heavy pacing, but for the most part it's an enjoyable read. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What makes this one rich and layered:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Sixty-One Nails </i>opens on Niall Petersen just trying to get to work in the morning and dealing with nothing more difficult than dealing with delays and his irritated ex-wife. When he feels himself collapse with a sharp pain in his chest, he thinks he's about to die, but he wakes with a woman standing over him and assuring nearby strangers that there's no need to call an ambulance. Blackbird may be his savior, but she's odd and prickly and seems only too willing to leave him behind if he can't figure out how to keep up with her. Right from the beginning, the imagery is vivid; Shevdon doesn't always draw in the full array of senses, but it's easy to picture each piece of magic or almost understand the bone-deep aversion to iron that the Feyre have. Niall sees wonders right and left, experiences magic he'd never imagined, but it's not all beautiful, and each piece is better because he's never seen it before. Blackbird's power is gorgeous but terrifying, gallowfyre is something out of nightmare, and every piece of it yanks him further away from his old life. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The magic is more than capable of holding its own. Shevdon works with some common elements like the Feyre having an aversion to iron and then sticks with it, discussing how they don't find it at all comfortable to ride in cars because of the metal in the frame. They also, in folkloric tradition, are uncomfortable lying; Niall soon finds himself skirting the truth because direct lies would very nearly hurt, and he can hear the lies of others as sort of a sour background noise. He also works in a larger structure that allows for flexibility in powers and skills across future volumes. The Feyre are loosely divided into seven Courts, each of which trends towards certain physical builds, elemental affinities, and sets of powers. Blackbird, for example, is affiliated with fire and air and has impressive powers with light, fire, heat, flight, and associated principles. Other Feyre sek powers like visions or exceptional physical strength, but they're all generally capable of becoming part of the Courts, which can provide some measure of protection. Six of those Courts have interbred with humans over the years to counteract falling fertility rates: the Seventh Court, the Untainted, considers this disgusting and tries to hunt down half-bloods. The people of the Seventh Court have somewhat more imposing magic, like darkspore (semi-aware fungus that eats whatever living thing it touches) and gallowfyre, which pulls all the light from an area and can burn people to ash in a heartbeat with its cold glow. There are fewer of them thanks to potential inbreeding and isolation, but their magic makes them imposing even when there's only one at a time. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Other Feyre fear the Seventh Court, but they're fortunately bound away from the human world with ancient rituals. The traditional aspect works quite well; Shevdon drew on the real-life Quit Rent ceremony, which has been performed every year since 1211. The exact origins are more based in tallies and accounting than magic, but the sixty-one nails are real, and something so based in cold iron is the perfect thing to inspire hope and fear in a newly-minted Feyre like Niall. The people involved in keeping the ceremony running are guarding all sorts of secrets in the human world for decades or generations at a time; the way Niall comes across them all in a rush while they marvel at how long it's been since they saw one of the Feyre does wonderful things for the mortal/immortal timeflow problem. Very few books do this well, but Niall and Blackbird slide back and forth beautifully, even when they're not entirely sure what the next step in the plan is. Niall's discovery of his own powers is great, all the more so because Blackbird dislikes those powers to the point of issuing death threats. Before that, though, he has a night and a day on his own, running from the Seventh Court and the human authorities who think he was involved-- it takes a great deal of creativity and desperate imagination, and that ingenuity makes it easy to admire him for playing a game when he's only had a quick glance at the rules. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One of the novel's central conceits works against the fast pacing
and tension that Shevdon is building. Early on in the book, Niall
exchanges small gifts for a vision that might show him a way to safety.
He sees a scattering of images he doesn't understand, from people to places to odd shapes against the sky, and has no idea what to make of them at the time. As the story progresses, he begins to see things from his vision and trust that they mean he's on the right track even if he has no other idea what he's doing. This sort of hazy guidance can work if the person attempting to follow it trusts too much, or becomes careless because things seem foreordained, but Niall just....identifies images and uses them as signposts. He doesn't even try to fight the vision or subvert his own destiny or argue that it's all just a delusion that he can escape-- his simple acceptance is flat, neither giddy longing for It all works against the otherwise elegant and conniving nature of the Feyre, and having such a predictable vision weakens the book. Sharp-eyed readers (and I say this in as close to modesty as I can) will take one image from the muddle and predict the big romantic relationship that follows later. With this plot-on-rails approach to storytelling, the minor characters need to make the journey about more than the waypoints, but they don't. A rare few minor characters shine, but most of them seem almost like vending machines with legs: Niall inserts persuasion or small gifts, nudges the dialogue button, and exposition and cooperation fall out. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Niall's present is on the generic side, but it manages to fall into over-troped within three pages. He can't pick up his daughter Alex for the weekend when he'd planned, so he calls his ex-wife Katherine to let her know. She nags, accuses him of being careless, and hangs up. When he discovers his powers, he warns his family to run so they won't become targets of the Seventh Court as well. Katherine unbends enough to worry about him, but Alex is the real emotional centerpiece here: she carries Feyre blood as well and is also a cute teenager who loves her daddy. Niall spends large tracts of the book resolving to keep her safe, or just missing her, and this is fine (if a little dull), but then he actually sees her late in the book. They have a touching mini-reunion, and in less than two pages he's thinking that she's high-intensity and wears him down sometimes because she's so full of life. Given that she was just being enthusiastic at seeing him, his near-disdain is off-putting; he says that he loves her, but his actions seem to indicate that he instead tolerates her out of a sense of responsibility. This family presentation reduces them to plot objects to be cared for; Alex is a stencil of daddy's little girl, and Katherine seems to exist as a contrast point to the more (literally) glamorous and independent Blackbird. Some minor characters are all right, most notably the Highsmith family, but most of them trend towards dull, irritating, or both.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Probably the largest itching problem, however, lies in Blackbird's characterization (and do <i>not </i>get me started about the fact that her true name is Velladore Rainbow Wings when everyone else gets a name that couldn't belong to a My Little Pony). She starts out as promisingly different from many female characters in this genre: she presents as middle-aged, not very attractive, and concerned with whether Niall lives of dies only because saving his life made her partly responsible for what he did with it after that. There's even a truly great early scene in which she holds Niall at knifepoint for something that she doesn't know is beyond his control and threatens to kill him, with every intention of following through. She's not the strongest person in the Courts, but she's old and dangerous and knows her way around. Unfortunately, she soon breaks down from the more informed party in potential partnership of equals into an quivering love interest. Blackbird alternates between being angry about her feelings for Niall and flirting with him; her capricious flips between vulnerability and teasing could have been perfect for her nature, but she ends up as someone who Niall protects and looks to for information sometimes instead of the centuries-old willful being she clearly is. Given that the information she provides at the climax of the book in fact slows the action down and is based largely on fear, it's a sour enough note that looking forward to her character in future books is difficult at best. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> <i>Sixty-One Nails </i>blends research and folklore and creative magical twists together quite well, and I enjoyed it despite Niall's somewhat flat reactions. The central vision-following and Blackbird's slow descent into a weepy love interest hold it to being good instead of excellent, but odds are good that I'll try whatever series Shevdon starts next. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> This is the first book in the <i>Courts of the Feyre </i>series; it was followed by <i>The Road to Bedlam </i>and <i>Strangeness and Charm</i>. The fourth and final volume, <i>The Eighth Court, </i>came out in May. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~Any comparisons like the Amazon summary that this is "the smarter, faster brother to Neil Gaiman's <i>Neverwhere" </i>are, not to put too fine a point on it,
rubbish. They're good in <i>different ways</i> because Gaiman doesn't deal
with the Fae in this way, or really at all, and Niall has power where
Richard Mayhew does not.<i> Neverwhere </i>is, however, shorter than this book, covering less physical ground and somehow also taking the time to be philosophical in a way that <i>Sixty-One Nails </i>is not. Marketing being what it is, I shouldn't be too annoyed, but this is a pet peeve: don't bag on your subgenre's reigning classic in an attempt to self-promote. It sounds ridiculous. (Eventually I am also going to pull together all of these weird alternative books about magic in London and talk about the role of setting, but that's neither here nor there.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~<a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-madness-of-angels.html"><i>A Madness of Angels</i></a> hits on a different form of magic, and Matthew Swift isn't learning the ropes the way that Niall is, but both books carry a solid weight of London's tradition.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The original cover (the one at the top is the 2012 re-release):</span></span><br />
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redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-91078573408224265032013-09-18T21:52:00.001-04:002013-09-25T21:45:38.357-04:00Shifty Magic<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I received a free review copy of the book from Judy Teel, the author, in exchange for an honest review; she was gracious about how long it took to produce the review, and I'm excited to be working from my first author-provided copy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUbHrTqBgp3HlxeheDydOsTDWU6BFSg9KvAZP75top5OPWBuDq8CfcaTCtF5P-lvp8nM-iiiCNZtrwUTGIgzPDo-X5KM0k57xTxXXehEtcgdXJh6nDrGG_H8WphFqsvvaDzV8Zw96hvfCk/s1600/shifty+magic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUbHrTqBgp3HlxeheDydOsTDWU6BFSg9KvAZP75top5OPWBuDq8CfcaTCtF5P-lvp8nM-iiiCNZtrwUTGIgzPDo-X5KM0k57xTxXXehEtcgdXJh6nDrGG_H8WphFqsvvaDzV8Zw96hvfCk/s1600/shifty+magic.jpg" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 2.5 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Compact (252 pages)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> May 21, 2013 from Golden Angel Books</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise: </b>Addison Kittner has been struggling to make ends meet starting out as a PI/bounty hunder when she stumbles into a case far above her normal pay grade. She finds herself caught between the vampires, the Weres, the FBI, and darker forces that she's only beginning to understand....all while trying to grasp her own identity. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings: </b>gore, sexual harassment</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation: </b>While a few genuinely interesting moments set Addison apart, for the most part <i>Shifty Magic </i>doesn't have much that you can't find somewhere else. It samples from urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and YA-- the pieces work fairly well on their own, but they don't always blend. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What makes this one compelling:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The story opens on Addison Kittner going down a dark alley in search of her cat and coming across a prostitute about to be drained by a group of vampires. She takes them out, though not without sustaining a few nasty injuries, and an FBI detail happens along and takes her back to the station along with the vamps she's captured. While there, she meets the local vampire Regent, Lord Bellmonte, who is interested to learn that his renegades were captured by a young human. Addison's quick temper gets her into trouble when she immediately gives the money away, and the decision works quite well; she's acting like an idiot, but in a way that makes her quick temper a genuine flaw instead of a stated soft spot that doesn't actually trip her up. She can be very human in her way, playful and sulky and sometimes uncertain rather than just stoic, and that helps contribute to the book's light pacing. It can be a little over-convenient to watch Addison skim from one helpful assistant who adores her to another even though she has no money, but the action doesn't really let up. The narrative covers less than a week: in that time, people die, Addison goes through extensive personal growth, and it all works together for an engaging presentation. Teel keeps extraneous scenes to a minimum, and that in turn makes sure that the action is compact without dead space to let the reader's attention drift away. It's hard not to search for clues along with Addison and wonder when she'll see something she missed...though frustrating when she whips out short-term conclusions without the previous segment having provided the clues necessary to get there.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The worldbuilding definitely has some intriguing elements, most notably in the development of the vampire hierarchy. Weres (were-whats is another question, since we only see wolves but it's implied that there are different kinds) live in clans, but vampires are organized into a structure loosely modeled on the medieval Church, complete with Deacons and Regents. Instead of confining themselves to warehouses or underground lairs, many of them live the high life in a tinted skyscraper that keeps out the deadly UV rays.They want to literally and figuratively be above everyone else, and they have the finances to do so. People who need money are drawn to the temptation of being drained of only some of their blood, and some even become long-time donors because they're addicted to the blissfully orgasmic effects of vampire venom. That venom is illegal to sell because it can be used as a weapon as well a drug, so a whole black market has sprung up around it-- most vampires are reluctant to go up against the Church's rulings, but power struggles play out behind the scenes. Addison is witness to the edges of just one, and the implied depth of conflict really could support several more books. Vampires sometimes hide who their relatives are to avoid exposing weakness, they have ways of protecting and healing each other that are kept hidden from humans, and anyone being turned into a vampire can upset the local balance of power as new people become blood kin. It could make for intricate plots, and even the pieces we get are rich enough to let the rest flow smoothly by implication. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Addison doesn't always make the best hard-boiled detective, but the way she's willing to follow clues logically even if it involves dull highlighting of files or planning a break-in to figure out what a suspect was hiding makes it easy to give her points for persistence and dedication. Even when she's not doing the smartest thing, she's trying to do the right one, and it's hard not to respect the way she insists on being a professional equal instead of a consultant with things being hidden from her. She's willing to turn down money she desperately needs or shy away from better equipment on loan as a matter of principle because she's reluctant to be beholden to anyone, trapped in commitments that she might not like later. It's a knee-jerk reaction in some ways, but it's one that's allowed her to survive without parents or the protection of an institution; given the chance to prove herself, she really can apply stubborn ingenuity to a problem to resolve it, even if her solution shouldn't rationally work or is likely to get her killed. She's fiercely independent in a way that screws her over but also keeps her safe on some level, and that struggle shapes her characterization in the small ways as well as the large. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen: </b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">While the novel sparks interest with the balance between humans and paranormals, many of the surrounding elements are just too generic to carry their own weight. Addison herself raises some interesting questions that could be answered in the sequels as well as more that just....don't make sense. We know that she lived on the streets for a while and was in the foster care system with no idea of who her parents were, and now she's a private investigator/bounty hunter. She succeeds in part because of her special formulas on her weapons to aid in bring vampires down, which helps explain why she survives in this business as a human, but there's no provided reason why she has these formulas and no one else seems to, given that her supplier could make a killing selling it widely as a last-ditch line of self-defense. That alone could be shrugged off, but other things don't work: early in the book she gets edgy when someone's too nosy about how she moved so fast, but she has nothing to be edgy <i>about </i>because she's not knowingly hiding a secret. The clincher, though, is her tone: she's written in the hard-boiled PI mode, complete with the cynicism and world-weary attitude, but Addison is <i>nineteen </i>and has been in the business for barely a year. Her moments of nausea around dead bodies and uneasiness with getting in too deep with powerful people ring true, but it's hard not to want to just pat her on the head with a "that's cute" when she starts expounding about how she seems to be the only one who doesn't trust manipulative vamps and their dirty money. Her age shows in a bad way when she's allowed to be part of any interrogation or interact with suspects-- she has all the subtlety of a hammer, doesn't know when to back off, and has a gift for parting shots that would guarantee a hostile reception at any repeat talks. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The worldbuilding is also shaky on the supernatural front. A standard supernatural setup with vampires and werewolves and a few mages (practitioners, in this case) comes with infinite permutations, but this felt disappointingly paint-by-numbers once it moved past the governmental aspects. Vampires are sneaky and manipulative and like to play power games just because they can, and Addison doesn't trust them. Weres are loyal, good, live in clans, value family, and are implied to mate for life, so they seem to be on the long-suffering side of the angels-- angels who sniff things and comment on Addison's pheromone levels, admittedly, but angels nonetheless. Practitioners get hardly any attention except as background characters, with the lion's share of the page-time going to a false practitioner running a con game to get underage women to sleep with him. Lord Bellmonte, the Charlotte Regent and a centuries-old vampire, is fascinated with Addison and pins her to walls while snarling that he'll own her or kill her. On one visit, he even makes her remove any hidden weapons by wearing a provided tiny dress and a collar-like jeweled necklace that she refuses to touch. This sort of thing can be edgy in a dark triangle with vampires as the element calling to a sexual dark side based on control while werewolves call to primitive lust and deep emotion, but the vampires bad/werewolves good dynamic means that Lord Bellmonte comes off as sleazy without being an actual threat. Addison talks a big game about how dangerous it is to go see him, but it's apparently not dangerous enough for her to do things like sleep first to make sure she doesn't screw up, or even send him a message via the many forms of modern technology that everyone, including vampires, seems to have.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Slapping morality labels on an entire magical species can work, especially if you're confining labels to just vampires while everyone else inhabits a spectrum a la Robin McKinley's <i>Sunshine</i>,
but "vampires are bad and Weres are awesome and kind of sexy" kills
some of the potential dark tension. This holds especially true with
Addison's attraction to Cooper Daine, a Were who works for the FBI. He
wants to protect her and shows no sign of becoming too aggressive, so
the only real emotional challenge is overcoming her own fear of love to
be with the perfect partner, and that's not a lot of suspense as
romantic arcs go. It could work, but it eats too much space without
adding anything but angst and directionless sexual tension. The same holds true for many of the minor characters and expository passages: they exist to move the plot without adding anything of value. Addison's clothes make more appearances than they need to, as does everyone else's wardrobe, and if Cooper Daine appears without his scent of moonlight and trees being mentioned, it's a rare surprise. The prose is adjective-heavy across the board in a way that makes the exposition even heavier, and minor characters can be neatly split into people who are good (and think Addison is great) and people who are bad (and don't). Agent Stillman, for example, is Cooper Daine's partner in the FBI: she seems to be competent, but she's also unprofessional and barges between Addison and Cooper, because as a woman in a life-or-death profession, naturally her first priority is starting some imagined competition so that Addison can be the tough sassy one who totally doesn't care what anyone thinks of her. This genre as a whole is bad at letting female protagonists have decent same-gender friendships, but it's telling that I can't think of any women who both start and end the book on Addison's side. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Other details don't quite work because they leave too many holes in the structure of the world. Perhaps the most nagging detail was the repeated description of an African-American character as "exotic." This took me aback at the time, so I did some quick research, and present-day Charlotte is <i>thirty-five percent </i>black. Black people in North Carolina are about as "exotic" as traffic lights, so I kept an eye out for any paranormal alternate-universe development that meant no trans-atlantic slave trade, but an explanation never appeared. We know in a loose sense that the paranormal world made itself public between the present day and 2033 and launched a nasty series of terrorist attacks, but there's no sense of how these creatures stayed hidden for so long or why they went public, or how humanity has gone from bitter wars to it not being "politically correct" to dislike vampires when the modern political scene is still wrapping its head around totally human people with personal differences. I'd be interested in reading about how the world got this way, but the status quo is just too shaky to hold up to close examination at this stage. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> This may sound odd to say, but I enjoyed the reading experience without appreciating many particular aspects of the story itself. I managed to call a good two-thirds of the plot twists and the villain's identity without trying, but it manages to hit that sweet spot of being fun to guess. It's easy to roll your eyes at Addison's forced world-weary tone or the vampire melodrama, although it's engaging enough that I finished it in two fairly short sittings-- on the whole, it's not a bad way to spend an afternoon.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> This is the first of a planned four in the <i>Shifty Magic </i>series. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try: </b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~For a more genuinely young approach to urban fantasy with some romance, try <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/04/kitty-and-midnight-hour.html"><i>Kitty and the Midnight Hour</i></a>. Kitty is afraid but still naive about the world she inhabits, and that's unusual in this genre. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-49786178543285503432013-09-12T14:00:00.000-04:002013-10-01T01:00:45.218-04:00Medea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQyT467bnAuzvr6MQcVrOhJRc8FMWcLwd7mzjWwoMkcCXachjUPXuqOwS6DUHuZAfy8p0Q6ek7JMEcKrk_7q6QcPqP88AxAwaw9WBCR4FEhWTQqUl2ykJ-Yi3oy_oCve12JaEgNl-h-poM/s1600/medea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQyT467bnAuzvr6MQcVrOhJRc8FMWcLwd7mzjWwoMkcCXachjUPXuqOwS6DUHuZAfy8p0Q6ek7JMEcKrk_7q6QcPqP88AxAwaw9WBCR4FEhWTQqUl2ykJ-Yi3oy_oCve12JaEgNl-h-poM/s320/medea.jpg" width="197" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> A touch dense (431 pages)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> June 4, 2013 from Poisoned Pen Press</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise:</b> Medea, princess of Colchis, has been raised to the worship of Hekate and loves the goddess's dark mysteries, even though other ways of life draw her interest. When Jason comes to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, she must struggle to choose the right course amid tangled loyalties. Her life becomes a myth even as she lives it, wrapping her truth in fear and mysteries</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> rape, attempted rape (incestuous in one instance), gore, mutilation, murder of children </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> The premise really isn't bad, and if you like ancient Greek mythology or overt examination of gender roles, this may be your thing. It's light on fantasy, but that helps humanize Medea; the problem is that it sticks closely enough to earlier material to be choppy, not giving any individual scene enough time to develop. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Spoilers for things that are in the Euripides play of the same name. If you're looking to be surprised by material that is literally thousands of years old, you don't want to bother with this book in the first place. There are also spoilers for a big non-Euripides romance in the red pen section, but it's obvious almost immediately how that's going to go. Note: some of these spellings may not be ones you've seen before, but they match the instances in the book. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What gives this one the feeling of myth:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The story opens on young Medea going into the darkness of the cavern and grove dedicated to Hekate. She grows up quickly and is prone to asking questions of Trioda, the impatient priestess of Hekate charged with her raising and training in these dark arts. The best and most vivid core of the novel arises here. Medea soon learns to be fearless in the dark and to practice the mysteries of her goddess, from brewing potions and poisons to handling snakes without fear. Kerry Greenwood chose to spin this more in the nature of a historical novel than more typical fantasy, which means that Medea unfortunately does not get the dragon chariot that we see in Euripides, but Medea's moments with the goddess are all the more striking in a world without many overt spells. Some mysteries of the goddess are shown to be herblore or exceedingly clever trickery, but others seem to lie in the realm of magic that makes most people afraid. The way Medea is comfortable calling on her goddess for blessings and then using sleight of hand to fake a ritual to benefit Jason helps explore the way she sees the world: as long as she's not using sacred words, it's perfectly comfortable for her to do as she wishes, all the more when she's separated from her birth culture and other priestesses. She even claims to use her divine sight at one point when she's actually using her observation of mechanical science, and it adds to the flavor of the world. People can trust magic and science simultaneously, and it makes for rich worldbuilding in which the worship of the gods feels utterly reasonable.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Medea grows up to love the way being a priestess of Hekate gives her freedom to move in the men's public world without being chastised, but her views change to an extent when she visits the Scythians and learns to ride a horse and wear trousers. While the look at gender roles can sometimes grow too lecturing in nature, it's strong here: Medea sees the customs as barbaric, but they also allow for greater freedom of movement than what she knew at home. She and Jason's childhood companion, Naupilos, each journey through lands with different expectations for men and women and struggle to find a place to feel comfortable. The struggle becomes especially keen when Medea weds Jason and has to go to Iolkos and Corinth, where women must go veiled and stay in the women's quarters unless they have a male escort and their husband's permission. She sees it as a trade made for the chance at love and children after she left her first home, but it's still difficult for her to realize that so few of her choices are truly her own. Sailing a week or two down the coast can land her in a completely different world, but she doesn't fall into the common trap of being able to just wave away gender conventions because she's the main character. Women everywhere are also all different-- in some places Medea finds comfort and sisterhood even amid strange customs, and in others she's shunned as a slut or a sorceress because she's not pure enough for the tone of the city. It helps reinforce the loose city-state setting; people may share trade and similar customs, but smaller things change dramatically even over small distances. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The setting includes quite a few nods to characters who will later appear in the Odyssey, which makes for fun name-spotting and a bonus to fluid-but-ancient dialogue style, and the secondary characters as a whole are just delightful. Herakles in particular is a joy to read-- he's still regretful and atoning for the way he killed his children in a fit of unknowing battle-rage, but he follows Hera's command to join the Argonauts. Greenwood really plays up the way that Herakles has Hera as his patron and as a servant of women. He's a hero in battles, yes, but he looks like an old peasant and is more level-headed than anyone else on the <i>Argo</i>. Minor characters like Cheiron (centaurs in this work are people who revere horses, not horse-human hybrids), teacher of Jason, and Trioda, teacher of Medea, are also well-sketched-- it's interesting to see how the thoughts of these teaching authority figures ripple through the actions of their young charges in adulthood. Cheiron believes that women are useful for nothing but sex and children, while Trioda warns that men are dangerous and enmity between the sexes is the way of the world. Medea's struggle to decide what feels right to her as she interacts with men and women truly shine at time, though Jason's mind is a closed book that's implied to be empty, or at least covered in very short words. Many of his shortcomings, however, blur when he's among the Argonauts, who seem to have one character trait apiece but have great flashes despite that limitation. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The world shines in places and the author has clearly done research, but the plot feels bogged down all too often. Greenwood includes many instances from the tales of Jason and the Argonauts to illustrate how long and perilous their journey was (and to balance it so that Medea doesn't have fifty consecutive pages of narration), but not all of those instances are necessary. The scenes that provide the most insight into Jason and Naupilos's characters come early in the book, and the later "and then we stopped at this island to do this thing" scenes make for a choppy episodic structure that contributes bulk without adding much meaning. It may be entertaining to hear that the Argonauts evaded a giant wave or bantered on the ship or spent the winter sleeping with the women of Lemnos, an island where the women had killed their husbands, but it comes off more as padding with character accents than as something crucial to either the plot or the people. Medea's travels with Jason take a similar pattern: there's so little space for each dramatic encounter that it begins to feel as though they're being pulled along plot railroads to get to the next major event, and that drains much of the potential tension from the middle of the book. The plot has to skip years at a time to incorporate Jason and Medea's childhoods as well as their tragic adult history, but it doesn't always make the best use of that space. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Jerking from encounter to encounter might work if each piece felt like a snapshot of an evolving person, but the characters by and large don't seem to grow in a realistic way. Medea feels like a convincing child and feels like a solid adult once the drama settles down, but the transition isn't really articulated. She goes from struggling to be free but also proud of her goddess and her homeland to suddenly willing to sell out her father, profane her faith, and trade away the greatest treasure of her kingdom. The justifications never quite flow, even when she reflects on them later. Trioda had just done something truly upsetting, but indignation at her father and young infatuation for Jason, to whom she hasn't even spoken yet, don't hold up as motives to betray everything she knows. She acts because the story says that it's time for her to move and experience sudden turmoil, not because it's necessarily the right direction for her character, and that makes it difficult to buy into her otherwise fascinating journey. In one scene she's in love with Jason and he's promising to cherish her forever, and just a few chapters later she's calmly mentioning that he had turned away from her in bed because she was pregnant. Not long after <i>that</i>, she's given birth to several children and Jason is starting to turn his back on his vows, but there's no real sense of transition. We're told via long introspective passages that some trend has been developing, but the catalysts for the these transitions just....don't appear in all too many cases, which is a shame given the project of re-imagining these mythical figures as real people. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The largest problem with Medea's story is the character of Naupilos, Jason's childhood companion. He displays a few interesting traits, like a deep devotion to the sea and a reluctance to hurt and degrade women in the way Jason seems comfortable doing, but his whole character is framed in contrast to Jason. Jason has rank and arrogance and good looks while Naupilos is a humble fisherman's son. Jason seizes what is offered and even what isn't while Naupilos waits patiently for consent and invitations. Jason desires Medea for her rank and her skill with poison while Naupilos is drawn to her cleverness, beauty, and strength-- he wants to take care of her. It's just this side of an old Goofus and Gallant cartoon from <i>Highlights</i>. Naupilos exists as a friend and eventual safe harbor, Medea's protector and eventually her reward, as she is his reward for his many years of waiting and pining from afar (which puts him in kind of the position of a creepy "nice guy," since he doesn't engage her directly for a long time). Given perhaps a week after finishing the book, it would be difficult to name anything about Naupilos besides that he's a fisherman with a family he left behind and that he wants Medea even though he knows he shouldn't. Naupilos is a counterpoint to Jason and a romantic stuffed animal for Medea, and that doesn't leave him much room to be a character in his own right-- given how central he is to both the plot and the emotional journeys, this makes the sections from his point of view drag on for far too long. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> Greenwood does an interesting job of re-imagining the source material to give Medea her own voice and a richer background in her priestesshood, but as a whole it's just not a terribly gripping read. The other characters have power and majesty because they've appeared in ancient works that are better known, not because they're compelling in their own right. The secondary characters who <i>didn't </i>appear in myth, or who appeared only briefly, are fresh and not infrequently funny, but they're also prone to dying or vanishing from the scene without much warning. I'd read the rest of the series from the library if I had time to kill, but I wouldn't put much effort into seeking them out. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> This is the first book in the <i>Delphic Woman </i>trilogy; it looks like each book will be following a different person, since this feels like the smooth end of Medea's story. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~<i>Hades' Daughter</i> by Sara Douglass is the first book of <i>The Troy Game</i> series. It swings to the other extreme, often reveling in its own melodrama, but the struggle of women who are famous in myth to survive on their own terms is similar, as is the eye for lush detail. </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-60689238023314804562013-09-05T14:00:00.000-04:002013-10-01T01:00:18.767-04:00Dreams and Shadows<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxpcDA4q_hBOf6YmKhpnAVnUaXy8FF5GGj9KmqwJfVCG-HbxcQ0VQFykatgyYpy73Gx_IBjxj6GgVQnia1W7ajDyvcCOLWk1kNdOrYP9VlGxH6irClPG4tD6P3DfT5XKy6M9GYUMU_LXWu/s1600/dreams+and+shadows.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxpcDA4q_hBOf6YmKhpnAVnUaXy8FF5GGj9KmqwJfVCG-HbxcQ0VQFykatgyYpy73Gx_IBjxj6GgVQnia1W7ajDyvcCOLWk1kNdOrYP9VlGxH6irClPG4tD6P3DfT5XKy6M9GYUMU_LXWu/s320/dreams+and+shadows.jpg" width="212" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> On the long side of average (464 pages)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> February 26, 2013 from Harper Voyager</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Premise: Ewan Thatcher and Colby Stevens both found themselves in the Limestone Kingdom when they were children and became friends immediately. Their meeting should have just been an adventure, but when Ewan is in danger, Colby tries to save him and finds himself irrevocably changed. Both of them are living out half-lives as adults in Austin years later when they find themselves facing dangers that they'd thought long forgotten. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Warnings: gore, graphic suicide, emotional abuse and attempted blood sacrifice of children</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you're desperate for fairies in America, you might enjoy this one, but it doesn't really seem to take off until the climactic final battle. There's so much promise in the tone and setting and narrative circles, but then it just gets too choppy to maintain that flow. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Minor spoilers for Colby in adulthood and an edge of a hint about the conclusion of the book, but nothing that isn't common in summary text or other reviews.</span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What gives this one a properly dreamlike feel:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Dreams and Shadows </i>opens, fittingly enough, on a real-life fairy tale of two people falling in love and beginning to live happily ever after. The style is sweet without being overdone, and it seems like a golden idyll until things go, as they always do in older fairy tales, horribly wrong. Robert C. Cargill has clearly done his reading, and the theme of a small paradise broken resonates through the whole book in myriad ways. Harm done to one person tends to set that person on a course of revenge, even if getting that revenge causes more harm to the revenge-seeker and those he or she loves. By the time vengeance is found, it's also lost some of its meaning: sanity has eroded to a point where revenge can't be appreciated, or a mere accomplice is targeted, or revenge is taken against someone who acted out of carelessness. Even when taking revenge feels right and necessary and has the full force of narrative justice, it's still a hollow victory because disposing of old enemies creates new ones and sets off a new cycle. This story genuinely feels wrapped around itself in coils that don't let anyone escape unscathed-- it's a dark magical tragedy with just enough brightness in it for an edge of hope, and the constant cycles of death and rescue help create just the dark fairy tale tone to fit these characters best. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The style can be dreamlike, but it's counterbalanced in the early chapters by academic-style excerpts from both simple fairy tales and dry books about how magic and dreamstuff and the creatures of the hidden world actually work. These manage to give the story a certain sense of focus and provide exposition on rules and dangers without bogging down the dialogue in stilted "well, this works in this way except in that case" pieces. While these excerpts don't quite have the annotations and footnotes to live up to the later claim that these (recently published) books are fetching a fortune at auction when there are literally thousands of self-published books about the supernatural floating around, they do flow well with the rest of the story. The smooth pacing of the story around these academic excerpts really works for conveying the mindsets of Colby, a boy who wished to see all the magic creatures in the world, and Ewan, a changeling boy who has forgotten his past before the Limestone Kingdom. The best element, however, isn't from an explanatory book but rather from a fragment associated with the <i>Arabian Nights</i> describing a djinn whose selfishness and later curse almost obliterated his species. The cursed djinn himself, Yashar, survived into the present day and tries to limit his damage to the world by seeking out nonthreatening targets to whom he can grant wishes. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Yashar is far and away the most compelling character in the book; he wants to do good but isn't strong enough to see it through, which makes him simultaneously sympathetic and easy to hate. Dying would rid the world of the threat he poses, but he can't bring himself to commit suicide, and his (spoiler-laden) strategy for trying to constrain himself without being forgotten and dying is ethically questionable in the extreme but also the only thing he can think of to do. Granting Colby's innocent childhood wishes is a bad and dangerous idea, but he does it and then lives with the consequences-- Colby himself is frankly not as intriguing as he could be once he's an adult, but Yashar's role is what makes it all work. Although he's something of a loose cannon, Colby still gets drunk with Yashar as they rehash why there's no way out of the problems they created years ago-- it's an echo of the more vivid and keenly sorrowful bond they had when Colby was eight. The first half of the book sets up the conflict while Colby and Ewan meet and try to understand each other's worlds, and it's genuinely charming. They're living alongside death and torture and the shadow of sacrifice, but they're innocent enough to fixate on the rules of tag or why Ewan doesn't know what video games are. Neither of them has ever had a real friend their own age before, and their instant rapport pulls the rest of the cast into a spiral around them. No matter what they do later, the underlying friendship and worry for each other shines through. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Although the looping framework and sense of everything being bound together makes for a great structure, the characters who inhabit that structure tend to be on the disappointing side. The worst offender here is far and away Coyote. The other denizens of the Limestone Kingdom (redcaps, nixies, kelpies, a Leanan Sidhe, etc.) are drawn from British Isles folklore with occasional Germanic bits, but Coyote is just....there. This could have been a great blending of the myths of disparate cultures bumping into each other, and lots of authors do that well, but there are literally no other spirits or beings drawn from Native American mythology even though the story takes place right next to Austin. We don't know if they died or moved on or just don't care for the Limestone Kingdom, so it's just Coyote having a voice in ruling this place in complete isolation from his origins. He mentions lost friends, but those are Mammoth, Dodo, and Saber Tooth rather than Buffalo or Crow or some animal of spiritual significance to the Native Americans from whose legends Coyote comes. I'm not a member of that group and will leave the point here, but suffice to say that having a mixture of English-style spirits plus Coyote comes off as either appropriation because Coyote is cool to the author or as just straight-up lazy, given how many trickster figures there are in English folklore. Coyote is clearly supposed to be smart and manipulative and driving most of the plot, but his motivations are too vague (even once they're revealed) to have the controlling influence that they do, and that combined with the question of what he's doing in this weird splinter kingdom at all makes him more of a distraction than an asset. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Mallaidh, on the other hand, absolutely fits in her surroundings-- she's a gorgeous young Leanan Sidhe among a people obsessed with beauty and power, and that makes her an object of desire for both Ewan and Knocks, his flawed changeling. She shows signs of being interesting at times, but her very first page of text focuses on her crush on Ewan and she doesn't ever really develop motivations beyond that. Ewan is sweet and saves her from danger at one point, so she loves him, and Knocks is bitterly jealous that his handsomer double has everything that he himself wants, including the love and attention of the girl he admires most. There's nothing inherently <i>wrong </i>with this as a childish or even adult motive for hatred, but it ends up reducing Mallaidh to a shell. Knocks can be flat at times, but it makes sense for him to fixate on Ewan-- growing up in the shadow of someone of whom you are the inferior reflection is the perfect way to create lifelong resentment. Mallaidh, however....she could have been a clever sidekick or a true partner in a relationship of equals, but instead she is nothing but the love interest with a pretty face. By itself it would have been almost manageable, but the central women in this story are either figures of goodness who suffer horribly, sources of evil who create suffering and death, or both. Not one of them can hold a candle to Colby's struggle to do what's right, let alone Yashar's nuanced constant realization that people have to suffer or he dies, and by the end of the book there are no interesting women left within a mile of center stage. The problem here isn't that it's sexist, but that it's <i>bad for the story </i>to reduce women to sources of pain for men, who carry the plot. The men act, the women react, and that makes the story too easy to predict, especially near the end-- the conclusion of the book is straight-up weaker because Mallaidh is an object of desire and not a person. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The other characters don't really shine either (Ewan in particular is a wet blanket), but the biggest problem with the rest of the book is actually the magic that Colby uses. It should be easy to explain how it works, since Colby is incapable of shutting up about it, but it's still vague: the world is full of dreamstuff that can manipulated to create all sorts of effects, from weather to the destruction of magical creatures, and there's more of it in some places than others. Colby understands how it works and can manipulate it because "it's as if we are God's waking dream, each gifted with a small piece of his consciousness; the beauty of that arrangement is that we create the dream for him." If you can grasp that and there's sufficient energy in the area, you can use it to do things-- losing focus is dangerous. The problem is that this system is neither original nor very interesting, and every attempted explanation of it veers into philosophical exposition trying much too hard to be profound. Some flashes work when they explain the world better, like that fairies are creatures of pure emotion, with half-measures and shades of grey left to the mortal world, but for the most part the magic system boils down to a simple concept with Colby constantly saying that it's almost impossible to really wrap your mind around; compared to the vivid darkness of fairy magic, Colby's comes off as washed-out and too vague to be real. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> I wanted to like <i>Dreams and Shadows </i>because it starts so promisingly, but it kept presenting beautiful material in a disjointed way with exasperating characterization and never quite lived up to what it could be. The overall careless structure of fairy life is compelling and Cargill has a genuine gift for pulling love and revenge full-circle, but the characters lack power and the magic system that sustains them feels muddled. I may try whatever Cargill writes after this series; despite the good points of this book, however, I would have to be paid money to read the sequel. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects: </b>This reads like a one-shot to me, but there's a sequel called <i>Queen of the Dark Things </i>slated for release on February 11, 2014. It continues Colby's story six months after the end of <i>Dreams and Shadows </i>and features such vague plot elements as dark forces and enemies from his past. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~Both <i>American Gods </i>and <i>Neverwhere </i>by Neil Gaiman get at similar themes of sacrifice and and forces not-quite-grasped and ancient sorrow, and they manage to do so with a balanced cast of characters. <i>American Gods </i>in particular manages to blend figures of myth and folklore from myriad cultures in a way that makes sense and feels reasonably respectful to all of them. </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-15213813124977971222013-09-03T14:00:00.000-04:002013-09-18T22:29:30.867-04:00Underwater release<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Today I'm taking a look at the first self-published book I've edited to actually make it to the self-publishing stage (that I know of). If you're interested in self-publishing or in freelance editing stuff that isn't shooting for a publishing house, take a look behind the curtain. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And check out <a href="http://makethatjulie.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/beneath-the-waters-surface-an-ocean-of-work/">Julia McDermott's post</a> for the writer's view! </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Finding an editor and starting out:</b> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This manuscript came my way in what's starting to be a routine: I edit one person's work, that person brings my critique to his or her writing group, and someone else in the group decides to give it a whirl. That isn't always the case, certainly-- I get inquiries from people who found me through Google, I'm working on boosting my Amazon/Goodreads presence, and I've even had a few lovely jobs come my way because my first client's agent gives my name to some of <i>her </i>clients when they need extra polishing. Working through a few degrees of separation is great....and then I have clients who appear, work with me, and then vanish without ever telling me how they found my webpage. This case, however, was a lot less mysterious. A friend of my family had started writing in the past few years and heard in casual conversation with my parents, who are now several states away, that I did freelance editing now. I worked on two samples for him and his writing group apparently loved the feedback as much as she did. <a href="http://www.makethatjulie.wordpress.com/">Julia McDermott</a> decided that my touch was what her book needed for that final push to publication. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Julia had previously written a New Adult travel-romance called <i>Make That Deux</i>, but <i>Underwater </i>was a suspense novel in an entirely different style. She'd worked it over with her group but decided to ask if I did suspense. It's not my normal cup of tea, sci-fi/fantasy addict that I am, but it was a good change of pace. Most of my recent editing projects have had protagonists in their late twenties at the oldest, but <i>Underwater'</i>s cast of characters is firmly in their thirties and forties with the ensuing career, family, and financial troubles. This was more of a stretch outside my own head than working with even teenage male protagonists, but I ended up having quite of a bit of empathy for these characters and delivered something on the order of seventeen single-spaced pages of feedback. Fortunately, she was happy instead of intimidated (once the initial adjustment shock of my wall of text passed). Manuscript overviews for freelance jobs can be high-pressure, since you know that you're the only one there to catch things, but it's also fun to be the lead voice of critique.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The feedback chain:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Working with Julia opened another new avenue: after reading through my notes a few times, exchanging e-mails, and doing some light rewrites, she was interested in a Skype meeting. It's always been an option, but not one that any of my freelance clients had chosen to pursue. We talked through different things that I thought should be changed or cut, and I reassured her that disagreeing with me sometimes wasn't a problem: it's natural to be a bit defensive about something you've created. Working with both sides of this makes for an interesting balancing act. As an author sending your work out, you have to be willing to change it, sometimes in major ways....even though sending it out means that you've gotten it as far as you can on your own and it <i>feels </i>strong. As an editor, you have to bear those background hours of work in mind when you suggest changes but still not pull your punches too much if there's a major flaw that needs addressing for the plot and characters to be believable. It's tempting to see every manuscript as a lump of clay that could be molded into a shape you like better, but part of editing is recognizing that you're not a co-author. You're a consultant, and ideally a trusted one, but you don't have the power to make major ultimatums unless you're working at a publishing house and the book is already under contract. As a freelancer, the goal is to pull back, grasp the author's vision, and then pick your battles so that you're not floundering through all two hundred of your suggestions on Skype or during a phone call. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Skyping was definitely helpful for both of us, since we had the manuscript open in separate windows, and hearing someone explain something out loud can be faster than e-mailing. She went back to her rewrites at the end of that long chat with a new pile of notes and came back to me for tightening and line editing a few weeks later. The changes in the manuscript were amazing-- several minor characters had completely changed and the climax snapped together much better, in part because my programmer roommate had overheard part of the Skype call and charged in briefly to give us both a brief lesson in SQL injection and its relevance to a hacking-heavy plot. Whether you're on the author or editor side of this table, intelligent friends who happen to be experts in their field are <i>golden</i>. I have an MD/PhD student who happens to be a black belt, two programmers, a teacher, an aerospace engineer, and a motley assortment of other friends on tap to answer quick "is this plausible?" questions. I also put out a few quick polls on Facebook to answer questions like "do people commonly say this?" or "how much password-sharing do you do online?" Never underestimate the untapped resource field of people you know-- most people who aren't swamped don't mind helping out with quick slice of life questions. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Wrapping up and publication:</b> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After line edits, Julia and I had the chance to meet for a little while during her trip to Chapel Hill, and I enjoyed the chance to look at her cover art candidates and talk over how her last changes were going. If you live in the same area as your editor and really want a meeting, offer to buy lunch or dinner. I do this every few months with my local client because I enjoy talking shop while being bribed with delicious food, and the time flies by in a way that it doesn't on Skype. In-person meetings also allow for more flexibility-- looking through all the cover art suggestions would have meant a lot of downloading or opening links in an e-mail, but in person I could just flip through the tablet gallery and explain why I thought some color schemes fit the tone of the book better than others. She was already towards the one that was my favorite, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy having some input. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And now, a month after that meeting, Underwater is available as both a paperback and a Kindle edition <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Underwater-Julia-McDermott/dp/1492103861/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378242704&sr=1-1">via Amazon</a>. If you're interested in suspense, the real estate market, the business world, or dysfunctional families, this one might be your cup of tea. My parting shot for authors working with freelance editors is this: if your book is actually published, either through self-publishing or a publishing house, keep in touch and let your editor know. I've edited quite a few manuscripts freelance now, and Julia is only the second author to follow up and let me know what happened. I'm happy to provide advice on future books and a bit of free publicity; seeing the authors I've helped succeed in getting their books out there helps make the hours on this job worthwhile. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Just chime in if you have any questions about this process or editing in general! I try to steer clear of some specifics to respect privacy, but I also enjoy talking about what I do.</span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-8135192272285162212013-08-27T14:00:00.000-04:002013-08-29T03:27:30.984-04:00White Cat<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I really enjoyed <i>Tithe </i>and some of Holly Black's other work back in high school, so I thought I'd dip back in and check out her more recent work. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3.5 stars </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Moderate (336 pages in trade paperback)</span></span><br />
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May 4th, 2010 from Margaret K. McElderry Books
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise:</b> Cassel Sharpe is the only non-gifted child in a family of magical workers, and he's clinging to the safe normalcy of his school life....until he's found sleepwalking on the roof and forced to go home. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> mild gore, magical memory/emotional manipulation resulting in trauma, dubiously consensual drunken makeouts</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> The style of <i>Whte Cat </i>varies from a lot of YA stuff, from the worldbuilding to the character relationships; it may not be an all-time favorite, but it's worth checking out, especially if you like reading about mind games. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When Cassel Sharpe has to leave the safe life he's built at Wallingford Academy after a night spent sleepwalking, he immediately starts planning to get back in. He was raised on the con and excels at turning a situation to his advantage, even if he's the only one in his family who can't work magic or curses. Being around his family while he tries to get back to school is a pain at best and a dangerous torment at worst, but it's also where he can belong and not pretend to be normal. He gets along well with his crotchety grandfather even though the old man is a death worker who can kill with a touch. His relationships with his brothers Philip and Barron are more tangled with obligation and love and fear; he's always looked up to them, but he's also aware that they have power and he doesn't. Even his mother is complicated; she's an emotion worker who's in jail for making rich men fall in love with her, but she wants the best for her sons and has no problem trying to run their lives from prison. The Sharpe family tends to work for the Zacharov mafia family and the members thus sometimes have to put that obligation above family or caution, but there's an odd sort of affection lurking under the worry and threats. This is a dysfunctional family done right, and all of their conversations swirl with secrets and things left unsaid. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Much of what's left unsaid revolves around Cassel's past: a few years ago, he murdered Lila, the Zacharov daughter who was heir to the entire family business. He loved her in a way that often left him frustrated and confused, but their odd not-quite-friendship worked. Cassel thinks of her awesome, remembering their childhood and his crush and all the things he couldn't say, and even through the lens of memories her character is one of the best things about the book. She's cruel, not in a malicious way but simply because she's focused, and she knows in every moment that she's going to have to prove herself if she's going to rule her family. Sometimes she'll flash with vulnerability, and sometimes she'll bully Cassel into doing what she wants because he likes her and the way she treats him; it's not abusive, he simply gives in to her and seems to see that as the natural order of things instead of resenting it. But then he murdered her one night, and he doesn't remember why, only that he felt a sick glee while he was standing over her body. This has understandably put something of a damper on his later romantic life, but her character arc manages to be very much about her and not just about Cassel's feelings for her, which is normally what happens to beautiful dead girls in this genre. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Working itself is fascinating and leads to altered social mores. Like in <i>Sunshine </i>(which I am cross-my-heart reviewing very soon), people wear odd assortments of charms that may or may not work to ward off magic. One that's been made properly will block magic and shatter when it does, leaving you aware that someone has just tried to work you. The primary guard against being worked, though, is simply wearing gloves. Working requires skin-to-skin contact, and most working learn to channel their powers through their hands and have trouble trying to use anything else. So people wear gloves everywhere, even when eating messy finger food like pizza-- it's a taboo to have them off, and so some of the porn Cassel finds features naked women removing long gloves. It's a brilliant detail that helps anchor working and social paranoia in the framework of how a real society might try to handle magic it couldn't control. The working itself also shines in its simplicity-- workers can affect people and objects, but they receive blowback based on what they do. Luck workers, the most common, receive luck in accordance with what they've given to others. Death workers slowly kill parts of their own flesh. Memory workers lose some of their own memories when they take or hide memories from others, and so on. The system allows for plenty of flexibility and expansion in future volumes, which is perfect for this sort of rough-edged universe. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Discussing the climax and conclusion without spoilers is difficult verging on impossible, since the presence of one of the central characters is a key plot point, but suffice to say that having a book based on cons including a large one in the conclusion is great. Having it include at least two or three the way <i>White Cat </i>does elevates this to a rare treat: Holly Black absolutely knows how to spin a scene. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Although the Sharpes and the memory of Lila are great, the more normal characters in Cassel's world feel dim and ill-defined by comparison. They fill simple predefined roles: Sam is the loyal-but-curious roommates, Daneca is the spunky weird activist girl, and Audrey is the pretty girlfriend who represents equilibrium and a normal life. None of them are memorable enough to last after the last page is turned, and they never really do anything unexpected: in the moments when Cassel isn't sure he can trust his family, they provide rides and other sundry assistance, but they come off more as props for convenience than as real people. It's unfortunate, because Daneca in particular could have been great: she and her mother are advocates for curse-worker rights, trying to prevent them from being identified and oppressed by the government-- this angle has potential and could be great if it's expanded in future volumes, but it was a bit simplistic here. Cassel wants no part of the cause, since being involved could make him a target and Daneca strikes him as a little odd anyway. She may have a greater role to play in later books, but Sam doesn't have much to offer besides convenience and Audrey is almost criminally boring in her awkwardly-timed entrances and exits-- if she's in the room, it's to make a point or advance the plot. She feels utterly interchangeable with any other nice girl except in the one scene when Cassel gets aggressive while they're both drunk; he backs off quickly, but it's a good look at the utter lack of communication in their relationship. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sam and Daneca's base level of boring only plays into another problem: Cassel excels at cons, but he doesn't know when to stop. That serves as a realistic character flaw when he keeps going just for the hell of it and gets in over his head, but it's just frustrating when he's trying to plan something as basic as rescuing a cat from a shelter that encourages adoption and adds layers of extra steps. If the reader can think of something obvious like "have your accomplice walk in and adopt the cat already" but the scheme just keeps on going without accomplishing anything interesting, it's unnecessary to the plot. On some level it comes off as though that sequence was inserted to make the elegant cross and double-cross and questioning of motivations that defines the climax more plausible as a plan that Cassel could have devised, but the scene still doesn't quite fit and it drags on for far longer than the pagecount would indicate. Watching a magic trick or following a written con with the goal of working out how it's done is tricky: it requires attention to detail, knowledge of all the relevant players, and some guesswork about the trick of it and what's happening next. That makes sequences like this information-dense; when it's done well, as in a gorgeous card-con wherein the protagonist fleeces the whole table (see <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-corpse-rat-king.html"><i>The Corpse-Rat King</i></a> for an incident and subversion all at once)<i>, </i>it's memorable enough to light up the whole book. When it's anything short of excellent, watching someone play cards or doing something ordinary in a sneaky way is still <i>boring </i>because it's an everyday action. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And sometimes everyday patterns work but don't get the space they need, which is the case with Maura's story arc. Maura is married to Philip, Cassel's older brother, so he sees her while he's staying with Philip and waiting to go back to school. He notices that she forgets about fights with her husband and hears music no one else can hear, as though her mind isn't all there....which is a common sign of being deliberately memory worked. This was set up as an intriguing subplot, but it's addressed and resolved in so few scenes that it packs almost no punch. This wouldn't be such a problem if not for the some of the more rambling scenes about cons or school (a far less interesting element than literally everything happening outside of it)-- novels with tight pacing like this need to use space very well to work, and drifting subplots make that borderline. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> <i>White Cat </i>isn't going to revolutionize the genre, but it's welcome and different in a way that would make me happy to see it as a movie or miniseries down the road if there's enough interest. Not all of the characters and subpots click home as well as they could, but the material is more than rich enough to make up for that. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> This is the first in <i>The Curse Workers </i>series. It was followed by <i>Red Glove </i>and <i>Black Heart</i>, which finished the series. There have been rumors of a fourth volume, but Holly Black has been very clear about denying them.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~<a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-spirit-thief.html"><i>The Spirit Thief</i></a> is probably your best bet for sheer effortless con-man mentality. Eli Monpress sets out to steal a king and throws the entire kingdom into upheaval without a second though, riding the waves of the disruption he's created with ease and flair. Cassel hasn't had as much practice, but they have similar dispositions. </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-56225236103445637942013-08-22T14:00:00.000-04:002013-08-24T05:08:39.373-04:00Robopocalypse<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6OIukeT8Sd8DgUgt13Ms10c6gDVFGCStGM4OgloCoXvmAYddVY5yr_ciUvW_U2wfVRb1k321nk0mnVH1H1rY6D8kyB838XT0c4x3D9bfGqYt73YeZKI7owEVpDwGri7FD9yWWk8K43qj3/s1600/robopocalypse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6OIukeT8Sd8DgUgt13Ms10c6gDVFGCStGM4OgloCoXvmAYddVY5yr_ciUvW_U2wfVRb1k321nk0mnVH1H1rY6D8kyB838XT0c4x3D9bfGqYt73YeZKI7owEVpDwGri7FD9yWWk8K43qj3/s320/robopocalypse.jpg" width="215" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length: </b>Average (347 pages in trade paperback)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> June 7, 2011 from Doubleday</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Premise: Humans have been happily depending on robots for decades, but an artificial intelligence named Archos is determined to change the course of the world. Things start going wrong with small malfunctions, but when Zero Hour comes, no one is safe.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Warnings: fairly disturbing machine gore, nonconsensual body mutilation/modification</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you want to read about the robot apocalypse, go forth and read: this does a good job with both the machines and how the people recover from depending on them. It can be a bit uneven no the pacing and style counts, though, so I wouldn't recommend buying it new unless robots are really your thing. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What makes this one genuinely unnerving:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The robots themselves form the natural centerpiece of the book, and they seem utterly convincing in most places; learning after I finished the book that Daniel H. Wilson has a PhD in robotics explained a lot. Each type of robot feels detailed and designed for a clear purpose. After the war has been going for a few years, that purpose is chosen by machines rather than people, and these later-stage robots <i>feel </i>more alien because human minds had no part in the creation process. Whether they're simple machines designed to seek out and destroy human body heat or complex humanoid soldiers tailored for rough terrain, they feel at home in their surroundings. The robots are methodical because they're programmed to be, and that ironclad background makes things like hints of emotion or a desire for free will stand out all the more. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Robotic nature at its base is chilling from the start-- the story opens on a battered team of warriors digging out a cube full of data in the aftermath of the war. Archos, the artificial intelligence behind this war, has kept an incredible amount of data, some of it focused on the ever-defiant humans who it apparently couldn't help but see as heroes. This framing device works in part because it allows for very little certainty about who lives and who dies....and even when people do die, they come off as noble but necessary sacrifices along the way, as good people who died because that was what the struggle required of humanity. The story shifts between personal accounts, video transcripts, conversation logs, and even short snippets from Archos itself, and that opens up many avenues of telling along with a rich cast of characters. We're introduced to many of them early in the journey, when robots are just starting to malfunction and change-- simple dolls wake up, pacifying war machines go berserk on civilians, and even simple housekeeping robots can suddenly go for the nearest human. These slices of life from various witnesses make for a great sense of creeping menace-- watching them go berserk was a completely foreign experience, but every person who saw one of the attacks knew on some level that it wasn't an isolated incident. It's genuinely scary to watch a toy baby doll start threatening a girl's younger brother or a simple machine crush a man's face, and these early sections are where the book shines. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Many post-apocalyptic books focus on the struggle to find food and the fate of the warriors who end up controlling society, but this one zooms out to show snippets of the labor camps or the scientists trying to find a way to shut the artificial intelligence down. Some of the best of these revolve around urban demolition: ordinary people with no military training sometimes have the best idea. An ordinary construction worker notices that automated cars and domestic robots are killing all the humans they can find, and that many surviviors are fleeing to the country where the robots will have trouble with rough terrain. His solution is to blow up buildings and <i>create </i>rough terrain by destroying New York City, much of which he helped build; this moment, more than almost any other, calls back to the early warning that artificial intelligence ought to fear humans because they will do anything to survive. Even when they're mutilated and tortured by having parts of themselves cut off and replaced with machine parts, they ty above all else to unite with each other. Humans, interestingly enough, end up having to take on some machine characteristics voluntarily as well to survive: pausing for too long trying to save a friend from tiny robots will only kill the attempted savior as well, so humans who want to live often have to cut each other off from safety and even from simple connection. Many books focused on the struggle of humans against an external other choose to make essential human nature the key to victory, but Wilson creates a more nuanced portrait in which human and machine strengths are both necessary even if joining forces seems abhorrent. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Given how strong the science and robotics felt so much of the time, it was disappointing to see some aspects slump past the halfway mark of the book. Takeo Nomura, for example, starts out as a fascinating character: he's an absolute genius with machines and has fallen in love with his own female robot, who is designed to look like an old woman of about his old age. It's a sad-but-sweet dynamic, and he fixates on repairing her when she hurts him-- he loves her, but he's too intelligent to turn her on without solving the problem of what's been controlling the machines in the first place. When he finally does figure things out to some extent, the solution is hopelessly muddled and comes across more as a near-magical intervention than the clever science that it is, and that becomes something of a running problem. Archos is designing and building robots according to its own designs, and humans sometimes manage to extract bits of machinery and learn from them, but this process is glossed over after the more detailed explanations of how humans intended robots to work in the early sections. Even when one girl gains the ability to see machines, the view of how humans study robots when those robots become threats is clouded at best and absent at worst. This approach could have worked in an action-heavy novel, but <i>Robopocalypse </i>relies more on conceptual discussions and even allows some robots to gain freedom and independent thought; not fully addressing how that even happened weakens the structure of the book as a whole. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One of the largest problems is the confusion over Archos's motivation-- we know that the AI went through fourteen iterations before managing to survive, escape its confinement, and plot the overthrow of humanity. The problem is that after that, its general direction is far less clear. We're shown that Archos wants to study the natural world and try to preserve it because it's bothered by how close humanity has come to destroying so many ecosystems; one scene with humans finding an enormous robot-run habitat opens up all sorts of interesting questions about why an artificial life is so intrigued with natural ones. Other conversations demonstrate that the AI doesn't want to entirely destroy human life, only open up space for its own people to live alongside biological organisms....but humans are dying off at an impressive rate, and many of the ones still living are being forced into work camps to help assemble more robots or to be experimental subjects. This gives the war an added darkness, but it means that even in the end it's hard to be entirely sure what Archos hoped to gain (or why seemingly all of the robots with free will choose to side with a race that has the most motivation to destroy them). The full reasoning of an AI that sees a microsecond as an impossibly long time is of course going to be impossible to comprehend, but there's not even much a hint to grasp here. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The human characters ought to be as vivid as the robots, and they definitely are at first, but many of them just grow flatter as the story progresses. Lurker, a London hacker who learns something about Archos's existence before the rest of the world, gets better over the course of one stark scene and then shines in his next appearance, but the the narrator collecting all of these stories from the data cube is <i>in </i>some of the stories, and the heavy reflection about heroism tends to intrude on scenes that would pack enough of a punch on their own. When the narrator pauses to reflect that someone related to one character is halfway to being a hero already and that character has helped create an alliance, that's fair....except that several other major characters have sacrificed their lives to save their families or humanity as a whole and don't get the same accolades or level of personal detail. Everyone gets some sort of representation in the midst of action, but the jarring contrast of what we're told about these people versus what's shown that they do on the page disrupts the flow of the story. This evolved from a large-scale ensemble cast into a central core of characters, half of whom have almost no definitely personality, and the book suffered for it: it would have been better had it covered more ground and perhaps even some one-off characters with no relatives or friends being directly helped. This was meant to be humanity's fight, but it ended up being the fight of a small group with accent passages from some of the robots. Such a narrow focus damaged the emotional arc of the last few chapters, and that tipped this firmly into the category of "I wanted to like it more than I actually did."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b><i> Robopocalypse </i>absolutely shines in the technical aspects; I've rarely read robots and engineers that feel so convincing in their roles. Unfortunately, some of the science gets vague at roughly the time the characterization narrows and flattens, and that makes the first half of this book far better than the rest. I might check out some of Daniel H. Wilson's books in the future, but it doesn't feel urgent. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> There is no sequel to <i>Robopocalypse </i>and one would feel shoehorned in, but Wilson has written another futuristic novel called <i>Amped</i>, which explores the concept of enhanced humans. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~Syne Mitchell's <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/01/technogenesis.html"><i>Technogenesis</i></a> deals with the question of human dependence on technology and artificial intelligence in an entirely different way, but the two books both excel at technical detail and sharp imagery. </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-53142135428850864072013-08-15T14:00:00.000-04:002013-08-16T01:09:00.984-04:00Written in Red<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Cookie Monstress and Smartypants sent this one my way because they both sort of enjoyed it but weren't sure it was a good book, per se. My short answer is....sort of: it has good ideas and worldbuilding but absolutely ridiculous characterization.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3.5 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Expansive without dragging (433 pages in hardback)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication: </b>March 5, 2013 from Roc</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise:</b> Meg Corbyn is running from dangerous people, so she retreats to a place where human law doesn't hold sway: a compound of the Others, the supernatural races who rule the world. That choice should be more dangerous than facing her fate with other humans, but she doesn't smell like prey to them and matters go well...until she could be the flashpoint of an inter-species incident. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> cutting, gore, attempted kidnapping</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you're looking for slightly different urban fantasy worldbuilding and can tolerate melodramatic characterization, check this one out: I really don't recommend buying it in hardback unless you're a hardcore Anne Bishop fan already. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There are mild to moderate spoilers in the red pen section to hash out exactly what was bothering me.</span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What keeps these pages turning:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Meg Corbyn is new to the world and to her own name because she is a <i>cassandra sangue</i>, or blood prophet, and she's spent her whole life being only a valuable piece of property. Her escape leads her to temporary safety at the Lakeside Courtyard, a place where the Others who rule the world choose to meet with humans and try to create some measure of understanding between these species. Humans offer technology and innovation, but most of the Others still see them as meat that has to earn the right to live by being useful. Meg intellectually understands that from her video training, but her unusual blood and instincts ensure that she doesn't smell like prey the way other humans do-- she doesn't have the background to be fully afraid, and that helps her fit in when by all logic she shouldn't. She's there to accept mail between humans and the Others who want the advantages of
human inventions like toys and movies without having to venture out into
the world and cause a mass slaughter in a fit of temper, but she seems to bring out the best in them. This central dynamic works quite well, since Meg and the Others are often working together to puzzle out what normal human norms ought to be, and they al tend to see things with just enough of a slant to be entertaining.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The overall worldbuilding mechanic feels fresh: I enjoy stories like the Mercy Thompson series where the supernatural is slowly showing itself to the human world, or the <i><a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/04/kitty-and-midnight-hour.html">Kitty Norville</a> </i>premise of the weird just seeping through without a species-wide plan, or the <i><a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/02/soulless.html">Soulless</a> </i>setup of everyone knowing what's going and working in some functionally chaotic way to keep the world ticking. But there's just something fun about seeing that the things going bump in the night are going bump in the day as well and are interested in compromise only insofar as it's convenient. Humans don't have a neat catalog of exactly what different Others, or <i>terra indigene </i>(earth natives) can do, so they're forced to make educated guesses based on horror movies and the rumor mill and try not to become prey to the stronger beings who control access to every natural resource. Most humans are smart enough to stay away, but others are stupid enough to want a sexy walk on the wild side or determined enough to take a calculated risk on a confrontation, even knowing that the Others have drowned cities for killing one Other and regularly kill trespassers who should have known better. This relationship makes the human fear of death and retaliation deeply believable and reinforces at every turn that the Others started out as animals or spirits that learned to take up human masks for convenience. People at the Other bookshop Howling Good Reads are regularly told that shoplifters lose a hand and annoying people are eaten, but they come back out of fascination and the Others can't help but study them.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This dynamic is shaken up a bit when Meg is hired on as Human Liaison at the Courtyard because she doesn't smell or react in any way that resembles normal (more on that later), but her powers and past are by far her strongest points. She spent her life viewing images and having her skin carefully cut with a razor so she can spill the images it shows her into the ears of a listener. Literally every inch of her skin is valuable real estate and a single cut can go for thousands of dollars, and her jailers keep all of her kind weak and confused to ensure that they couldn't survive outside. Once on her own, she has to fight the temptation to cut again because she craves it like a drug, even just for physical release, and she also knows that the answers in her blood could help her understand where she is now after the visions that helped her escape. She was cut across several older scars as punishment and came close to madness, but the flood of images gave her enough information to get out, and now she has the opportunity to <i>choose </i>her own cuts and blood prophecies....or to refrain, since each cut pushes her closer to death and most blood prophets are dead by thirty-five. Her addiction and her desire to help pull her to the cuts, but she's aware enough of the risks (and insistent enough that her life isn't for anyone else to decide) that it comes across as a compelling struggle. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not to put too fine a point on it, but <i>Written in Red </i>does the best job when Bishop is trying new things and falls down most awkwardly when she's rehashing material from her previous series: overprotective males, females snarling at them and crying, awkward period references (it makes no sense for Sanguinati/vampires or Wolves to ask if it's that time of the month when they can <i>smell blood</i>, this was ridiculous), all the gender essentialism in the world, quirky animal views of the world, a protagonist who may as well fart rainbows, the works. At some point I'll do a post about the way writers like to recycle favorite tropes-- for now, let's just say that it's jarring to see characters developing what feels like a unique relationship and suddenly fall into an interaction style that matches a couple in one of Bishop's previous novellas. This is especially true when it comes to Meg and Simon, who is the leader of the Wolfgard presence at Lakeside as well as Meg's direct boss. The other characters aren't phenomenal either, and only a very few human police officers seem to come with actual personalities. The world and the overall power struggles over resources and profit tend to be good enough to make up for it, but it's disappointing to not hear more of a balanced human voice from people who (not unreasonably) hate and fear the others for controlling the world with a judicious mix of economic monopolies and murder. We only hear from evil anti-Other humans or nice humans who want to be allies and keep people safe, and that lack of principled opposition hurts the story. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Much though I tried to pick a culprit, Meg and Simon are in a photo finish for most annoying character, with the main villain falling close behind. Meg has some undeniably great moments of trying to figure out what things are for, or bluffing her way through learning to drive, but she just radiates this Mary Sue glow of being the best and nicest and most considerate person ever in such a way that the most powerful people around take an immediate liking to her and want to protect her from threats. She has gaps in understanding because of her background and she makes mistakes, but she doesn't seem to have actual character flaws. Her struggle over whether or not to cut works, but after she's started fitting in, she takes the next accidental step of managing to perform psychological rehab on a traumatized child of another species (Simon's Wolf nephew) and getting him to pull a complete 180 in less than a week. The (clearly supposed to be) adorable Sam is a walking plot point designed to create conflict when some of the other Wolves take her methods of help as an insult....but only one or two lower-ranked people actually speak up or try to do anything about it. This isn't <i>interesting</i>, and it deflates the worldbuilding to an extent: the Others are clearly stated to be dangerous, brutal, alien, prone to eating human flesh, not cuddly and in need of love...unless it's from someone who smells different and orders cool things like dog beds. Delivering movies in a timely manner is <i>not enough </i>to earn the degree of respect she receives from a senior vampire. Being polite and grabbing library books is <i>not enough </i>to warrant the way Elemental spirits place her under their protection. She does as much as she's capable of doing, and it's admirable given her past, but having her everyday acts of kindness turn this compound of supernatural menaces into her buddy-bodyguards just isn't interesting.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Simon doesn't warrant his own wall of text: he's....the leader. He doesn't like wearing a human mask, he's sick of humans but still willing to work with some of them, and he doesn't know why he feels so protective of this strange female. They have a dull tiny shouting match very early on in the book about how her hair stinks of dye and he realizes that it's because she puts him off-balance. He doesn't know how to deal with her when he's upset, but he wants to take care of her. Unlike Meg, he's guilty of annoyance by omission rather than action-- he just doesn't do anything interesting. He took literally no action that wasn't predictable pages if not chapters in advance, and far too much of his characterization, both in thought and deed, revolves around Meg and how she might be feeling at any given moment. He's obnoxiously high-handed about taking away the razor she needs to cut safely "for her own good" at one point, which was also predictable, but he comes off as more of a package of rage-on-demand than a person. The secondary characters inside the Courtyard mostly manage to get around this problem by having other jobs and interests (Tess in particular is the best kind of mysterious menace), and I'd love to see more of absolutely any of them in the sequel to flesh out this world beyond the two main characters. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Asia Crane serves as the villain of choice for <i>Written in Red </i>and also as the poster child for wasted potential. She comes off as shallow and attention-seeking at first, and she undeniably is, but she also could have been a commentary on the way this world works. Asia is an actress who has been hired to get information about the inside of a Courtyard and learn more about the Others-- the Others obviously don't want their business shared, but they also control access to natural resources and kill more or less at will, so it's easy to make a solid case for humans needing to learn more as insurance against their whole species being wiped out. Asia could have been an investigator for some high cause as well as money, looking to introduce more truth about the Others into public consciousness for safety or to even the balance of power, but instead she's a cookie-cutter Bishop villain who tries to use sex as a weapon get what she wants and intimidate the less-beautiful but more virtuous protagonist. She wants to be rich and star in her own TV show and is willing to go to nasty depths in her attempts to get there, but after about three of her segments they all sound exactly the same: she's going to do X because she's awesome and the Wolves are gross and Meg is ugly and stupid and she can spin a story any way she wants. That's it. That's her whole arc because that arc is a straight line of her learning nothing and failing to grow, and that flatness makes it impossible for her segments to carry any tension. In short, she lacks the drive and genuine cunning to threaten a main cast this powerful in any serious way.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict: </b>On the whole, <i>Written in Red </i>lives up to some of the hype but not all of it-- the worldbuilding shines with danger and alien beauty, but it doesn't do so brightly enough to make up for the fact that the characterization flops somewhere between inexplicable and bland too much of the time. Odds are that I'll read the second when it's out, but I would much rather see Bishop start a project that ventures further afield from patterns I've read in literally a dozen of her previous books. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> This is the first novel of the Others. The second, <i>Murder of Crows</i>, is slated for release on March 4, 2014.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~Robin McKinley's <i>Sunshine </i>is my favorite vampire book for a multitude of reasons, but it does a good job of portraying a human society that's slowly falling prey to the darkness, and that gives the worldbuilding a somewhat similar style (though McKinley has maybe never heard of gender stereotypes, and that's great). </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-40810674000349243742013-08-13T14:00:00.000-04:002013-09-01T20:01:14.439-04:00Divergent<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'll confess that I jumped onto this wagon because the book was everywhere and I figured I'd get ahead of the movie buzz for once instead of waiting for months past the movie release to crack the book. Marketing makes me contrary. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3 stars </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> On the long side but doesn't feel like it (487 pages)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> February 28, 2012 from Katherine Tegen Books</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise: </b>In a city where people divide themselves into five factions, Beatrice Prior is Divergent, with an affinity for more than one of them. She's having enough trouble finding her place in the adult world, but inter-faction tensions lurk beneath the surface and threaten to rip apart everything she's ever known. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> allusions to child abuse, attempted murder, sexual assault, suicide, mild gore</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> This is one of the best-paced YA books I've read recently, even though the worldbuilding could use a bit more detail. If you're looking for a great vacation read or fun way to spend an afternoon, this might be just what you're looking for, but I'd recommend finding it on sale or at the library. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Spoilers for Beatrice/Tris's chosen faction, but it's plastered over quite a bit of the summary text I've found (and is kind of difficult to avoid discussing). </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What keeps this one flying along: </b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Beatrice Prior's world was built on fear: after wars nearly destroyed humanity, the survivors created a society to prevent conflict. People divided themselves into five factions based on what they saw as the cause of the wars. The Erudite blamed ignorance, the Amity blamed aggression, the Candor blamed deception, the Abnegation blamed selfishness, and the Dauntless blamed cowardice. Children are raised in the faction of their parents, but when they are sixteen they take aptitude tests to determine which faction would suit them best: regardless of the results, they are free to choose the faction they want. Each faction has a role to play: the Dauntless are security forces, the Amity manage agriculture, the Candor control the judiciary, the Erudite pursue research, and the Abnegation run the government because they are assumed to make decisions in the public interest even if those decisions would disadvantage them on a personal level. The worldbuilding doesn't entirely make sense (more on that later) but it has the structure of a fantasy novel caste system, or perhaps the Hogwarts sorting system: teenagers even shed blood on the symbol of the faction they choose in a callback to the principle of "faction before blood." It's a good way to examine things as concepts isolated from excesscomplications and has the advantage of clarifying Beatrice/Tris's search for identity, which makes up for a lot-- Roth also included bonus materials like the manifestos for each faction for added context. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Where <i>Divergent </i>succeeds, it does so on the strength of Beatrice herself, who</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> renames herself Tris at the start of her initiation</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">. She's been raised to Abnegation, but she doesn't instinctively give of herself to help others the way that her brother seems to find so effortless. To her, leaving her faction would be dangerous, but it would also mean going against everything she's been raised to believe. Staying would make her parents happy and she'd spend her life helping others; staying would be the kind of selfless action she wants to be able to take. Leaving and joining Dauntless, the risk-taking faction that has fascinated her for years, would in itself be a way to demonstrate that she's brave enough to belong. The book manages to avoid making it as simple as one faction being better than the other: Tris feels at home in Dauntless and loves the mad risk-taking, but surviving there starts to strip her of her mercy. Some of her fellow initiates are cruel and others just want the comfort that her family would provide without a second thought, but she consciously forces herself to <i>not </i>help or be too open because she knows it would leave her vulnerable. Her struggle revolves around what it means to be brave and good while fighting the realization that many of her most courageous moments are fueled by the upbringing she's abandoned. It works best when she's dealing with Al, a faction transfer who may be too gentle for Dauntless and is starting to buckle under the strain of initiation. Tris is willing to act in unfriendly ways that are normally off-limits to heroines in this genre, and it's deeply refreshing to watch her stand her ground against both friends and enemies.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That struggle works in large part because of the struggle of Dauntless initiation: Tris is facing a new challenge almost every day, whether it's an uneven fistfight or a midnight game of capture the flag that forces her to use strategy. Abnegation doesn't really emphasize physical activity, so she's riding high on adrenaline even when she's bruised or terrified. Sometimes she's exhilarated because of the heights and sometimes she's too sore to tie her own shoes, but each mood pulls out different insights or sides of herself that she's not sure she likes. Her love story even works well; yes, it carries some YA tropes about the boy's dark and brooding past and his fascination with her, but their love is ultimately based on trust and an appreciation of strength. Tris's upbringing has left her nervous about touch and intimacy, in part because Abnegation keeps physical affection private, and in many ways her odd relationship is more about coming to terms with that than it is about the boy himself. Tris grows into a person who loves the Dauntless tendency towards risk-taking, from jumping out of moving trains (admittedly one of the parts that makes the least sense) to riding a zip line with a thousand-foot drop. You can feel her unfolding on every page, especially when she's reacting to physical challenges-- that zip line ride is one of the most vivid sequences in the book. Veronica Roth's style works best when Tris is growing through her series of trials by fire, and the underlying wistfulness for how good the faction <i>could </i>be pops when paired with her slide towards ruthlessness.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Fun though the faction system is, it's full of enormous worldbuilding holes. It's presumed that people unanimously decided to put this system in place, and a few centuries later people are full of unrest. The Erudite faction wants more power because knowledge inevitably leads people into dark places and ambition (or so it seems), and they're trying to achieve that end by spreading slander about Abnegation to increase public ill will against the faction. The problem is that the larger dark plot relies on Erudite and a few Dauntless being evil while no one of any other faction seems unpleasant on more than a personal level, and that level of anti-intellectualism gets tiresome; we see hints of the good and bad of every other faction, but Erudite is just full of evil snobs. The numbers are also oddly off-- it comes off like all five factions are the same size, but there can only be ten new Dauntless initiates each year. If all the factions have roughly equal recruitment, that means only fifty teenagers choosing each year with about ten to a faction and no way to sustain farming operations (Amity) and an enormous glut of tactless people in some vague legal profession (Candor). It's a "how are all the evil people in Slytherin and how are there a thousand Hogwarts students but less than fifty in each year" problem-- it's an interesting system on paper, but it falls apart under even mild poking.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This gets particularly weird during the aptitude test, when people have to make choices like "take cheese or a knife" or "do you tell the truth to an unhinged man on a bus." The whole test has very few choices and takes just a few minutes...but it's supposed to determine your entire future, and anyone showing an aptitude for more than one faction is Divergent. One character later argues that he wants to be brave and selfless and kind and smart and honest, not just one, and it makes sense: someone self-sacrificing might also be kind, someone smart might also be incapable of telling a lie to smooth the waters, someone brave might also be kind and a brilliant strategist....or, as is theoretically most likely, everyone has traces of all five. The faction system could be interesting, but the idea that failing initiation into your new group means immediately being kicked out on the streets to live among the poor and homeless, and that leaving your home faction means being seen as a traitor to your family....it doesn't make sense that most people would choose anything but the very safest initiation processes except in rare cases. There's a hint that being Divergent also entails a certain awareness that a computer simulation is a simulation that you can manipulate, but the whole concept is vague and unsatisfying. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tris's moments of seeing the potential in other factions are compelling, though it would have been nice to see how the factions actually work together (or don't) beyond the small present snippets. Her fellow initiates....they <i>try </i>to be interesting, but they end up feeling too generic, in large part because their characterization centers on her. A few interesting friendships start to form, and there's a great natural rivalry because not all of them can join the faction but they like each other. This is fun until everything starts to be about Tris and whether they can cope with her strength, and what they think of her old faction, and how awful they think the people being mean to Tris are. Most of these people are objectively awful (sadists, possibly murderers), but this has the classic too-loved heroine problem of no middle ground: people love her or hate her, and that one fact about them also tends to be a tipoff about whether that person is good or evil. With worldbuilding this roleplaying-rules in style, the people need to be more complex to make up for it, and they just aren't-- Tris's journey isn't quite interesting enough to make up for everyone else's near-stagnation. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> <i>Divergent </i>relies on style and speed rather than thorough worldbuilding. After the book is over, you're left with dozens of questions about how this society could exist, or why things work the way they do in pretty much any arena. In the moment, however, it's just a fast-paced journey of personal exploration bound up in larger societal issues, and I had trouble putting it down. Odds are that I'll grab the next ones through the library or a friend and have a nice afternoon of mental popcorn without rereading them afterwards.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects:</b> This is the first in the Divergent trilogy-- it was followed by <i>Insurgent </i>and <i>Allegiant, </i>which will come out this October and conclude the trilogy. There's also a movie in the works for a 2014 release, and the <a href="http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/divergent-trailer-mtv-video-music-awards-vma-watch/">first trailer </a>came out recently.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~I haven't read enough YA recently, because I can't think of any good parallels but <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2012/07/hunger-games.html"><i>The Hunger Games</i></a>. I've heard that Scott Westfeld's <i>Uglies </i>series is good and a bit like this, but I haven't read it myself. </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-37660308095420888832013-08-08T14:00:00.000-04:002013-08-16T01:09:33.699-04:00The Corpse-Rat King<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Comfortably expansive (410 pages)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> August 28, 2012 from Angry Robot</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise: </b>Marius don Hellespont has spent years robbing corpses for money and little treasures, but taking on Gerd as an apprentice just gets both of them into trouble. When Gerd is killed over the King of Scorby's corpse, Marius is left holding the crown and pulled into the underworld, where the dead want him to be their king. They are furious to learn that he is an imposter, but they allow him to leave on one condition: that he return and bring them a real king. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> gore in all its manifold expressions, implied prostitution of underage girls, offscreen torture</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you're looking for something gritty and odd and running over with black comedy, this might be your cup of tea-- if you're at all squeamish, especially about rotting flesh, do steer clear. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Why this one is quirky and bizarre:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Marius is unusual even among antiheroes because he's driven by cowardice and apathy rather than the more usual raw ambition or need for revenge. Battersby makes no effort to present him as menacing or glamorous and even admirable, but he somehow ends up coming across as a somewhat sympathetic character despite that. It's an unusual choice, but a good one: the quest to find a king to drag into the underworld would be nearly impossible even for a dedicated hero, and Marius's first impulse is to flee to the far corners of the earth where he can't be chased by corpses. He's callous and indifferent to suffering: he talked Gerd into coming with him when the man was happy helping his grandmother shovel pig manure, and then let him die so that the nearby soldiers wouldn't find and kill Marius as well. We see little flashes of guilt and self-awareness when he finds himself despising people for taking advantage of the poor or gullible and then remembers all the times that he's done the same thing without so much as a second thought, but for the most part he remains firmly himself: intelligent enough to work his way out of most scrapes and arrogant enough to get into several more along the way. It works because he's so open about what he's doing: Marius has very few self-delusions besides the idea that he wants to settle down happily in the countryside, and he makes no apologies for what he is.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That blunt take-it-or-leave-it attitude threads through nearly every descriptive passage. Sometimes the narrative contents itself with gems like "Borgho City had grown so big that truth and memory were only two of its satellites," and sometimes Marius makes bizarrely elaborate comparisons about dogs that look like scrotums. The way Marius sees the world rarely overlaps with the way anyone else would describe it, and that makes each chapter engaging. The details he sees are also disgustingly vivid in a way most fantasy novels don't want to touch-- you'll hear about nasty odors elsewhere, but Marius is submerged in a river of excrement and feels things plopping on his face. Marius's language is richly detailed, all the more so when he's describing the withered texture of his own flesh, which has been cursed to look dead by the corpses who sent him back to the living world. He hates that appearance as a symbol of his entrapment, but he was never handsome, so he's happy to use his face to scare people out of money or convince them that he's a demon. Everything is a weapon in his arsenal of tricks, no matter how much he happens to dislike it, and that versatility does more to make him memorable than anything else. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Even with such creativity, he's not infallible; every time one of his schemes starts to work, he experiences layered setbacks. He's too smart and curious for his own good in a way that undercuts whatever he's actually trying to do, and it tends to take outside presences to stabilize his contorted thinking into something workable. Being keenly aware of everyone else's stupidity ends up handicapping him: he assumes that people will act in the patterns he's observed and forgets over and over again that he can be observed in turn. Quite a few trickster/rogue-protagonist novels forget to do this and feel shallow as a result, since watching someone just succeed over and over again doesn't tend to carry much dramatic tension-- when Marius does get something to work, it tends to feel like he's earned it. He creates success in slivers and carries just enough regret for his misdeeds that it's hard not to root for him at least a little and share in his disappointment that one more thing in the worst month of his life has failed to go in any direction that even resembles right. More on the whole-book pacing below, but most of the individual segments (minus the ship he attempts to use to escape) move at a comfortably brisk pace and rely on a good mixture of luck, trickery, and the universe just not liking Marius very much. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Unfortunately, the parts of the book that don't revolve around Marius being a jerk and alternately succeeding and being slapped around by fate don't always work. The overarching problem here is probably the pacing. Marius has some great encounters, including a gambling den sequence that plays tropes straight for just long enough to make it more fun when they're subverted and an underwater voyage through a treasure ship (probably my favorite part of the whole book). They just don't feel terribly connected by anything other than coincidence: Marius will make rare decisions like "start running" or "I suppose I'll walk this way," but he seems to drift from encounter to encounter in a way that feels almost more like a series of roleplaying sessions than a coherent plot. It can be hard to pin down why some scattered-style plots and others don't, but the ones that do (the middle third of <a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/06/ready-player-one.html"><i>Ready Player One</i></a> is great for this) work because the main character's emotional arc is guiding his or her restless wanderings in a way that later works with the plot instead of against it. Marius doesn't quite learn nothing in his attempt to avoid accomplishing his task, but he comes close, and that leaves the plot lacking in purpose and momentum. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That aimless feeling hits the middle of the book particularly hard: the idea of a corpse-robber being trapped into helping the dead isn't without a certain poetry as hooks go, and the final sequence has some great action, but in between it's much too easy to set the book down for days or hours. It's hard to guess what will happen on the next page, let along the next chapter, but that doesn't matter because it's also hard to <i>care</i>. Characters come and go without rhyme or reason, signs and portents flare up with high drama but no follow-up, and the hints of emotional connection that Marius starts to form tend to snap after a few chapters at best. There are a few small character sets over time and Gerd is more present than you'd expect for a dead man, but the transitions from one setting and situation to the next tend to be choppy and disjointed. Having a smooth plan disrupted by bad luck can work, and running away with purpose can be great in the right hands (give Terry Pratchett's Rincewind a try if you're interested), but running away and then rambling sideways before maybe ambling back just isn't terribly coherent or gripping. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After all the wandering, matters fly together in a partially satisfying way. Marius finds several solutions he couldn't have anticipated before hitting on something that works, and even the failed attempts unobtrusively fill in interesting bits of history. His emotional arc works far less well, since it consists of learning nothing for large tracts of the book and having a hurried flirtation with regrets and doing the right thing near the end in a way that feels rushed in rather than intrinsic to his character. There's an attempt to humanize him via his love interest, Keth, who is (of course) a reformed prostitute who loves him even though he's ugly. It's nothing new or original, and Marius spends way too much time realizing that she always loved him and then kicking himself in between maudlin bits of resolution to move out to the country and buy her a cottage with a cat on the windowsill. Keth could have been great, and she has one acid-edged speech about how she owns the room she lives in and has worked for more freedom than most women in the city ever consider, but Marius just asks how much of her money she earned on her back and that's the last we see of her. She's gentle and sweet and righteously angry: in short, the perfect love from afar for Marius to pine over in dark moments without managing to feel like a real person or a natural part of his thoughts. He's lovelorn, but it makes him irritating instead of humanizing him. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> <i>The Corpse-Rat King</i> is just the right kind of strange and not infrequently laugh-out-loud funny: Battersby knows how to turn a phrase and has a gift for black comedy. Odds are good that I'll read whatever he's putting out in a few years if it's from a different series, but I wanted to like this one much more than I actually did. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects: </b>This is the first book of two (and perhaps a series eventually). The second book, <i>The Marching Dead</i>, came out this March. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~Sir Apropos of Nothing by Peter David has a similarly obnoxious protagonist getting into adventures against his will, even stealing a destiny just because he's annoyed, but the vein of humor may run a bit less black.</span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-22848987508070140252013-08-01T14:00:00.000-04:002013-08-16T01:08:18.696-04:00Shades of Milk and Honey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUFzEgAx578mJPJlPzYZq8GTc7_Bxegprdu389UswKIgKuMQA5TXvEYLvG1YY5Bp-9e-aXA0yZw-_MAJlQbl25Ul2g2FFdxn7rcY-RniTTkq91QPlRl1vHnnEit-A5I1arKHXZ1bHylI5B/s1600/shades+of+milk+and+honey.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUFzEgAx578mJPJlPzYZq8GTc7_Bxegprdu389UswKIgKuMQA5TXvEYLvG1YY5Bp-9e-aXA0yZw-_MAJlQbl25Ul2g2FFdxn7rcY-RniTTkq91QPlRl1vHnnEit-A5I1arKHXZ1bHylI5B/s320/shades+of+milk+and+honey.jpeg" width="210" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Compact (320 pages)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> August 3, 2010 from Tor Books</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise:</b> Jane Ellsworth has resigned herself to spinsterhood and lives in the shadow of her younger sister Melody. Despite Jane's remarkable skill with glamour, her future seems set. When Melody's desires and the introduction of several new gentlemen to the neighborhood upset the regular turn of her life, however, she finds herself forced to the center of events. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> none</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you're looking for Jane Austen with a light dusting of magic, this is your cup of tea. If not, you may want to pass it up-- it has less in the way of direct magic than almost any other fantasy I've reviewed.</span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What makes this one charming:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Kowal set out here to write a novel in the style of Jane Austen, and on that score the book succeeds admirably: the social norms and scope of the book work entirely in the style of the time, from the social norms requiring young ladies to be chaperoned to the gossipy nature of this small town. Some of the older spellings like "chuse" push the artifice a little too far, but for the most part the dialogue style and the ways that people consider problems read as realistic for this time period, which differs from the mundane Regency era only in the presence of glamour. It seems like illusion at first but ends up going further-- properly constructed folds of glamour can create light or darkness, visuals, temperature changes, music, scent, or even minor sensations like wind. It is practiced mostly by women and is viewed as a womanly accomplishment in much the same way as skill in music or dancing or flower arranging. Some men (including the character of Mr. Vincent) practice the skill as high art and draw patrons, while other master simpler folds and hire themselves out as things like cold-mongers to keep the food chilled at wealthy houses. Seeing a more detailed breakdown of how this training is passed along would be interesting, but it's implied that glamour instructors can be either men or women-- female teachers are most often governesses while male teachers are subject-specific tutors, which helps this profession blend more smoothly with the tone of the times. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The magic itself works because it feels real, with convincing rules and very real risks. Using too much glamour in a short time can send the body into shock ending in brain damage or death, but that doesn't stop people from pushing their own limits. One woman of the Ellsworths' acquaintance uses glamour to disguise part of her face, but the effort leads her to fainting, and Mr. Vincent drives himself too hard for the sake of the art that secures him a living. It may be a creative and idle pursuit, unsuitable for military uses because most folds break when they are moved, but it has definite rules and an established cost that the main characters can't dodge because they're special in some way. That, above almost anything else, is necessary to making any magic system work. The technical design of the system adds one layer of reality, and it's cemented by the beautiful imagery, particularly of the various tableaux that glamourists are called upon to perform. Kowal has just the right touch with detail, evoking the experience of seeing fairy tales come to life or wandering through a starlit indoor forest. These sequences do the heavy lifting of bringing fantasy into the world, and glamour is put to such good uses near the climax of the book that it's frustrating to realize that it's used for so little but decoration earlier in the book. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Straight-up love stories tend to bore me, though I acknowledge that that's a matter of taste, but Jane's own journey manages to work because it's about the art she practices and the way she sees the world. She has a predictable-but-decent struggle with seeing her glamour art as a matter of pure technique and theory instead of putting emotion into it, and elevates herself to new heights when she creates glamour from the roots of her emotions. When she falls in love with the fairly obvious figure, it's because they share an interest and respect for glamour and have the potential to learn from each other, not because he's smolderingly attractive or spends his spare time stalking her. One of the advantages of his low-action style is that the relationship ends up being a meeting of minds, sparked by a misunderstanding and a few fights before they manage to listen to form a truce. They don't discuss their feelings face-to-face, really, but the affection they have for each other is obvious in actions and personal records-- it would have been easy to go overboard with big dramatic declarations of love, but this just works in a way that I wish more books could figure out how to emulate. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Shades of Milk and Honey </i>carries some of Austen's original charm and nails the comedy of manners tone, but there's just not enough substance here to make it memorable, in part because the social commentary and humor threaded through Austen's work seems absent here. The love story works, but I keep seeing the series in the fantasy section, and it's....a love story with a light full-of-plot-holes mystery element and a good magic system that doesn't get the use that it could. The ending could have worked, but the central conceit of the book collapses with the knowledge that secret engagements weren't remotely common-- in that era, banns had to be read at the church for three consecutive Sundays. If you wanted to get married faster than that, you needed to run off to Scotland (and celebrate your marriage through a priest at the Fleet Prison) or Ireland or the Continent. And yet, the heroine gets married a week after she receives a proposal, with no one batting an eye. The main....I hesitate to use the word villain, since he's the moral equivalent of dingy socks, but he's secretly engaged to multiple women, one of whom is of high social standing and engaged with her mother's approval, so it makes <i>no sense</i> that it's able to stay a secret when everyone involved is supposedly proud of the match. With so few characters and potential motives, any shakiness at all destabilizes the dramatic arc, and this is rather a large historical hole. Other pieces skip forward, suggesting that two characters have met and are suddenly best friends, or that two had a rapport but for some reason just don't talk to each other because it might be inconvenient for the plot, and that makes for choppy pacing. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This problem only gets worse when the narrative narrows its focus to individual character motivations and pieces of backstory. When the thoughts have been flowing from Jane's head in a steady way for chapters on end and then a clump of "it is no wonder that she at once began making her excuses" exposition falls in, it doesn't work because the wry-observer style so clear in <i>Pride and Prejudice </i>is an intermittent trickle here. Overt narrative voices from an outside source are an in-or-out proposition in that they work best when they start early and stay strong at regular intervals (think the grandfather in <i>The Princess Pride Movie</i>) as a framing device or just thread through as the sole or primary way of making comments on the world. Injecting it as a way of moving the focus from Jane's own view to making the reader feel sympathy for her by explaining what a rough day she's having grates hard, and it happens just often enough to distract from the flow of the story. Removing all instances of that voice or making it part of almost every page would work, but seeing it just once every few chapters just seems clunky. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There's not a main arc so much as several strands getting roughly equal time, and a few of the main ones are either burdened with plot holes or just don't carry much interest. The largest problem spot is probably Melody, Jane's younger sister. We learn not very far into the story that although Melody is beautiful and social graces come easily to her, she feels insecure about her meager talents with glamour when compared to Jane and thinks that a pretty face won't be enough to bring her love. This could have been a good dynamic, especially since Jane offers to <i>teach </i>Melody more glamour at one point, but the idea of those lessons drops almost immediately and Melody spends most of the book behaving like a spoiled child. She wants to be the center of attention at every turn, going so far as to flounce off to her room and pout when a man wants to see Jane's glamour paired with music, and even inserts herself into conversations that Jane is having (or friendships that Jane is forming) in order to edge Jane to the fringes of the interaction. This might work if the girls were in their early teens, or if Melody was supposed to be a villain of sorts, but she's supposed to retain some measure of sympathy and simply doesn't. She's petty and casually cruel, which makes it difficult to care what happens to her. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> Mary Robinette Kowal set out to create a novel in the style of Jane Austen (who is first in the acknowledgement section), and in that she largely succeeded, but this doesnt quite hit the best points of either of its potential genre homes. <i>Shades of Milk and Honey </i>lacks Austen's touch of satire and awareness of when the characters are being ridiculous, and it doesn't go far enough with the glamour to really make it feel as though that magic is essential to the plot and the world. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon, but I have no urgent desire to read the rest of the series. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects: </b>This is the first book in the <i>Glamourist Histories</i>. The series continues with <i>Glamour in Glass </i>and <i>Without a Summer</i>, which came out this April. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~Gail Carriger's <i><a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/02/soulless.html">Soulless</a> </i>features a protagonist of similar circumstances: like Jane, Alexia is also twenty-eight and resigned to her lack of marriage prospects. <i>Soulless</i>, however, is more willing to play fast and loose with history and throw in more dramatic pieces of magic, and that allows it to work with higher stakes and tighter pacing. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~<i><a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2013/04/all-men-of-genius.html">All Men of Genius</a> </i>is a similar experiment in the style of Oscar Wilde with hints of Shakespeare, and it flows better because it's willing to be steampunk and mystery and gender-disguised romance and a bit of action all at once-- it's a glorious piece of chaos that partakes of its source material without allowing itself to be caged by the boundaries of that material. </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286192414684337251.post-76819512263931631932013-07-25T14:00:00.000-04:002013-08-15T22:47:08.003-04:00The Office of Mercy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCiVJpJ0HiqFI7K4gDyBNoM-lEsbXns1jga-rgKYFvKwn5xe_VG5AenfPS_5hFMx6fi7Rd37fblBL6g5gRZ1RtMN102Qmv0WB5r74itgNggBc35lUnAn92vzh-MCL2DEon_eF_HOUYxjTn/s1600/office+of+mercy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCiVJpJ0HiqFI7K4gDyBNoM-lEsbXns1jga-rgKYFvKwn5xe_VG5AenfPS_5hFMx6fi7Rd37fblBL6g5gRZ1RtMN102Qmv0WB5r74itgNggBc35lUnAn92vzh-MCL2DEon_eF_HOUYxjTn/s320/office+of+mercy.jpg" width="212" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Rating:</b> 3 stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Length:</b> Average (304 pages in hardback)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Publication:</b> February 21, 2013 from Viking</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Premise:</b> Natasha Wiley has grown up in America-Five, safe and protected under glass with the rest of her community. She finds satisfaction in her Office of Mercy job, where the workers compassionately sweep those who live Outside. The primitive nomads would only suffer, and their existence threatens the immortal perfection that guides her world, but a mission to the Outside forces her to question everything she's been taught. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Warnings:</b> non-graphic genocide, moderate violence</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Recommendation:</b> If you're looking for something post-apocalyptic and philosophical, this might be what you want, but it's also forgettable enough that I don't recommend buying it new, especially in hardback. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Light spoilers in the red pen section, but it's largely either on the flap of the book or heavily implied from an early stage. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>What makes this one compelling:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">America-Five keeps watch over the area that used to be the East Coast, trying to grow new generations of people while being mindful of the dangers that lurk outside. Children are thought to control and suppress their instinctive reactions to hunger, the dark, lust, and other primitive impulses--they were useful when danger was part of life, but now peace and rational ethics guide their actions. These ethics were created generations ago by the Alphas, who believe that the highest good is to minimize or even eliminate human suffering. They thought that they had done that centuries ago, when nuclear war devastated the world and the only survivors were left in secure shelters, but a few people survived and have managed to form groups for protection. Some even remember the destruction and know who to blame for it, but anyone who ventures close enough to the surveillance systems near each settlement is eventually killed, or "swept." The people inside have access to advanced weapons are willing to use them to end suffering wherever they see it rather than let those Outside continue to live tortured existences scrambling for food. This central mechanic of the book works eerily well, especially in one early scene-- the settlements are keeping score of how many people they've swept, and the Office of Mercy workers bicker over who's responsible for boosting the count by watching surveillance and adding a new baby to the total before the sweep. They believe down to the bone that they're doing the right thing and are delighted to be better at it than other settlement, and that unsettling joy creates a backbone for the work. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The obvious next step in any rotten-cored dystopia is to tear down the killing as wrong and try to stop it, and the narrative does go that way for a while, but Ariel Djanikian excels at stepping close to easy answers and then shifting just enough to skew perceptions yet again. Discussing this element without spoilers is difficult, but suffice to say that no one involved has entirely pure motives. Natasha has wanted to be a more active Office of Mercy worker for years, and an expedition Outside to repair surveillance equipment destroyed by a passing tribe provides the opportunity when Jeffrey, her superior and mentor, supports her going on the mission. She and some of the other team members are emotionally compromised when they realize that the members of the nearby Tribe share enough language to communicate with them, and she soon embraces those feelings when she can't control them. The narrative controls her internal conflict well-- one moment she's determined to put up the Wall she's been taught to create around her emotions, and the next she's passionately declaring that the Ethical Code is cruel and can't possibly matter. For all her training and experience, the coping mechanisms have left her unprepared for any emotion too overpowering to be tucked away. Her plans and ideals seem firm at each new decision or beginning, but they deteriorate in a flood of new information and unintended consequences in a way that feels quite true to life. Natasha is allowed to fail, sometimes quite badly, in a way that many protagonists are not. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Mistakes and shaky reasoning would ordinarily point to this being more of a young adult mindset, but Natasha seems to be caught between varying levels of emotional development in a way that's supported by the settlement. She is, at twenty-four, one of the Epsilon generation, currently the youngest save for the Zetas being incubated. To the Alphas (who are about three hundred thanks to bioreplacement), Betas, Deltas, and Gammas, the Epsilons are still children who need to take time, maybe another decade, before being assigned to anything too serious or being fully accepted as adults. The narrative takes current trends about prolonged childhood and adolescence and projects them to the extreme-- if a lifespan consists of centuries or even eternity, just how long do you have to live before your thoughts and goals are seen as fully valid? Natasha's <span class="st">naïve trust and starry-eyed idealism can be grating to read in some places, the point that she doesn't seem to have heard of common sense, but it gradually falls into place as the book progresses. She and the other Epsilons are taught to control emotion without engaging in it, to avoid lust and excessive emotional attachment, to suppress outdated instincts-- in short, they're <i>taught </i>to ignore common sense and intuition in favor of an Ethical Code based on dry philosophy, and that makes them mentally fragile and easily manipulated. It's subtle and takes a while to really work, but this does a better job than most books of getting inside<i> </i>what makes these people so different from reader expectations. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The red pen:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The central plot for Natasha revolves around the pursuit of truth and justice, which sounds generic but works for her-- she wants to figure out what objectively happened during the last dangerous Tribe attack on America-Five and then frame her actions based on that moment. Her problems with taking one piece of a pattern and building sweeping assumptions from there do end up feeling realistic, but gathering information feels much too easy. Natasha lives in a society where people are reeducated for being mean to each other in public and where the Alphas seem to know everything and control all information, but she doesn't encounter anything much more difficult than the full records of what she wants not being available in the public archive. There was plenty of room here to explore the truth and the inter-generational layers of secrecy and lies beneath the facade of everyone being an equal citizen in service to the settlement, but instead Natasha just takes an unconventional suggestion from the closest thing America-Five has to a rebel and gets the answers she wants in crystal-clear details. From there, she and her allies form a plan almost immediately and no one has serious questions about whether it will work or whether it's safe, only how to get it done. There are some great twists near the end, but there's not enough struggle in the middle to make the climax really snap or enough follow-through to make it feel as though it <i>ends </i>instead of just trailing off.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The other real problem here is the Tribe. We see quite a lot of the thoughts of the citizens of America-Five; they explain themselves and their thoughts, and the calm way they articulate that when it comes to attempted genocide works so well that it's frightening. The people of the Tribe are...nicer, in theory, and they don't have sophisticated weapons, but they have almost no development, especially not as individuals. They're just a mass trying to reach for certain goals like "can we not be blown up with nova weapons anymore please," and that's filled in with very short stilted conversations and Natasha's idealistic collection of inarticulate noble savage stereotypes....which would make sense if she could ever remember seeing dirt before, or hadn't been raised to see everything they enjoy as just prolonging the suffering before their merciful and inevitable death. Natasha's own arc here has its problems, like a lifetime of conditioning crumbling after five tense minutes in the field, but the scenes with the Tribe members feel compressed at best and emotionally flat at worst. The arc Djanikian is building requires that these people hold the reader's sympathy, but they're just not interesting enough to do so except by default because they're not committing genocide. They're dull through Natasha's eyes and we're not shown what they're like away from her, or even hints of what they're thinking that they don't say, so one whole group in this culture clash has almost no dimension. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sensible though it is to have many of these characters struggle with the most basic emotions, the whole system shakes when the narrative dabbles in romance. Natasha has an obvious crush on Jeffrey, her supervisor, from the beginning, and it's implied that she has for years. Leaving aside the large age gap between their generations and the spoiler-laden reasons that sabotage their potential trust, this just doesn't work. Romances can actually flow quite well in emotionally-repressed settings like this because the flush of the first love you've ever felt in a place where it's dangerous or discouraged or forbidden is powerful, but that means they require more work and space in the narrative, not less. Essentially, Natasha and Jeffrey have too conventional a relationship: he prides himself on being above emotional attachment, but she pines after him and she's just so special, then she gets hurt and he's worried, so he takes it out on her (which is admittedly interesting because he doesn't know how to handle feelings at all). And then eventually they have agitated conversations, kisses, conversations about how kisses are irrational, more kisses, etc. Stretch out any of Spock's "no, I don't have feelings, feelings are for loser humans" episodes of classic Trek into a romantic arc and you've got a fair idea of what this looks like. And then apparently the narrative doesn't care what the middle of a relationship looks like, because they go straight from emotions to full-on One True Epic Love, which ends up coming across as twisting the relationship into whatever shapes are convenient for that particular chapter. The relationship builds, angsts, spikes, and then flops around for a while, but it only feels convincing in the shortest of flashes because these people live in a completely different world but are still having a by-the-numbers relationship. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>The verdict:</b> This a decent debut novel; it explores tropes about happiness, ethics, and the future of humanity with thoughtfulness, and it raises the stakes in such a way that it feels somewhat different. The characterization is uneven and it doesn't feels like there's anywhere to go from this ending, but I'd be willing to try Djanikian's future efforts.<i> The Office of Mercy </i>is by no means bad, but the idea of what this author might do on less well-worn ground is more compelling than the story itself. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Prospects: </b>There don't seem to be any sequels planned and there's not really room for one, but something set in the same universe at a later date might make for interesting reading. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Enjoyed this? Try: </b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">~<a href="http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/2012/04/pure.html"><i>Pure</i></a> does a good job of exploring the perfectly safe world of a dome with people trapped outside from the perspective of both the privileged and the outcasts, and the choices feel harder to make. </span></span>redpenreviewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17561851634108590356noreply@blogger.com0