Waiting on Wednesday 10/08/14
Posted on October 8, 2014 15 Comments
“Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine that lets us feature upcoming releases that we can’t wait to get our hands on!
Mogsy’s Pick:
Jinn and Juice by Nicole Peeler: November 25, 2014 (Orbit)
A few weeks ago, Orbit posted a reveal/launch of their spring to summer 2015 covers, and there’s a lot of good stuff there. Presumably some of them are paperback releases because there are some titles there we’ve already seen before. This is one I must have missed the first time around, because apparently it’s slated to be out at the end of this November. I can’t say I’ve read a lot of urban fantasy featuring Djinn/Jinni/Genies, so this one automatically captured my attention. The fuchsia cover, the “Don’t rub me the wrong way” tagline and belly dancing…heck, I find myself intrigued, in spite of myself.
“Cursed to be a jinni for a thousand years, Leila nears the end of her servitude—only to be bound once again against her will. Will she risk all to be human?
Born in ancient Persia, Leila turned to her house Jinni, Kouros, for help escaping an arranged marriage. Kouros did make it impossible for her to marry—by cursing Leila to live a thousand years as a Jinni herself.
If she can remain unBound, Leila’s curse will soon be over. But Ozan Sawyer, a Magi with the ability to See, Call, and Bind jinn has other plans. Oz needs Leila to help him penetrate Pittsburgh’s steel-soaked magic, a juice potent but poisonous to supernatural creatures, in order to find a missing girl with her own mysterious connection to Kouros. Unfortunately for Leila, becoming Bound to Oz may risk more than just her chance to be human once more—it could risk her very soul…
Jinn and Juice is the first in a new series by fantasy writer, Nicole Peeler, set in a world of immortal curses, powerful jinni and belly dancing.”
Guest Post: “In Defense of Fluff and Fun” by Erin Lindsey
Posted on October 7, 2014 9 Comments
You may have caught our review (and GIVEAWAY too!) of The Bloodbound last week, and today we are excited to have author Erin Lindsey on board to talk discuss the novel and her approach to world-building. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and if you haven’t checked out our giveaway yet, there’s still time! It is an excellent book with its perfect mix of fantasy and romance, and not to be missed.
IN DEFENSE OF FLUFF AND FUN
by Erin Lindsey
Recently, I came across an article by Justin Landon on Tor.com [http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/09/book-review-the-broken-eye-brent-weeks] that made me sit up and say Yes.
I
n fact, it made me sit up and say something a little more emphatic than that, but I’m trying to keep it PG here.
The post was primarily a review of THE BROKEN EYE by Brent Weeks. The part that made me sit up and take notice, though, was this:
“The frustration I have … is [the suggestion that] there’s something wrong with pulp, and that epic fantasy should necessarily have some larger agenda. … Is it enough to merely entertain? I believe this argument is at the core of a lot of criticism that surrounds epic fantasy.”
I couldn’t agree more, and in fact I’d extend the argument to SF/F in general. Somewhere along the line, it has become a virtual truism in speculative fiction that it isn’t enough merely to tell a good story. A book might be wildly entertaining, but if it isn’t tackling some Big Issue, then it falls short. At the very least, it should challenge genre tropes, subvert expectations, dazzle us with meticulous research and thought-provoking what ifs. It should be meaningful.
The thing is, I don’t buy that. In fact, I think it’s rubbish.
I admire a complex, thought-provoking tale as much as the next person. Guy Gavriel Kay’s TIGANA made me want to hang ‘em up forever, because there was just no way I could ever craft something that brilliant. The commentary on the importance of identity and control of the historical narrative… it resonated so much with me. But you know what? I’ve had just as much fun reading what Landon refers to as “charismatic fluff” – and I’m not ashamed of it. Where is written that SF/F has to be cerebral to be good?
I have a similar attitude when it comes to world-building. One of my biggest pet peeves as a reader of fantasy is gratuitous world-building – “gratuitous” being the operative word here. World-building is a necessary – and wonderful – feature of the genre. But there is a fine line between adding depth and texture and indulging in unnecessary flourishes that don’t actually enhance the story in any meaningful way. Do I really need to know the two hundred year backstory of the hero’s family estate? Is it important to the plot that the spiced mutton being served at this meal is stewed in cherries because that’s the way King Unpronouncablename decreed it must be prepared during the Reign of Terror and it’s been like that ever since? Do I need the entire theology of the world to be crammed into Book 1 of the series? I love it when these kinds of details are folded in gradually and elegantly, in ways that enhance the story. Too often, though, they’re a detour, a scenic route taken not for the reader, but for the author, just to show that s/he’s thought it through. As a writer, I certainly understand the impulse – you’ve created a three dimensional world, and you want to show it off – but as a reader, I often find it disruptive. It doesn’t enrich the story, but intrudes on it. At worst, it can come off as self-indulgent and boring.
So how much is too much? I think it comes down to taste. As with descriptive language, romance, and so many things, some like a heavier hand, some a lighter touch. Somehow, though, it seems as if elaborate world-building, like thought-provoking themes, has become a requirement for the genre, a once-size-fits-all criterion against which all contenders will be measured. I think that’s a shame.
No surprise, then, that as an author, I tend towards minimalism. With THE BLOODBOUND, I made a conscious effort to focus on characters rather than magic systems and religions and backstory. I didn’t have a Message, and the themes I’m playing with are certainly not new. As it says in my author bio, I wanted to create the perfect summer vacation novel. I wasn’t out to re-invent the wheel – just to make it the shiniest, fastest, most entertaining wheel it could be. Because for my money, those sorts of books are often the most enjoyable.
Your mileage may vary. But that’s the beauty of speculative fiction – it’s all about variety.
Or at least, it should be.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erin Lindsey is on a quest to write the perfect summer vacation novel, with just the right blend of action, heartbreak, and triumph. The Bloodbound is her first effort. She lives and works in Bujumbura, Burundi, with her husband a pair of half-domesticated cats.
Graphic Novel Review: All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
Posted on October 6, 2014 5 Comments
All-Star Superman, Vol. 1 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
Genre: Superheroes
Publisher: DC Comics (2007)
Author Info: www.grant-morrison.com
Artist Info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Quitely
Wendy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Poor Superman is always going to start off on the wrong foot with me and having him written by Grant Morrison doesn’t make things much better. Fortunately, I’ve read Morrison’s We3, where he lets Quitely’s art do what it’s supposed to do: tell the story–so I expected to see as much here. Secondly, Morrison’s approach to this series pleased me, as he stated in the planning stages that he did not want to rehash Superman’s origin story yet again. The point of All-Star Superman is to give us the essence of the character, which is what I have been looking for all this time.
Superman fans who have seen my low ratings of other tales such as Superman: Birthright and Superman: Earth One, while I praise alternate, darker visions of the characters like Superman: Red Son and Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, probably think I’m trolling. What I have actually been doing in my readings is trying understand why people like this character that just doesn’t make sense to me. “He’s one of us,” is something that I’ve been told many times, but I just can’t buy it. He’s a god disguising himself as a human. That’s not fitting in. That’s just damn good acting. “But you read stories about people who command the weather and shoot laser beams out of their eyes,” people argue. I sure do, but for me, the X-Men have always been human beings first. The world as a whole might hate them from time to time, but the X-stories have always given the mutants a place to belong within their own community. They always have a place where they can be themselves, without pretending. Meanwhile, Superman fans have tried to convince me that Kal’El is the very same. Certainly he wants that, but how can he ever have that when he is completely alien? Yes, he has moments of weakness thanks to kryptonite where he gets to experience life as a weak little human being for a few days, but he always gets his powers back so he can save the day. That’s not quite a mile in my shoes, Clark.
But All-Star Superman addresses many of my concerns, sometimes in very amusing ways. Most notably, the concept of no one recognizing Clark as Superman. I like that Morrison and Quitely actually change his physical appearance beyond hair and glasses. Here, Clark is a little bit overweight, to go along with his cowardly, clutzy demeanor. And when he reveals himself to Lois, the Pulitzer prize winning investigative report, and even Lex, the most brilliant mind in the world, no one can fathom that they are one and the same, even if there is a striking resemblance. I love the way Morrison/Quitely really play up the concept of mind over matter, letting even the most intuitive minds only see what they want to see.
I keep saying that I want a well-written Superman story that helps me to appreciate the character, even though I may never like him. This is it. In fact, it is the Superman story I should have read first and just skipped all of these origin stories that try to tell a “new” story despite being forever forced into the Superman standards of Daily Planet, Krypton, Ma and Pa Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, etc etc. By shedding the need for these chains, while still working on the assumption that I am fully aware of them, Morrison/Quitely just give me a look at the Man of Steel himself. The lonely man who is loved and hated by those around him. A man who understands that dichotomy, and recognizes that can never be one of us, no matter how much he cares for humanity. Morrison and Quitely aren’t asking me to love him too, or even respect him. They are just presenting him as he is. It’s up to me to take him or leave him.
At the end of the day, I don’t like the character, but I can appreciate this “just shut up and Superman” story as a fine example of who and what he is.
YA Weekend: Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
Posted on October 4, 2014 11 Comments
Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
Genre: Young Adult, Supernatural, Romance, Urban Fantasy
Series: Daughter of Smoke & Bone #1
Publisher: Little Brown Books (September 2011)
Author Info: www.lainitaylor.com
Wendy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Karou is a nice, blue-haired enigma living in Prague and attending art school where her friends love to see her sketchbooks. In those books are beautiful images of fantastical creatures–human and beast, woven together like tapestries–and she has elaborate tales to go with every image on every page.
The thing is, the stories she tells about those creatures are as real as the creatures themselves, because Karou’s family happen to be a bunch of chimera. Karou is well aware that this is not exactly normal, but, having no clue about anything else about herself, she accepts it as how her life works. Until the angels arrive to literally burn things down.
Taylor’s world is incredible, and I love the tantalizing unveiling of the age-old struggle between the chimera and the angels, with neither side clearly being good or evil and poor Karou caught in the middle of it. The only thing that could make this aspect of the book better is if it included a full gallery of Karou’s work.
Unfortunately, the story starts to fall apart for me right about the time that the angel Akiva appears. He is beautiful beyond all understanding, and Karou is drawn to him as he is to her, even though they are enemies. Uh oh. Forbidden love alarm bells! I love a good Romeo and Juliet story, but this one just wasn’t it. When the two start to obviously fall for each other, the feisty Karou is replaced by the lonely Karou in desperate need of someone to call her own, while Akiva, who gets to tell the story from his own point of view as well, is the wounded angel who once knew the love of the enemy and is falling for it again.
Back to the part about the angels burning things down. The book takes on all the signs of a pending apocalypse when the angels reveal themselves to humanity, fighting this battle on earth instead of in other realms as it has been in the past. While we do get a few glimpses of the damage and excitement that results, that all becomes background noise as Akiva and Karou go on dates to get to know each other. Okay, it’s not that trite, but it feels a bit like that at times when they are hanging out at coffee houses after epic street battles–even if the people do believe it to be just an elaborate street performance.
Once we learn about Akiva’s past, the connection to Karou becomes obvious and so the big reveal–which is dragged out to frustrating levels–isn’t such a surprise. It’s also where the book falters further, slowing the pace to give us the truth about Karou in more forbidden love angst, complete with potential love triangle concerns.
By the end, I was disappointed. So much potential in a unique story about angels and demons and their war, but it all just ends up as a banal young adult love story. Despite the second big reveal (again, dragged out and unsurprising), there is promise for things to get interesting, but I have so little desire to hang out with Karou and Akiva much further.
Book Review: Premonitions by Jamie Schultz
Posted on October 3, 2014 20 Comments
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Book 1 of Arcane Underworld
Publisher: Roc (July 1, 2014)
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Mogsy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have a thing for heist books. That’s what Premonitions is and more, mashing up the best elements of urban fantasy, mystery-noir and dark psychological horror. Be prepared for lots of thrills along the way as things spiral rapidly out of control on a high-stakes job, leaving a rag-tag gang of professional thieves floundering in a situation none of them could have imagined in their worst nightmares.
This is the story of Karyn Ames’ crew, who thought they’d hit on the ultimate score when the notorious crime lord Enoch Sobell offers them two millions dollars to steal an ancient occult artifact – just some piece of dusty old bone. But as it turns out, that bone once belonged to something evil, vengeful, and not even of this earth. And it just so happens to be in the possession of a fanatical cult, who will stop at nothing to protect their precious treasure.
There are two main reasons why I love heist stories. One is that they are essentially a problem solving mission to acquire a quest item, with the characters using everything at their disposal to gain their goal, very often leading to some creative solutions. The second part of it is the characters themselves. After all, what’s a heist story without a diverse crew made of individuals with “special” talents? Premonitions shows us how it’s done.
First up, we have our leader, the one who heads up the crew and decides which jobs to take, and that’s Karyn Ames. But Karyn isn’t your typical mastermind who calls all the shots. She has a condition which allows her to hallucinate slices of the future – a useful power when you’re the one responsible for the safety and wellbeing of your crew, but it can also be overwhelming and debilitating when the visions get out of hand. To keep her hallucinations in check, Karyn relies on a very rare black market drug called Blind, which unfortunately is also very expensive. Without Blind, her visions can get very unsettling. It becomes difficult to tell the present from the tangled mess of near or even far future possibilities.
The author has done an incredible job here portraying Karyn’s struggle with her visions coming and going, as well as evoking powerful responses from me with the things she sees. Imagine experiencing scary moments like armed gunmen kicking your door in, not knowing if it’s really happening or if it’s something that will happen in the future (not like that’s any more comforting). Or having gruesome hallucinations of things like bullet holes spurting blood in the middle of your friends’ foreheads even as they are in front you talking like nothing is out of the ordinary. Jamie Schultz ends up capturing the disturbing nature of this very well, and I think it’s one of the best aspects of the book.
Karyn’s predicament with her condition makes her the most interesting character, but the rest of her crew are no slouches either. Anna is the second-in-command and best friend, ever competent and dependable. Then there’s Nail, who is most definitely the guy who brings the big guns. He’s the expert on ordnance and how to dish out the punishment. Finally, there’s Tommy, the eccentric and somewhat creepy practitioner of dark magic arts, probably because his line of work involves doing some pretty unsavory things. A mid-mission addition is Genevieve, liaison extraordinaire and a love interest for Anna, and pretty good at some of that sorcery herself. And of course we also have to talk about the client, the ruthless criminal overlord Enoch Sobell himself. Is he the crew’s ally or villain? Both or neither? There are so many surprises when it comes to this mercurial character, you’ll just have to read and find out more.
All told, there’s plenty of delicious twists and turns in this one, a treat for fans of the urban fantasy genre who are especially looking for a touch of something darker and more ominous, but without sacrificing the action and the fun. Premonitions ends up being a lot more than the sum of its parts, but it does stumble briefly on a couple of bewildering segments. Perhaps my only issue with the story is the jumble of factions involved in the main conflict, at times causing a few instances of confusion when it’s not clearly explained who’s going after who and which group has taken over which other group. In the end it’s not an issue that I found overwhelming, and I enjoyed the overall story in spite of it.
Ultimately, Premonitions ended up being a pretty damn good read. Considering how the book has been on my radar for a while, it didn’t disappoint. With this, the series is off to a great start and I’ll very likely pick up the next book because I think I’d like to know more about this world and its characters.
A review copy of this book was provided to me by the author in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Jamie Schultz!
Tough Traveling: Curses!
Posted on October 2, 2014 16 Comments
The Thursday feature “Tough Traveling” is the brainchild of Nathan ofReview Barn, who has come up with the excellent idea of making a new list each week based on the most common tropes in fantasy, as seen in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynn Jones. Nathan has invited anyone who is interested to come play along, so be sure to check out the first link for more information. Compulsive list-maker that I am, I’m very excited to take part!
This week’s tour topic is: CURSES
CURSES are long-standing ill-wishings which, in Fantasyland, often manifest as semi-sentient. They have to be broken or dispelled. The method varies according to the type and origins of the Curse: {Can include}
– Curses on lands, Curses on families, Curses on BUILDINGS, Curses on RINGS and SWORDS, Curses on people, Curses with conditions.
Mogsy’s Picks
The Godless by Ben Peek
After a war between the gods, their dead and dying laid scattered across the world becoming part of the forests, mountains, and other features of the land. Since then, men and women have awakened with strange and spectacular powers that are derived from the fallen gods’ bodies. Ayae, the young apprentice of a cartographer is one such individual, who discovers she is “cursed” after emerging completely unharmed from the flames that devoured her shop.
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
In this book, a whole land and all of its people are cursed! When Brandin the sorceror’s son is slain in a battle with the principality of Tigana, he destroys the remnants of their army in his grief, but doesn’t stop there. After burning their books and demolishing their structures, he makes it that no one born in there can even speak, hear or remember the land’s name.
Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
There are curses aplenty in the Dresden Files series. A type of dark magic, there’s a particularly nasty one called the “death curse” which is a wizard’s last spell. Another type of curse is the entropy curse, which causes luck to turn against the victim. There are also hereditary or bloodline curses that kill everyone related to the person cursed, no matter how distant the connection.
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
A debilitating curse hangs over the royal family of Chalion, one that can only be drawn back by the gods through the will of someone who lays down his life three times for the House of Chalion. Cazaril accepts a position as a tutor for the Royesse Iselle, half-sister to the king, and in doing so finds himself drawn into the mysteries of the curse.
London Falling by Paul Cornell
This book has an example of one of the most bizarre “curses” I’ve ever encountered. While on a case, a team of police officers discovers a connection between a series of child abductions and a long-standing curse related the West Ham Football Club, caused by a witch who kills any soccer player who scores a hat trick against her favorite team.
The Leopard by K.V. Johansen
This first part of the Marakand duology introduces us to Ahjvar, the assassin also known as the Leopard. Ahjvar is bound by a horrible curse and he only wants to die, taking the burden to his grave. That changes when he is offered an opportunity to complete a mission on behalf of a goddess, who promises to free him from his curse if he succeeds.
Wendy’s Picks
Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
The curse that plagued Chalion has been lifted and Lady Ista freed from her god-touched state, but the gods aren’t done with her yet! Her travels take her to another kingdom suffering from a plague of sorcery, and Ista must choose whom to sacrifice in order to free them.
The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
No better place to find curses than in fairy tales. But sometimes, the stories that are told at night don’t tell you who the true monsters are, such as king whose infidelities turned his daughter into a striga or the beast and his deadly beauty.
A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
Dragons are attacking the village, and, shortly after the “outsiders” visit the ancient ruins, ominous signs appear. Surely it is the curse of the twisted dragon king! Well, maybe it’s not, but you know those pesky villagers and their pitchforks, ready to chase away anyone who disrupts their quiet way of life by bringing on the wrath of undead demons.
King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
The thing about eating a necromancer’s heart is that, with great power over the undead, comes some pretty haunting ghosts, the results of Jorg’s not so nice deeds.
Tour Review + GIVEAWAY! The Bloodbound by Erin Lindsey
Posted on October 1, 2014 16 Comments
***The giveaway is now over. Thanks to everyone who entered!***
The Bloodbound by Erin Lindsey
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Series: Stand Alone
Publisher: Ace (September 30, 2014)
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Mogsy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Erin Lindsey is also E.L. Tettensor, author of the mystery-fantasy Darkwalker that I enjoyed so much last year. So needless to say, I was really excited to read her new novel The Bloodbound, a sword and sorcery adventure with a more romantic bent.
The book introduces readers to Alix Black, a soldier and scout in the king’s host. I always enjoy it when I come across fantasy stories that feature both men and women fighters, and seeing someone like Alix, who is a noblewoman of a sort, in the army is doubly refreshing. Despite being one of the Greater Houses, the power and influence of the Blacks have waned over the years, leaving only Alix and her older brother Rig. Alix has left the life of luxury behind, trading in her gowns and lavish balls for leathers and her blood blade, swearing her service to King Erik.
But what she didn’t expect was actually becoming Erik’s bodyguard. When the king is betrayed on the battlefield by his own brother Prince Tomald, Alix rescues Erik and is named his protector. Leaving her comrades in the scouts behind, Alix becomes Erik’s personal guard but also a trusted confidante as the two grow closer. Complicating matters is Alix’s relationship with her former fellow scout and more-than-just-a-friend Liam, but what is a loyal soldier to do when her sovereign ruler requires her protection and the fate of their entire kingdom rests on the outcome of a brutal war?
While The Bloodbound might not be breaking new ground, it has all the ingredients for a winning fantasy novel. It has a strong female protagonist, who is deadly capable without being a cutting, embittered warrior. No damsels in distress here; we see a gender role reversal from the norm, with Alix doing her fair share of the rescuing, saving Erik’s kingly hide time and time again. There’s also an intriguing, fast-paced plot involving a traitorous royal brother and an invading foreign army. The world building is also rich but subtle, with plenty of the magic, history and politics of the book’s world getting through to the reader without ever becoming overbearing. And then, of course, there’s the romance.
I’ll admit, I had my reservations when I first encountered the love triangle. Torn between Erik and Liam who have both expressed their true feelings to her, Alix knows that eventually she will have to choose between them. But love is not as important as duty when you’re a king, a noblewoman, or even a common soldier who may be more than he appears. Meanwhile, a usurper threatens to take the throne and an attacking enemy force has the dark magical power to do great evil, so the Alix-Liam-Erik situation is further muddled by political need.
While I knew going in that The Bloodbound would have strong emphasis on romance, the love triangle still threw me off a little. Considered a staple of the Young Adult novel, at first I wasn’t sure how I felt to see it in my adult epic fantasy. However, after pondering the matter, I realized that even though love triangles are a common trope, my problems that stem from them have nothing to do with the love triangles themselves, but actually how they are written. Erin Lindsey ends up avoiding a lot of the common pitfalls, opting to forego the angst and melodrama, sparing me a lot of frustration and eye-rolling. Without the drawn-out dramatics of your typical love triangle, I ended up enjoying this one quite a bit. The romance is almost in perfect balance with the rest of the novel, and doesn’t distract too much from the overall bigger story.
All in all, this makes The Bloodbound a very special book. It mixes the modern with the classic, with the result being an epic fantasy type novel that would also be very easy to get into for fans of YA romance or Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance. An engaging love story is something I feel is missing in a lot of epic fantasy, so this book worked very well for me. It gives equal weight to both the romance and the fantasy world-building elements.
All told, this is a very well-written novel that I believe has wide appeal as well as the potential to connect with many kinds of readers. It can be read as a standalone, with a satisfying story and no cliffhangers, though it does keep the door open for future possibilities. I love the author’s style: simple and elegant, which is how I like it. No matter what name she writes under, I’m a fan.
A review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Ace Books!
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THE BLOODBOUND GIVEAWAY
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for! We have one print copy of The Bloodbound up for grabs in this giveaway to one lucky winner. As per the publisher’s policy, this giveaway is open to residents of the US only. Entering is super easy, all you have to do is send an email to bibliosanctum@gmail.com with your Name and valid Mailing Address using the subject line “BLOODBOUND” by 11:59pm Eastern time on Friday, October 10, 2014.
Only one entry per household, please. The winner will be randomly selected when the giveaway ends and then be notified by email. All information will only be used for the purpose of contacting the winner and sending them their book. Once the giveaway ends all entry emails will be deleted.
So what are you waiting for? Enter to win! Good luck!
Waiting on Wednesday 10/01/14
Posted on October 1, 2014 5 Comments
“Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine that lets us feature upcoming releases that we can’t wait to get our hands on!
Mogsy’s Pick:
Clash of Iron by Angus Watson: April 14, 2015 (Orbit)
You might have seen my adoring review for Age of Iron last week, so it should be no surprise that I’m itching to get my hands on the sequel. Barring any delays, the release date is apparently only about six months away! *fist pump*
“The second book in Angus Watson’s epic Iron Age fantasy trilogy.
LEADERS ARE FORGED IN THE FIRES OF WAR
Iron Age warriors Dug and Lowa captured Maidun castle and freed its slaves. But now they must defend it.
A Roman invasion is coming from Gaul, but rather than uniting to defend their home, the British tribes go to battle with each other — and see Maidun as an easy target.
Meanwhile, Lowa’s spies infiltrate Gaul, discovering the Romans have recruited British druids. And Maidunite Ragnall finds his loyalties torn when he meets Rome’s charismatic general, Julius Caesar.
War is coming. Who will pay its price?”
Mogsy’s Fall Reading List + WWEnd Reading Challenge Update
Posted on September 30, 2014 10 Comments
As ever, I’m going to keep doing seasonal reading lists because they’ve become something of a tradition, but I’ll be tackling them somewhat differently this time around. I still have a lot of personal reading/purchased books to get to and a bunch more to read towards my Worlds Without End Reading Challenge goals, but until I get caught up a bit on review books, making these ambitious reading lists that are 10+ to dozens of titles long is going to be futile (I only managed to polish off a paltry 7 out of 19 books on my Summer Reading List)!
I’m going to take a page from Wendy this time around and keep Fall’s list short, sweet and manageable. I sense a theme coming on here. I call this my “Countdown to…” list:
Care to guess why? If you answered they’re all books related to major TV or video games releases this fall, you’d be correct. It’s my way of tiding myself over while counting down the days to some great things in the next couple of months. A New Dawn is the prequel for the television series Star Wars Rebels that I’m really looking forward to check out. I also need to catch up with the latest World of Warcraft novel before the next expansion Warlords of Draenor comes out. Same goes for the Dragon Age novels, before DA: Inquisition hits shelves this fall.
So, I should have plenty of time to fit those in before the end of December rolls around. If you’re curious about what my reading list looks like for the more immediate future though, behold my October Priority TBR:
I expect to be getting to most of these this month (I’m not so delusional as to believe I’ll get to ALL of them…but I can try!) so keep an eye out for the reviews.
Now for the WWEnd Reading Challenge updates. At the beginning of the year, my co-bloggers and I decided to participate in their Roll-Your-Own Challenge and I chose to do three: the Women of Genre Fiction Challenge, the Young Adult Reading Challenge, and the Read the Sequel challenge.
The titles I’ve chosen towards these goals have changed somewhat, due to various factors like new releases, availability of the books at the library, and of course, WWEnd updating their database so that a lot more options are open to me now, and I was able to redo my lists using a lot of the books I’ve reviewed earlier this year.
Technically, I’m pretty sure I’ve completed all the challenges already. In spite of the expansion to their database, it’s still not comprehensive and there are a bunch of titles I would have liked to put on that aren’t up there. But the way I see it, 2014’s still far from over, and that just keeps giving me something to work towards.
Angry Robot Backlist Boost: An Interview with Cassandra Rose Clarke
Posted on September 29, 2014 18 Comments
Earlier this year I got an email from Angry Robot about their Backlist Boost, and I loved the idea. After all, we always hear so much about the new and upcoming books, it can be easy to forget there’s a whole trove of wonderful preceding titles that deserve more attention too.
A book and author that came to mind immediately was The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke. I read this wonderful novel earlier this year, and in case you missed it, here’s my review. So much has happened since its publication, including a nomination for the Philip K. Dick Award as well as new books and deals for Cassandra, so it’s great to be able to catch up. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming her to The BiblioSanctum and I hope you enjoy the interview!
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Mogsy: Hello, Cassandra! Welcome to the BiblioSanctum and thanks for joining us today!
Cassandra Rose Clarke: Glad to be here!
M: As part of Angry Robot’s Backlist Boost feature, I’d love to talk to you about The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, a book I read and enjoyed earlier this year – and one that I feel is deserving of a lot more attention! For those not familiar with it, can you tell us a bit more about the book?
CRC: The Mad Scientist’s Daughter is a science fiction fairy tale that follows the relationship between Cat, a human woman, and Finn, a life-like android her father brings home when she’s a child. They grow up together, but when Cat becomes an adult, she’s forced to confront what her relationship with Finn really means.
M: From Romeo and Juliet to Cat and Finn, I have a weakness for tales of forbidden love. What made you want to explore this theme?
CRC: I’ve always loved forbidden love, too! In particular I like forbidden love that comes from the characters themselves, where they’re sabotaging their own happiness because of their own biases and misperceptions (as opposed to the sort where the relationship is challenged from the outside). That was one of the big things I wanted to explore with MSD—what are the emotional and moral considerations of being in love with an android?
But at the same time, I also just wanted to tell an epic, angsty love story. One of the big inspirations for this book was actually gothic romances like Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights—I wanted to capture the feel of those books in a science fiction milieu.
M: Finn is an interesting character, being a completely sentient robot that looks and acts human, but at the same time he is specifically programmed to help perform duties for his owners. Did you draw inspiration from anywhere when writing his character?
CRC: Probably my biggest inspiration for Finn was Data, from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was rewatching the series during the same period that I was working on the book, and it got me thinking about the idea of robots wanting to be human, or wanting to experience human emotion. Part of me wonders why they would want to experience such a thing—it seems like human hubris to assume that a robot, our creation, is automatically going to want to be like us. (Our flesh and blood children don’t turn out like us most of the time.) So with Finn, I was interested in writing a character who did not want to be human but instead had humanity foisted on him by the people around him, including people that he loved and cared for—it wasn’t enough for him to love them as a robot, but he had to love them as a person, too. It ties back into my wanting to look at the implications of falling in love with a robot.
M: Cat ends up in a pretty tough place, torn between her feelings for Finn and knowing that their future together is uncertain. There are a lot of intense, heart-wrenching emotions involved on all sides. Did that present any interesting writing challenges?
CRC: I loooooove writing emotional scenes like that. I find most people, when they’re writing, have certain scenes they write toward, “candy” scenes that help them get through the connecting scenes they may not be as excited about. The heart-wrenching scenes were my candy scenes. I tend to get really emotionally invested in my books and in my characters, and there’s something so cathartic about throwing characters together and having them bounce off each other the way they do in The Mad Scientist’s Daughter. It’s like watching a sad movie. Sometimes you just want to cry at the end of something.
A pic of one of Mogsy’s favorite shirts (sorry, it just seemed so perfect to include it here): Know Your Android ABCs
M: What are your favorite books, movies, shows, stories, etc. about robots, androids, cyborgs and automatons?
CRC: I really like Data on Star Trek, as I talked about above. I also love the synthetics in the Alien movies. There are four of them total and they all have different personalities, different motivations, different levels of self-awareness, and different ways of interacting with the humans around them. I think it’s interesting how what’s essentially a twist in the first movie (“He’s a damn robot!”) became an integral part of the mythology of the series later on. In terms of written robots, one of the best robot stories I’ve ever read is a story called “The Robot’s Twilight Companion,” by Tony Daniels. It’s about a robot-robot, as opposed to an android, and it’s absolutely harrowing and heart-breaking.
M: Of course, you have written a lot of other works, including several Young Adult novels that were published by Strange Chemistry. Briefly can you tell us about those books?
CRC: The YA books are considerably different from Mad Scientist’s Daughter! They’re a series of YA adventure fantasies, the first of which is called The Assassin’s Curse. The book follows the adventures of a pirate named Ananna as she gets tangled up with an accursed assassin named Naji. It is another love story, though!
The first two books in the series form a duology. The third book in the series, The Wizard’s Promise, is the start of a new duology about Hanna, a young fisherman’s apprentice who was named after Ananna and seeks to live up to her namesake. She gets thrown into her own adventure, too! Sadly, plans for completing the duology are up in the air due to the closing of Strange Chemistry this year, although I do hope to finish the series eventually. I really love the characters and the world and want to return to it soon.
M: I’m an avid reader of adult speculative fiction but I’m also a firm believer that the Young Adult genre should not be overlooked. What are some great things about writing YA? You bio also states The Mad Scientist’s Daughter was your first adult novel. Were there any interesting new experiences?
CRC: I actually wrote The Mad Scientist’s Daughter before I wrote my YA series! I began the YA series as a challenge to myself—not to write YA specifically (I wasn’t really thinking about the age group) but to write something plot-driven and centered around adventure and general awesomeness. Having gone through a graduate creative writing program, I was most comfortable with interior-driven literary fiction. Writing The Assassin’s Curse was definitely interesting. One of the biggest differences was that I had to do a lot more rewriting and re-outlining than I did with The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, which more or less came to me wholesale. But it was so satisfying to see The Assassin’s Curse finally come together in the end.
To answer your first question, one of the great things about writing YA, particularly speculative YA, is that you don’t feel as beholden to certain tropes and expectations they way you might in adult science fiction. There’s a lot more rule-breaking that goes in YA that’s a lot of fun to write.
M: I saw recently on your site that you had signed a new book deal with Saga Press. Congratulations! What’s the new book or other projects can we look forward to from you in the future?
CRC: Thank you so much! The new book is another adult novel about robots, although it’s much different in its scope and approach than The Mad Scientist’s Daughter. Its called Our Lady of the Ice and it follows four people living in a domed Argentine colony in Antarctica as various factions—robots, humans in favor of Independence, gangsters—struggle for control of the city. I had a lot of fun writing this one and I can’t wait until its out in the world, which should be fall of next year.
M: I also saw that you were a NaNoWriMo participant! Wrapping things up here, are there any parting words of wisdom you want to share with those (including myself and my co-bloggers!) who will be heading into NaNo this November, or any writing advice in general?
CRC: NaNo is great! The funny thing is that, while I have written 50K on one project in a month (Mad Science Daughter was such a project), I’ve never officially “won” NaNo. Yet I still join up every year, because I love the community that builds up around it! I think anyone interested in writing should participate in NaNo at least once. For those of you who already planning to participate, I think the best thing to remember is that even if you “lose,” you really didn’t. I mean, you still got some words down, right? Whether it’s 50K or 50, you’ve got started on a story, and that’s what counts.
Thanks so much again, Cassandra! It was awesome chatting with you! For more information about Cassandra Rose Clarke and her books, please visit her website at:
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