Book Review: Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan
Posted on January 21, 2014 1 Comment
Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Riyria Revelations vol.1
Publisher: Orbit
Publication Date: November 2011
Author Info: www.riyria.com
Wendy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Riyria means “two” in elvish and the two in question are Hadrian Blackwater, the master swordsman, and his shadow partner, Royce Melborn, the brooding master thief. The reputation of Riyria precedes them such that even the local guildsmen know not to cross paths with them, and their skills are so great, that their resume boasts many references from lords and ladies who have used their subterfuge and even assassination services. But when Hadrian falls for a big score that goes against all their rules, unsurprisingly, they end up on the wrong end of a sword. Blamed for the murder of the king, they are set for execution, until the princess gives them a way out: kidnap the prince and take him to a mysterious prison to find a mysterious prisoner.
Theft of Swords collects the first two books in Riyria Revelations series, The Crown Conspiracy and Avempartha. These stories contain a lot of possibility, but as you can tell by my three star rating, they fell short for me. The plot and characters are set up to be amazing, but some how, they failed to truly cross the line into the realm of being memorable. They are missing the “something more” that should make them truly spectacular.
Every time I felt like we were getting somewhere with character building or plot transition, things sped up to the end and/or glossed over what should have been the meat of the development. For example, Hadrian and Royce kidnap the prince, who is a petulant creature that ends up figuring himself out in order to prove himself worthy of taking his father’s place. But there was not really a strong interaction to show us the transition. Instead, we got a long inner monologue where he realized that he had to grow up. And that’s a major problem in Theft of Swords – a reliance on too much exposition. There are a lot of moments spent divulging a lot of information that, while relevant to the overall world, do not hold any immediate importance to the events, or even slow down the momentum of the story. For example, when Royce is teetering on the edge of a step about to collapse within a tower set to fall apart and kill him and the princess he’s trying to rescue, the tension of the moment is completely lost because the dwarf goes into complete schematic detail on how he manufactured the elaborate trap. And as much as I want to know about Royce’s shadowy past, I didn’t need him to meet up with a group of bad guildsmen who’s only purpose seemed to be to detail Royce’s shadowy past. Oh and to deliver a message about a girl who needed Riyria’s help.
Hadrian and Royce disappointed me the most. They should have been a dynamic duo, but instead, I found myself wondering what the elvish word for “one” was. The characters aren’t interchangeable, but I felt that their personalities weren’t clearly defined well enough beyond “charming warrior” and “shadowy thief” to actually require both of them, save in moments when they were needed to be in two different places at once, being warriory and thiefy, respectively. Fortunately, by the end of the second book, things got a little bit better and the female characters, Princess Arista and the commoner, Thrace, likewise became a bit more interesting.
Still, I did really like the way Sullivan included fantasy standards of elves, dwarves, magic and mythical beasts, but did not place them at the forefront of the story. Here, elves are a downtrodden race and there are some enticing hints of future conflicts and interactions that I hope will be fully realized.
Esrahaddon, the maimed and imprisoned wizard, is also an intriguing character. Though he too often gets to reveal the answer to all the riddles, rather than letting our heroes do so, I look forward to learning more about him. He is a man with plans within plans that promise a lot more intrigue ahead.
Book Review: Fortune’s Pawn by Rachel Bach
Posted on January 20, 2014 Leave a Comment
Genre: Science Fiction
Series: Book 1 of Paradox
Publisher: Orbit
Date of Publication: November 5, 2013
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Rachel Bach is also Rachel Aaron, an author who put herself on my radar earlier this year after I read The Spirit Thief, the excellent first book of her fantasy series The Legend of Eli Monpress. That novel really impressed me with its light-hearted yet suspenseful story, not to mention the fun, down-earth-characters. So while we may be heading to a place a little beyond earth’s atmosphere this time around, I had good a feeling that Fortune’s Pawn would be just as enjoyable and entertaining.
Fortune’s Pawn introduces us to Deviana “Devi” Morris, a Paradoxian mercenary not content to settle for anything less than the best — and the best, to her, is a position with the Devastators, the elite armored branch of the king’s fighting force. But achieving such a decorated post won’t be easy, and Devi knows she will need a lot more experience to even get herself noticed.
Following a tip from a friend, Devi applies for a job on the Glorious Fool, a tiny trade vessel with a reputation for being a “cursed ship”. Trouble seems to always follow the Fool, and it is said that one year of security work there is equal to five years anywhere else. If experience is what the Devastators want, Devi figures there’s no better place to get it. After all, she’s confident her skills can get her through anything.
Not entirely true, of course, as we the readers can expect. Secrets and a multitude of dangers await Devi, the kind she never would have thought to prepare for in a million years, including…love? Now, what’s this? Romance in my science fiction? Oh boy, I was tickled pink when I found out, practically cackling and rubbing my hands together with glee. This is one instance where the addition of a romantic arc was definitely most welcome. I didn’t think much of Devi at first, being all brawn and ambition, but throw in her feelings for Rupert Charkov, the Glorious Fool‘s sexy, charming and mysterious cook and suddenly she became a much more interesting and deeper character.
The plot, which I also thought would be rather simple and straightforward, took a few startling turns as well. To be honest, I’d picked this one up as a palate cleanser after my recent string of emotionally-heavy books, fully expecting it to be mind-candy I’d been looking for — quick, uncomplicated and fun. I had anticipated a few action scenes involving high-tech battles with aliens to be the highlight of Fortune’s Pawn, but much to my surprise, I quickly discovered a lot more below the surface. The book is indeed a lot of fun so I got what I wanted, but there’s also an intriguing mystery here, a teasing thread that gave the story that extra boost and made it more special.
In any case, Fortune’s Pawn was exactly what I needed, with its strong protagonist and her candid narrative, a colorful and interesting supporting cast (a crew member who is essentially a giant chicken as the ship’s second? Brilliant!) and the story’s dynamic, spirited pace. All this made it a great book that was really hard to put down.
Book Review: Netherworld by Lisa Morton
Posted on January 19, 2014 Leave a Comment
Book Review: The Grim Company by Luke Scull
Posted on January 18, 2014 1 Comment
The Grim Company by Luke Scull
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Book 1 of The Grim Company
Publisher: Roc
Date of Publication: September 3, 2013
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Okay, I can be pretty out of it sometimes. I picked up Luke Scull’s The Grim Company on account of all the positive buzz surrounding the book, and ended up loving it. But the thing is, I didn’t read many reviews or any information about it ahead of time, so it wasn’t until weeks after I finished the book that I finally found out about all the comparisons made to Joe Abercrombie, an author whose work I adore as well.
In retrospect, I suppose there were a lot of parallels, but at the time I can honestly say I didn’t get that vibe at all, other than the fact both authors write grimdark fantasy about gruff and tough barbarian warriors who love to swear a lot (not a distinction held by any one specific author in the industry, really). In the end I’m glad I went into this book blind, because I found that Luke Scull’s writing shone through with his own style, not to mention the heavy focus on magic and other unique ideas found in his book made me consider it entirely on its own merits.
When it comes to a gritty fantasy adventure, we’re definitely starting out on the right track with a story that spans far and wide in terms of locale and history, featuring settings from palace halls to the northern remote highlands. Five hundred years ago, the Magelords killed the gods and now their tyrant Salazar rules the empire of Dorminia. Meanwhile, his greatest adversary the White Lady plots his demise from across the Broken Sea and seeks to free the people. Far away from both, demonic forces plague the remote mountains in the north.
Book Review: Seoul Survivors by Naomi Foyle
Posted on January 17, 2014 1 Comment
Seoul Survivors by Naomi Foyle (Jo Fletcher)
Genre: Science Fiction
Series: Stand Alone
Publication Date: February 6, 2014 (Paperback)
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Mogsy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s only January, but already I have a feeling that this is going to be one of the more “out there” books I’ll read this year. As usual, Jo Fletcher Books continues to push the envelope and explore beyond the boundaries of traditional adult speculative fiction with novels like Seoul Survivor.
COVER LOVER: Behind the Scenes with The Barrow
Posted on January 16, 2014 Leave a Comment
Cover Lover is a feature originally created by our friend and fellow book blogger, Jaedia at Once Upon A Time. Usually, we chat about covers that strike our fancy, of which The Barrow‘s cover most definitely is one, but Eisner award nominated Author and Artist Mark Smylie, Pyr®‘s award-winning Editorial and Art Director Lou Anders and the incredible scifi/fantasy cover Illustrator Gene Mollica have graciously helped me take this feature one giant step further by offering us some insight on the cover design process.
Some covers are more symbolic. Some covers focus on a particular aspect of or event within the story. Some, like this one, seem to directly reflect the book’s description of an epic, swash-buckling adventure. What factors go into selecting a particular image? How closely should the image reflect the actual story or particular elements of the story?
Lou Anders: The most important job for a book cover is that it connects the right book with the right reader. I’ve likened book covers in the past to the patterns and colors of different flowering plants, signalling to the appropriate insects “This is the flower you want; stay away from that one over there. Try this!” Book covers have about thirty seconds or less to catch the casual bookstore browser’s eye, and if they can’t do that, then it doesn’t matter how attractive they are. In fact, before the book ever reaches the shelf, its first (and arguably most important) audience is the book buyer who determines how many copies to buy for his/her store. At Barnes & Noble, that’s one individual, who buys for all of science fiction and fantasy nationally. I think it is wonderful when a book cover depicts its contents accurately and in line with its author’s intent, and we always strive for this, but an accurate representation of the contents is not as important as an accurate presentation of the type of experience the book promises. The most important consideration is that the book cover accurately indicates the promise of the book. That’s it right there. The book cover is a promise, and we need to keep that promise. In this particularly case, a lot of directions were tried and discarded, because, although they were wonderful pieces of art in their own right, they promised a different experience from the one Mark’s story provided.
 |
| Behind the scenes |
Gene Mollica: To be honest, the decision as to what kind of image is best for a certain book usually happens before it gets to me, the artist – it’s made by the editors, art directors, and publishers based on what they think is most powerful about the book, the market they’re going after, and hopefully some input from the author. Then, they call me with a description, and I concept and create the image – the model, the clothes, the pose, the setting, and the mood. There are all kinds of covers in science fiction/fantasy – I tend to like the ones that are more photographic or photo-real appearing, and dramatically lit. For The Barrow, I had the opportunity to work very closely with both the editor and the author, which doesn’t always happen – Mark actually lives nearby so he came to my office and I showed him my ideas, some models, and the costume design before we did the shoot. I really wanted to bring the gritty tone and the characters to life and I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.
Mark Smylie: There’s obviously a huge range in terms of sf/fantasy covers, though I think the range in fantasy tends to be a bit more narrow. If it works, The Barrow is a novel about some pretty grim and gritty characters doing some very dangerous and dirty work; I won’t go so far as to call it grimdark, I wasn’t even aware of that term until recently, but if it winds up with that label I don’t think I’d object too hard. It’s kind of like an archetypal Dungeons & Dragons adventure as run through the filter of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels: a predominantly street-level view of the world, loaded with (casual) violence and tension and hopefully some unexpected twists. There are all sorts of other themes and layers that run through the book – well, there are if I was successful as a writer, that is – such as the fate of women in a medieval-style patriarchal culture, the question of who you trust and why, how you decide what you’re loyal to, how history and lineage are bound up in a present reality. I think when Lou and I were initially discussing cover ideas we had discussed a fairly wide range of cover concepts, with some of them hitting more on some of those additional themes and elements rather than focusing on the main vibe of the book. But in the end Lou thought it would be best to really emphasize that gritty quest-narrative that drives the book, and I think the result is spot-on.
How much editorial input is there prior to and during the design process? Does an editor see the design before it is complete? Does the editor have input on what it should look like?
Lou Anders: In this case, I am both Editorial Director and Art Director of Pyr, so yes. This editor commissions the artist, communicates the art brief, views the roughs and art directs the entire process. I also oversea the work of our three very talented in-house designers (Jacqueline Nasso Cooke, Nicole Sommer-Lecht, and Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger).
Gene, what information do you get to work with in order to create a cover? Do you read the story itself, or are you just provided an overview?
Gene Mollica: I was really fortunate with this project because I got a lot more than just the usual brief overview; I had the pleasure of working with two very visual people who like to be hands on. Lou knew very well what he needed and what visual directions to take. Mark is a fabulous artist and provided very clear illustrations and descriptions of each of the characters.
Together we made a great team, as we continued to nail down and refine the concept. We reviewed models / talent for the photography; once we picked the talent, we then discussed wardrobe carefully so that I could start designing the costumes (all of the wardrobes for the characters were custom made by my fabulous costumer).
It got really fun when we realized that both Mark and I lived just minutes from each other – that called for a face to face throw down of who has the best weapons in their arsenal. Mark won, incredibly convenient that he’s also a collector of fine rare medieval weapons. So like two big kids we got into the costumes, weapons, baldric, belts, knives and swords – work life doesn’t get better than this.
So this assignment was a hell of lot of fun, rarely do you get this much direct insight from an editor and the author. Together, hopefully we achieved a great cover.
Mark Smylie: I might take issue with Gene saying I won the arsenal contest. Gene’s got a great collection of weapons and props, certainly far more pieces than I do, and I even had a bit of a geek moment when I spotted the sword he used for the cover of Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold (which I believe wound up being used as Erim’s sword on the cover, though you don’t really get a look at the hilt; there are other pictures from the studio shoot where you can see that it’s the same sword).
As an artist yourself, Mark, did you consider doing the cover? Why or why not? How much input did you have on the process? How do you feel about the end result?
Mark Smylie: Lou actually asked me early on if I wanted to do the cover; I think he assumed the answer would be yes. But I declined. My art style uses a mix of watercolor, colored pencil, and ink line, and I think it works well in comics or in roleplaying game illustrations but maybe less so in the realm of sf/fantasy book covers, which tend to be either painterly, photorealistic, or very design-oriented.
 |
| Mark Smylie’s Artesia |
Since I come out of comics and graphic novels as a writer/creator/illustrator, I wanted there to be a clear message to the reader: this is a fantasy novel. It’s not a graphic novel in disguise, or somehow translated into a prose work (well, okay, technically it was a screenplay first; but it was never intended to be a comic). So I thought it was important to have someone do the cover who could give it that feeling of “hey, look, it’s an actual fantasy novel.” Lou and I kicked some ideas around – I think the only stipulation I asked was that it couldn’t be someone that I already knew – and at one point he suggested Gene. I had seen a number of Gene’s covers (such as the cover he did for Best Served Cold, and for Brian McClennan’s Promise of Blood and the Powder Mage series) and really loved the idea of a sharp, photorealistic style to it. I was able to provide some details and sketches and sample photos as a kind of look-book for the characters and their equipment, and then as Gene mentioned since it turned out we lived not too far from each other I was able to pop over to his studio and take a look at some of the available weapons and costume choices. With the comic I’ve always tried to inject realism into the armor and weaponry and costuming, and Gene and his costumer have a great sense of how to mix fantasy and historical elements in the look of the character’s clothes. It was fun to be asked to be involved in the process and I really loved Gene’s end result (so much so that I asked Gene to do individual character portraits that I am using on the book’s website, at www.swordandbarrow.com).
Book Review: Ex-Purgatory by Peter Clines
Posted on January 15, 2014 2 Comments
Ex-Purgatory by Peter Clines (Broadway Books)
Genre: Science Fiction Fantasy
Series: Book 4 of Ex-Heroes
Publication Date: January 14, 2014
Author Information: Website
Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
It’s an age of trilogies we live in, so you can’t really blame me when at first I thought Ex-Communication was going to be the end of the Ex-Heroes series. Thank goodness it was not. I was so happy when I finished reading that and found out about Ex-Purgatory, because I don’t think I’m ready to say good bye to this superheroes vs. zombies fest quite yet.
Ex-Purgatory was…strange, though. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact I’ve been following this series since the beginning, I was thrown for a loop as soon as I started the first page. St. George is now just George Bailey, working as a janitor on a university campus. No super strength, no invulnerability, no flying. No fire-breathing, no nothing! Seriously, I was like, is this like a prequel or something? A flashback? What’s going on?
Well, there’s a reason why the book description is so vague. The story’s sort of a surprise, though a reader who remembers some of the events and characters from the previous books would probably figure it out quite quickly. I’ll just put it this way: you know how when you sit down to watch a Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon and like a Holodeck episode comes on you just immediately know it’s going to be weird? It’s sort of like that.
Fans of movies like Inception or shows like Lost will probably really enjoy this one. And that’s what puzzles me — I normally go nuts over stuff like that and thrive on high levels of weirdness especially when it comes to books like this; I wouldn’t have such a love for this series in the first place if I didn’t. Still, I wasn’t as on board with the story as I’d hoped. Something just felt missing here, and I think it has to do with superpowers and the zombies taking a backseat while the main conflict shifted internally to focus on the heroes trying to figure out what was going on instead.
I still really enjoyed the book; it has a lot of the things I really like about this series, including the action and clever dynamics between all the characters. I’ve always loved how Peter Clines writes about his ensemble casts, the way he gives each person a unique identity and attitude for speaking. It does make for some very entertaining scenes. Take complete polar opposite personalities like Karen Quilt AKA Stealth and Barry Burke AKA Zzzap, for example, throw them into a conversation together and watch the fur fly and dialogue flow. The satirical take on superhero archetypes still also makes me chuckle.
As for the main plot, methinks how it’ll be received will depend on the invidual reader. I think it’s slightly darker in tone than the last three books, and Clines was definitely out to try something a little different with the whole idea behind this story. Others will probably love it, even if I personally wasn’t completely sold (though, I still think I should have been. And I still feel somewhat like a wet blanket that that wasn’t the case). I just love these heroes and their powers so much, and to read about how all of them have forgotten who they are for so much of the book just feels…too odd!
Don’t get me wrong, this was nevertheless very good. Yes, it’s different but whether it’s a welcome or unwelcome change, you’ll just have to read it and be the judge of it yourself!
Waiting on Wednesday 01/15/14
Posted on January 15, 2014 Leave a Comment
“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!
Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Here cold sleeps can last decades and waking moments mere weeks. Its citizens survive for millenia, traveling asleep on long voyages between worlds. Not only is Lockstep the new center of the galaxy, but Toby is shocked to learn that the Empire is still ruled by its founding family: his own. Toby’s brother Peter has become a terrible tyrant.
Suspicious of the return of his long-lost brother, whose rightful inheritance also controls the lockstep hibernation cycles, Peter sees Toby as a threat to his regime. Now, with the help of a lockstep girl named Corva, Toby must survive the forces of this new Empire, outwit his siblings, and save human civilization.”
Book Review: Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Posted on January 14, 2014 2 Comments
Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction
Series: Book 1 of Red Rising
Publisher: Del Rey
Date of Publication: January 28, 2014
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Whoa, where do I start? My head is still reeling with all the things I have to say about Red Rising. Now let’s just hope I can consolidate them all into a coherent review without having it devolve into unrestrained, mindless gushing. In any case, I expect this book will be wildly popular — though only time will tell, of course. Nonetheless, 2014 appears to be off to a great start with debuts like this one from Pierce Brown.
Meet Darrow, a miner on Mars. His people, the Reds, occupy the lowest rungs of society. And like all Reds, Darrow is resigned to a life of hard labor, of digging under the planet’s surface for the rest of his days. He thought it was for a noble cause, that his hard work will provide future generations a safe place to call home. Except, as it turns out, it was all a lie. Mars had been habitable for generations, and the decadent Golds have been maintaining this charade all along to uphold their hierarchical system of castes and slaves.
Let me just get it out of the way now and say that comparisons to The Hunger Games will be inevitable. You have a dystopian society featuring a main protagonist who rises from the poorest, most downtrodden and oppressed section of it, hoping to destroy the system from within. But before that can happen, he has to go through a transformation to help him fit in with his enemies. You have a competition in which the hero must come out on top at all costs. The war games involved are observed by many, in this case the Proctors of the Institute as well as thousands of Aureates and important Golds who follow the results eagerly, hoping to find their future apprentices amongst the competitors.
But now that that’s taken care of, I can also tell you all the ways it was different. First and foremost, the world of Red Rising is hands down in a league of its own. The descriptions of the society and its people and its cultures all overwhelmed me. I credit much of this to Pierce Brown’s writing, which is just gorgeous. How does he do it? How does he paint the picture of a life as a Red with so much suffering, hardship, and horrors and yet still manages to fill it with so much beauty? The first chapters were simply astounding, introducing you to Darrow, who comes across as much older than his sixteen years thanks to the experiences he’s had as Helldiver, the most dangerous position on a drilling team. His people value song and dance, because even in the darkness there is a kind of hope in expression through music. It’s all so lovely, just absolutely surprising and heart-breaking.
Oops, I’m treading dangerously into gushing-territory now, aren’t I? Thing is, so much of my thoughts for what I read is tied up in emotion, and no question about it, this one gave me all the feels. There’s a keen bite to the story, which will rub your emotions raw if you’re not expecting it. Even knowing beforehand that some terrible event is going to set Darrow off on his mission for justice, I was not prepared for the number Red Rising did on my poor, battered emotions. I’m not typically one to give in to tears while reading, but when I saw that we weren’t even fifty pages in yet and I felt like bawling my eyes out, I knew at that very moment I was holding a truly remarkable book in my hands.
It only gets better. That darkness and poignancy lasts for the whole book, even when the focus shifts to the games at the Institute. Saying that all hell breaks loose at this point would be a gross understatement — but in a good way. Oh, in the best way. I expect this is where most people will draw parallels to The Hunger Games, but interestingly enough, my own mind went straight to Age of Empires. No doubt it’s the gamer side of me coming through, for I could not read about the characters gathering resources, dividing their forces up for different tasks, commanding armies and conquering other Houses’ bases and their Fog of War maps without reminiscing about some of my favorite real-time strategy games with fondness.
Seeing as how the game at the Institute makes up the bulk of this novel, this book would have been anywhere near as addicting or intense for me if not for the descriptions of the tactics and strategies involved. And yet, it is still a very human story; Pierce Brown takes the reader straight down to the trenches where we experience everything from terror and triumph as the competitors fight tooth and nail to try and conquer each other. One could hardly miss the symbolism behind it, a decadent pantheon watching on with amusement as the puny mortals below go at each other like depraved animals.
Ultimately, comparisons will probably abound no matter what. But none of them will change the fact that Red Rising is a very special book, filled with beautiful and terrible things in equal measure. It definitely has what it takes to shine on its own, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Designing A Kitsune – A Guest Post by M.L. Brennan + IRON NIGHT GIVEAWAY
Posted on January 13, 2014 2 Comments
Join us at this first stop as we kick off the Blog Tour for Iron Night by M.L. Brennan! We here at the BiblioSanctum are thrilled to have M.L. with us today, sharing with us her inspirations and insights. Forget werewolves, gimme KITSUNE! Iron Night is the newly released sequel to the brilliant Generation V and if you enjoy Urban Fantasy, then you’ll definitely want to check out these books!
Also be sure to stick around at the end of this post for our giveaway information on how to win your very own copy of Iron Night!
by M.L. Brennan
One of the earliest decisions I made when I started writing my urban fantasy Generation V was that I was going to be working with vampires. With that one decision, I waded into perhaps the most excessively written and re-written monster in urban fantasy (rivaled only by werewolves, with elves a very distant third), so my next decision was that I needed to balance my vampires out with a monster that was a lot less typical. I also really wanted to work with something that wasn’t out of the Western tradition, and after a little bit of exploration, that led me to the Japanese myth of the kitsune.
Kitsune are a fox shapeshifter that has a strong presence in the fables of Japan, China, and Korea (with some distinct differences between cultures – I went with a Japanese version, which is why you won’t see my kitsune character, Suzume, hankering after human livers, which she would’ve had she been based off of the Korean kitsune!). My introduction to them came when I read Neil Gaiman’s beautiful graphic novel The Dream Hunters (a standalone in his Sandman series), which is a very lovely and tragic story about a fox who falls in love with a monk. This is actually a good example of how long a particular idea can percolate in the back of a writer’s mind – I read The Dream Hunters when I was a freshman in college, and it was ten years later when I made the decision to use kitsune.
The kitsune offered a lot for me – they haven’t been explored too much in urban fantasy, and I also liked that unlike werewolves (which as a creature we’ve almost communally agreed on as a fairly male-dominated and chauvinistic creature) there was a really natural opportunity to set the kitsune up as a largely female-oriented society.
And that was as far as my initial thinking went. Because that was as much as I knew about the kitsune, and it was all filtered through a secondary source. I wanted to get a better handle on the myth, so I wanted to get as close to primary sources as I could get. This wasn’t perfect – after all, I had very foolishly taken Latin classes rather than learning Japanese, so that held me back from the research ideal of reading stories and fables in the original language. (I drew a big line at learning the language to do research – sorry!) I read two books of translated folk tales – The Moon Maiden and Other Japanese Fairy Tales by Grace James and Kwaidan: Ghost Stories and Strange Tales of Old Japan by Lafcadio Hearn. There are a few really interesting stories of kitsune in these, and it was how I learned how very malleable the presentation of kitsune was. In some stories the kitsune were acting maliciously toward humans, but in others they were simple pranksters who could be scolded into proper behavior. Sometimes they even acted benevolently toward those who had done them favors – and in a few really lovely stories there were tragic romances between human men and fox women. There was a complexity that I thought was really fascinating, because the agency seemed to be on the part of the fox – they were the deciding factor of their behavior, not the humans who interacted with them. Reading the fairy tales was also important because folk stories are usually representative of the culture that they come out of – read the fables of a culture and you will see what traits are valued by the society, and what behavior is being held up as an example. The kitsune in my books is a third-generation Japanese-American, but her cultural heritage is from Japan – these were the stories that she would’ve been told as a child.
In addition to the fables, I also read Fox by Martin Wallen, which talked both about foxes as a species and foxes as a cultural icon in various societies. The final book (and the best) was a graduate thesis that I was able to get my hands on through a university library loan system called The Fox’s Craft in Japanese Religion and Folklore by Michael Bathgate. This was great not only because there were stories in it that I hadn’t seen in the fairy tale books, but it also analyzed what the kitsune meant culturally in Japan, which involved an analysis of women’s positions in society during the height of the stories.
All of that was crucial background… at which point I got to take all of that information and translate it into how I wanted kitsune to work in my books. For one thing, I wanted to have kitsune in Providence, Rhode Island, and I wanted them to have a strong sense of identity – these weren’t going to be New England housewives who changed into foxes on the sly (I think that’s the plotline to the kitsune version of Bewitched, actually!). I’d built the vampires as almost the feudal overlords of the East Coast, but I wanted the kitsune to be a powerful and individualistic group (if you’re a history buff, kind of like the Marcher Lords were in feudal England). So the kitsune who appear in my books are one family unit, and are all descended from the original immigrant from a post-World War II Japan: Atsuko, the White Fox. I ended up writing quite a few powerful (in every sense of the word) female characters and elder matriarchs in Generation V, but Atsuko was one of my favorites. She was a geisha who, following the death of her entire family in the first atomic bomb attack, came to a new land, made strong alliances, and rebuild a family. She’s only in one scene in the first book, but I always feel like she has a long shadow. My kitsune Suzume might not be afraid of much, but she’s always very aware of her grandmother, who is one of a very select few people who she knows she can’t handle or manipulate.
I actually got a little bit of flack from a few reviewers about making the kitsune family geisha – some people said that it was exploitative because it made them sex workers. Geisha society is actually a really interesting piece of history and culture, and extremely complex. Was there a bit of sex for money? Sure. But there was also a strong artistic presence – geisha were dancers, musicians, singers, and poets, and during their height in the 1800s many of them were purely entertainers. There was also a social aspect to the geisha – they would be hired to come to parties, but not to provide sex. Instead they provided conversation and hostess duties. The geisha houses themselves were what actually made my decision to have Atsuko be a former geisha – these were matriarchal societies. The women ran the businesses, handled the money, trained daughters or nieces to follow in their paths, and were economically independent. For my foxes to be able to preserve their own society and customs, but not have the fear that a group always in hiding would have bred into them, they needed a place in society that was in the general social net yet at the same time distinct and private. Out and about, they look like women, but in their homes they would always be kitsune – foxes first, then women. That wouldn’t have been possible if they’d been balancing duped husbands and nosy village neighbors (everything, ironically, that made poor Samantha’s life so tough in Bewitched – wow, I did not expect that reference to come full circle like it did!).
Of course, in America my kitsune family runs an escort business, but they’ve moved into the management roles. There is nothing even close to the geisha in American society, and Atsuko would’ve been building a new life for herself in 1950s America – not exactly a time conducive to a woman building not only her own self-sustaining business, but passing it forward to daughters and granddaughters who would not be bothering with husbands.
All of this is part of the framework that went behind Suzume. In Generation V her role was much more up in the air – I had longterm plans for her, but as a big plot point I wanted the reader to believe that at any minute she was capable of ditching my main character. That changes in the sequel, Iron Night. The friendship between Fort and Suzume is much stronger now, and as a result Suze is clearly strapped in for wherever things take them. Those cultural elements were really important when I was writing Iron Night, since as I was writing I never got a sense that she was just tagging along – my understanding of Suzume was that there was a big part of her that is convinced that without her looking out for him, Fort is likely to trade his car for magic beans or possibly even walk off the side of a cliff. In this friendship, she’s the stronger, tougher one – and Fort knows and respects that. Iron Night was also a chance for me to start showcasing more of the kitsune – the dynamics of this complicated and sprawling family as well as their stories and beliefs. I won’t give too much away, but there is a moment in the book where Suzume tells Fort a story that her own mother used to tell her as a child, and it was something that I was so incredibly excited to write since I’d literally had that scene in my mind since some of the early planning stages of the series itself.
Right now I’m working on the third book in the series, Tainted Blood, and I’m getting to explore the kitsune even further there. A few threads that are hinted at as early as Generation V are just getting fleshed out, and I’m really excited about where all of it is going!
The BiblioSanctum 