Flesh and Fire: Review & Giveaway (Laura Anne Gilman)

Free books and a free stuffed meerkat at the end of the review!

Flesh and Fire [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] is the Nebula-nominated first book in Laura Anne Gilman‘s Vineart War Trilogy. Gilman dedicates the book to her agent Jennifer Jackson, “whose casual suggestion ‘write me a food- or wine-based fantasy’ … triggered the idea that became these books.”

The idea of wine-based magic is very much the heart of this book, and it’s a nifty idea indeed. Even for someone like me, who doesn’t drink alcohol.

Our protagonist is a boy named Jerzy, a slave to the Vineart Malech, who senses Jerzy’s gifts and pulls him out of the fields to be trained in the ways of magic. Slowly, Jerzy learns the history of magic, the powers inherent in different vines and grapes, and the process for turning those grapes into spellwines. The tale of the apprentice wizard is a familiar one, but the worldbuilding and detail of the Vin Lands brings a freshness to Jerzy’s story.

As Jerzy’s training progresses, we learn about an external threat, a coming danger that threatens Vinearts and perhaps all of the Vin Lands. Jerzy and his master must protect themselves against attacks both human and magical, while trying to seek out the source of this growing danger.

Gilman makes some interesting choices with this book. Slavery is used deliberately, as it is believed to be the only way to bring out a potential Vineart’s talents. Like the grape, the young vineart grows strongest under stress. That aspect of the story and worldbuilding is unpleasant, but I trust Gilman is going somewhere with it in future books.

Jerzy’s life as a slave has definitely impacted him. He was sexually abused in the distant past, and that has left its scars. Once again, I’m not sure where she’s going with that part of his character, but it’s a thread I expect to come back in future books.

I enjoyed watching Gilman explore the rules and limitations of her vine-based magic, the possibilities and the implications. That’s something I’m working on myself in my current book, so yes, I was taking notes 🙂

If I had a complaint, it would be that at times the exploration of the idea seemed to push plot into the background, and I tend to be a plot-oriented reader. This is very much the introductory book of the trilogy. But as I enjoyed the idea and the world, that’s not a major complaint.

The ending also reflects the book’s “Part One” status. It’s not a cliffhanger, per se, but this is definitely just the start of the larger story.

For those who have read it, what did you think?

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And now for the giveaway! Gilman is well known in certain circles as the meerkat of the SF/F world. She even has an ongoing Practical Meerkat column at Book View Cafe, offering writing advice to authors young and old. Gilman has offered to give a free copy of books one and two (in hardcover!), and a small stuffed meerkat for answering the following question:

Who’s going to be first against the wall when the weremeerkat revolution comes?

Leave your answer in the comments, and I’ll pick a winner at the end of the week. (U.S. and Canadian entrants only for this one, please.)

Fox & Phoenix, by Beth Bernobich

Fox & Phoenix [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] is a change from Beth Bernobich‘s first novel, Passion Play (which Sherwood Smith and I discussed here).

Fox & Phoenix is Bernobich’s first YA title. From her site:

The king of Lóng City is dying. For Kai Zōu, the news means more than it does for most former street rats in the small mountain stronghold, because he and the king’s daughter are close friends. Then the majestic ruler of the ghost dragons orders Kai to travel across the country to the Phoenix Empire, where the princess is learning statecraft. In a court filled with intrigue, Kai and his best friend Yún must work together to help the princess escape and return to Lóng City.

There’s a lot I liked about this book, starting with the fact that it was set in the aftermath of a fairy tale adventure. If you’ve read my stuff, you know this is an approach I like, and from the very first page Kai points out some of the problem with fairy tales:

“All those stories stop right there. They never mention what comes later. How your gang changes. How your best friend doesn’t end up as your one true love.”

I enjoyed the world-building, which creates a pseudo-China both modern and medieval, with magic filling the role of electricity and technology. I liked the ghost dragons and  the spirit companions (particularly Kai’s companion Chen the pig) and especially the (not-)dead griffin. I liked the awkwardness of post-adventure relationships between Kai and his friends, all of whom were changed by that adventure.

I wish we had gotten more details about what came previously, though. In some ways, this reads like the second book of a series … it stands on its own, but there was the nagging feeling that I was missing something. (Note: Bernobich has e-published the prequel short story, “Pig, Crane, Fox,” which should fill in those gaps.)

My other complaint would be Kai himself, who made me a little grumpy in the first part of the book. This may be my own personal peeve, as I find myself with no patience for traditional teenage angst these days. (I lived it; I don’t want to relive it.) As the book progresses, Kai does move beyond that angst, and it feels like he finds himself and his role again.

The book does a nice job of exploring some of the implications of the commodification of magic, and how politics and magic intertwine. But I think the characters are the strongest part of the book, particularly in the ways they’ve changed, and the way they find new ways to come together at the end.

Also, Kai’s mom rocks.

Fox & Phoenix comes out on October 13. You can read an excerpt on Bernobich’s website.

First Book Friday: Kari Sperring

It’s been a while, but First Book Friday is back, at least for today! Previous entries in the series are indexed here, and the submission guidelines are over there.

Kari Sperring (LJ, Twitter, Facebook), aka Kari Maund, has written many books, though she’s relatively new as a fantasy novelist. She joins us to talk about selling her first books (both nonfiction and fiction), and the importance of being very specific when making wishes…

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You probably don’t want to know about my first book. I realised a few weeks ago that it’s twenty years old this year. I can see it from where I’m sitting writing this, its dark-brown cover a little battered with use, though the silver embossed writing proclaiming author and title is as sharp as ever. I’m still proud of it, after all this time, even though back on the day of its publication – summer 1991, I think, though the exact date is gone from my memory – I greeted it with mixed feelings. I’d wanted to be a published writer since I was six or seven, but I’d failed to be specific in my wording. One must be careful what one wishes for: there it was, my first book, the product of four years of research and study and writing: Ireland, Wales and England in the eleventh century: some paradigms for political interaction.

It’s still out there, in libraries, on shelves, in second-hand bookshops, though it’s been out of print now for a decade or more. Four years of my life between two neat brown covers: the clean final version of my PhD dissertation, published by an academic press, without fanfare or advance, though it earned me about £2000 over the next seven or eight years. I still like that book, I like its carefulness and orderliness, its sharp clear arguments and twenty years on I still stand by my conclusions. It’s been a good friend and a good ally and in the end it may be what I’m remembered for, if I’m remembered at all. It sits there over my desk in a short row with my other five non-fiction books, and the jumble of my articles, my first career in a foot or less.

I’d forgotten, you see, as a young child, to make my wish specific. Perhaps, at six or seven it hadn’t really occurred to me that non-fiction was written, just as much as fiction. I’d wished and won and my wish was not what I’d expected. I wrote my second book – and that one was a novel – while Ireland, Wales and England was in the press, and sent to off to a handful of British publishers, and failed to sell it (though the rejection letters were very nice). I wrote the third, too, and sent it out while I was working on my next research project (which is extant in various articles) and my second academic book (which is the one you really, really don’t want to read, as it’s a reference book of the most specific kind – A Handlist of the Acts of Native Welsh Rulers, 1132-1283). That book – third novel, equal third book – was Living With Ghosts [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy].

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Phineas & Ferb vs. Kim Possible

I wanted to thank everyone for their kind words about Flit, and to those of you who shared your own pet stories. It was very much appreciated.

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I admit it. I was a Kim Possible fanboy, and I’ve become an equally devoted follower of Phineas and Ferb. Both shows have their flaws, but overall, I love ’em.

Kim Possible was about a crime-fighting cheerleader, her goofy sidekick and his pet naked mole rat, and supervillains that ranged from the mad scientist to the monkey kung fu master to Ricardo Montalban.

Phineas & Ferb is about two stepbrothers who build implausibly awesome inventions, everything from space ships to roller coasters to teleportation portals. In the meantime, their pet platypus sneaks out to fight a would-be supervillain determined to rule the tri-state area. Also, there are musical numbers.

Introducing Team Badass

Both shows are smart, well-written, self-aware, and fun. Both shows treat viewers with respect instead of talking down to kids or adults. I routinely quote Phineas and Ferb and get their songs stuck in my head. At one point Kim Possible had Michael Freaking Dorn guest-star as a superevolved naked mole rat from the future!

After several seasons, both shows did something risky. They changed things.

At the end of a Kim Possible special, Kim starts dating her sidekick/partner Ron. Instead of the tired old “Will they or won’t they?” storyline that drags out for far too long (I’m looking at you, Castle!), the writers simply decided that they would. There was actual smooching.

Phineas and Ferb just released a movie called Across the Second Dimension, wherein our heroes discover their pet platypus Perry’s secret identity as Agent P, crime-fighter for the OWCA (Organization Without a Cool Acronym). Perry had successfully hidden his double-life for the entire show, but now he got to team up with his humans, and it was awesome. Both for seeing how well they worked together, and for random lines like, “Wait a minute, I just realized you could have been changing your own litter pan this whole time! Oh, this is not over!”

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Flit: 1997-2011

I was at work this morning when I got the call from my wife that our cat Flit had died. This was not unexpected. She was 14 years old, and her liver and/or kidneys were failing.

I had taken her in to the vet on Saturday, where they hydrated her and gave her a shot of steroids to give her a few more days so we could all say goodbye. She perked up a bit, and I planned to bring her back in this week once the drugs wore off. Apparently Flit didn’t want to go back to the vet…

Flit was one of three kittens I got back in 1997 before heading off for grad school. (I asked my mother to get two cats who needed homes from the vet where she works, but Mom was never that good at math when it came to needy pets.) Flit was a cute little gray poofball who flitted all over my bedroom like a manic butterfly as she explored her new home.

She was a gorgeous cat, and dumb as a rock. She was the best hunter of the three … when she could remember what she was doing. I once watched her sprint across the living room in pursuit of a vicious fly, only to stop halfway and sit back, head tilted to one side. You could actually see the thought leaving her brain as she forgot what she had been doing…

I’m pretty sure she was part Maine Coon, although she was always a relatively tiny cat. She had the Maine Coon look, and she loved the sink, where (in the words of Janet Kagan), she waged a neverending battle against the evil water snake.

She was a ridiculously happy beast, purring at the slightest sign of affection. She had a tendency to forget about her tongue, and would sometimes lay there with her tongue poking out of her mouth, looking around like she was trying to figure out why the humans were all laughing.

Toward the end, she had pretty much stopped eating, and was almost as light as she was back when she was a kitten. But she didn’t appear to be hurting. She still jumped into the sink to see if her arch-enemy the water snake had returned. She still purred at the slightest provocation. She was still happy, and as far as we can tell, she died peacefully.

I’m going to miss that goofy cat.

The Legend of Jig Dragonslayer

As some of you already know, my book Libriomancer is scheduled to come out in August of next year.

But that’s not all! DAW has confirmed that they’ll be releasing The Legend of Jig Dragonslayer, an omnibus edition of my three goblin books, in July of 2012.

Woo hoo! Jig’s getting his own omnibus! And it’s coming out right before Libriomancer, meaning I should have two new books on the shelves next summer.

This makes me happy in so many ways. I love that DAW is continuing to show so much faith in me, in my new books and my old. I love that Jig and Smudge will get the chance to find some new readers. And it’s pretty cool that I’ll finally have my very own doorstopper-sized fantasy book 🙂

To celebrate the Goblinbus news, have a pic of Smudge throwing up his legs in arachnid victory!

Have a great weekend, all!

Questions from the Keywords

I’ll occasionally look through the site logs to see what keyword searches brought people to my web page. Some are predictable (my name, book titles, etc.) Others are rather bizarre.

It’s interesting to see how many search queries I get looking for specific blog posts I’ve done. There were also a fair number of questions people had typed into Google or other search engines. And since I had a little time last night, I figured what the heck, let’s answer some of these!

“what font is used on the goblin cover?”

Rhapsodie Swash Caps.

 “what are the chances of writing a best selling first book?”

That depends very much on how good a book you write.

“what is the difference between a arc and release copies?”

An ARC is an Advance Review Copy, a bound book which generally has not gone through final proofreading, meaning there may be typos. It may or may not have cover art. ARCs are generally sent out in advance of a book’s release in order to generate early reviews, buzz, and other publicity.

“where can fan fiction be found?”

I recommend the internet.

“why doesn’t she leave?”

There’s no single answer to that question, but I’ve written about it some here.

“why doesn’t she leave jim hines?”

Some days I wonder that myself. I think it’s because she’s a very patient, kind, and tolerant woman, which helps to explain why we’ve made it this far and will be celebrating our 8th anniversary in a few weeks.

“how much do short stories sell for?”

It depends. I generally make 5-6 cents/word for my short fiction these days. Best short story sale ever brought in $2000, but that only happened once.

“how much does a fantasy author make?”

Depends on the fantasy author. It ranges from nothing up to approximately one bajillion dollars (J. K. Rowling).

“party famale wheth woman xhamester?”

WTF? What I really want to know is how this query led someone to my site. Or maybe I’m happier not knowing…

“jig the goblin torrent?”

No. You came to the author’s website to get a torrented version of his work? ::Thwap::

“who is neil gaiman’s agent?”

Merrilee Heifetz.

“how much do first novels earn?”

Check out Tobias Buckell’s study here. (This gives average advances for first novels, but some first novels earn out their advance, meaning the author makes more money over the life of that book.)

“do readers like big novels?”

Yes.

“grisham self-published a time to kill?”

No, he did not.

“whos awesome?”

You’re awesome!

The New Political Correctness

When I was growing up, my understanding was that political correctness meant those words you weren’t allowed to say. “Visually impaired” instead of blind, “African American” instead of black, “vertically challenged” instead of short, etc.

I often find myself accused of being the PC Police. Which sometimes strikes me as odd, because I’m pretty sure I’ve never told someone what words they could or couldn’t use … whereas I often feel like I’m being told there are certain words I shouldn’t use, and that by doing so I destroy all meaningful discussion.

I’m calling this the New Political Correctness, and I’ve come up with a few examples to illustrate.

Racist – I’ve been told that accusing someone of being racist is worse than being racist. This is one of those nuclear words that is unacceptable to the NPC Police. To call a person or their actions racist is to attack and bully them. The fact that one SF/F collection after another claims to represent the best of the genre while including almost exclusively white authors isn’t racist, because the editors are colorblind and only interested in quality. So from now on, please use the NPC term “chromovisually impaired.”

Sexist – I remember the first time someone told me there was no sexism in the SF/F genre. After all, the women in publishing outnumber the men! Even though women get paid significantly less. Also, romance! (Because in every one of these conversations someone is required to point out, “But girls write more romance novels!”) Bottom line, calling someone sexist is a no-no, and will get you labeled an instigator or a devotee of fail fandom. So the next time someone mentions that works by men get disproportionately reviewed over works by women, don’t call it sexist! These numbers simply “fulfill the masculinity quota.”

Bigot – Calling someone a bigot is like running over an old lady in your Jeep, then stealing her kitten and feeding it to a velociraptor. Don’t do it. (Though if someone else uses that word, you can call them a douchebag, dick, or pretentious asshat, as these are all NPC-approved terms.)

Privileged – Some people find this word so offensive that they’ll refuse to read any post or essay that uses it. This is a bad word. A naughty word. A word that likes to be tied up and spanked hard. Shun this word, or bring shame to your family! Remember, if “those people” would just work harder, they’d overcome all societal and institutional barriers. Because everyone’s equal! So instead of describing someone as privileged, please use the family-friendly term “disproportionately equal” instead.

Homophobic – Would you believe that in the unenlightened past, it was acceptable to use “homophobic” to describe statements and actions that reflected a fear of the damage homosexuality would do to our great nation? Fortunately, we in 2011 are civilized and have moved beyond such hateful terms. So the next time someone suggests the people should overthrow the government if it ever sanctions same-sex marriage, remember — they’re not homophobic. They’re “Takei adverse.”

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I hope it’s obvious that this is all rather tongue-in-cheek. I know people disagree with me on all sorts of issues, and that’s fine. I get that sometimes words are used imprecisely, that some words are more powerful than others, and that the internet can be a hotbed of accusations and counteraccusations. But dude, when you accuse me of being the PC Police and then turn around and suggest that nobody should use the word “racist” because it’s such an ugly term? That scores about a 9.6 on the eye-rolling scale.

Brennan & Hines on Ending a Series (Part 2)

This is part two of the discussion between myself and Marie Brennan about wrapping up our four-book series this year. Part one is posted on her blog at http://swan-tower.livejournal.com/491310.html

If you’re not familiar with Marie or her work yet, here’s a quick introduction:

I’m the author of six fantasy novels and more than 30 published short stories, which puts me just a little behind him. I’ve written about people split in half (mystically, not with an axe) and faeries hiding out underneath London, and I’m currently writing about a nineteenth-century gentlewoman who travels around the world to study dragons and get into trouble, not necessarily in that order. I am a mildly popular blogger, and alas, have no fuzzy beasts to take care of — unless you count my husband.

She writes a very thoughtful blog at http://swan-tower.livejournal.com. Her latest book is With Fate Conspire, which I reviewed earlier this month.

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In Which I Tell You to Go Away (Sort of)

Over the weekend, I spent 40 minutes chatting with author Anton Strout for his Once and Future Podcast. Anton has posted our chat in Episode 2 of the podcast, in which we talk about the writing process and also werejaguars (of course), as well as me babbling a bit about my own works.

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Or if you prefer, you can head over to Marie Brennan’s blog where she and I talk about ending our respective series, and some of the choices and challenges we faced. Marie is very sharp, and worth reading. I’ll be posting part two of our conversation tomorrow.

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