I wish I had more time to read. Isn’t that the writer’s lament? We spend all our time writing (or cleaning the kitchen to avoid writing,) and hear over and over again that ‘if you write, you have to read.’ A good friend of mine had something of an argument against that old trope you can read here.
Still, I actually like reading, and so I still wish I had more time to read. It recharges batteries when its good and when its bad, well, honestly I fling it across the room and vent about it to my husband for a day and a half. After that, I’m rededicated to write something awesome to make up for the bit of crap I’ve just read. (I imagine this is a grand cycle, all the world over, writers are reading each others work, hating it, and writing out of spite so that their work can be hated and the cycle goes on unbroken.)

So anyway, I make myself time to read from time to time. Especially when I get a book from the wonderful Laura Ann Gillman with a request for review. And so, on to The Betrayal by Pati Nagle.

How Did I Find this Book: Well, as stated earlier, I got this book in the mail. (Yay free books right to my house!) I did a little further recon after I got it, checking out the writer’s site and so on. I like to have a background idea of what I’m getting into when I start something new. Ms. Nagle’s page for this book is pretty neat. There’s a calendar, detailed outline of the clans and other aspects of world building. I gotta say, I was pretty impressed with the amount of ‘off scene’ detail went into the background of this book. I’m usually luke warm about the idea of heaps of world building going into a fantasy novel since it seems like it gets in the way of just sitting down to write the thing. Since The Betrayal is sitting on my bookshelf now, I can say Ms. Nagle didn’t fall into that trap, and her world building worked out nicely.

The Good: So here’s where I give a disclaimer. This time is no exception. I don’t read fantasy, I rarely like fantasy, and so I don’t usually feel like I’m a fair audience for a fantasy novel. There’s nothing wrong with the genre, it’s simply a matter of personal taste. That said, I read this book with an open mind and I don’t regret the time at all. (Hint: I did not throw this across the room.) It’s a story with elves and vampire elves and magic and just enough sex to interest me without getting smutty. What really impressed me was that Ms. Nagle managed to create badguys who made sense. The villainous evil vamprie elves seemed reasonable, actually, even their mysterious and bloody leader, a cold blooded monster woman, came across with just the right pathos to be interesting. I cared about her and her story as much as the heroines story, and that’s a hell of a thing to do while keeping the bad guys bad. For a fantasy novel, the writing wasn’t over the top and purple. If it didn’t have some shades of violet in it, it wouldn’t have read like fantasy, but it didn’t hit a point where I wanted to put on a monocle and drink Earl Gray while reading. The sex was just as it should be. Pretty real, a little hot, and seemed to exist to either forward the plot or deepen the characters which is just what I want out of sex.

The Bad: Flowery language, romance all over the place, monsters and a bit of renaming real world things to make them more… fantasyish… I can’t say any part of that was awful, but I’m sure some sticklers might not be able to get past that sort of thing to enjoy the book on what makes it unique. Well, boo for them. I bet they hate Santa too.

Who Will Like this Book: Fantasy fans who like their stuff a bit romantic. Romance fans who think elves are interesting. Writers who want to see villains done sympathetically. People who like vampires, sparkely or not. Me when I get around to reading it a second time.

Who Won’t Like this Book: I mean, if you’re a non fantasy reader and don’t otherwise appreciate the genre, (coughD&Dcough) I don’t know how you’d get into this. It fits nicely into its genre without being stale, but I didn’t feel like it did a lot to reach out of the genre. It doesn’t have too, not every book out there needs to break boundaries. It’s okay, I’ll read it twice for the sake of both of us.

Up Next: DEL TORO’S THE STRAIN!!! WOOO!!! I’ll admit, I started this already on vacation. I couldn’t resist. Boys and girls, you are in for a treat if you’re headed into this book anytime soon. More later.

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I’ve had the privilege of getting a copy of Tobias S. Buckell’s collection, Tides from a New World, and was honored to read it since the author himself sent it since it to me. (Twitter is a fantastic tool, ain’t it? Man I love free books.)

Let me start by saying that as far as collections go, I can’t think of the last collection of short stories I read that felt like they suited the title so well. Tides feels wet, liquid, and fluid in its movement from one story to another. Sometimes in a collection, I am caught up in writer commentary or looking at the story selection as a whole (A minor failing of mine that’s probably no fault of the author.) In Tides, I enjoyed the brief breaks in storytelling to give me an idea of Buckell’s process and evolution of a writer, but remained a series of stories that felt right, reading one right after another.

There’s a good selection here, from Buckell’s earliest work, up to work written specifically for the collection. Though I felt the stories went well together, there’s enough variety in style, voice and characterization that it never felt monotonous.

Buckell’s unique history colors his work without staining it, and especially in the stories that directly relate to the sea, I can feel a deep connection between his island life and a tie to the water. All of that comes together to make Tides feel different and special without being inaccessible.

I could talk about any number of stories in the collection, but the one that really grabbed me and wouldn’t let go was a story he wrote with Ilsa Bick, titled “Shoah Sry.” The story is, at its base, a great ‘what if’ story. What if men were extinct and the human race went on as generations of women cloning themselves? What stands apart isn’t the idea that some women might develop a cult-like desire to bring ‘man’ back from extinction, but the seductive and silken way the story is told. It isn’t all style, the action is real and feels it, (painfully so in places.) There’s indication of some awesome hardcore science going on, but it feels so very seductive and lush that I just accept concepts like the living ships and their odd relationship with the pilots because I’m more interested sharing the feeling of the story as it flows along. I might question some of the choices made to explain the differences between men and women, but the rest of the read is so smooth and satisfying that I felt more like I was nitpicking than anything else.

All in all, I loved the collection and despite having read it, I look forward to picking up a copy for myself. To those of my readers who enjoy sci-fi, I’d highly recommend it. I’m greatly looking forward to watching Buckell’s career and progress, this collection has turned me into a fan.

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So let me start off by saying, it’s about three hours after my bedtime, but I couldn’t go to sleep without telling you about Patricia Wrede’s Thirteenth Child. I’d actually planned to post this sometime later today, on release day and all, but I can’t wait. I’m writing this in a bit of fit of passion, so you’ll forgive me for that. (My class tomorrow might not, but they’ll just have to learn around my snoring.)

I’d picked it up again earlier today to reread the second half because I wanted to give it a far shake before reviewing it, and ended up reading the entire thing in more or less one sitting. (Much to my understanding husband’s dismay. I think he remembers what my eye color looks like.) Okay, okay, without further distraction, the review.

How I Found This Book: This was actually an ARC sent to me by the lovely Laura Anne Gilman. She was looking for, as she put it, galley slaves to read galleys and ARC copies, I posted on her LJ I was interested, and I got free books out of the deal. The internet is a beautiful place. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I signed up, because frankly I would have been mad at myself for the rest of my life if I’d never read this book. I cannot wait to see more in the Frontier Magic series, YA or not YA, good writing is good writing.

The Good: So the good, where to start really? Strong but still believable and sympathetic female lead? Check! Beautiful World Building full of neat touches I hadn’t seen before and ideas I’d wished I’d dreamed up? Check! A vast and believable alternate history that unfurled before me without ever feeling like info dump? Double Check! Characters with language all their own? Check and check. Without giving anything away, this is, simply put, the best coming of age western steampunk fantasy adventure I’ve ever read, and I’m a big fan of Weird West. Wrede does an amazing job of giving the reader the feeling that Eff, the first person narrator speaks with a dialect from the times, without it ever getting in the way of the reading. Beyond that, her pacing is just brilliant. As I commented to my husband while reading, “Ten years just flew by for this little girl, more or less, and I don’t feel like it was rushed, that I missed anything, or that it wandered around like I so often do with time spanning fantasy.” He said something like, “yes dear,” and let me get back to my studious reading. As a mother with a daughter myself, I couldn’t be more excited to know I’ll be able to hand this book to my budding frontiers’ woman some day and know that the main character Eff is someone she can look up too without me worrying about it. At a pivotal moment in the book, when Eff decides what she wants to do with her life, making a huge step in her development, I felt this motherly swell of pride as if Eff were my awkward teenage girl, and now, she’d grown up and made a good choice, so I didn’t have to worry about her anymore. What a great feeling to get out of a book. Ms. Wrede, seriously, when do I get more of this story?

The Bad: In the interests of fairness, I’d have to say there was a time or two when Eff’s worrying and fretting got to be a little nerve racking. Sometimes it seemed it was just an endless cycle of her worrying over nothing, being reassured by someone she respected, but then going back to worrying a few pages later. Of course, just as soon as that feeling flared up, I remember back to when I was an awkward teenage girl, how I worried about everything and was just so sure I would ‘just turn out wrong’ and Eff’s worries seemed less silly. I’d say that’s about the only thing that stood out as why this book was YA instead of just fantasy. I still want to give props to Wrede, however, for remembering the sentiments of that age in a way I hadn’t even without been all that far removed from my teen years myself.

Who Will Like This Book: If you know a tween or teen girl who’s nervous but special, only she doesn’t know she’s special, get her a copy of this book immediately. If you know any youngin’ who likes Harry Potter but isn’t all that into the sheer Britishness of the Potter series, get them this book. Get this book for women you know with daughters, I’d be curious to see how many other moms got the same swell of pride I was hit with. And most importantly, if you like the Weird West, you ignore the YA category and go get this book for yourself. No, really. Go ahead. I’ll wait right here.

Who Won’t Like This Book: Some of Eff’s more unreasonable girly traits and worries might turn off a young boy, but I think so much of the story is just so adventurous, it might not matter to them. Other than that, I can’t come up with any good examples. No really, read this book.

Next Up: I’m going to try to finish up Mark Henry’s Roadtrip of the Living Dead, (best sex scene ever, I’m not even kidding,) we’ll see what happens from there.

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So to be perfectly honest, I’ve been going back and forth on whether on not I actually wanted to write this review. It basically came down to ‘not burning bridges’ in a very small universe, or being honest with my readers. (I know, all three of you.)

When I weighted it out, I decided a bad review treated fairly and note based on gut reaction might be better for the internet as a whole then a blank space. Plus, that way, as new readers show up, (I’ll welcome you, reader number four,) they can feel secure that I’m reviewing for honesty and not just for links and incest.

So without further ado, my review of Brian Keene’s first novel The Rising. Not his last book by far, God bless him, I never intended to review only new books, however, so bare with me.

How I Found This Book: Do you know, I’m not sure? I think it’s one of those convoluted social networking messes, like a guy who knows a guy invited me to Ning network and I followed him back on Twitter and then he mentioned Keene, and I was like, ‘I want more writers I love,’ so I went out and picked up this book. (Internet ties always make me think in run-on sentences.)

That said, let me tell you, I really really wanted to love this book. I wanted to pick it up and love every goddam page of it and eat if for breakfast and run out and buy everything Keene ever wrote and be a fangirl and run screaming through the rain to get to the front of the line at book signings.

So, you know, the fact that I actually kind of hate this book A LOT makes the possibility of those other things happening pretty slim.

Lemmie see, a book with a construction worker, a old priest, and a ex junkie ex hooker team up to save the construction worker’s son from the zombie hoard? Where the hell do I sign up? I usually hate the synopsis on the back of the books. In this case, I actually wish the book fit it’s back cover. Alas, not so much.

The Good: Erm. Well. You know, um. Okay, that’s not fair. To be fair, this book has a lot going for it. Keene’s got a real gift with sensory detail, which is important in a zombie novel. There are things in the book that are really truly gross in an enjoyable way, and I think that was the writer’s intention. At one point he describes the smell of a man’s infected leg not unlike a microwaved hotdog. I don’t know if this is completely true, but it sure was vivid. I’ll also note that this is a first novel, and maybe some of the problems I had with it had more to do with Keene exorcising some demons then any actual defect in his personality. Who knows, right? Also, there are some KILLER ideas in there. Sentient zombies? Check. The host of Hell? Check. The military going crazy and trying to take over? Check. A heartfelt search to save a man’s estranged son? Well, most of a check.

The Bad: The problem is, none of those good ideas got followed completely, while Keene instead chose to focus on a strange rape fixation and this weird ‘all people are bad, or if not, they’re dead’ philosophy that seemed forced. Time and time again, the characters run into people who have gone from normal to people to mustache twirling evil in the few months since the dead started to walk. I understand that without civilization, people are likely to get WAY more selfish and blah blah, but Keene’s focus seems to all but ignore the zombies and focus on the ‘evil that men do’ in such cartoonish fashion that I imagined the demonic zombies sitting on the side lines going ‘hey, we’re over here yanno. We’ll rape, pillage and eat you too if you’d just give us a little attention.’

When I was talking to my husband about this book I had a long, feminist rant about how disgusted I was by much of the stories fascination with taking sexual advantage of the main heroine, but I think I’ll spare you. Suffice to say, when Keene decided to describe in detail a gang-bang followed by urination on the woman I assume I’m supposed to identify with, I threw the book across the room. And don’t even ask me about the Meat Wagon, a brothel on wheels that the National Guardsman build to turn every woman they run across into a sex slave. I’m sure a busy man like Brian Keene isn’t going to read this, and if he is, I’m sure he’ll dismiss it because it’s a bad review, but really, Brain, man, lighten up on the women, huh? We want to be your audience too. If you really think this is the way men would behave when society falls, I weep for your outlook on life.

So why did I finish reading it? I guess I kept hoping the last few pages would be some kind of pay off. That I’d get some reward for the disgusting cartoon I had read that far, but alas, I was never satisfied. The book brings you right up to the point where you find out if the construction worker’s son is alive or not, (you know, the reason I’m reading the book in the first place? The story?) And that’s it. To the door, no further.

The damn thing didn’t end.

I don’t know if I was expected to make up my own ending, or if I was expected to read the sequel as a result, but I can tell you one thing, I LIKE open endings and cliff hangers. I did not feel like this was either a cliff hanger or open ended. To be perfectly honest, I feel like the ending was a cop-out. Like Keene had lost his real story some where along the sadistic-rape-happy way and couldn’t bring himself back to it in time to end the book. But what the fuck do I know, right? This guy has had a dozen novels published, and I’m still 0 for 0.

Who Will Like This Book: I want to say something snide like, ‘not anyone I want to be alone in a room with,’ but that’s probably unfair. I know he’s got a hell of a following, I’ve checked out his fan community, but wasn’t terribly surprised to see a lot of military or ex military men in the forums. I’m sure they saw things in this and other books by Keene I’m just not seeing, or maybe they just didn’t see the degradation and humiliation I found so appalling. That’s not really for me to say, so I’ll just say this; true to the back cover, this book is not for the squeamish.

Who Won’t Like This Book: Other than me? Again, hard to say. I read some unnecessarily scathing comments on Amazon, but that wasn’t a big surprise. I know my husband would hate it. I figure if you want a deep psychological look at humanity and their responses to chaos and damnation, this probably isn’t the book for you.

Next Up: And in all together more thrilling news, I got my first ARC in the mail yesterday. I am SQUEALING with joy over that. It’s Patricia C. Wrede Thirteenth Child. While I don’t normally read YA, this was free and I’m enjoying it so far. Sort of a young person’s introduction to Steampunk or Weird West. I’ll have a formal review in April, so keep your eyes peeled.

Current Mood:  contemplative

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(I might end up doing a lot of these, so here’s a warm up and a great place to start.)

If you’re anything like me, (what are the chances of that, really?) than you weren’t satisfied when they told you at the end of a fairy tale ‘and they all lived happily ever after.’

No fucking way. There’s no way a family like Cinderella’s would be satisfied with her running off to the castle to be a princess. What about Sleeping Beauty’s family, now a hundred years out of date with the rest of the world? You’re telling me a child as pretty as Snow White goes out into the woods unmolested by seven guys who live all alone? No fricken way.

That said, I’ve always puzzled over what happened after the tale ended. In case you missed it in my blogs before, Jim C. Hines was nice enough to write the book for me so I didn’t have to bother.

How I Found the Book: Like most of the rest of the world, I read Whatever. When he mentioned The Stepsister Scheme, I immediately followed links around until I found Mr. Hines livejournal. Much to my delight, he was a thoughtful friendly dude with a down to earth approach to his career and his writing. The book was due out the next day, and I thought ‘well hell, even if it’s bad, at least I bought a book and supported a nice guy.’

Well shit, not only was it not bad, it was good. No, it was great! I picked it up in a Borders on the release day and started reading it while waiting for the bus to go home. I read it on the bus. I read it on the walk from the bus stop to my house. In fact, I barely put it down in the week it took me to finish it. (I read slow. This was a speed record for me.) I even read it aloud to the toddler and she got mad at me whenever I would stop.

The Good: I love Fairy Tale Princesses. I’m not going to lie to you. I love them in Disney, sure, but I love them in Grimm’s and even earlier tales. I love the blending of good feminine qualities and cleverness. I love that even when they are out witted, out matched or out gunned, a good fairy tale princess will endure thanks to her timeless grace. Grace, more as a state than a religious idea, really sings to me. I get the feeling that Hines feels similarly through his portrayal of Danielle Whitehall, the main character and his Cinderella. In short, her ‘happily ever after’ soon isn’t when a wicked scheme robs her of her new husband and possibly her life. It is, ultimately her gentle nature, her grace, and the love and faith in her friendships that really get her through.

Sounds like a stupid chick flick, I know.

It really isn’t. The action is nearly nonstop, thanks in no small part to Talia, Danielle’s companion and Hines’ answer to Sleeping Beauty. She a magically gifted dancer, and has over the years translated that dance into wicked deadly martial arts. Hines’ descriptions of Talia’s movements in combat are first rate, I could easily picture each movement.

The Bad: If you’re squeamish, or expect “Bella Sera, The Book” you aren’t ready for this book. Hines’ pulls no punches when discussing the more disgusting sides of archaic culture. Riverside towns smell as bad as fish awful, and Hines’ does fantastic job of communicating that to the reader. At times, it feels like Terry Gilliam’s Jabberwocky meets a Disney movie. (Which, it’s worth mentioning, I love, but I could see where some readers might get put off. Sissies.)

Who Will Like This Book: Anyone who loves kind hearted, deeply romantic heroines who love with a passion and won’t hesitate to break their hands on a guys face to make a point will love this book. Oh, and did I mention Hines is a gamer? Yeah, I thought you’d like that.

Who Won’t Like This Book: Haters. Men who’ve never gotten laid or are otherwise not comfortable around women. People with absolutely no feminine side. Possibly my husband.

(For the record, I’m sure that- like my husband- there are rational, good, decent people who wouldn’t like this book, but that isn’t as funny, is it?)

Next Up: Brian Keene, either The Rising, his first novel, or Castaways, depending on which I finish first. (What is leisure fiction, anyway?)

Current Mood:  cheerful

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