OMG IT’S A FRIDAY FIXATION I AM BACK LOOK AT ME

*cough*

So. Yes. I realize that this website has long since been abandoned.  I don’t even plan to update it regularly.  But I was filled with a sense of nostalgia for the time when I used to do this all the time, and I am obeying my nonsensical urge to flail around drawing attention to myself.

So here is what I am fixated on this Friday: Steampunk.

To be more specific, I went to this event tonight, Steampunk Street.  There were some really, really cool people down there.  Gorgeous artists and vendors and people in such elaborate costumes that I was filled with jealousy.  I have been fixated on steampunk for a while now, really, as evidenced by my Halloween costume this year

*pause for blatant self-promotion*

 

*resumes post*

but tonight I was just reveling in the awesomeness.  There were musicans and guys with steampunk guns and jet packs and clockwork hats and ladies with stripey dresses and amazing boots and goggles of every size and colour.  And an artist friend of mine had a booth where she was selling large beetles that had gearwork insides, among other things.  She is amazing. Go look at her gallery. (And note that most of her work is not included in her gallery because she makes most of her money on private commissions.  You should SEE the steampunk gas mask she made for someone’s Halloween costume this year.)

So. Steampunk.  It’s my thing, this Friday.

Maybe someday soon I’ll write a review of a book….?

. . . for the big one

Initial reaction to Changes:

Oh.

Oh God.

Oh. My. God.

Real, actual, lengthy review forthcoming.  Later.  After my heart stops pounding and my brain stops trying to crawl out of my skull.

Oh.

God.

Gearing up . . .

Consider Small Favor and Turncoat to be one gigantic firestorm of doom and awesomeness.  I mean, the last hundred pages or so of Turncoat are just one battle.  Say that these two books are an adrenaline rush that makes you wish you were a millionare, so that you could buy every copy available and hand them out on street corners so everyone could share the experience with you.  And then say that Jim Butcher is a sadistic freak who likes to toy with his readers.  He is an awful, awful man.  I’d forgotten how much I hate him over the endings of these two books.

Michael . . .

Thomas . . .

*the sound of me hitting the floor as I pass out*

White Night

Book 9, my friends, is when shit gets real.  You thought it already got real.  They already went on the offensive in the heart of the Winter Court.  They already dealt with necromancers.  The war with the vampires has already reached epic levels, someone has already thrown the theory of a “Black Council” out there . . . Harry has his very own apprentice, he and Murphy talked romance, etc.

But in White Night, things get dark.  There’s a serial killer in Chicago, it’s a wizard, and Harry is determined to find him.  Thing is, when he talks to his contacts, they all have the same question: “Is it you?”

Ouch.

You get the imprint of one demon in your brain, and suddenly everyone’s a critic.  It’s heartbreaking, actually.  Harry knows that he’s serious bad-ass, and he knows what he’s starting to look like to other people.  He’s even afraid that they might be right.  (Not about being the serial killer.  Just about being scary.)  Some time between last book and this one, he was with the Wardens training some newbies, they got ambushed, and he went biblical on the ghouls that did it.  People are afraid of him.  And then of course all the evidence starts pointing not to Harry, but to Thomas.  No vague evidence, either.   Stalker-photos and illegal automatic weapons in his apartment.  To top it all off, Elaine is in town, hired by some women to protect them from the serial killer.

I’d forgotten how depressing this book is.  Doesn’t help to remember that it stays like this for the next several books.  Thank God Butcher wrote the scene where security catches Harry snooping in Thomas’ apartment and he pretends to be a disgruntled boyfriend.  Rolling on the floor laughing saved me from weeping.

(Thomas didn’t do it, by the way.)

More Dresden Files

Presumably I’d be farther into this journey if I stopped messing around on the Internet and actually picked up the books.  But I’m enjoying myself, taking it slow and remembering why this series is so good.  I’m in the middle of Book 7 now, Dead Beat, and it’s the one where the veneer created by all the wisecracking drops away to reveal that these stories are deep and complex and frightening, just like their hero.  Of course it starts off funny, but then it’s all going toe-to-toe with necromancers, finding out that Bob is scary, being tempted by a beautiful demon, etc.  The first chapter of Dead Beat is like this perfect distillation of the series, actually.

And Waldo Butters turns out to be the man.  He is just so awesome.  I’m going to quote you the best line in the entire series, which happens to be spoken by this man.  He’s asking to become one of the people “in the know” about magic/the hidden magical world.  Harry is trying to avoid telling him, because the magical world is kind of ugly and terrifying.  He tells Butters that it will screw up his life to be told.

“Screw up my life?”  He stared at me for a second, and then said, deadpan, “I’m a five-foot-three, thirty-seven-year-old, single, Jewish medical examiner who needs to pick up his lederhosen from the dry cleaners so that he can play in a one-man polka band at Oktoberfest tomorrow.” He pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, folded his arms, and said, “Do your worst.”

Waldo Butters is a classy, classy guy.

And this is the book where Harry finally figures out that Murphy is a girl.  And boy does that get complicated.  Murphy is even cooler than Butters.  And I just realized that Butcher has been foreshadowing certain events surrounding Murphy since the first book.  Before he ever introduced Michael and Shiro and Sanya, he’s been setting Murphy up.  You’re evil, Butcher.  Pure evil.

Oh, Jim Butcher, how I love . . .

Oh, wait.  No, I don’t.  I hate you.  You’re such a bastard to your characters, and in turn to me as your reader.

The painful finale of the romantic breakup happens in Book 5, Death Masks, and Harry gets his shit wrecked by a couple the Denarians (demon inhabitants of the thirty pieces of silver of Judas Iscariot fame—yes, this is a freaking amazing concept, and Butcher does pull it off, thank-you-for-asking).  So, whopping injuries, no more Susan, and no resolution to the vampire war.  Ouch.

On the plus side, after their absence in Book 4 to make room for the Faerie Court, Michael and Thomas are back.  Michael’s got 2 awesome sidekicks, and Thomas turns cryptic about his motivations for aiding Harry.  Mysterious Bad Boy.  Yum.  Ooooh, not to mention the first appearance of Waldo Butters, who is one of my absolute favourite characters.  Waldo Butters is the man.  The short, polka-loving, morgue-employed man.  One of Butcher’s greatest strengths is interesting characters, in case you hadn’t figured that out yet.

All right, on to Book 6!  Even though I already know what happens in this book, I’m already bouncing up and down in anticipation of the scene in which Thomas tells Harry just why in hell he keeps showing up.  If anyone says they saw it coming, they’re a liar.

Dresden Files FTW

So . . . Jim Butcher has a new installment in the Dresden Files series coming out this week.  Yes, folks, by this time next week, I will have read and written a review for Changes.  But ever since last Wednesday, I’ve been re-reading the series.  It’s been a while, and I want to make sure I remember everything before I dig in to the new story.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for the new book.  I’m working on book #4 today, Summer Knight, where Harry Dresden goes up against the Faerie Court, and I can’t believe how much I’d forgotten.  And how much I love this series.  It’s urban fantasy at its absolute best—wizards in Chicago with a noir detective flavour and a wise-cracking narrator that just keeps becoming more complex and deeper as a person with every book.

Book #3 introduces two of my favourite characters, and I’d forgotten just how great they are, right from the beginning.  Michael Carpenter is the most amazing person ever, and Thomas Raith is a sexy, sexy beast.  I adore the originality that went into these characters.  Michael isn’t a wizard, he isn’t a detective, and he isn’t powerful.  All he has is the power of faith, and he kicks so much ass with that.  Thomas is a vampire and he’s got super-cool special powers, but he’s a totally different kind of vampire, and the only reason that his wise-ass remarks aren’t the funniest thing in the series is because Harry’s are better.  That these two become more interesting is hard to fathom, but I know they do, because I’ve read the series already.

And there’s Harry himself, of course.  He is such a stubbornly chivalrous idiot and one amazing wizard.  He just won’t die.  And every time a new book comes out, I find myself on the edge of my seat because something even worse is happening to him.  I always have to talk myself down and remind myself that this is his series, so he can’t die until the end.  And hopefully not then.  Not that Butcher is making any promises there . . .

I may not be able to restrain myself.  I may have to make a couple of posts this week, just thoughts and musings as I read through the books.  Have I mentioned yet that I have a top five lists for fantasy series, and these books are on it?  That’s right, Jim Butcher is on my top five list with the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  The man is just that good at what he does.

The long-awaited fixation?

I confess: I have a real job.  Two real jobs, in fact.  Sometimes, I go straight from one to the other with no more break than the time it takes to drive there.  I try to make time for this site.  I do.  But there are days (like today, in fact, I have to be up again to go to work in less than five hours) that reading a fantasy book, writing and editing a review of it, and then finding some piece of fanfiction or manga to get all interested in and do a write up of that . . . well, there are days it gets daunting.  Hence not hearing from me in the past couple of weeks.  I do apologize.  I just hope there’s someone out there that cared enough to care about the apology  . . . Well, anyway, clearly exhaustion makes me maudlin.  On with the show!

This week’s fixation is a manga/anime called Kobato.  I watched the 24-episode show in a 2-day marathon that I do not regret a minute of.  I am a tremendous fangirl of CLAMP’s, so the new show evoked the traditional squealing and calling of other fangirl to talk about it.  If you don’t know who CLAMP is, you should.  xXxHOLiC and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle are two of the best mangas out there, although the corresponding anime is not as good.  And happily enough, characters from those two series make cameos in Kobato!  (The really important thing to know about CLAMP is that they have this multi-dimensional thing going on—not only is it possible for a character to travel to the worlds of the different dimensions, it’s possible they have doppelgangers in multiple other worlds.)

Kobato. itself is pretty interesting.  I haven’t yet had the opportunity to read the manga, which is always a good thing to do with these authors, because a lot of interesting stuff tends to be lost somewhere on its way to the animation studio.  As usual with the show, I felt that there was a certain richness to the story and the background of the characters that I was missing out on, that I would get if I was reading.  Still, it’s a lot of fun.

The titular character is a young girl who’s hopelessly clueless and clumsy, who arrives on the earth from some other plane, stating that she is here with a mission: she must seek out and heal broken hearts, and collect the healings in a jar.  Once the jar is full, heaven will grant her wish.  We know she wishes to go to a certain place, but we don’t know what the place is or why.  She is watched over, coached along, and often angrily reprimanded by a guardian spirit named Ioryogi, who exists in this world as a stuffed blue dog toy.  He’s not too thrilled about it, but apparently it’s part of a punishment from heaven, as is his guardianship of Kobato.  This almost obnoxiously cheerful girl finds a nursery school that she immediately starts volunteering at.

The school itself, particularly its headmistress and the young man who devotes a great deal of his time and attention to it, fuel a great deal of the plot.  Kobato is trying to fulfill her mission at the same time she is trying to discover why the school is getting threatening phone calls (and what it takes to get the standoffish and rude Fujimoto to accept her).  It’s actually quite dramatic.  There’s an evil loan shark with intimidating lackeys and everything.

There’s a host of minor characters that pay tribute to all of CLAMP’s fans, since they are an array of doppelgangers of characters from other series.  Half the cast of Chobits is there, not to mention a handful from Wish.  I didn’t notice it at first, but a friend pointed out to me that one particular character is a doppelganger of Fai from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, which I do not like.  He is so effing creepy in Kobato.  You can’t make Fai creepy.  His smile should not appear on that character’s face—Okiura isn’t blond, and it isn’t right.   In fact, I refuse CLAMP the right to re-use their own character.  What makes it even weirder is that the characters from Tsubasa actually travel into Kobato’s world for one episode.  So Fai is is the same world as his weird and creeptastic counterpart, even though they never see one another.  And I swear, somehow Ioryogi and Kurogane are doppelgangers, despite Ioryogi not being human—they’re even voiced by the same actor.  (By the way, when my Tsubasa boys showed up, I nearly had a fit.  I love them.  So much.)

The conclusion to the series is actually pretty satisfying, overall.  It was emotional and rough.  I was afraid that they would make it too easy, but they don’t.  They don’t save the school, and Kobato doesn’t stay with Fujimoto, and what she is revealed to be was really unexpected.  It is way more light-hearted and girly that what one normally sees from CLAMP, but that wasn’t a bad thing.  I wasn’t sure if they were even capable of writing an entire series in which everyone’s lives were not ruined and mind-bendingly major things do not happen.  Leaving aside Ioryogi’s background (which I would LOVE to hear more of, they merely tease with hints of some kind of war with  heaven), it appears that they can in fact write a sort of gentle story.  Who knew?

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

When I run across a first-time author in the fantasy genre, let me make an understatement by saying that I do not expect to be blown away. I generally expect a self-serving and romanticized attempt at characterisation, a series of extremely derivative countries/people groups, and a plot so riddled with cliches that it looks like a particularly uninviting Swiss cheese.

With The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, I got none of these.

I won’t say I was entirely overwhelmed by Jemisin’s first novel, but I was certainly pleased. Everyone, from the main character down to the household servants, was given a breath of new life and originality in a genre that usually acts as the poster child for recycling. (Keep the earth green—set your book in quasi-medieval Europe!) Yeine, the female protagonist, is the political leader from a backwater country whose only notable feature is that an important noblewoman gave up the seat of power to marry a man from Darr. The woman happens to be Yeine’s mother, and Yeine’s mother happens to be the Arameri heir. The Arameri are the ruling family of “The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms,” which is usually used to mean the known world.

The story begins with Yeine discovering that insignificant little Darr hasn’t entirely escaped royal notice—her grandfather, the most powerful man in the world, has noticed her. Her mother has recently been murdered, and while she’d rather spend her time grieving, she finds herself ordered to travel to the ruling city. Her grandfather informs her that she is now a candidate to be his heir, along with her two cousins, both of whom will kill her to ensure they take the throne. Gee, thanks, Grandpa.

Yeine has only a few weeks before the succession. This youthful barbarian girl must not only find favour at court and escape the hatred of her cousins, despite how time-consuming it is. She must also try to uncover the mysteries of why her mother abdicated, and whether or not it was Yeine’s grandfather that murdered her. As a very young woman from a remote country, one who is still grieving over a loved one, we could forgive Yeine for crumbling as she learns how cruel and power-hungry the Arameri are, and that her mother was once admired for embodying such traits . . . but Yeine doesn’t crumble, she fights tooth and nail at every step to get what she needs.

Complicating matters are the gods. Everyone worships the Skyfather, but much less rarely do they talk about the sister god whom he killed. His brother god is known to all but only worshiped by “heretics.” That brother, the Nightlord, was made a slave rather than being killed, and so were his children the godlings. In fact, Itempas made his brother Nahadoth a slave of a certain family—three guesses which family, and the first two don’t count. The Arameri’s power is chiefly in having a handful of dethroned gods as their tools and weapons.

Yeine isn’t sure if it’s good or bad that the gods like her. Of course, her indecision on that point is mostly because she doesn’t know the truth behind the scope of their interest in her. The gods are deeply involved, this time, and what they want is beyond what Yeine can guess.

The gods are, in fact, hugely responsible for my positive take on this book. Much of their character and behaviour hearkens back to Greek mythology, but they remain interesting in their own right. They are a family, deeply flawed, and partially mortal. The childlike Sieh, the divided Nahadoth, the remote Zhakkarn . . . They are not human, but they are as broken and breakable as we are. The goals they reveal and the intensity with which they feel made it seem at times that they were upstaging poor Yeine as the main character in Jemisin’s tale.

But Yeine herself was just as fascinating, most especially because of her background. The country of Darr is considered barbaric in part for being a matriarchal society. It’s far more than leadership roles passing from mother to daughter—in her country, it is the women who fight while the men stay at home. Even then, it’s more complex than simply role reversal. Yeine was not able to be considered a woman until she fought in an enclosed circle with a man and overpowered him, and she was certainly not expected to be a virgin when she took the position of ennu as a single young noble girl. The inherency of the struggle for dominance was likely what made Yeine strong enough to stand in a court full of Arameri who wished her dead.

The actual narrative of the book was interesting and engaging, as well. It is told from Yeine’s first-person perspective, and there are often breaks that are highly intriguing when they happen. Sometimes she’ll stop in the middle of a sentence, or suddenly begin to talk in circles. It all leads up to a powerful revelation about midway through the book. I loved the way the narrative worked, but the placing of the reveal was my one complaint—I wish she’d left it a bit later. If she had, then the drama of the buildup to the conclusion would have been a little stronger. As it was, I had time to see the end coming. I still liked the end, don’t get me wrong, and there were plenty of other things to hold the reader’s interest between the two points. I simply think she could have built better momentum if she’d found a way to hold off a bit longer.

As a whole, this book was enjoyable, unique, and engaging. There seems to be a second book in the works, one which is not a continuation of Yeine’s story but is nevertheless set in the same world. From the short sample available in my copy of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, it seems Jemisin’s second book will delve deeper into the complications of gods living among mortals. There is a new central character that seems likely to hold my interest, and I look forward to seeing its arrival on the shelf of my local bookstore.

Conclusion: A promising debut from a legitimately talented storyteller. Will probably be more engaging to female readers, but male readers won’t find it a terrible experience.

The God Engines by John Scalzi

What’s this? you’re saying.  A book review, on top of that wealth of information and insight into Lewis Carroll?  My god, how does she do it?

I know, I know.  I’m just that awesome.

John Scalzi is a notable name, these days. His Old Man’s War series has four books, three of which have been nominated for the Hugo Award (this is a big deal, in case you were wondering). And now, his novella The God Engines has been nominated for the Nebula Award (this is also a big deal). But do we take the nominations with a grain of salt, like we do with the Academy Awards? Or do we accept that Scalzi really is an amazing science fiction author?

I heard that gasp. Yes, I said science fiction. But The God Engines is a curious mix of both sci fi and fantasy, and I felt that Scalzi deserves some attention on my blog.

To get back to the question of what makes Scalzi great, you must have read some of the classic works of science fiction—the Heinlein, the Asimov. Because this novella felt like a throwback to some of the old greats of the genre, in both good ways and bad ways. The characters seem fairly standard in Scalzi’s tale; a military captain, a high-ranking religious figure, and a prostitute (who is far more interesting than you’d think, because she’s got the government stamp of approval). But there’s another character, here: the god. Indeed, the title of the book is meant quite literally: dethroned gods power the ships that men use to travel space.

You may think, as I did, that such a fascinating idea would lead to a truly fascinating story. But it wasn’t, and this is where mimicking old classics becomes a bad idea. When Heinlein bashed organized religion in the sixties, it was interesting and revolutionary. For Scalzi to do it in the new millenium, it seems a bit routine. Is Captain Tephe a sympathic character? Yes. Is the god interesting? You bet. But overall, the story is nothing that hasn’t been done before.

It’s more than religion-bashing, in fact. It seems more that Scalzi is god-bashing, as if he accepts the existence of gods and simply wants us to realize that they can be as petty and cruel, or as noble and self-sacrificing, as humans. Well, unfortunately for Scalzi, we’ve known that since Greek mythology first got recorded, and it was not a good idea to make it the main point of the book. If it’s been done before, then what new story needs is new ideas and new life given to those themes. But this book follows convention, all the way to the end. The final moments of the story, the brief conversation between Tephe and his First Mate Neal Forn . . . That was powerful storytelling. That caught my attention.

I was just a bit disappointed that Scalzi didn’t do something with the brilliant ideas he introduced. It’s almost a crime that he didn’t take his ideas about gods powering star ships and make it into something a little bigger than what this novella seemed to be (a bitter little rant on how disappointing gods might be). I would never tell you not to read the rest of his work, because the Old Man’s War series and The Android’s Dream haven’t been stricken from my reading list. I’m simply telling you that The God Engines, in particular, probably isn’t worth your time.

Conclusion: The premise promises more than it delivers. Only if you have a spare afternoon and there’s nothing good on the telly.