Book Recommendations - some happy birthday epic fantasy

It's Book Recommendation Day - and a special one at that. Today we'll talk about the epic fantasy of NK Jemisin on the occasion of her birthday! Happy birthday to Jemisin, and let's read some really good epic fantasy novels. So today, to wish one of my favorite authors a happy birthday, I'll recommend some of her books.

NK Jemisin at the Brooklyn Museum

What do you mean by "Epic Fantasy"?

 If one asks four fans of fantasy fiction what "epic" fantasy is, one is likely to receive about six different answers. My personal definition - and the definition for the purpose of this discussion - is that Epic Fantasy is the subgenre of fantasy which concerns large, world-changing themes. An epic story is grand in scope, a set of events which divide the world into before and after. The Lord of the Rings is epic in that the fall of Sauron and his empire will have effects for generations to come. George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (from where we get the television series A Game of Thrones) likewise deals with world-shaping events. Likewise in Jemisin's books we deal with epic-scale events but, unlike these other works, view them from a more intimate point of view. Jemisin writes grand stories, but shows them through a narrow lens. So rather than the more traditionally epic focus on large numbers of viewpoint characters scattered throughout the world we get very human stories with the larger global changes as somewhat of a backdrop.

The Inheritance Trilogy

These books were my introduction to Jemisin, and a series I had the good fortune to find late enough that all three had been written  by the time I got around to reading them. This saved me the toughest part of being a fantasy fiction reader - the long time between books of a trilogy. I got to read all three books back-to-back-to-back -- and what books they are!

The Ineritance Trilogy takes place in a world which has already had one cataclysm in the distant past - the Gods War, which involved the three eldest gods in the world's pantheon:

Bright Itempas, the lord of the sun, of light, and the father. Lord of creation and order
Nahadoth, the Nightlord, or darkness and death. Lord of chaos and change.

Enefa, of the twilight. The only female of the three, the creater of life, mother.


The Gods war ended, long before the start of this trilogy, with Enefa dead, Nahadoth enslaved by a human race known as the Arameri, who are able to use their control of the nightlord and continuing relationship with Itempas to maintain a position of power in the world. This brings us to the first book, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Here we meet Yeine, a chieftan of a matriarchal warrior-society known as the Darre. Yeine is brought to the Arameri capital where she becomes embroiled in both courtly intrigue and the ongoing struggles between the gods, the enslaved godlings, and humans. We meet a host of memorable characters, including the trickster god and eternal child Sieh who will take a more central role much later in the story. In the end there are revelations, moments in which we realize the assumptions we - and Yeine - have been making for the entire book aren't quite correct and, at the very end, a moment of sacrifice which will change the very foundation of the world.

The next two books deal with the aftermath. I'll not spoil the first by getting into plot, but suffice it to say that we meet humans who become gods, gods who become human, and finish in a place which surprises us while being true to the earlier story and feeling - even if surprising - still fair. It's a wonderful set of books, well worth reading. If you've not, I urge you to go experience them now. You'll be glad you did.

The Broken Earth Trilogy
This isn't quite a trilogy yet, as we're only two books into it. It's again a secondary world fantasy, opening with the twin shocks of personal and global disasters:

LET’S START WITH THE END of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.

First, a personal ending. There is a thing she will think over and over in the days to come, as she imagines how her son died and tries to make sense of something so innately senseless. She will cover Uche’s broken little body with a blanket—except his face, because he is afraid of the dark—and she will sit beside it numb, and she will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She’s old hat at this by now.

Thus we meet Essun, as a mother grieving over the death of her son. It's an opening paragraph which not only grabs our attention, but hints at what will follow: stories of grief, of endings, of cataclysms both personal and global. The death of a child is a shocking note on which to begin, but The Fifth Season is a novel which earns that shock, pays it back, and makes it a real and organic part of the story.


 We soon learn that the world - ironically known as The Stillness - is so beset by cataclysmic  earthquakes as to have an entire culture and language built around them. A disastrous global event is  season. Words carved into rock to survive seasons are stonelore. It's created a very pragmatic, literally downward-looking world in which not only is studies of the heavens and astronomy considered silly trivia, but the giant floating stone obelisks which drift above the world are, for the most part, completely ignored.

The Fifth Season, like the books of the inheritance cycle, is an intimate story, following only three women in different stages of their lives: a young girl, the young adult Syenite, and the grieving mother Essun. The three are linked by the rare ability to control earthquakes - an ability which caused them to be feared, hated, and persecuted. Like The Ineritance Trilogy, The Fifth Season and its sequel deal directly with class conflict, with racism, and with how hatred directed by society can become internalized. It's a smart book, a wise book, and an all too relevant book.

It ends with a hint as to why the world is as it is, even if it isn't quite fully explained as of yet. There's not yet an explanation as to why Essun's sections are written in second-person while Damaya and Syenite are in the more traditional third-person, but I trust that will come. There are already hints in the second book, which I'll not discuss save to say that it's a worthy followup. We begin to see more of the world, we learn that some of what we've taken for granted - including the works of this earthquake-controlling power - might not be what we thought it was. We spend more time with our small cadre of characters, come to know and love them.

There is, of course, much more to say. I'll not say it here, as the more you read about the book the less joy you'll have in experiencing them. They're books worth reading. Trust me on this.


And yes, those who've read the books will know that the above includes, in addition to a call to trust me, a lie. It's certainly a white lie, and one for which I'm sure you'll forgive me after you've read whichever book about which I'm keeping secrets.

So enjoy. And happy birthday to NK Jemisin.

Book Review - The Fireman, by Joe Hill

Had anyone else written The Fireman, I'd be tempted to compare it to Stephen King. We have an implausible global disaster treated as if real, tight focus on a decent and resourceful group of survivors, even a New England setting. It's a comparison I fought against making because it isn't, in the end, fair. King is King and Hill is Hill, as obvious as it is that the former influenced the latter in as many ways as possible. For the nonce, let's set comparisons aside and talk about the novel itself. Expect minor spoilers herein, but not too much to preclude your enjoyment of the book when you choose to read it (and you should. Trust me on this).

The disaster in The Fireman comes in the shape of a mysterious disease called "Dragonscale". It manifests itself in patters of black markings on a victim's skin and is perfectly harmless - with the exception of causing those infected to literally burst into flame. Our first brush with the disease comes through the eyes of Harper Grayson, a Disney-quoting elementary school nurse. Some of my favorite parts of the early chapters deal with the relationship between Harper and her husband, Jakob. Jakob is smart. He's intellectual. He's charming. His talents range from the ability to ride a unicycle to being really good at sex.  However, the more we see of him the more we see an underlying self-centered-ness, a pettiness, a nastiness. When the school in which Harper works closes indefinitely due to the 'scale crisis and Harper is pressed into service at a hospital, it becomes clear that Jakon sees her patients with a pitying disdain rather than compassion. I wish we'd lingered a bit more on the positive side of the marriage before learning that it was a false-front, but learn we do and in a shocking and impactful way. Jakob can be read as every man with a feeling of entitlement, not as much intellect as he thinks he has, and a bitter disappointment with his lot in life. As civilization falls, so too does the veneer of civility Jakob has built around his rotten inner core. The horror in reading this book is not the image of a person bursting into flame: it's that we all know too many Jakobs, and that Hill is showing us what they are like inside.

One of my favorite kinds of moments in any fantastic novel is the moment in which what you think you knew proves to be wrong. We soon meet John Rockwood, the titular Fireman, a conflicted hero with a tragic past and a maddening tendency to set himself apart and attempt to be mysterious.   Rockwood has found a way to control the dragonscale, not only avoiding self-immolation but even gaining control over fire itself, using it as a weapon or a tool. The entire middle third of the book takes place in a sort of hidden commune in which a small but growing infected population hides from the roving quarantine patrols who seek to eradicate the disease at gunpoint. It's little surprise to see Jakob reemerge with one of them.

I'll make a note here on language: Hill does a terrific job working ways of referring to the new infestation into the book's dialog. The quarantine patrols sometimes call themselves (and are called) cremation crews, and refer to the infected as "burners". A bargain-basement talk-radio host gives himself the moniker "Marlborough Man" because he's smoked so many burners. These are lovely touches which add to the feeling of immersion.

We also had an odd, seemingly out of left field reference to Martha Quinn,  rumored to be a leaderof a safe space for the infected. Martha Quinn became an unlikely symbol through much of the book, and a source of hope. As a child of the 1980s, I found the inclusion of a literal voice from our collective past to be a tiny delight.

Anyway, the book is about how people deal with the crisis rather than the crisis itself. We have the Camp Wyndham community dealing with the threat of cremation squads. The uninfected dealing with the fear of infection. Everyone fearing fire. There are breakdowns in social order and, while there are villains, it isn't the villains which most interested - or most chilled me. It was the all-too-real way seemingly decent and reasonable people would follow them, and how quickly a community can slide from communal love to communal hatred. The book is at its best at those points. I do wish, as I said, that we'd had a tiny bit  more of Jakob toward the beginning and, to be honest, a tiny bit less toward the end. His constant reappearance made absolute thematic sense, but ultimately veered into horror-fiction cliche territory.

And there's one moment in which we see a communal act of kindness toward those infected, only to see it subverted into something else. THis is a part about which I thought for a long time. Did the people know the real result of their charity? Were they deliberately fooling themselves? Did they fail morally in giving from a distance, and not following up? Or were they simply doing the best they thought they could? It was a nice, poignant, and ambiguous moment.

Comparison time again:  I've stated in the past that I see an unsavory message in the works of HP Lovecraft in that his central theme - fear of the other - is a mirror of and metaphor for his racism. In one discussion on the topic, someone asked me if that is part and parcel of horror fiction in general. Clearly in my mind - and I suspect in Hill's - it is not. The horror in The Fireman was not the Dragonscale, was not even the fear of self-immolation. It was the moment that a seemingly loving husband showed us the monster within. It's the moment that a community of survivors let fear and anger twisted it into something ugly.

Horror isn't fear of the other; it's fear of ourselves, and what can let ourselves become in moments of fear as we fight for our own protection.

This book is horror. And it's good horror. I strongly recommend that you go read it.

Book Review: Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett.

This is what the world looks like when the Gods have
much imagination and little mechanical inclincation

Months after its debut in Britain, the fortieth of Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld books has reached our shores. For those not in the know, Discworld is a series of fantasy novels set on a disc-shaped world balanced on the backs of four elephants which travel through space on the back of a great turtle. It is a world described as one created by gods with more imagination than mechanical ingenuity. Pratchett wrote the first of the Discworld books, The Colour of Magic, over three decades ago, and has been lovingly expanding his magical universe ever since. While the first three books read as a somewhat one-note parody of standard fantasy tropes, the series picked up a surprising measure of depth as it moved on, giving us the chance to see the growth of some very well-drawn and memorable characters. Has this upward trend in complexity and quality continued? How does volume 40 stack up to the rest (or to other books with which one might choose to spend ones time?)  Looking at it with a critical eye, Discworld has likely peaked several volumes ago. What we have now is, while pleasant, the literary equivalent of comfort food. It's still funny and enjoyable enough, but too much of that enjoyment stems from familiarity.

The motif of a typical Discworld book is to apply a modern and anachronistic concept to the fantasy setting and familiar set of characters. We've had the city guard and equal-opportunity hiring (including dwarves and trolls), witches and The Phantom of the Opera, trolls and rock music. Raising Steam, set in the Discworld metropolis of Ankh-Morpork, follows Going Postal and Making Money in following reformed scoundrel turned postmaster and chief banker Moist von Lipwig as he plays a part in introducing the first railroad to the Discworld after the invention of a steam engine. What conflict there is arises from a group of ultra-conservative dwarves known as Grags. We've seen them before as the Discworld equivalent of real-world religious fundamentalists. In the past, they've taken the role of maintaining the traditional culture, leaving more modern dwarves glad that someone was doing so as a sort of vague cultural pride. In Raising Steam we see the darker side of this, as heavily armed Grags engage in sabotage, assault, and even murder against elements of dwarven and non-dwarven society which they feel is inpure or non-dwarvish. They've gone from an insular religious order to religious terrorists, and the new steam engine is quite the modern target.

This should be a terrific set-up for a very exciting and interesting installment in the Discworld series, but it never quite came together for me. In the earlier novel Men at Arms, Pratchett introduced the first firearm to the Discworld.  There was not only tension but, in the final reckoning, a real cost in the death of a guardsman introduced early in the book and who we'd gotten to know. There've also been, througout the books, some real growth by several key characters. Sam Vines went from being an honest cop with a drinking problem to the commander of the watch, the husband of a rich society woman, a father, and a man who's come to understand the role of politics even if he doesn't like it. Does that sound like an interesting character arc? It is. Vimes is a terrific character, and watching his growth and development has been a treat. What else do you notice about the character arc I described? It's over. He's learned what he can learn, found his place in the world, and is both content there and almost supernaturally competent. This makes him, as a character, somewhat boring.

Near-supernatural levels of competence and decency have come to suffuse so much of the Discworld universe that the books have come to feel both too nice and too easy. Ankh-Morpork is ruled by a tyrant, which seems bad until you realize that he's an absurdly benevolent tyrant who is also utterly brilliant, a master-assassin, master of disguise, and thoroughly expert at manipulating people. His level of competency and control has grown greatly since he faced, quite a few books ago, a threat to his office.

Overall, this is sounding more negative than perhaps it should. The Discworld books remain great fun the same way a beloved television series remains fun. As it's settled down to later volumes, both Pratchett and his readers seem to have too great a level of affection for the Discworld characters to see them hurt, changed, or even much challenged. It becomes literary conflict as a Harlem Globetrotters game, in which we know the result ahead of time but come prepared to be dazzled. 

There are hints about how technology can transform the Discworld and, by extension, or own. This is one of my favorite lines of thought which, sadly, was not explored further. One of the cultural contributions of tje goblin race is potmaking. Here is one character's thought as some goblins start working on the new railway, perhaps instead of their pots: 

Sir Terry Pratchett. 

...what would happen if goblins learned everything about humans and did everything the human way because they thought it would be better than the goblin way... Will goblins really stop taking an interest in their pots and will humans learn the serious, valuable and difficult and almost magical skill of pot making? Or will goblins become, well, just another kind of human? And which would be better?

This is a lovely metaphor for globalization and a reminder that, as much as the goblins (and humans from far-flung corners of the globe!) have gained from the ability to share, there is inherent a levelling, a smoothing of sharp edges, and a loss of what makes individual cultures special or unique. I do wish that Sir Terry had taken this thought farther, and the hope that he may is as much a part of what will draw me to the forty-first Discworld book as the chance to revel in the familiar antics of the Disc's zany cast of characters. 

Back to Narnia - Musing on Fantasy Literature and Reading Lessons

One of the nice presents our family was lucky enough to receive this winter holiday season was from an old school friend of my lovely bride's: a nicely illustrated box set of the seven Chronicles of Narnia books as an early-arriving but late-delivered (we thought it was for Christmas) birthday gift for Chloe.  At just seven years old, we feared that these might be a bit tough for her. Then again, yesterday when I told her she was getting the ante-penultimate brownie she pondered a half second before answering "so there are two left." Vocabulary is clearly not an issue, and the girl loves reading at least as much as I did at that age. The Narnia books themselves are a very, very hazy memory for me, but the wondrous, open-ended anything-can-happen feeling in a great fantasy novel is not. It's something that, beneath the writerly analysis and tendency to overthink, I still feel today.  Still, these are books targeted perhaps a touch older than she is, so I thought it would be nice for her to have a guide. With this in mind I told her that I'd like to read along with her, picking up the book when she sets it down to catch up (and only to catch up - she didn't want me cheating and reading ahead!) so we can talk about the characters and what happened. Now, through the wonders of technology, you have the chance to read along with us for my musings on both the books and the process of reading them with a young child.

We started before the beginning, with The Magician's Nephew, mostly because the set we have numbers it first. This doesn't strike me as a bad place to start; it introduces Narnia at the very beginning (literally the beginning - we see its creation as a new world) and learn the origin of familiar objects and settings, such as the lamppost in the woods and the famous gateway in the back of a wardrobe.

What's this Book About? A refresher

For those interested in the plot (and who either don't know it or have forgotten it), two young London children named Digory and Polly are sent out of this world and into another by Digory's narcissistic and cruel Uncle Andrew - the titular magician.   Through the use of magic rings crafted from Atlantean dust they travel first to Wood Between Worlds, in which clear pools of water serve as portals to our world and others. From there their explorations take them to the dead world of Charn, in which Digory recklessly and impetuously awakens the evil Queen Jadis, providing an antagonist for the remainder of the series. She'd put herself into an enchanted sleep after - in a clear allegory of nuclear war - she'd killed every single living thing in her world through the magic of the Deplorable Word.

The famous Narnia lampost.
Image by Ej.culley

Jadis's follows the children to London, where here magic doesn't work but her supernatural strength makes her something of a menace. Through use of the magic rings, they manage to bring the evil witch through the Wood between Worlds and, eventually, to the new world of Narnia, as of yet still unformed. A Lonon cabby and his horse also make the trip.

In Narnia we meet the lion-god Aslan, who literally sings the world into existence. In atonement for bringing the evil witch into the newly formed world, Aslan sends Digory along with the carriage horse - now winged through Aslan's magic - to a hidden garden near the edge of the world for a magic apple of all things. It would not only keep the witch at bay for a time, but is quite healthy and loaded with a great deal of delicious symbolism. Digory takes the trip with Polly and the horse, resists the witch's temptation to eat the apple himself or take it back to London to cure his ailing mother, and is rewarded by Aslan with another magic apple so he can cure his mother after all. A final chapter details Digory's move away from London and the creation of the famous wardrobe we'll see in the next book.

Reading as a Writer and Parent

Teaching children to read is so much more than teaching them to read the words which, as I said above, isn't much of an issue now. In some ways this is a very nice introduction to "real" fantasy literature because it is so simple;  the witch is evil. Uncle Andrew is also evil, but not so much as the witch. Giving in to the temptation to keep the magic apple is wrong because it would be a betrayal of the trust Aslan had given Digory - and because it would be wrong for him to save  his mother with an act counter to the values he taught her. This correct act is rightly rewarded. Digory is the closest to a complicated character we get; he's basically good, but badly wounded by family troubles and dreadfully impulsive. There was a moment of violence between him and Polly - just one moment, but an unmistakable crossing of a line - which prevents us from seeing him as just a hero. 

The more interesting thing reading this as an adult is how apparent the work's flaws are. The quest to get the magic apple was all too easy, with no obstacles of which to speak. Aslan is a being of pure good, and Jadis a being of pure evil. In addition to the idea that a powerful woman is a villain and also a temptress, she's somewhat of a boring villain, with no motivation or real personality aside from a desire for power. She's more a force of nature than a person. Compare, say, Queen Mallow in Cat Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Boat of Her Own Making. Mallow was quite the villain and did a fair measure of harm to the denizens of Fairyland, but once we meet her we see that she had her own personal reasons for doing so. In the end, she was more to be pitied than hated.

Speaking of the apple, I'm not sure how I feel about that element. On one hand, the adult writer in me finds it painfully heavy-handed in its symbolism. As we are a non-religious household, it's symbolism that sailed right past our young reader's head to little effect, so no harm and no foul on that. What almost bothered me more is the forced "happy ending". Digory made the right choice in resisting the temptation to steal the apple to cure his mother. As a reward he gets... a magic apple to cure his mother. This is almost exactly the same complaint I had at the end of Disney's Tangled - the sacrifice is rendered meaningless by granting the reward anyway. 

That's not to say that the writing, although perhaps a bit old fashioned - lacks charm. Take, for example, this passage in which the two children arrive in the dying world of Charn:

"It's very funny weather here," said Digory. "I wonder if we've arrived just in time for a thunderstorm; or an eclipse.""I don't like it," said Polly.

Both of them, without quite knowing why, were talking in whispers. And though there was no reason why they should still go on holding hands after their jump, they didn't let go.

I especially like the bit about the two of them holding hands and called it out as an example of "showing, not telling". They're nervous. How do you know that they're nervous and a bit scared? Not because they say so, but because they don't let go of each other.

Reading as Readers

All of the object lessons about literature, about reading, and about writing aside, one of the very best things about this process has been sharing the pure pleasure of fantasy literature. The journey from Uncle Andrew's study through the Woods Between Worlds and eventually to Narnia evokes the open-ended feeling of limitless possibility which attracted me to fantasy in the first place. If one looks past the symbolism, characters, authorial decisions, one is left with not just a story, but a fantastic story. A story in which it feels as if anything can happen, and we're along for the pure joy of exploration. 

It's easy for us grown-ups to forget that sometimes. If understanding of the bigger picture is my gift to my children, a view through young and innocent eyes is their gift to me.

Book Review - The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

I picked this one up on a very enthusiastic recommendation from a friend. We all have books we like, books we love, and book about whic we become downright evangelical. For him, this bordered on the latter. I'm not evangelical about it by any stretch, and am not even quite sure that I love it, but did like it very much and am glad to have given Grossman a measure of my time.

The Magicians follows three well-worn fantasy tropes: the wizard school, the fantasy novel that ends up being real, and the secret history. The latter element is given disappointingly short shrift.  We're given hints that wizards among us quietly spread their influence, but all we see any of them doing outside the magic school is either recruiting new prospective wizards or idling their time away at a sinecure arranged by seemingly limitless magical influence and wealth. The description of the latter, somewhat late in the novel, felt as if it were written by someone ignorant of anything about the corporate world aside from surface appearances and, at first, felt like a very weak part of the novel. Looking more closely, it fits into one of Grossman's main themes: a deconstruction of the nerd author-insertion wish-fulfillment novel.

At first, the book appeared that it was going to be pure wish-fulfillment fantasy. We're introduced to Quentin, the oh so very smart seventeen year old with an Ivy-league future ahead of him, a headful of fantasy novels, but no real sense of belonging with his peers or any real plans or ambitions. So of course he'll end up at a wizarding school, of course they'll find something special about him there, and of course he'll end up a part of some epic quest the likes of which even the magical world has never seen. He'll eventually find expertise as a wizard, learn the truth about the much-beloved children's fantasy world of Fillory, and go on to have great adventures.  It's obvious and predictable, which is why I was pleased and impressed that it didn't follow formula.

Instead, we find Quentin where many top of their class wunderkinds find themselves. He's suddenly transported from a place where he was special to the place where all the special kids go, where to be a genius by any other measure is to be squarely average. Along the way we find a magic school which, while not as fantasical as Roke Island in Ursula Leguin's _A Wizard of Earthsea_ (for my money the best description of an education in magical arts I've ever read. If you've not read Leguin's Earthsea books, put this review down right now and go get them. If you haven't read them but watched the miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel, you might need to lobotomize yourself first), but it did a nice job injecting genuine wonder into something which should be wondrous; the sequence involving the students' taking part in the mysterious fourth year "disappearance" was both lyrical and fascinating.

What I found a touch disappointing and what grounded the book a bit too much for my taste is that Grossman's storytelling was strictly linear. Towards the end we get some marvelous set-pieces with magical battles that could have been beautifully fimled as a Peter Jackson epic followed by a culmination of several story threads, yet the nature of the book lead us to not really feel that these were threads we'd been following all along. For all of its import, we'd seen very little of the magical world of Fillory until we're ready to go there. There are hints, but never quite enough. Later still, when we learn secrets about time-travel, they do little to disorient the reader the way great time-travel or multiple-worlds novels can. Here I'm thinking of things like Hal Duncan's Vellum or even Neal Stephenson's Anathem. Still, not being a modernist experimental writer needn't be a strike against. It just felt to me like a missed opportunity.

Finally, I'll not spoil the ending here but offer an observation: the scene and language used made it appear to be a note of hope, yet I found it vaguely depressing. It appeared to me that Quentin hadn't really had a character arc, but ended in much the same place as he began; as a follower with no dreams or plans of his own, going along to the next thing because it seemed to inevitably come next. Your mileage, of course, may vary and I'd be quite interested in hearing from people who read this differently than I did.

Three stars.

G is for Glamour in Glass

Today I have another book review for you, of Glamour in Glass Mary Robinette Kowal's sequel to World Fantasy Award winner Shades of Milk and Honey.
For those who've forgotten, Shades of Milk and Honey is, in brief, a regency romance with a touch of magic. The fantastical element lies mainly in the creation of glamours - illusions and other effects formed by a kind of psychic manipulation of the aether (which, in this world, appears to be a real thing). There were multiple suitors, misunderstandings, love-triangles, secret pasts, and a beautifuly written relationship between the sharp, independent Jane and her more beautiful but less wordly younger sister, Melody. They were sometimes competitive, sometimes dismissive of eachother, sometimes jealous, sometimes supportive, and sometimes just don't quite understand eachother. Shades of Milk and Honey also introduced Vincent, a sometimes troubled, sometimes moody but brilliant glamourist with both an artistic eye and a drive towards technical innovation.  It is a romance, and by the novel's end Jane and Vincent are wed.
Glamour in Glass begins not far from where Shades of Milk and Honey ended - with the Vincents newly married, much in demand for their artistic talents (they aren't merely glamourists, but some of the world's best glamourists). There's a lovely moment when, after feeling slighted by her husband's not including her in some element of their work, Jane immediately confronts him and tells him her feelings. It's a sign that Kowal knows how to let her characters act like real, reasonable people and that any misunderstandings won't come from people not telling eachother things  just so the author can create tension. It also tells us that we're reading about smart, reasonable people.

Tensions do come (it wouldn't be much of a book without them, now would it?) during the trip Vincent and a newly-pregnant Jane take to the continent to visit Vincent's old mentor. Napolean has just escaped from Elba to begin his ill-fated attempt to reclaim his empire, leaving a populace divided between those loyal to the current regime and those who long for Napolean's return. Add a mysterious long-term assignment for Vincent, Jane's inability to travel because of her delicate condition, and we get a feeling of real trouble.

Another thread winding through this part of the novel are the couple's attempt to record a glamour using the glass prisms suggested by the title. The experimentation was a fascinating picture of bright, talented people struggling at the edges  of a new and poorly understood science. There were setbacks, but ultimately triumphs. 

And, of course, it wouldn't fit into the period without some intrigue. Without giving too much away, know that there are hidden agendas, conflicting loyalties, and an actual surprise or two.

All of the narrative threads - the secret goals, the experiments in glamour, and the looming war - come together for a dramatic climax in which a victory is won, but at a steep cost. I'll not spoil it here, but that cost - and the characters' different reactions to it - were beautifully written and felt quite real.
I'll close with a word about language in this book; Kowal took the effort to painstakingly cross-reference all of the words she used here with actual works written in the nineteenth century so, even more so than with Shades of Milk and Honey, this book is of its time. This effort gives the book a wonderful feel of authenticity.
Highly recommended. Four stars.

B is for (independent) Book Review: Nails Jane by Trista Guiseppe

I encountered Trista Guiseppe on the Google+ social networking site shortly after the completion of her first novel. Following it the first of what I expect to be three short book-reviews in the a-to-z month. Look for more reviews at "G" and "L".

In her debut novel, Nails Jane, Trista Guiseppe gives us an action-packed blend of new space opera, weird-tale, and philosophical meditation. Even if her reach sometimes exceeds her grasp (which it does), and the disparate pieces don't fit together perfectly (which they don't), it's still an entertaining, fast-paced read.

It opens as the story of Eva, a woman in present-day realistic Earth with a job she hates, a troubled marriage, and enigmatic dreams hinting of another world beyond this one and another identity. When she is approached by a mysterious stranger with apparently supernatural powers and more knowledge about her than he should reasonably posess, it feels like well-tread familiar ground. Then the narrative breaks into the first part of a counterfactual secret history regarding a malign entity which has been manipulating the human race for the purpose of keeping us from fulfilling our potential and becoming a threat. There's a strong anti-religion message in much of this,  but the work embraces the supernatural in a way that makes it far more than - and far different from -  a rationalist screed.

The book then dances from military SF to fable and back again in a dizzying series of tonal shifts. We meet  Ati, an apparent doppleganger of Eva. We briefly learn of - but see little of - aliens. We're told myths of a creator of worlds and his battles with a destructive beast, of a Death figure who shirked his duties, of archetypical artists and scuptures. Some of these stories don't all fit thematically with the rest of the novel, and can sometimes feel like an author's attempt to clarify a philosophical point. Others - most notably the segments with death - tie into the rest of the work beautifuly in a blending of science and fantasy vaguely reminiscent of Elizabeth Bear's All the Windwracked Stars.

 There's a paramilitary organization dedicated to fighting the threat of Versinon, a world-spanning evil. There are conflicts with powerful beings capable of destroying worlds, encounters with gods or creatures close to it, and a final conflict in which there are challenges, threats, sacrifices. I very much enjoyed the ride, but at the end felt that there was something missing. THe world-destroying evil? Really a greate evil. Those military commanders who seemed to be treasonous or corrupt? Really treasonous or corrupt. Great speculative literature is perhaps better than anything at turning your world upside-down, at telling you that everything you thought you knew was wrong. Think of moments in Dan Simmons' Hyperion series when we first see the world from the perspective of the Ousters or we learn what this faster-than-light travel really costs. In a much smaller way, there's a moment in Mary Robinette Kowal's forthcoming Without a Summer in which the point-of-view character's entire perception of someone - a perception which the reader likely took for granted - is wrong. Here we don't get any of that; yes, there are philosophical trimmings, but they end up being window-dressing in a story which, for all of its scope and grandeur is surprisingly linear and simple.

So, I'll give this three out of five stars with a recommendation to pick it up for some light, enjoyable reading in hopes that Guiseppe's next effort will take us just a little bit deeper.




 Tomorrow we'll stay with books and bring you C for Characters, then move back to pixels with D for digital.