Archive for the ‘Jim C. Hines’ Category
Imprinted (available January 2018) is the forthcoming novelette in Jim C. Hines’s Libriomancer series, and The Squirrel on the Train (November 2017, Subterannean Press) is Kevin Hearne’s latest Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries novella. Two super fun and funny little stories!
Jim C. Hines concluded his Magic Ex Libris series with the fourth book in the series, Revisionary. The magic of this series sounds rather basic at first – the world’s collective love for books, stories, and the items found therein allows Libriomancers to pull physical items out of books. Urban fantasy awesomeness and characters who will absolutely shred your heart ensue. Because character relationships, people’s abilities, and the danger ramp up pretty quickly, this is a series that needs to be read in order. But. . . with an itty bitty spoiler (that really doesn’t spoil anything) you can read Imprinted even if you are not caught up on Magic Ex Libris. That’s me, by the way. I’m the person who isn’t caught up on Magic Ex Libris.
Revisionary was supposed to have been the end of the series, right? Well, it wasn’t for Jeneta. She still has a story to tell!
Seventeen year old Librariomancer Jeneta Aboderin has a unique libriomantic ability, it’s an ability Isaac might never even thought of had he not met Jeneta. But her power brings risk with it. What if she isn’t strong enough to control her ability? What if she is able to control it, and ends up disrupting the foundations of libriomancy?
Fable: Blood of Heroes, by Jim C. Hines
published August 2015
where I got it: purchased new
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My introduction to the Fable videogame series was playing Fable II until I nearly broke the disc. Kicking chickens, shooting gargoyles, solving riddles, completing quests, honing my skills, being friendly or mean to people, getting different clothes, getting rid of pesky highwayman, increasing my character’s abilities, seeing how different decisions affected the game . . . I spent many a happy hour in Albion. Fable II spoiled me: I expected all video games to be this fun.
If you’ve never played the videogame, there is still plenty for you to enjoy in Jim C. Hines’ new novel Fable: Blood of Heroes. You’ll get a well drawn story with a good balance of action and characterization, heroes to cheer on and bad guys to hate on. This is not a heavy deep story, it is just pure fun, just like the video game I have fond memories of. Having recently tackled Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest, I needed something that was going to take me for a great ride without frying my brain, and Fable: Blood of Heroes fit the bill. For those of you have played any or all of the Fable games, you’ll get the in-jokes, recognize videogameisms such as getting information by talking to as many villagers as you can, see the level ups and HP count increases, recognize Will users and Strength users and Skill users, laugh when NPCs tap the fourth wall, and best of all you’ll recognize a fellow Fable fan in Jim Hines.
The story starts in the town of Brightlodge, where the young king has summoned four heroes to protect the town’s inhabitants from impending doom. Tipple is the tank of the group, Inga the warrior with an enchanted shield, Rook is the assassin, and Leech the life-force using healer who is a little too interested in how your insides work. A classic D&D adventure team, the heroes’ first quest is to rid the town of a smuggler who harbors more than a few secrets (and a secret identity!), and a boat of attacking redcaps. The redcaps are foul little bloodthirsty creatures with bloody caps nailed to their heads. They thrive on havoc and on setting things on fire. The plot thickens when the heroes learn of concerns that are far bigger than one pirate and a ship full of redcaps. In a style that George R R Martin made famous, Hines gives each hero their own point of view chapters, which helps flesh out certain characters and develop their backstories. With a main cast that soon grows to eight, giving characters their own chapters was a smart move.
- In: guest post | Jim C. Hines
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Today I’m thrilled to host Hugo Award winning author Jim C. Hines. I’ve had the pleasure to meet Jim at a number of conventions and local events, most recently at a book signing at my local independent bookstore. Jim C. Hines is most well known for his Goblin series, his Princess series, and his Magic Ex Libris series. You can learn more about Jim at his website and his blog, or by following him on twitter. You might also know him for his SFF Cover Art photoshoot project.
Oh no, Jim’s been captured!
Oh, you don’t know Jim C. Hines? Well, first things first, go get yourself a copy of Libriomancer this instant. The third book in the Magic Ex Libris series, Unbound, comes out in January, and I am so geeked!!
But, back to today’s topic! Always interested in neat projects, Jim C Hines is about to be know for, erm, something else. His newest book, Rise of the Spider Goddess, hits bookstore shelves tomorrow (Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords, GooglePlay). In today’s guest post, he lets us all in on the little secret on what in the world he was thinking. (Jim didn’t give me a title for his guest post, so I had to make one up. Sorry Jim!)
This Book Admits its Bad. And That’s What Makes it So Good.
a guest post by Jim C. Hines
When Andrea and I were emailing about ideas for a guest blog post about Rise of the Spider Goddess, she came back with one of the same questions a lot of people have been asking: “What the heck were you thinking, Jim?”
She was much kinder in her phrasing, of course. But it’s a reasonable question. You see, this book is bad. It says so right in the introduction:
The book you’re about to read is bad. Bad like waking up at two in the morning because your cat or dog is making that distinctive hacking noise. Bad like your almost-potty-trained child walking out of the bathroom to announce, “I did finger-painting, Daddy!”
I do not think it is possible to cram any more cool bookish stuff into one day. This past Saturday, I started my day at BookBug bookstore, for my friend Andy’s Type-In. Andy collects manual typewriters, at last count he has over twenty. A Type-In is where a bunch of type writer aficionados bring their babies somewhere and show ’em off. And then there’s me, walking around typing up postcards and asking “how do I do an exclamation point? I made a mistake! how do I backspace?” I was a <sarcasm>genius</sarcasm> I forgot my really cool postcards at home. Luckily, Andy brought some, and his had cool Type-In logos and bookstore images on them! I better tell my parents to watch their mail box.
A couple of hours later, I drove five minutes down the road to Kazoo Books for the Jim C. Hines and Tobias Buckell book signing! I wish I’d gotten a photo of the table covered in Toby and Jim’s books, it was a beautiful display (and pretty empty a few hours later).
Jim and Toby have known each other since the beginning of their careers, it was wonderful to just listen to them talk about the challenges and pressures they faced as their careers took off, different types of projects they’ve worked on and are working on, adventures in bookstore signings, how “being an author as a single guy” is pretty different from “being an author as a Dad”, among other things. There was lots of laughing and fist bumping happening. It was a wonderful afternoon. Toby signed my copy of Hurricane Fever, and since I already have signed copies of Jim’s books, I had him sign a paperback of Libriomancer for me to use as as a give away! He even put a sooper seekrit message in it!
Woohoo, Give Away!
Codex Born by Jim Hines
Posted on: September 3, 2013
Codex Born, by Jim Hines (Magic ex Libris #2)
published in 2013
where I got it: purchased new
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Picking up shortly after the end of Libriomancer (review here), Isaac Vainio is back up at the Copper River library. As time allows,he’s been working with Jeneta, a poetry loving teenager who has learned to pull poetic metaphors out of e-readers, and together, they are trying to figure out why her kind of Libriomancy even works. Lena’s oak tree stands tall in Isaac’s backyard, and he’s working hard to get used to the fact that his girlfriend has another girlfriend (it’s complicated). When you are a libriomancer doing research for the Porters, there’s no such thing as a normal summer.
Did you get a kick out of Libriomancer? Codex Born is better.
The plot gets started very quickly, when dead wendigos are found, the local werewolf clan can’t agree on who has jurisdiction, and strange metal bugs are attacking Lena’s tree. The marks left on her tree match the marks left on the wendigo corpses, and there’s only one person who could have made these metal creatures: Victor Harrison. IT Guy for The Porters, tinkerer extraordinaire, also dead. With the help of a very creepy vampire, Isaac, Lena, and a few other Libriomancers put on the case learn that Victor’s father, August, has used his late son’s inventions to hack into the Porter’s databases and awoken an old and nearly forgotten type of Libriomancy. Not even Gutenberg’s soul-powered automatons have a chance in this fight.
sounds pretty awesome, right?
What if I told you the kick ass plot is the least kick-ass part of this book?
A great bookish, bloggish weekend
Posted on: August 11, 2013
It’s been a pretty awesome weekend so far.
Friday evening I got to be all loquacious as victim number one in Larry’s “interview other bloggers” series at the OF Blog. He asked some interesting questions, beyond the usual “what books do you like?” easies. We talked about the Hugo Awards, William Shatner, geeky suddenly being cool, and beating dead horses while in a room crammed with white elephants. I can’t believe he let prattle on that long, I swear I never talk that much! It was a good time, and I hope Larry has many more bloggers lined up for this project.
and then on Saturday? On Saturday I got to see Jim Hines at a booksigning for his newest novel, Codex Born! Squeeee! He talked a bit about the series, where it’s going, that due to some other projects he’s got going on we’ll have to wait at least a year and a half for the 3rd book, and that he promises not to kill off Smudge, everyone’s favorite pyro-spider. There was talk of autistic cats, and the proper care and feeding of scowling preteens, and snowstorms. it was wonderfully casual.
blurry photo is blurry.
Instead of reading from Codex Born, he read a short story instead, one he wrote for the upcoming Unidentified Funny Objects 2 anthology. I wish I could remember the name of the short story, titled Stranger vs. the Malevolent Malignancy (thanks Jim!) it was fucking brilliant. Inspired by the real-time writings of author friend Jay Lake as he fights stage four cancer, Hines wrote a story story about exactly that: A superhero who has cancer. It wasn’t an easy story to listen to. No one knew what to say afterwards. Cancer is a total fucking buzzkill. but the story? damnit, but it was funny. like, laugh out loud oh-god-I-shouldn’t-be-laughing-but-it’s-so-funny Funny. so we laughed. and then we clapped. and then many books were autographed and photos were taken.
Isn’t that cover art gorgeous? shhhh! don’t tell anyone I grabbed extra bookmarks.
And I psyched myself up to ask Jim Hines if I could do a special littly bloggy project with Libriomancer, and he said it sounded cool, So now i gotta psych myself up to actually do it.
So when I have more details, I’ll let ya know!
Along with a signed copy of Codex Born, I bought The Melancholy of Mechagirl by Catherynne M. Valente and Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis. You know I loves me some Valente short fiction, and the Tregillis has been on my radar for ages.
And then Saturday night i went on a dinner date with the hubby. the food was just so-so, but my date was adorable.
- In: cover art | Jim C. Hines
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Last night I went to the Jim C. Hines booksigning at a local bookstore. To help him not think about the upcoming Hugo awards ceremony at Worldcon, where he’s nominated for best Fanwriter, Jim read from the short story that inspired Libriomancer (same Smudge, different Isaac), teased us about what we can look forward to in the second book in the series, and answered questions about what it was like place his book in rural (and urban) Michigan, what a person can, can’t, and really shouldn’t do with Libriomancy. And if you haven’t heard of Libriomancer, go read my review, then go read Justin Landon’s review, then go read some more about it, and then seriously, go get a copy. If you love books, if you are a geek at heart, this is the book for you. Libriomancer is just an all around wonderful read.
Recently famous for being this guy, there was some talk about cover art. One of the characters in Libriomancer is Lena Greenwood. She’s a dryad, and she ain’t a skinny lady. She’s perfectly rounded and curvy and unbelievable sexy. At the moment, she has a dark complexion. Jim Hines is poking at the expectations of the love triangle so often found in urban fantasy, and Lena is his sharp stick.
So he was telling us about a recent conversation he had with his publisher, where they were asking for a plot summary of the second book so they could start working on the cover art. Part of Jim’s response to them was that Lena needed to be on the cover, and a few days later he received in his e-mail some headshots of models they were thinking of using to portray Lena. When he complained that all the models were far too slender to be a realistic Lena, the response was “How about this one, she’s a size 6?”. Jim had already been through this conversation four times with his Princess books, begging for one of the characters complexions to be darkened to match what she actually looks like.
I’ve already had this discussion with Sarah Zettel about cover art not matching what the character looks like because publishers have the final word on cover art. Cover art white washing and “sexy-izing” isn’t anything new. The fact that it has become not unexpected means we are not talking about it enough.
Yes, I understand that “sex sells”, and the publishers know that people make a quick judgement based on their first look at a book. But if they could put a fat old guy on the cover of Throne of the Crescent Moon, what’s so terrible about putting a beautiful, pleasantly plump dark skinned woman on the cover of an urban fantasy?
I imagine publishers are asking themselves which book people are more likely to spend their money on – a book with cover art showing young-ish super skinny sexy woman wearing really tight pants and showing plenty of skin, or a book with cover art showing a beautiful plump lady?
so, reader, I ask you: how likely are you to buy a book where the cover art shows a plus-size lady whose skin tone doesn’t match yours?
do we want our cover art to portray an unrealistic expectation of beauty and perfection, or do we want our cover art to portray what the characters actually look like, and what real people (and possibly even the reader!!) actually looks like?
Libriomancer, by Jim C. Hines
Posted on: July 16, 2012
Libriomancer (Magic Ex Libris, book 1), by Jim C. Hines
published – August 2012
where I got it: received review copy from the author
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Libriomancer is a book for people who love stories, who love characters, who want to visit the places they read about and meet the characters they’ve only been able to visit on paper. Seriously. If the magic of a story has ever leapt off the page and seduced you into knowing that dragons and wizards and galactic empires and zombies exist, this is the book for you. If you adore the physical object known as book, this is the story for you.
Exiled to a tiny municipal library in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, ex-libriomancer Isaac Vainio should be able to stay out of trouble, right? He’s been set up in an easy job, been forbidden from doing magic, and is attempting to live a normal life with only his fire-spider Smudge by his side. Isaac yearns to dive into books again, and pull out something magical, but knows he shouldn’t. Isaac’s exile was for his own safety, because he couldn’t control his magic, but when vampires attack him in his library, it’s time to find out what the hell is going on.
Thus starts Jim Hines’ newest series, Magic Ex Libris. Isaac strikes me as a Harry Dresden type character, someone trained in a specific type of magic, but also responsible for making sure regular people are never aware that anything unusual is going on. He’s been educated and burned, and doesn’t want any more people to get hurt through his own carelessness.
Someone has been attacking Libriomancers, the vampires seem to have lost their minds, and the creator of Libriomancy himself, Johannes Gutenberg, has gone missing, along with his mechanical bodyguards. Isaac teams up with the motorcycle riding, bokken wielding dryad, Lena, to get to the bottom of the mystery, before it’s too late.
EpicConfusion wrap-up the first
Posted on: January 23, 2012
I have returned from EpicConfusion!
And it was incredible. I was in geek heaven. Everyone’s first con experience should be like this. There were authors hanging around, authors doing organized and well planned panels, authors autographing stuff (not just books!), and plenty of cosplay, humorous music (Rocky Horror Muppet Show!) and every flavor of crazy and fun. I met so many wonderful folks, authors, artists, other. Rothfuss was incredibly friendly, Lynch was gracious, Elizabeth Bear said I had pretty hair, Abercrombie may not be aware how irresistible that “British rogue” thing is to American women, Ahmed wins for nicest guy and best hair, Kameron Hurley is insanely interesting, Myke Cole gave me a hug anyways, and Peter Brett let me interrupt his dinner to talk about a panel he’d just done (btw, don’t interrupt peeps who are trying to eat. It was a total asshole thing I did), and Jim Hines is even more hilarious and friendly than I expected, even when he was completely exhausted and I was bugging him. When people found out it was my first con, they told me I picked a good one. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, and I was not disappointed.
I’ve so much to tell. . . . and so many blurry photos to post (wait, what? my camera has a low-light setting? Why didn’t someone tell me that before!). To keep you from having to slog through stuff you might not be interested in, there will be a post on fun/funny author interaction (that’s gonna be this one, by the way), panels, cosplay and of course, Scott Lynch gets a post all to himself.
I was that girl who faux pas’ed my way through my first con by hijacking conversations and bothering people and talking to anyone and everyone who looked interesting (including the goth cross dresser) and now I’m gonna be that girl who gives WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION. read at your own risk, and don’t say I didn’t warn you!
There will be a giveaway for peeps who survive all of these ridiculous posts.
the Little Red Reviewer 
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