Posts Tagged ‘magic’
I love absurdity. A flying angry bear, talking animals, weird creatures, intelligent fungi, guns that shoot bears (the bullets are bears. Live bears come out of the gun when you pull the trigger!). Absurdity, I say bring it!
I’d been hearing about Vandermeer’s A Peculiar Peril for a while now, and I knew nearly nothing about it. I knew that it had something to do with Thackery T Lambshead, I knew it had Vandermeer’s brand of weirdness, and reading the back cover copy made me laugh out loud, so we were off to a good start! If you mashed up Mieville’s Perdido Street Station with a Neil Gaiman, you might end up with something on the same plane as A Peculiar Peril.
The book has an wryly funny, if tragic beginning. Young Jonathan Lambshead is officially now an orphan. His mother disappeared in the Alps and is presumed dead, and his grandfather Dr. Lambshead has passed away. The novel opens with Jonathan arriving at his grandfather’s mansion and no one is there to greet him. Through letters and a phone call (delivered through a phone that isn’t plugged in), Jonathan learns that if he can only organize and catalog his grandfather’s collectables, he will inherit all! Well, It’s a good thing Jonathan invited his best friends Rack and Danny to help him. (Rack and Danny are brother and sister, “Danny” is short for Danielle, “Rack” is short for something much longer)
If you thought this was to be another adventure through Dr Thackery T Lambshead’s Cabinet of Curiosities. . . you’d be wrong. But that’s ok! By way of a strange map, an even stranger marmot, and yet stranger doors that go elsewhere, Jonathan, Rack, and Danny find themselves in an alternate Earth called Aurora, where Napoleon is a literal talking head, Aleister Crowley hasn’t realized he’s not in control, monsters abound, animals talk, shadows do as they please, and thanks to one particular bridge, you’ll be scared of puffins for the rest of your life.
All Jonathan wants is to understand what the hell is going on. Why does he need to find the Golden Sphere? What is he supposed to do when he finds it? Why do people seem to talk in code whenever he’s around? Is Danny hiding something from him? What the heck is the Chateau Peppermint Blonkers (I LOVE that absurd name, don’t you?), and who can he trust?
This book truly is absurdity piled on top of absurdity, and mostly in a good way. Let’s start with Aleister Crowley, because this poor guy is just so apeshit cray cray. Vandermeer’s Crowley rules Aurora with an iron fist, a creeptastic familiar named Wretch, and increasingly nonsensical pronouncements involving household trash and rabid animals. Or well, Crowley thinks he runs the show, but as the story progresses we learn more about how Wretch is, well, keeping Crowley under control. One of Crowley’s advisors is Napoleon’s head. Just his head. And when Napoleon gets to chatty, Crowley puts him up on a tall pedestal where no one can see or hear him. There’s also a mechanical elephant with an escape hatch under its tail, involving a conversation that screams to be read out loud in your best Monty Python voice.
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher is one of the cutest, most fun books I’ve read in a long time! Apparently it’s been a while since I read some Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher.
Ok, so the book isn’t all cutesy – people die, assassins go after teenagers, kids are homeless, adults act like idiots, there is some shit to be said about why we need heroes in the first place. . . ok, crap, this book is actually pretty dark, now that I’m thinking about it.
(the book doesn’t have any swear words, because Mona is a good girl. but #sorrynotsorry, this review has a lot of swear words.)
But I felt cute while I was reading it? I laughed a lot while I was reading it. I loved all the characters, i loved loved LOVED Mona’s internal voice, i kept snarking “not my gumdrop buttons!” outloud, and reading this book really made me want to bake and hold my loved ones close. Reading it made me feel hopeful.
So, after Mona’s parents died, she went to live with her aunt and uncle and work in their bakery. Well, she works there, but she lives in her own little room down the street. At fourteen years old, she leaves her apartment at 4am, goes to the bakery, and starts the ovens. What were you doing at 14? Mona is also an amateur wizard – she can make bread dough do cute things. The bakery customers (ok, some of them) love it when she makes the gingerbread men get up and dance (some of the customers think she’s a creepy witch). There’s also this semi-sentient bucket of sourdough starter in the basement named Bob. Bob eats the rats. #teamBob.
One sleepy morning, Mona arrives at work, to find a strange girl in the bakery. The girl is also dead. Aunts are woken up, police are called. And not too many days after that, when Mona gets to work in the wee hours of the morning, the assassin is waiting for her too.
Fourteen year olds shouldn’t have to escape from assassins at four oclock in the morning.
And I haven’t even had a chance yet to tell you about Knackering Molly and her dead horse Nag! I wonder what Bob and Nag would think of each other? Molly freakin’ rocks, by the way.
The assassin is obviously another wizard. Why the heck would a wizard be hunting other wizards, especially someone like Mona, a teenager who has limited magical abilities?
Things happen, and then dear reader, you will read the funniest scene you have ever read in your life. It involves Mona and her new friend Spindle climbing up a, um, sort of drain pipe? The, um, drain pipe that leads directly to the Duchess’s, um, garderobe. Ain’t the Duchess in for a shock when she walks into her bathroom to find two shit covered teenagers. My friends, I was laughing so hard I fell out of my chair!
You’ve probably already figured this out about me, but I don’t mind it when an author doesn’t explain everything. I’d rather a story very slowly tease out the “what’s really going on”, rather than tell me all the fun stuff up front. Sheri S Tepper’s The Family Tree, published way back in 1997, is very much this kind of story. We meet some characters and get to know them . . we meet a second batch of characters and get to know them. . . and then, well, you might want to duct tape your jaw to your head, as some insulation against how many times this book will make it drop.
Also, whoever wrote the back cover copy on the paperback I have, man, that person managed to take an amazing, charming, enthralling book and make it sound kinda blah. So don’t read the cover copy!!
As with most other Tepper novels I’ve read, I was drawn in to the story immediately. The characters caught and kept my attention, and Tepper showed me their environment without infodumping. This is a very Tepper book, and by that I mean the characters are intelligent and persistent, there is a pro-environmental / live kindly with nature theme, and a long game.
We meet police officer Dora Henry as she’s realizing she needs to leave her husband Jared. They have the absolute strangest relationship ever, more a marriage of convenience than anything romantic. And when she moves her stuff out he flips out. (later in the book, when Jared flips out even more, I described him as a mustache twirling dick. My husband’s response was “but was he a dick twirling mustache?”. Dick twirling mustache is my new favorite way to describe a petty bad guy).
Even without the divorce and Jared’s drama, Dora has her hands full at work. There are some murders that her department is investigating (who would kill a scientist?) and invasive plants and trees are taking over the city. She doesn’t mind the invasive trees and plants, they are quite pretty, if you like that kind of thing (which Dora, and I, do)
So, just as I’m getting super invested in Dora’s plotline, the story shifts to this sort of quest fantasy plotline. My first thought was that Dora was telling this story to someone? Or that someone was telling this, as a bedtime story, to Dora in her childhood? Because it did have the trappings of a fantasy story – among other characters is the young harem slave, Nassif, who is told to dress like a boy and be a servant for Prince Sahir who is going on a quest, there is also Prince Izakar who has access to secret library and is told he needs to solve the great mystery of his time, there is a farming family whose humorous children only care that their grazing animals are safe, there is a countess, there are a few other characters. All these people end up meeting and deciding they should continue together, in hopes they can help each other on their possibly connected quests.
My second thought, after a few chapters of these fantasy style characters was how nice they were to each other. Sure, people disagree, but there was no backstabbing, no betrayals, no intrigue, no bloody wars of conquest. All these folks are, for lack of a better term, decent human beings who show kindness and compassion. (how sad is that, that I’m shocked to run into decent human beings in a sci-fantasy novel??) There does seem to be this thing about accusing people being cannibals, which was disconcerting and threw my idea of this being a bedtime story out the window.
what’s this, a book review? I know, right?
Shorefall, by Robert Jackson Bennett
Published April 2020
where I got it: Received ARC from the publisher (Thanks Jo Fletcher books!)
I meant to reread Foundryside before reading Shorefall. But then i was like do I really have time to reread Foundryside? And I liked that book, but did I like it enough to want to reread it?
So I dived into Shorefall, with very, very fuzzy memories of Foundryside. I remember really digging the magic system, really liking Clef and his whole deal, being kinda meh on Sancia even though she has a tragic backstory and a metal plate in her head, and really digging the magic system. Yep, that’s about all I remember from the first book. I don’t remember all the details about Valeria from the first book, but she must have been really important. That said, I do NOT recommend jumping into Shorefall if you haven’t read Foundryside. (Altho I am SUPER curious about people who did read Shorefall first. Could they get into it? is this a series that can maybe be read in any order?)
Shorefall opens with Sancia, Berenice, Gregor, and Orso putting the final touches on some new invention they’ve created in their workshop. What exactly is this thing? First I thought it was some kind of printing press, then it seemed more like a magical photo copier, and finally I settled on that it was some kind of magical quantum button thing, that whatever one button does, the other button does it.
Even they have a tough time describing their invention, and that makes a specific merchant house even more interested in getting their hands on it.
Of course, getting their invention inside that particular merchant house is just the first step in their grand plan . . .
Something I’ve loved from the start of this series is the magic system. It functions sort of like computer programming – you etch a set of sigils, and lines of sigils become commands, and the commands that are etched into something, such as a metal plate, make that something want to break the laws of physics. Now, imagine if all the commands and how to combine them weren’t yet known, but scrivers messed around with things (a la mad scientists) to figure out new combinations that would make something work without it exploding. Larger discoveries effectively creating programming shortcuts, and new knowledge akin to a more advanced computer programming language. Oh, and there are no computers, and hardly any advanced technology. It’s all very Girl Genius, but with way less humor.
I was worried this book would suffer from “middle book syndrome”, and the book ended up being quite the opposite! In fact, in my opinion, Shorefall is all around a better book than Foundryside.
I *think* I was supposed to connect with Sancia, and really follow her plotline and be super interested in the politics of what was going on in Tevanne.
What ended up happening was that Sancia had a scene or two that tugged at me, and then I lost track of all the fancy merchant families, and then I got super invested in Gregor and Crasedes and Valeria. And then buckets and buckets of hella cool shit happened at the end of the novel. And I mean really, really hella cool shit!
This was the book I didn’t want to review.
I didn’t even want to read it.
I don’t know why, but I felt the need to save this book for some time when I really needed it. Like it was the last bottle of whisky from a famous yet shuttered distillery. And once I opened it, it would evaporate and soon barely the scent would remain.
When I did crack the book open, of course the first story I read was The Battle of Candle Arc. And then I read that story again. And then I read Iseul’s Lexicon, which I then, read again.
I consumed this collection in such a strange way, I consumed it the same way I use a cookbook. Once I identified a story I enjoyed, I’d reread it three, or four times, getting into into my rotation. When I felt ready, I’d try another story/meal.
Strange, I know. But you already know that I’m strange.
The time came for me to start thinking about the review.
I didn’t want to write it. I didn’t want to put Conservation of Shadows back on the shelf along with all the other books that “I’m done thinking about”. I’m not ready for these characters to not be in my life anymore. Can I reread these stories any time I want? For sure. But there’s something different about a book that is floating around the house because you are still thinking about it, and a book that you’ve put back on the shelf and categorized in your mind as “I’m done thinking about that book”.
This is what Yoon Ha Lee does: writes fiction you don’t want to stop thinking about. You might be done reading the book, but the book isn’t done with you.
To write this review, I’ve made a bargain with myself: I purchased Hexarchate Stores, so I can dive right into that, and Conservation of Shadows is going to live on the coffee table for a while longer. This review is not an agreement that I’m done with this book. In fact, it’ll be really fun to reread these stories in 6 months or a year, and see if they have changed, or if I’ve changed.
Thank you for letting me get all of that out of my system and put words to my feelings. You’ve been very patient. I guess it’s time I talk about this collection, yeah?
Most of the stories touch on language (which of course, I have zero interest in), colonialism and occupation, assimilation, destruction of cultures through destruction of their language, how sometimes things just don’t translate, and how war makes us strangers to ourselves.
One last thing before I actually talk about the stories! Fun new words!
sumptuary morphophonemics escritoire
logographs entelechy
Isn’t “escritoire” just the most beautiful word you’ve ever seen?
Ok, I am getting to the stories now, I SWEAR. In no particular order:
Two more Vlad Taltos Books
Posted on: September 24, 2019
You saw this article on BoingBoing about Steven Brust and Roger Zelazny, yeah?
I’m going to talk about these books in the order I read them. Even though in hindsight, I should have read them in the opposite order. Oh well.
Minor spoilers and major teases ahead.
So, I haven’t read every single book in this series, and the ones that I have read, I haven’t exactly read them in order. But it’s okay, because the books in this series are sorta kinda meant to be read in whatever order you please, and then reread in whatever order you please. I kinda don’t want to get to the point where I’ve read every book in this series? Like, I always want there to be some surprises left. Lol I’ll be 90 years old and blind, and that’s when I’ll decide to read the one I haven’t read, and then I’ll be shouting in the middle of the night at the nursing home “That’s how Teldra and Morrolan met? You are fucking shitting me!”
These books are my comfort reads. When I need something I know I’m going to love from page one, I pick up a Vlad Taltos book, and I’m a happy camper for a few days.
Also, I’ve got a little bit of history with this series.
Phoenix was written in 1990, and is chronologically the approximate 9th book in Brust’s Vlad Taltos series. (yeah, this isn’t that kind of fantasy and these aren’t those dragons. Just so we’re clear)
This is the book where Vlad realizes his marriage is over. Some readers will gloss right over those scenes, I had a really tough time. I’m a softy, ok? And he still loves her. And I think she still loves him. And I get why they split, and I respect it, but I can still cry about it, ok?
Anyway, the book opens with Vlad getting killed. And he thinks about the Demon Goddess Verra, and how he
“had once traveled several thousand miles through supernatural horrors and the realm of the dead men just to bid her good-day”
And I thought that sounded hella cool, so I pulled Taltos off my bookshelf to read next. Not only does Verra answer when Vlad calls out to her with his dying breath, she gives him a job. All Vlad’s gotta do is kill a guy. He’s pretty good at that, so no problem. Except, his target is the king of a tiny island country that the Empire doesn’t have anything to do with, because sorcery doesn’t work there. Sorcery is what allows the Empire to function, so if you could go somewhere where it doesn’t work . . . .
There’s also a drummer who might be a spy.
And there’s a revolution brewing at home. This book has buckets of societal questions about the rights of the lower classes and the rights of minority ethnic groups, and the right to protest and the right to be heard. But this isn’t a book about how to start a revolution, it’s not a youth anthem, it’s not a book about toppling the system, this ain’t Hunger Games, you know. In truth, Vlad would very much like for things to quiet down and go back to the way they were. He just wants to live a quiet life where he gets paid to kill people, and runs illegal gambling dens, you know?
two books I enjoyed
Posted on: September 14, 2019
instead of a some long drawn out reviews, howsabout a few words on some books I enjoyed recently? You’d like that? yeah, me too.
They made a movie out of The Prestige by Christopher Priest, and all I remember was i think Hugh Jackman was in it? And there was some scene at the end where there are like 30 top hats just blowing away? I’m pretty sure another Illusionist/Magician movie came out around the same time, and I might be getting them mixed up. Anyone remember the details of this, or even what year these movies came out?
From seeing the movie, I pretty much already knew the “big reveal” in the book. But friends had told me that the reveal is treated totally different in the book, and boy were they right!!! if you like slow-ish moving historical dramas, this is the story for you! The beginning was a bit slow, and then it ramps up and the drama ramps up, and at the end I couldn’t put the book down. If you’ve not ever read any Christopher Priest because everyone says his book are weird AF (they are!), this is a great book to start with because it’s completely readable and keeps you turning the pages, even when weird shit happens. The further you get into the book, the more weird shit happens. Also? Nikola Tesla has a cameo!
Both main characters, the guys who are feuding, neither of them are sympathetic characters. They are both shit heads, they both feel bad for the shitty stuff they did, and at the end of the book I wasn’t sure who I felt more bad for. I pity them both.
The Prestige is a great place to start with Christopher Priest and Vallista isn’t a good place to start with Steven Brust. Vallista is the 15th book in Brust’s Dragaeran series (but like, the 13th book, chronologically? i’m really not sure). I love this series. When I am feeling stressed out, these are the comfort books I turn to. This series is basically about a guy, Vlad. I’m not going to get into it more than that, because if I did I’d be blathering on forever. If you are that interested, start here, and from there there is about a million directions you can go.
I lovethis series so much because, well, the writing and the story and the characters, they are all fantastic. I love first person POV, i love dialog banter, I love snark, I love long running jokes, I love slow world building. This series has all of that. I love that this series is just about people trying to live their lives, and people who care about their families. Knowing I have a stack of Steven Brust books (many of which are Vlad books) that I can read whenever I want is therapeutic for me. Just knowing they are there, like, it works for me, ok? Being alive at the same time that Vlad’s life is being created, like, it’s a good time to be alive. and yes, I know Loiosh is giving me side-eye right now for not making him out to be the main character. I earned that side-eye!
ok, anyway, Vallista. What a fun book! Devera shows up and asks for Vlad’s help (she doesn’t tell him with what, exactly), and of course he’s going to help her! She runs into a house on a hill (YES, the house from the end of Hawk! eeeeee!!!!), he follows her, and the door locks behind him. This house doesn’t follow any rules of physics or architecture, and when Vlad meets the ghost of the architect, her explanation doesn’t help any. The book gave me Doctor Who vibes, in the best way. The people who Vlad meets in this weird house, he’s got to figure out how to get them to keep talking, because the more he learns about what the hell is going on, the more likely he is to figure out how to get out of this weird screwy house!
if you’re not caught up in the series, so long as you have met Devera, you’re good to read Vallista. I know she shows up in Tiassa, I don’t remember if she shows up prior to that.
I dig this series, because the world building happens slowly. Like, you remember when you were young, and you started collecting books, or comic books, or whatever? You had a little bookshelf in your room, and it slowly filled up. When it filled up, you were really excited – your bookshelf was full! then you got a fullsize bookshelf. and that filled up. fast forward ten years, and you’ve rooms full of books. and you are happy, because they are full, and you are happy because you keep buying more books. that’s what the worldbuilding in this series feels like – just the right amount at a time, at just the right speed. I didn’t explain it well. #sorrynotsorry
A question to my fellow Dragaeran readers: Who is your favorite character in the series?
Stay tuned, one of these days I’ll post about two books I read recently that didn’t wow me!
This post is part of The Gossamer Blog Tour! and it wouldn’t be a blog tour without a giveaway, now would it? In the almost ten years that I have been blogging, I have NEVER seen a give away like this before! Click for details! (Are you outside the US? Gotcha covered!)
Earlier today I posted a guest post from Julie Czerneda, where she takes us inside her worldbuilding process, and talks about maps and distances and that sometimes the map is the territory.
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The Gossamer Mage by Julie Czerneda
Available August 6 2019
Where I got it: Received ARC (thanks DAW!)
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Where I got it: received for review (thanks DAW!)
Go ahead, judge a book by its cover. Especially this book. The golden ink on that cover, you would swear that it moves when you look away. What happens to the words that are written with such ink, with the intentions that come with those words? What indeed.
Julie Czerneda’s newest fantasy novel, The Gossamer Mage, takes us to the beautiful land of Tananen. In the port city, in the rolling hills, in the villages, in the mage school up in the mountains, magic flows through Tananen. Mages and Priestesses commit their lives to the Deathless Goddess, and through Her, through writing Her intentions, amazing magic happens. While the townspeople and villagers love the magical medicines, technologies, machines, and trinkets, those intimately involved with Her magic know the terrible cost of what they do. Travelers and traders have learned the hard way that magic only exists within the boundaries of Tananen, and that the Deathless Goddess is not welcoming to strangers. She protects Her secrets.
The Gossamer Mage is a quietly compelling, character driven, smartly written fantasy. If you crave characters that leap off the page, if you prefer knowledge over swords, if you liked Fullmetal Alchemist (really! There’s a connection!), this is the book for you.
The first thing that hit me while reading The Gossamer Mage was how much I loved the way Czerneda did the world building. I feel like if I took a drive, Tananen could be over the next hilltop and I’d know exactly where I was. Czerneda’s writing is incredibly immersive, but it never feels like she is burying the reader in exposition or infodumps. As characters travel around Tananen, she takes the opportunity to show their experiences and observations as they explore their new locations, everything feels immersive and natural.
Magic in Tananen isn’t cheap. Getting a magical trinket, or a made-horse from a mage won’t cost you very much. . . but it costs the mage dearly. Magic is done by writing the Goddess’s Intentions, and each successfully written intention costs the mage at least a year off their lifespan. The more bells sewn into a mage’s hair, the more intentions they have written, the less years they have left to live. A 30 year old mage easily appears to be 85 years of age, or older. It is an honor for your child to show the talent that will take them to the mage school. Mothers weep at the news, knowing they will outlive their child.
- In: H.G. Parry
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The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, by H.G. Parry
Available July 2019
where I got it: received ARC (Thanks Hachette!!)
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Since the beginning of ever there has been this thing that readers and writers of literature don’t read or write genre fiction, and readers and writers of genre fiction don’t read or write literature. That’s all bullshit by the way, but there are always authors who are offended that people call them “science fiction writers”, and readers of literature who look down on us speculative fiction readers.
Yet, it begs the question – how to get lit readers and genre fiction readers to see how much they have in common? That we all love a story well told, that we all love characters who go through hell and back, that we all love the feeling of falling headfirst into a book? The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry could be the book that brings us all together. This book stitches together a scholar’s love for classic British literature with the scifi/fantasy joyful gleefulness of fictional characters who literally come alive out of books and then someone’s got to help them figure out how to live in the real world, or shove them screaming back into their dry paper pages.
If you’re a scifi/fantasy fan, and you enjoy Jim C. Hines’ Libriomancer books, or if you secretly loved those ST:TNG episodes where the holodeck went haywire and some poor Ensign found themselves face to face with Moriarty, you’ll enjoy this book.
If you have no idea what libriomancy or a holodeck is, but you love Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, and anything involving Sherlock Holmes, and/or if you intimately know the beauty and the power of literature, you’ll enjoy this book.
For nearly 30 years, Rob has helped keep a dangerous family secret. The secret is that his little brother, Charley, can literally pull story book characters out of books. When then were little boys, Charley pulled the Cat in the Hat right out of the book! Now that Charley is back in Rob’s life, Rob’s got to once again get used to middle of the night phone calls of “help, it happened again. Can you come over?”. The family fears the worst if anyone where to find out about Charley’s secret power. Would he be thrown into some secret prison lab somewhere, never be to be seen again?
Much of the story is told from Rob’s point of view, and he’s the classic frustrated older sibling, as loyal to and protective of his little brother has he is annoyed by being constantly dragged into his brother’s problems. How long can Rob keep this a secret from his fiance? And who the hell is this Uriah Heep look-a-like who has shown up as an intern at Rob’s workplace??
The plot thickens right away, when Charley and Rob are told of a secret “street”. Through an alleyway, they find a secret door, behind which lies The Street. Storybook characters who have been given life (by Charley??? By someone else?) eventually find their way to the Street, where they can live safely. The White Witch of Narnia is here, as is the Implied Reader, along with Heathcliff, Matilda, five versions of Mr. Darcy, Miss Matty, Dorian Gray, and Millie Radcliffe-Dix, among others. I’ll need a pulp mystery expert’s help here, but I believe Millie Radcliffe-Dix is an actual fictional character made up for this novel, she’s a 1950s Girl Detective – full of moxie and smarts, and never in any actual physical danger.
Rob is astounded and rather terrified to see all these fictional characters wandering around, and Charley is full of wonder and glee. The Street is the first place where Charley has felt safe.
the Little Red Reviewer 
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