I read The Cursed Queen

This week's novel is The Cursed Queen, the sequel to The Imposter Queen by Sarah Fine.

Ansa was raised in a vicious warrior tribe that values bloody raids and make kill marks on their arms to show their status.  But when they launch a huge invasion fleet, the witch queen who rules where they were about to invade single-highhandedly destroys everybody.  The witch queen also curses Ansa (one of three warriors who survive) to have fire and ice magic that threatens to destroy her tribe when she takes it back to them.  Ansa has to keep her curse a secret or be stoned by her tribe as a witch, but with their warriors dead and their old chieftain replaced by his daughter, who everyone thinks is too soft-hearted, a splinter tribe tries to take over and Ansa is sucked into a political game that tests her loyalties.

This book has a different narrator than the first book, an it's set in a different part of the world.  The two books are also taking place simultaneously, and it's interesting to see how the two stories intersect.  Having read the first one, we know a fair bit more than Ansa--namely that she's not cursed, but rather she's inherited the magic.  But it works well, and I never felt like Ansa was stupid for not figuring out what I knew because I'd already read the first book.

In general, I liked how Ansa was portrayed.  She was born in the country from the first book, but kidnapped by the raiders and made a member of their tribe, and she has spent her life desperately trying to fit in.  So when she tries repeatedly to reject the magic, I understood why she was doing it.  Then her new chieftain is talking about changing their ways to survive (farming?!  not killing old, unarmed people?!) and the chieftain who wants to take over their tribe is talking about tradition and being glorious in victory, and I understand why it's so hard for Ansa to pick a side.  It never felt like she was flip-flopping for the sake of keeping the plot going until she can make a decision and show her loyalty at the climax, but instead it felt like a character flaw rising out of her desire to belong and be accepted and never be weak enough to have her family murdered in front of her again.

And, like the first book, I like how this one is about identity.  Is Ansa part of her adoptive culture or the culture she was born into but doesn't remember?  Can her tribe change their ways without abandoning who they are?  These are questions that so many people wrestle with, just turned up to eleven and with pseudo-Vikings.

***

Next week: Wild Beauty, YA Fantasy by Anna-Marie McLemore

I read To All the Boys I've Loved Before

 This week's novel is To All the Boys I've Loved Before, by Jenny Han.

When Laura Jean gets crushes on unattainable guys, she writes love letters, spilling out all of her feelings as a way of saying goodbye, and then she stores them away in a hat box.  She never means for anyone to read them or for them to ever get sent, but that's exactly what happens.  This is more than just regular embarrassing, because one of the letters is to Josh, Laura Jean's sister's long time boyfriend, who she dumped right before going to college and right before the letters got sent.  In order for hi to not get any ideas, Laura Jean arranges to have a fake relationship with Peter, who also received one of her letters and who just broke up with his manipulative boyfriend and wants to make it clear he's moved on.

I found a lot to like about this book.

Laura Jean is allowed to be unapologetically feminine.  She loves to braid her hair and wear cute clothes and bake cupcakes and scrap book and write notes using fancy pens on special stationary.  She does a lot of dreamy-eyed daydreaming.  She's not embarrassed about it, the narration isn't poking fun at her for it or implying she's any less of an interesting person.  She's not given extra interests that are traditionally coded masculine to make her seem "tougher" or "stronger," while at the same time, it's never implied that she's weak.  The fact that I find this so refreshing, makes me a little uncomfortable.  Why don't we see this more?

Oh, wait.  I know why.

I also found the sister's relationships fascinating.  They were good sister relationships, where they squabble and stick up for each other, where they're loyal, but their fights are bitter.  That was well done.  But what I really liked was how directly their backstory affected their characters and their relationships to each other.  Their mother died when they were young, and Margot, the oldest, clearly stepped up to take over the job of mothering.  She keeps track of the family's scheduling, she plans and cooks meals, she makes baked goods for school bake sales.  So when she leaves for college, the family is a bit of a mess for a while, forgetting about the youngest sister's field trip and such.  Meanwhile, Margot is calling home and reminding them to do things they already have on the calendar and telling Laura Jean that junior year is the most important year and she needs to join some extracurriculars and apply for internships.

Laura Jean, on the other hand, has a strand of fear in her that you can trace back to her mother's death.  She's too panicky to drive the car.  She also has trouble getting close to people, and would rather sigh while pining after boys from afar than really get to know them.  She'd rather fake-date Peter because then it's not real, and therefore not scary.

And meanwhile, the youngest sister, who is much younger, and was three when their mother died, has way less baggage than the other two, and really wants a dog.

It's really well done, and I started quietly taking notes.

The last thing I want to talk about are the scene changes.  The chapters are all very short, some only a handful of pages.  And there aren't many scenes where significant events happen all at once.  Laura Jean and Peter will be in the library studying and hell put his head in her lap and she'll shove him off, and she'll feel the flutters, but then the scene will change and she'll be in a class and someone will say something rude.  It's not quite a montage, because everything is in scene, and you'll stay in that scene for a full page or two.  But the scenes will shift without anything resolving, without Laura Jean having a breakthrough or a definite start or stop to a problem.  Furthermore, when they come back together in a different time and place, it's as if friendships get resettled back into their base state.  Laura Jean and Peter will snip at each other and she'll be angry that he's not over his ex, but then in the next scene, they'll be ready to drink each other's sodas.  The way I'm describing it, it sounds like actions don't have lasting consequences, but I saw it as an accurate portrayal of what it's like to have a friendship at school.  You can't have a full conversation in the middle of class.   You snip at each other and then you go to Waffle House, because if given a few class periods, you'll get over it or they'll get over it, and even if you're both kinda still mad, it's not going to keep you from Waffle House.

***

Next Week: The Cursed Queen, a sequel to The Imposter Queen, by Sarah Fine.

I read Muse of Nightmares

 This week, I read Muse of Nightmares, the sequel to Strange the Dreamer, by Lani Taylor.

I can't talk about this one without spoiling the first one.  If you haven't read Strange the Dreamer, you should go read that instead of this blog post.

Lazlo and Minya are at an impasse, where she wants to use him to wreck vengence on all Weep, using her control over Sarai as a threat, and he wants to protect Weep and is pretty sure Minya won't kill her only bargaining chip.  They all realize how very damaged Minya is, both by the trauma of living through the carnage and by the weight her gift places on her, and Sarai sets out to charge her heart and mind.

The first big chunk of this book is very dismal.  There's just nothing anyone can do and no good solution.  They spend a lot of time replying how awful the situation is.  It made for a rough read.  I kept getting distracted, because the first chapter of each section is about a completely different group of people: a pair of sisters who dream of being chosen by the blue gods because their dormant amazing gifts are so amazing.  They dream of being taken away from their harsh ice village with their horrible step-mother and their horrible jobs butchering walrus-like creatures.  It was gripping and I had room to root for them.  The A-plot was such a downer that I started flipping ahead and just reading the B plot chapters.

I did like how all the pieces fall into place at the end, all the different story lines coming together.  A bunch of secondary characters get developed over the course of the book, so when they use their skills at the end in ways that help the main story, it feels earned, even though a lot of the resolution could have easily felt like a cop out.

I still love Strange the Dreamer, but this sequel was not as striking.

***

Next week: To All the Boys I've Loved Before, YA contemporary romance by Jenny Han

I read Charmed Life

This week's novel is Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones.  This was on a recommendation list for books about magic schools, and Howl's Moving Castle, another of Jones' books is one of my favorites, so I thought I should check this out.

Cat's older sister Gwendolen is a talented witch, so when their parents die and they're eventually whisked off to live with Chrestomanci, the rich and talented wizard, she thinks she'll finally get the attention, respect, and power she deserves.  Cat is just homesick.  But when Chrestomanci refuses to let Gwendolyn use magic, and she sets out on a series of daily magical pranks to get attention, things get even more difficult for Cat, who's put in the middle of trying to appease his sister and trying to fit into his new home.

I really liked the first half or so of this book, because Gwendolen's siege against Chrestomanci, trying to get a rise out of him, felt real to the kind of crap a kid would pull who has just lost her parents, and then been displaced from her home.  It felt like she just needed some attention, even if that attention was punishment.  If she gets in trouble, at least the adults in charge are noticing her.

I also liked how Cat is the devoted underachiever, and that he loves his sister even if she's being a pill.  I liked how his life was structured so that "Gwendolyn is going to do great things, and I'm not" is a fact that's never questioned or resented.  That felt real too.  It also felt real that he struggles so hard with standing up to her, and that he wished she'd calm down so he could make friends with the other kids at Chrestomanci's castle.  He just wanted to play in the tree house, but his sister needs him to help her make giant spider monsters so she can disrupt Chrestomanci's dinner party.

So I'm pretty disappointed that the ending ruins all of that.  I was expecting Gwendolen to have a sobbing breakdown where she admits she only wants love and misses her parents and is trying so hard to be the great witch everyone back home expects from her and it's difficult do deal with the realization that she was a big fish in a little pond.  I was expecting Cat to realize he had his own power, and to move out from under Gwendolyn's shadow, and for Gwendolen to realize that she'd been overbearing.  That would have been a more emotionally satisfying book for me.

That is not what happens.  In fact, what happens has to be summed up at the end in true Jones style with Chrestomanci explaining everything while everyone has tea.

I did like the hints at the mystery that are strung along through the book.  They were enough for the reader to know there were things afoot, but not enough for me to piece it all together myself.  It was also reasonable that Cat, after hearing these clues, wouldn't have his interest piqued by them and investigate them to their conclusion. Jones does this all very well.

As a warning, this was written in the seventies, and there are a couple moments of weird racism just dropped in for no reason.  All the instances are so brief that if the lines were cut, the story wouldn't lose anything but racism, but it was the seventies, so no editor cared.  It's really more jarring than anything else.

Next week: The Muse of Nightmares, the sequel to Strange the Dreamer, by Lani Taylor.

Homophones!

I got edits back from my agent this week.  Most of the edits were line edits, which are edits for spelling or punctuation or word usage.  Line edits are things where you go, "Oh shoot!  You're right," and then you click to accept the change and then move on with your life.  They aren't big, global things like "I don't understand this character's motivation," or "This scene makes no sense," or "You should add a bunch of background or world building or cut a character."

Most of the edits were line edits.  A big chunk of them were homophone mistakes.

Homophones are words that sound the same, but are spelled differently.  Two, Too, and To.  Your and You're.  Don't worry, I've got those under control.

What I don't have under control are things like "compliment" and "complement."  Did you know those are two different words?  I just learned that a few years ago, and it's still blowing my mind.  One means that things match or improve upon one another, like "That dress complements her complexion."  The other is something nice you say to someone.  "Thank you for the compliment about my dress!"  For a real long time, I thought they were the same word, because both words are about lifting one another up.  We're complimenting each other!  We're complementing each other!

Alas!  This is not the case.

The other one that blew my mind was "wander" and "wonder."  One is when you stroll around without direction.  One is when you think about something real hard or are in awe of something.  I thought these were the same, because when you wonder, you are wandering around in your thoughts.  Just...figuratively.

Alas!  Also not the case.

I'm real bad at homophones, y'all.  This is why the podcast was successful.  No one can hear if those mistakes are there.  Or not there. Maybe I did everything right.  You'll never know.

This week, I made myself a Big List of Homophones.  It's a list of way too many homophones that I'm likely to mess up, and before I send anything else out to my agent, I have to check everything that's on there and make sure I'm using it all correctly. 

I read Leviathan Wakes

This week's novel is Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey.

I'd heard good things about The Expanse TV show, but at first, I didn't have access to it.  Recently someone told me that the first couple seasons were on Amazon Prime, and I settled in to watch it.  It might be a combination of my TV, my air conditioner, and the dialects that the characters have, but I can not hear a single word anyone is saying on that show.  I turned the first couple episode up really loud and then I turned on the subtitles for the third episode, and then I realized that I didn't know anyone's name or what they were talking about, and if I was going to read the whole thing, I might as well track down the book.  So thanks, Chicago Public Library!

In the future, a large portion of the solar system has been colonized, with Earth and Mars in an uneasy peace and people from the asteroid belt treated like second class citizens and reliant on Earth and Mars for resources.  Detective Miller of Ceres is given a case of tracking down a girl named Julie, who has been hanging around with asteroid belt rebels, and whose rich dad wants her kidnapped and shipped back to Earth.  Turns out Julie's ship was attacked in transit and the wreckage was found by a water tanker, which was promptly nuked by a stealth ship using technology from Mars.  This sets off events that lead to armed conflict between the belt, Mars, and Earth, and through it all, Miller is trying to find Julie.

I get why this was made into a TV show.  There are about a dozen set-piece action sequences, where a ship explodes or a riot happens or there's a space battle or they have to escape through a platoon of marines or zombies attack.  It's a little exhausting to read in large chunks, but if you take a break after every episode, it's fun, even when you know there's still 15% of the book left and at least two more horrible things are going to happen.

I like how long the space travel takes.  A couple of weeks pass between destinations, which feels genuine to the massive distances while at the same time putting us in the future where those distances are possible.  It doesn't make traveling too easy, often emphasizing that if they're accelerating at 3 g, it means they spend the trip strapped in.  The book does a good job of not dwelling on the boring transits while still conveying that time has passed.

I also just really like stories where colonizers on Mars end up fighting with Earth.  I think it's the residual love for Babylon 5 that will never wash off.

I realized a little way into this book that it was written by a white dude, and I haven't read a book written by a white dude in a while.  Parts of it felt a jarring after not experiencing them in a while, and I find it refreshing to think about how I could go so long without reading a book by a white guy that that could happen.  There really isn't anything wrong with it, it's just that the two point of view characters are both men, and there are scant few female characters, and there is an awful lot of talk about balls.  Having balls in high gs sounds awful.  Thanks, book, for drawing this to my attention.  That kind of detail probably wouldn't make it into a book written by a woman, and that's why representation is important.

***

Next week: a book not written by a dude.  The Power, sci-fi where women take over the world, by Naomi Alderman.

I read The Belles

This week's novel is The Belles, by Dhonielle Clayton.

In a world where everyone is born with gray skin and red eyes, a set of magical girls, called belles, can change people's appearance to make them beautiful for a price.  Camellia has worked her whole life towards being skilled enough to be The Favorite, the belle assigned to the royal family, who sets beauty standards across the country.  When she finally reaches that goal, she finds that the position is way more dangerous than she'd ever thought.

I have a couple warnings to start with if you're thinking of reading this book.  1. There are egregious examples of bury your gays.  You read that right, "examples" is plural.  2. There's a series of headlines, just several in a list, and one of them mentions a trans person.   Somehow in that single headline and single mention in the entire book, it still manages to misgender them.

I'm not in the mood to find stuff I liked about this one.

This book did not dive into the themes set up in the premise as much as I was hoping for.  This story seems like fertile ground to talk about how arbitrary it is that some features are considered beautiful and some aren't.  Especially given that the main character is a person of color, whose skin tone and hair texture are, in modern American culture, considered undesirable.  Since there isn't race in this fantastical society, Camellia's skin tone is treated as just a variant on a theme, and--heck--let's get into that!  But no.  The premise also seems like fertile ground for discussing how only the wealthy can afford the treatments to make them beautiful, while the poor are gray, red-eyed troll people.  Do the gray, red-eyed troll people think they're ugly, because they're told they are every day?  Do the wealthy look down on them? Has anyone tried to make a fashion statement by having openly gray skin?  Being beautiful is something mandated by the Goddess they worship, so what does it mean that they're charging people to obey the goddess' mandate?  We don't know.  It's not important. 

Instead, the book focuses on how the princess, who will probably inherit the throne, is a cartoon villain, and Camilla needs to stop her/do everything she says.

I was even expecting for the beauty standards of this world to be bizarre and engaging.  If you're starting from gray, why wouldn't people have blue skin and three eyes and hair that sticks straight up in the air?  I was expecting full on Capital from the Hunger Games, and although there are blips of weirdness, the book never lets loose with it.  And that makes the moments of weirdness confusing.  Are they supposed to be weird?

"The wardrobe opens and the interior explodes with color.  Dresses with full skirts, A-line cuts, empire waists, sheaths, long sleeves, cap sleeves, no sleeves, V-necks and scoop necks and plunging necklines.  Dresses made of brocades, laces, velvets, glass beads, cashmeres, silks, and pastel satins in every color and pattern.  Special carts follow the wardrobe, carrying vivant dresses inside large glass bell jars.  These are dresses made of living things.  Butterflies open and close their wings, exposing their dress's inner rib cage.  Honeybees buzz in and out of a honeycomb-shaped gown.  Roses of every color wave their petals."  I can picture everything but the honeybee dress, which seems wildly out of place.  Then on the next page, there's this:  "I'm wearing one of the Fashion Minister's latest creations--a honey-and-marigold bustle dress with a waffle texture and a waist-sash of striped fur."  Is...that pretty? Does Camilla think it's pretty?  To me, it doesn't sound stunning or wild, just...unpleasant.

That's a problem I've been encountering a lot.  If a setting or a dress is described and none of the characters give their opinion on it, sometimes I can't tell if the reader is supposed to be awed or think, "Wow, that's tacky."  Maybe it's because I read this book right after Crazy Rich Asians, which does a similar thing, but the point is supposed to be that--yep--that's pretty tacky.

***

Next week, I'll be in a better mood with Leviathan Wakes, space opera by James S.A. Corey.

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 12: Finale

 



The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 12:Finale

Slang dates your writing. And that's OKAY.

I'm following the facebook page for Just Write Chicago, a group where I used to be an active member but these days not so much.  Mostly, I ignore what they post, so I probably shouldn't be following them, but every now and then they link to an interesting article about craft.  A couple weeks ago, though, they linked to an article called "Writing with Slang."  It's from Grammar Girl, which has the lay/lie chart that I always google and gives some good tricks for remembering homophones, which I suck at.  This article, however, gave me THE RAGE.

It's about how using slang in your writing dates your writing.  Yes.  This is true.  Using language particular to a time and place, sets your work in a time and place.

HORRORS!!!

The article starts with a list of slang phrases, all of which are either derive from African American communities or from teen girls.  Huh.  It's almost like their language shouldn't be taken seriously.
It goes on to give an example of Lord Buckley, who translated Marc Anthony's funeral oration for Caesar into slang used at the time by beantniks. 

A screenshot

I beg your pardon?

That passage is great!  Do you feel the way it flows?  How it perfectly matches the meter?  How it's poetry that washes over you, even if you don't know what every word means?

It reminds me a lot of listening to...what am I thinking of?...hmmm...oh wait.  Shakespeare.

Is this article serious telling me that Shakespeare, with its many many footnotes, makes more sense?  Surely they're not saying that Shakespeare's writing is more timeless because he doesn't use slang.  Surely they're not saying that his writing isn't dated by the language it uses.  They're saying here that Shakespeare is easier to understand (I would argue it's not), and they're arguing this without getting into the fact that we have accepted Shakespeare's slang due to linguistic imperialism: slang from cultures that beat all other cultures into submission ends up not being considered slang anymore.

I'm so mad.

 

Then it goes on to tell me not to use slang in my writing, except sparingly in dialogue.  Because this person has never heard of a first person or close third person perspective.  Or maybe they have, but they've only thought about it if an upstanding character who does not use slang (or whose slang is not considered slang) is the point of view character.

I get it.  Language changes fast, and there's a chance a new term or a phrase won't survive more than a few weeks or months, or that it won't find a place outside the niche culture in which it was conceived.  There's a real threat that no one's going to know what you're talking about by the time the book you wrote gets published. 

However.  Sometimes those niche cultures need representation.  Those people need to see themselves.  They need to see the way they talk and the way they think.  And anyway, teen girls are not a niche culture.

I'm also done with this idea that your Great American Novel can be timeless by making it not apparent what time period it's set in.  I run into this idea a lot in writing meet ups, and I'm sick of it.  Let's look at the white dude cannon: Hemingway, Falkner, Fitzgerald, etc--they set their books in a particular time and place, which gives their settings and characters a distinct richness.  Let's look at sci-fi set in the future or in second-world fantasy not set on Earth.  Within a decade, these become clear products of the times in which they were written.  They can bring baggage of biases about race or sex or gender or colonialism, or they can date themselves with ideas about where technology will progress or with the lack of technology that has progressed, or they can date themselves by what they see as a threat: fascism, nuclear annihilation, climate change...Okay, maybe that one's a bad example as those threats have all made a comeback. 

This idea that you could possibly write something that wouldn't show its age is the height of hubris.  That's not what being "timeless" is about.  To attempt to do this, you would have to suppose a world where you could remove all things that would change, where biases and power structures remain stagnant or are so far removed from the characters' experience as to be non-existent.  Or both.

Yeah, it's natural to cringe away from things that feel a decade old, things that are at the point of being embarrassing instead of nostalgic.  It's easy to make fun of Elaine Benes's shoulder pads or the language in Clueless.  But if the things that set your story in a certain place and time are too much to look past, maybe you have bigger problems. 

And by the way, Clueless?  Still a great movie.  Know what else?  Similar to the example that started off this rant, it's a retelling of a classic work of literature. 

I Read Crazy Rich Asians

This week's novel is Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan.  I've been hearing all sorts of good things about the movie and decided to check out the book.

Rachel Chu, an economics professor in New York agrees to go with her boyfriend, Nick, to his home in Singapore for his best friend's wedding and to meet Nick's family.  Nick does not warn her that his family to filthy rich and Rachel gets swept into decadent homes and ostentatious parties full of people who think Rachel is a gold digger and are determined to break them up.

This is a silly book. 

It doesn't really have an end.  There's several characters who we are following, who each have their own arcs that ramp in intensity.  But instead of the usual rom-com ending where there's a definite happy bow put on the end that ties everything up, in this one, they all get to places where you can see where they'll go from here and then the book doesn't waste your time showing it to you.  Two of the story lines have very obvious parallels, but the book ends without any of the characters realizing it or learning from each other.  In many ways, it feels like a fizzle.  It feels like things happened, and I read about them and was entertained, and then it was over.

And I think that's the point.  This book is much more "Look at these weirdos!" and "What a whacky situation!" than it is about characters learning and growing and coming together.

That comes through in the descriptions too.  There are are sooooo many descriptions of buildings and decor and houses and planes and cars and jewelry, which all go to show how much money is being spent on everything, but sometimes you have to stop and ask if it's classy or supposed to be classy, if a dress is beautiful or if a fancy dinner would taste good.  Sometimes, the answer is clearly that the people have money but not taste so they're just flaunting their wealth.  But then other times there are people who look down on those who are flaunting their wealth, only for their bathroom to be described and for me to squint and ask if that's supposed to be classy.  Is any of this supposed to be classy?  The lines start to blur.  This is the heart of the novel, so the book's ending is just another moment of strangeness.

I don't think they could get away with it in a movie.  I wonder what they did.  Don't tell me.

***

Next week: The Belles, YA magical beauty standards, by Dhonielle Clayton.

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 11: August

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 11: August

I Read Crooked Kingdom

Wow, I got very far behind writing these up.  Mea culpa.  Hopefully by the end of the day, I'll have the next month queued up.

This week's novel is Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo.  This is the Sequel to Six of Crows, which I read a while back.

The team has to rescue Inej, who was captured at the end of the last book, and then they must take their revenge on Van Ek, get paid for the job they pulled in the last book, and help a bunch of Grisha get out of town before they're kidnapped by super soldiers created by the Shu.  Multiple complex heists ensue!

I was impressed by the ensemble cast and the complicated heist of the last book, and those certainly continued in the second half of this duology.  I got to know the characters enough to celebrate their growth and cheer for their moments of triumph.  (Jesper gets this moment...it's so good.  I'm still pumped about it.)

But there's an added layer to this second book, because as the characters grow to rely on and trust one another, a sadness and uncertainty is built into the story, because if the plans all go perfectly, the team members will go their separate ways and never see each other again.  When they hated each other, this wasn't a problem, but now they've been through a lot.  It reminds me a bit of the last few weeks of senior year in high school, when everyone was excited to leave and start their lives, but with that came the looming realization that friendships weren't going to be as strong and many wouldn't survive.  This was like that, only maybe they would die or be tortured, and also the city where they all cut their teeth is way more horrible than a high school.  And yet they were still a little sad to leave.

This book also had an added layer in that they each had to make something of themselves.  In the last book, they all thought that the money from the pay off would fix all their problems.  It would pay off their debts and get them out of indentured servitude and get them passage back to their various homelands.  In this one, the money would still do all that, but they also needed to step up emotionally.  Nina, the drug addicted Grisha, has to accept that her powers will never be the same and she'll never be the same.  Matthias has to get over his biases against Grisha, rather than the "love the sinner, hate the sin thing" he had going on at the end of the last book.  Jesper has to get out of debt to save the family farm, but he also has to accept that his gambling addiction got him in debt in the first place, and he needs to work on that. Wylan needs to get away from his abusive father, but he also needs to accept that his father was wrong and Wylan has worth.

***

Next week: Crazy Rich Asians, a rom-com set in obscene wealth in Singapore, by Kevin Kwan.

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 10: Regina

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 10: Regina

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 9: Trish

 



The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 9: Trish

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 8: Alice

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 8: Alice

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 7: August

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 7: August

I read Listen to Your Heart

This week's novel is Listen to Your Heart by Kasie West.

Kate's whole goal in life is to take over her parents' marina on the lake.  She thinks of school as the time between lake trips, and she's not excited about how her best friend, Alana, has talked her into taking a podcasting class with her.  She's even less excited when she ends up the host of their podcast, and the topic for the year is "advice," and her co-host keeps calling her "Kat."  Alana is crushing on a guy named Diego, and Kate is helping her gather information and low level stalk him.  So when he starts calling into the podcast for advice about "a girl he likes" it seems like Diego and Alana are going to ride of into the sunset.  Highjinks ensue.

This is a cute book.  There are several points where I, the reader, said, "Oh no.  That's going to be misunderstood."  And sure enough.  But the cool thing was that even though the book is a series of misunderstandings, the characters all handle their disappointments and confusion really well.  You get the impression pretty early on that Diego might be into Kate, but he's friendly enough with Alana that it is kind of hard to tell.  He takes what he assumes is Kate turning him down like a champ and doesn't get openly upset about it. 

In general, I appreciate how friendly everyone is to each other in this book.  Alana and Kate and Diego and Other Guy all hang out and are friendly, even when maybe they all like each other.  There's no petty bickering over guys.  There's no hard feelings when who really likes who is revealed.  They're all friends first and kissy-friends second, and it felt more real to how I remember high school than anything I've read in a while.

Also, what kind of school has a podcasting class?  Is this a thing the kids are doing these days?  I feel like I missed out.  I also like how bad Kate was at podcasting at the beginning, and how she got better and how she took every bit of faint praise as a sign she was horrible.  That felt real too.

***

Next week: Crooked Kingdom, the sequel to Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo.

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 6: Jasmine

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 6: Jasmine

I read Of Fire and Stars

This week's novel is Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst.

Princess Dennaleia is betrothed to the crown prince of Mynaria as part of an alliance between their two countries.  She also has fire magic, which is seen as heresy in Mynaria.  When she arrives in Mynaria, there are a series of assassination attempts on the royal family that threaten to draw Mynaria and Danneleia's home country into war with a third nation.  She also discovers that her magic is much stronger in Mynaria, and that people with magic are treated very poorly.  On top of this, she finds that he's more drawn to her betrothed's sister, Mare, than the prince.

The slow burn romance between Dannaleia and Mare in this is very good.  I get why they both like each other.  They have great chemistry.  The challenges to their relationship are logical.  And the story gets bonus points for having a lesbian couple front and center.

Also, all the names are excellent.  I love them.  They're great.  Names are hard and these all made me want to live in a magical place where I would have a sweet, long name.

But the rest of the plot was frustrating.  There are four assassination attempts, of which a few are successful, and security around the castle is never increased and everyone still thinks it's a good idea to sneak around past the few guards that are there.  When they find evidence that the country that welcomes magic users is not responsible for the assassinations, but is being framed to start a war, all the leaders of Mynaria together decide that, nah, it's probably that evil country of magic users and it's not worth checking to see if they're going to war with the wrong people.  Characters uncover a part of the mystery, and then don't share what they found with anyone and then fifty pages later they uncover the same thing again and then fifty pages after that put together what I understood a hundred pages ago.  It makes the non-romance part of the plot feel stgnant.  Everyone in leadership is so incompetent that I found it really hard to worry about them being assassinated. 

I found myself much more interested in the magical people who live in Mynaria and the problems they faced. Ambient magic builds up in the air like gas out of a stove, so if no one is using magic to burn it off (if, for example, all the magic users that can be found are rounded up, thrown in prison, and drugged) the magic will build up, so if one person (like, say, Dannaleia) uses magic by accident, it will explode in a big ball of fire.  It turns out that there's a temple in Dannaleia's home country where magic users regularly go to burn off the ambient magic and keep everything in balance, but by the terms of the new treaty, magic users are no longer allowed in the temple.  There's a lot to get into here about the dangers of keeping information from people and the dangers of fearing whole groups because you don't understand them.  This is high-stakes and interesting and I want to know more about it.  But we don't get much of that.

Furthermore, since I sympathized with the magic users so much more than with the people oppressing them, pretty early on I wanted the alliance to fall apart.  That also made this a frustrating read, since Dannaleia spends so much time and energy trying to hold the alliance together. 

So if it were a straight up star-crossed romance and all the other plot threads were removed, would I have liked it more?  If these threads had been fleshed out and if characters had done a better job leading the nation they were supposed to be ruling, would the romance have fallen into the background?  I don't know.

***

Next week: Listen to Your Heart, contemporary YA by Kasie West.

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 5: Craig

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 5: Craig

I read Shadow Scale

This week's novel is Shadow Scale, the sequel to last week's novel, Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman.

Seraphina gets word that the half dragons can all work together to form a kind of energy net that will stop dragons in mid air, which could come in handy when the dragon civil war finally makes its way to their kingdom.  She sets out to round up all the half dragons, traveling from country to country.  Along the way, she clashes with Jannoula, who can invade people's minds, go through their memories, and take control of their bodies.

Although the sequel didn't have a lot of the things I loved about the first novel, it was still fun and well executed.  I especially liked the world building that went into the different countries Seraphina visited.  The history and geography of each area directly tied to how each nation dealt with and thought about dragons, and therefore half dragons.  For example, while Seraphina's home country of Goredd is directly south of dragon territory and--up until the peace treaty--was regularly burned to the ground by dragons so everyone had to live underground, the countries to the south used Goredd as a buffer, and they were able to create elaborate cities and art.  Each culture is distinctive, which makes it fun when Seraphina travels into somewhere new and fresh and completely different.

Along the same lines, even though there are seventeen half-dragons, they all have distinctive personalities and experiences.  Not only do they all look different and have different abilities, but they all interact with their world and react to Seraphina's plan in different ways.  Furthermore, their actions make sense given the cultures in which they were raised.  Some of them have been outcasts so long that they latch onto the constructed half-dragon family, while others are so jaded by their persecution that they refuse to have anything to do with the plan.  Still others already have loving families, so they don't really see the point in helping Seraphina.  Everything flows from world building to characterization.

I also appreciated that most of the weeks of traveling were glossed over in a couple paragraphs.  The destinations, the stops in capital cities where she would poke around trying to find people, were the important parts and the narrative reflected that.  I've talked before about my personal preferences and how I don't care about long journeys on horseback or cooking out on the trail.  Those sound boring and smelly and tedious.  So I appreciate stories that feel the same way.

***

Next week: Of Fire and Stars, YA fantasy romance by Audrey Coulhurst

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 4: Grant

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 4: Grant

Editing Exercise

I led the workshop portion of my critique group last week.  It was nearing the end of Camp NaNo, which most of the group was doing, and I find that at the end of NaNo I have a pile of nonsense where I just dump huge swaths of backstory and utilitarian descriptions of characters and things like, "That made him sad."  There's a whole bunch of editing that goes on after NaNo if you ever want to make anything of the stuff I write, and I wanted to make an editing exercise for my group.  I didn't want us to edit our own stuff, because that would just open a can of worms.  I didn't want us to edit each other's stuff, because that would turn bitter.  So I wanted us to edit something that was already out there. 

Furthermore, a lot of what I see as pitfalls in my NaNo writing are things that are encouraged in middle grade books.  I find that middle grade readers are super smart and catch on to so much, but they need really weird stuff spelled out for them. 

So I grabbed the first page or so of five different Goosebumps books and presented them to my critique group.  I figure R L Stine is too successful to notice, much less take offense.

I didn't tell them what I'd given them exactly, just the first pages of popular middle grade books.  And I told them, "Pretend you wrote this for NaNo, and then you took a month away from it, and you're coming back now with fresh eyes."  The idea was to elevate the selections from mass market middle grade to a book for an adult reader (which is what we are all writing).  The idea wasn't that these books were bad and we needed to fix them, the idea was that this is what we had and we were going to change them.  And with that, we took five minutes and marked up what needed to change--not what words we would use to change them, but what we wanted changed.  More sensory details in description.  Sections cut for repetition.  Emphasizing themes.  Mixing up the diction.​  Afterwards, we discussed what we did.

We found that

• It was easy to pretend we had written these, meaning that it was easy to take ownership of them.  It was surprisingly easy to shift them into our own distinct voices​.  One woman in my group told us that she would change the selection from the mummy book so that the main character stealthily follows the tourist who bumps into her at the pyramid and stumbles onto an international mystery.  "That's...what the main character from your book would do."  It was also surprising how easy it was to go after the selections with a red pen.  I think this is because in the work we actually write, marking up your first draft is laying out guidelines for the cubic ton of work you'll have to do later, and that's not pleasant.  And then, aside from marking up our own work, we often mark up each other's work, and there we have to back off a bit because it's their story and not ours, and changing someone's work to sound like your work--again--turns people bitter or has them ignore what you're saying.
• We all were pretty much in agreement in the broad strokes of what should be changed.  This is good to remember when we're getting feedback.  On the other hand, we all approached how to address those problems differently, which is also good to remember.  I'm reminded of the Neil Gaiman quote, “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
• When we read the selections aloud before our five minutes of editing, everyone thought they were pretty good.  Charming even.  But then when it was time to edit, everyone said, "Who's the main character here?" "Why is this description so boring?"  "Why is this character so obnoxious?" 
• I emphasized that these were published works--popular published works.  And we could still edit them to death.  You can always edit everything to death.

It was a pretty good exercise.  We had fun, and the group seemed to find it helpful.

I read Seraphina

This week's novel is Seraphina by Rachel Hartman.  This one has been on my to-read list for quite a while, and I feel remiss now for not getting to it sooner.

Seraphina is assistant to the sickly court composer, meaning she's doing the court composer's job of giving the princess harpsichord lessons, rehearsing the choir, planning the huge state celebrations for when the leader of the dragons visits to celebrate 40 years of peace, and planning the prince's sudden funeral when they find his body decapitated (probably bitten off by a dragon).  Her father has long wanted her to keep a low profile and never play music in public in order to protect her terrible secret, but staying out of the way becomes hard when she makes friends with the princess, draws the prince's attention with he knowledge of dragon behavior and protocol, and gets swept up in stopping a conspiracy to end the uneasy peace.

This book dealt with several themes I've been exploring lately in my own writing, so this was a blast to read.  Hartman conveys the alienness of dragons quickly and organically.  Dragons can take human shape, but they pride themselves on logical thinking, and if a dragon shows too much emotion, the dragon censors show up and give them a lobotomy.  It's a mixture of them being mentally unable to express emotion and culturally dissuaded from expressing emotion, so they're very bad at it.  Their oddness and inhuman natures were shown in the beginning through dragons walking away when they have nothing else to contribute or gain from a conversation, not saying greetings but jumping straight to the point, and in referring to child Seraphina as "it."  These little tricks are expertly deployed and work well from a world-building standpoint.

I've also been interested lately in people who professionally plan and preform music selections, and this fit right in with that.  I've been interested lately in cantors and church music for a story idea, and it was neat to see how the court music program in a fictional world aligned with that.  It felt real in that most of Seraphina's job was on the frustrating planning side instead of the losing-yourself-in-beautful-music side.  There's a moment at the beginning when the scheduled performer breaks a reed and doesn't have a backup reed and the backup performer is sick and Seraphina has to step up and sightread the piece.  The part that sticks with me though is a scene right after this, where she's explaining why she had to play and the scheduled performer says, "I did not lose my backup reed.  I found it after the show."  And I was hooked, because I get this tertiary character, and I get what Seraphina has to deal with on a day to day basis.

Aside from pinging with me on these very specific levels, the story also clipped along, the flirting was good, and it focused on a chipper, smaller story with daunting stakes lurking just beneath the surface.

***
Next week: Shadow Scale, the sequel to Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 3: Josh

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 3: Josh

I read Jane, Unlimited

This week's novel is Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore.

Jane recently lost her beloved Aunt Marigold, an underwater nature photographer who raised Jane since she was a baby.  Her death leaves Jane adrift, dropped out of college and with nothing that makes her happy except designing and crafting umbrellas.  When Kiran, a wealthy friend, invites Jane to stay at her mysterious family mansion on an island, Jane goes and find that the house is full of mysteries.

This book starts by introducing you to a grieving Jane, to the weird house, which is filled with priceless art and was built a hundred yeas ago from chunks of other houses either stolen or bought, and to Kiran's family and the house staff.  The reader is immediately presented with a whole bunch of mysteries and it's made clear that everyone in the house is hiding something.  Jane's in a sleuthing mood, and at the end of the first chapter, she has the option of trying to get answers from six different people. In the second chapter, she follows one person and finds herself in the middle of an art theft mystery, which she solves, and the book seems to end.  Then chapter 3 throws the reader back to the end of chapter 1, where she then follows a different person and finds herself in the middle of an international spy ring thriller.  Every chapter is a different timeline, solving a different mystery. 

It's fun because you can see hints that the events of one timeline are playing out during the other timelines unless Jane's actions change something.  You can tell that events you saw in chapter 2 are still happening in chapter 3, but without Jane in the thick of it.  You see weird blips of events that will be explained in later chapters.

So by the end of chapter 3, I was very excited to solve the next mystery: what happened to the step-mother who mysteriously vanished.  But the book took a hard right turn and it became clear that each chapter is not just a different timeline, but also a different genre.  So in chapter 4, the book introduced...ghosts?  Creepy ghosts, who I did not like.  While I was ready for some sci-fi elements and possibly some portal fiction, I was not expecting Gothic horror.  I probably would have been more onboard with the rest of the book had the ghost not altered the text of Winnie the Pooh in order to be creepy.

The ghost is bad news, y'all.

Mostly I'm impressed with how well Cashore kept track of all the details: where everyone is at any given time, what Jane knows (which is nearly reset at the start of each chapter), and what the reader knows, which is handled so well that it's amazing.  Things feel like they're introduced in exactly the right order and the chapters themselves are placed perfectly.

I do not envy what Cashore's editing process must have been like.

***

Next week: Seraphina, YA dragons and music assistants by Rachel Hartman.

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 2: Derrick

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 2: Derrick

I read The Hero and the Crown

This week's novel is The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley.  This one was recommended to me by by biffle Ariane about a million years ago.  In my defense, I got it as soon as it was available on Kindle from the library.  What, that's not a defense?  Pft.  Sure it is.

Aerin, the king's only daughter, is looked down upon by most of the nobility, because her mother was a witch from the north, and Aerin does not show any magical ability even though the royal family's claim to the throne is based around their magic use.  Aerin takes to fighting dragons, inconvenient pests that breathe fire and sometimes eat livestock and children.  It's not glamorous, which suits Aerin just fine.  When her father forbids her from joining the army as they go to put down a rebellion in the north, and when a great dragon--a huge, flying monster that's thousands of years old--appears, she runs off with just her spears and her rehabilitated war horse to defeat it.

I'm a sucker for sucking-too-much-at-stuff stories where the protagonist doesn't live up to expectations and people have written them off.  I like that these stories always end up being about finding a true calling and finding confidence in yourself and about doing things not because they're expected, but because you want to.  This is fertile YA ground, and I like to roll around in it and inhale the good rich-dirt smell.

In the second section, this gets a little too dream like for my tastes.  Who is that guy?  Why do we trust him?  Why do we like him?  Okay, so he appeared in a dream.  But...who is he?  I preferred the more concrete, interpersonal relationships in the first half of the book, where Aerin navigates her obnoxious cousins being snotty, and she navigates her loving but distant dad, and she navigates the guy who's super into her and it makes everyone jealous and anxious.  I like how when people left her to her own devices, she spent oodles and oodles of time doing stuff she wanted to do, but no one would really think was acceptable behavior, like rehabilitating a lame war horse and researching how to make fireproof paste.  She's not working to do something impressive that will win her people's affection.  She's doing unglamorous work because because outcast gives her the freedom to do unglamorous work.  It gives it a down-to-earth feel even though there are dragons and magic and royalty.

***

Next week: Jane, Unlimited,  timeline-hopping, genre-hopping YA by Kristin Cashore.

Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 1: August

The Twenty Percent True Podcast

Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support

Episode 1: August

Motivation Software

I like motivation software to help me write.  This is a thing about me.  Not all writers need them, and I don't know if I need them, but I do like them.  Someone put in work thinking about how they could help me be more productive.  That's nice.

I really like Write or Die, where you set the number of words you want to write and the time frame and if you stop typing for too long, the screen turns red and it starts making horrible sounds (if you have the sound on).  It gets you to just vomit out everything you need to write.  It's also kind of anxiety provoking.

I recently started to play Fighter's Block instead.  Here you set your word goal and then you have a little avatar who's fighting a monster.  As you type, the monster's health decreases.  If you stop typing, your health decreases until you start typing again.  So here there's both positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, and you can imagine you're fighting a monster.  The problem is that there's only one monster to fight even though it says, "More coming soon."  I thought maybe when I hit a certain level another kind of monster would appear, but I'm at level 35 and I'm starting to doubt that.

I used to do this thing called Habatica (but it was called Habit RPG when I did it).  It's a website where you get points for good habits and you can level up and collect armor and weapons and pets, and you take damage when you don't do your daily tasks.  It's gamifying good habits.  Habits can be stuff like exercising or washing your hair or writing or editing.  And it's nice because you get to set your own goals.  But the problem with this is that if you miss a day, you know your character is going to take damage the next time you log in, so...you could just not log in?  It's what's called "broken window syndrome" because in abandoned buildings you're not likely to throw a rock at a window if all the windows are in tact, but once someone has thrown a rock and broken one window, you might as well throw another.  That example is not from personal experience.  My personal experience with this is that laundry goes in the hamper unless someone leaves socks on the floor and then you might as well drop your socks on the floor too and then your living room is full of socks.  In the case of Habatica, when once you miss one day, you might as well miss two days, and then you might as well stop playing.  My other problem was that if I had a great, super productive day, I didn't get bonus points, so when I set my sights on a sword to win, it would take me weeks.  I need some immediate gratification here.

So this week, I found a new program, 4thewords, which is like if Habatica and Fighter's Block had a baby with better graphics than either of them.  In this one, there are a bunch of different monsters to fight, each with a different little picture, a time limit, and a word count goal.  So you can pick what you're in the mood for.  You can fight as many monsters as you want, and every time you defeat one, they drop items that you can use to buy things at the store like a sword or sweet boots.  There are a bunch of quests you can do, which are things like "fight 5 monsters with sorcerer hats."  Then when you finish the quest you get a cool hat or something for your avitar to wear.  So there's a lot of room to pick your own journey and your own rewards, and there's a lot of room to over-achieve and write 3,000 words at a time because you really want that hat.  It's a big incentive to write 300 more words.  And I'm really proud of my sweet star crown.  I've heard it doesn't help when you're editing, but I have yet to encounter that problem.  It also cost $4 a month, which is the same as a fancy coffee.

I beat 5 of these hat monsters today.

And won this sweet star crown thing!

I read Well, That Escalated Quickly

This week's book is Well, that Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist, Franchesca Ramsey's memoir.  This was recommended to me by the Chicago Public Library on their list of Bold Books by Black Women.

Franchesca is a you-tuber, who makes hair tutorial videos and sketch comedy pieces, and hit it big with a sketch called "Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls."  This launched her career both as a comedy writer and an activist.  Her memoir discusses the hurdles she had to go through of all the times she made mistakes and all the times success fell on her after years of hard work.

The part I appreciate the most from this book is her frank discussions of times she got it wrong.  She talks about how she went on TV for interviews after Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls went viral, and how, although she felt that the way she was so often treated smelled fishy, she didn't know the vocabulary to talk about racism with clarity.  She talks about how she got push back from the black community for that lack of clarity, how hurt that made her feel, and how she set out to educate herself so she would not offend again.  I appreciate her acknowledgement that people aren't born knowing everything about how racism works, and what's racist and why and how to stop it, even when they know that some things make them feel crappy, it's hard to stand up and say so and it's hard to articulate exactly what's wrong. 

This is something that gets glossed over a great deal: people make mistakes and then they learn.  Should we as a society drag someone for that one problematic thing they said that once?  Maybe, because then maybe they'll learn.  Maybe, because maybe the refuse to understand what they did wrong or to improve themselves and stop doing it.  And Ramsey gets into that, how you need to call people out on their mistakes, but sometimes it's better to "call in," which is a fantastic concept and a great phrase.  "Calling out" is done publicly.  "Calling in" is taking someone aside and saying, "Hey, that's a problematic thing to say because of reasons, and I know it's hard, but here's some ways to do better."  And Ramsey talks about how this is emotionally draining, especially when whoever you're calling in gets offended and defensive and won't listen to you, even though you've been sympathetic and patient, and spent time trying to educate.

This book works really well, because Ramsey gives advice while also showing that she's made mistakes.  She's let rampant, racist, wild criticism online get under her skin.  She's been overly enthusiastic about calling people out online.  She's said things that were problematic.  But she shows that she was able to grow and learn from those mistakes, and that gives me hope that I can too.

***

Next week: The Hero and the Crown, vintage sword and sorcery by Robin McKinley.

Folklore is Dad Jokes

I went to a reading this week by Edward McClelland, the author of Folktales and Legends of the Middle West.  This sounded so far up my alley that my family didn't even give me any trouble for skipping out on bed time.

McClelland read several stories from Resurrection Mary to the Lake Erie Monster.  But in listening to the Paul Bunyun stories, I realized what was happening:

The stories were chalk full of dad jokes.  At the end of each dad joke, McClelland would pause, give us Pun Husky Face, and then keep reading.

"...And they took that copper and used it to make the dome of the Ohio capital building!"

 

"...And that was the start of the Mississippi River!"

Dissecting it on the walk home, I thought about how it wasn't the presence of the dad jokes that was novel during the reading, but it was their placement.  Usually you see them at the very end of a story, a joke ending where you would slap your hands together and throw them out into jazz hands.  "Ehhh?!  Get it!"  The point of each of my grandad's stories was that at the end he had solved the last engineering puzzle keeping a building from being completed, and once it was solved they were able to construct such-and-such famous building in downtown Dallas that you'd have heard from if you were from Dallas.  Or that he gave some advice and then that poet was Robert Frost. 

It's like a flag that you wave at the end to say, "Got ya!  That didn't really happen...Or did it?!"
So when these jokes are peppered throughout the story, as the punchline to each paragraph rather than the punchline to the full narrative, it sounds different to the ear.  It's more, "Let me tell you a string of puns," rather than, "Let me tell you one long, winding joke that sucks you in for a while before spitting you out with how it didn't happen."  So maybe not giving the listener time to get engrossed eases that sense of mild annoyance that comes after the big reveal.  The annoyance where your friend does jazz hands and cackles at their brilliance, and you boo at them and tell them to delete their account.

But really, they're the same, and it took a different format for me to see it.

I read A Flame in the Mist

This week’s novel is A Flame in the Mist by Renee Ahdieh.  This was a 2017 Goodreads Choice Award  Nominee for YA Fantasy.

Mariko, the only daughter of a prominent samurai, is sent off to marry the emperor’s son.  On her way to the imperial palace, her caravan is attacked by the Black Clan, and she is the lone survivor.  She disguises herself as a boy and sets out to find the band that attacked her caravan, infiltrate them, then bring them to justice when they least expect it.  The problem is that the Black Clan aren’t the cold blooded murderers she expected.

I’m always impressed with Ahdieh’s sense of place.  The setting here is so rich and so deep.  The setting permeates the characters, their motivations and actions to the point when calling it a setting makes it feel cheap.  Maybe this is what setting is supposed to be.  It feels like you’re breathing in the air of feudal Japan as you read.  It’s impressive, and it’s impressive that she’s done this twice with two very different settings, since she also wrote The Wrath and the Dawn.

I also like the romance in this one.  They’re both on the same page, without speaking of it, that this is not going to work out in the long run (unless some earth shattering changes take place, which I’m kind of guessing they do in the sequel), but they’re going to have a good time anyhow.  I like how their relationship of publicly disagreeing with each other and getting on each other’s nerves doesn’t change when they start making out.  No one gets all doe-eyed, and I’m here for it.

***

Next week: Well,That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey.

I read A Conjuring of Light

This week's novel is A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab.  This is the final book in the Shades of Magic trilogy, which includes A Darker Shade of Magic and A Gathering of Shadows.

When darkness from Black London makes its way into Kell's world, where it possesses the citizens of London and rots away the infrastructure, the team has to join forces to stop it.

I had some trouble starting this one, and I've been thinking about why.

As is the way with trilogies, the first book is a self-contained story that was easily extended, and the second book ended on a cliff hanger.  So while the action of the second book picked up a few months after the events of the first book, the third book picks up only moments after the end of the second.  That means that starting the third book, you're thrown straight into the super-high-stakes, dramatic action.

I wouldn't say that the first two started lighthearted, but the stakes started low and built up as the books went along.  There was a lot of fun world building and showing off wondrous new places.  Most of the second book revolved around a magic tournament, where, although each character was wrestling with internal demons and there were stakes for everyone, the stakes weren't world ending and it was mostly fun fight scenes and big parties.  It was fun, with the over-arching plot of the series only really popping up at the very end. 

In the third book, there was no light-hearted, good times, lookit this magic!  It started off grim, when the parts I remember enjoying about the rest of the series was the fun.

It started grim and then kept going for the most part, but I love all these characters so much that I don't care.  Every single one of them is great, and I was invested in every one of them.  That might be another reason why I wish there was more fun swashbuckling and less EVERYTHING IS AWFUL AND WE'RE SCREWED: I want them to have fun.

It's a great series, and you should check it out.  And the good news is that since the whole thing is out, you can read straight through and the third-book-drama won't be an issue.

***

Next week:  A Flame in the Mist, Japanese inspired YA fantasy by Renee Ahdieh.

I read When Dimple Met Rishi

This week's novel is When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon.  This was a Goodread's Reader's Choice Awards nominee and on NPR's list of best books of 2017.

Dimple and Rishi are first generation Indian-Americans.  While Rishi embraces Indian culture and his parents' vision for his future (including marrying a nice Indian girl that they pick out for him), Dimple is more Americanized and pushes back against her parents.  She really doesn't like her mother's misogyny, especially when it comes to agreeing the let her go to Stanford, not because it has a great computer science program, but because it's full of nice Indian engineers for her to marry.  Dimple is very excited when her parents agree to let her go to the exclusive, intensive app programing summer camp of her dreams, but it turns out it was all a big set up for her to meet Rishi.  Rishi assumed her parents would have told her about the whole arranged marriage thing that their parents had set up, but he's wrong.  There's a lot of awkwardness to deal with.

I liked how this book showed that there are different ways to be a first generation America.  It's not a universal experience, even if their parents are from the same culture.  But I also liked how at the same time it showed that Dimple and Rishi have similarities.  The neatest part of the book for me was when Rishi offers her some khatta meetha, and she's like "Those are my favorite snacks!" and eats whole handfuls of them right after having a conversation about how much she hates her parents pushing Indian culture on her.  It's pretty charming.

But along the same lines, there's a moment I did not like at all.  There's another Indian-American kid at the camp, whose name is Hari and pronounces it Harry.  And Dimple tells him that he's wrong and his name is Hari.

...Excuse me?

I think he knows how to pronounce his own name.  However he chooses to pronounce it is his choice, and it is not okay to be rude to anyone about their name of choice.  If he uses an Anglicized version, that is part of his personal journey and his personal relationship to the culture in which he lives and the culture his parents are from, and that journey is none of her business.  She can say, "My parents would pronounce that Hari," or "In India, that's pronounced Hari."  And it's irritating, because this not only is this coming from Dimple, who for the most part (as I said) would rather not with being Indian, so this defensiveness of "true Indianness" is weird.  It's annoying because one of the big themes of the book is policing who's Indian enough.  And it's also annoying because Hari is a pretty awful dude for a slew of legitimate reasons, but his "mispronouncing his own name to look cool" is presented like it's supposed to be further evidence against him being a good person.  It's presented like the reader's supposed to say, "Geeze!  What a tool!"  But there's enough evidence already that shows that he sucks, and making me think instead that the main character sucks and giving me a moment to sympathize with him doesn't help the story.

***

Next week:  A Conjuring of Light, the last book of the Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab.

I read "A Visit From the Goon Squad"

This week's novel is A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.  This was recommended to me by my friend Eric.

This is a series of interconnected stories that follow the people around Bennie Salazar, as his fame as a record producer rises and falls, and the people around Sasha, his kleptomaniac assistant.  The focus shifts from chapter to chapter, passing through Bennie's band mates in high school, his mentor Lou and his family, Bennie's ex-wife and ex-wife's ex-boss, and through Sasha's family and friends.  It skips around in time from the seventies to the near future where music has to be made to appeal to 6-month-olds who by songs by poking at their parent's phones.  While each story focuses on a single moment, all together, you can get a sense of how the characters rise and fall over time, and how time changes everything.

While some of the individual chapters are amazing by themselves--I especially like the first chapter where Sasha explains to her therapist how she stole a woman's wallet while on a date, where the pull to steal things was presented in such a way as to make it both relatable and tragic--the part I got the most out of was how different each chapter was.  You get an immediate sense of the main character of each story by how the style changes.  There's a definite voice to each chapter and it comes through as the voice of the character rather than the voice of the author.

The one everyone talks about is the power point chapter, which I was pleasantly surprised not only by what a quality power point it was (I'm picky about good power point presentations) but also how easy it was to follow without the aid of the speaker who would be filling in the gaps and details when only the main points were presented on the slides.  It worked really well to tell a layered story and I honestly haven't seen that done before. 

But I feel like focusing on that chapter downplays how unique each of the other chapters were.  There's one in the second person because the narrator is high and detached and sort of narrating what he's doing to himself.  There's a whacky comedy of errors where a disgraced publicist tries to improve the image of a foreign dictator.  There's an interview with a movie star that you know from previous chapters is going to end poorly.  And aside from the form, there's the voice and the deep dives into each character's fears and ticks: kleptomania and extreme embarrassment remembering that thing you did twelve years ago, not wanting your husband to know how great you are at tennis at the country club but not wanting to lie about it, being your true "authentic" self, and not wanting anyone to know you sold out.  The versatility is impressive.

***
Next week: When Dimple Met Rishi, YA romance by Sandhya Menon