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!