Monthly Archives: January 2012

A Quick Question

I’ve been thinking about something for the last few days, and I’ve reached the point where I would like some feedback.

At the end of last year, I posted two essays. The first was an explanation of my growing frustration with ebooks from major publishers, in regards to both quality and pricing, concluding with the statement that I would be reading many more indie published books in 2012. The second contained my recommendations for which publishers had the lines I thought would be the most interesting in 2012 based on my reading in 2011. In both posts I put lists of what I intended to read over the next few months. In the post on publishers I listed titles, although not all the titles I have on hand from every publisher. The other list only contained authors, in part because in some cases I hadn’t decided which books from particular authors I would read first.

Since then, something interesting has occurred.

Since those posts, I’ve gotten several requests to review indie published books, all of which I’ve agreed to. In one case, I already had that book on my list. Another of these books is a YA novel. Now I’ve never reviewed any novels marketed as YA here. Not because I’m not interested in what’s being published in the YA market, but because there were so many other things I wanted to read first.

But I’ve got a son who will be reading in middle grade and YA soon, and I want to encourage him to read. At the moment he doesn’t share his father’s interest in reading, in part because of the way reading was taught in the town where we lived before moving to where we are now. I need to know what’s out there that he might be interested in so I can direct him to those books.

Here’s where my question, or questions rather, enter the picture.

First, how much YA would you being interested in seeing me review? I’m going to be reading some, but I’d like to kill two birds with one stone and review some of it here. How many of you would be open to that? How many opposed?

Second, I’ve been thinking about how to handle reviewing requests by indie authors. One of the requests I’ve gotten for a review is a little outside the scope of the blog but not so much that it would be totally out of place. How far afield would you those of you who read this blog tolerate my reviews going? I’m not going to review urban fantasy much, and while I have no objection to romance being a major part of the story, I’m not interested in reading anything where that’s the entire story. I’ve been wanting to increase the amount of historical adventure I include here. A lot of the indie published stuff I’ve seen has been historical, but mostly historical romance rather than adventure. On the other hand, some of it has been historical mystery, and it’s been hard to tell just how much adventure as opposed to classical deduction the story contains.

I’ll review indie science fiction over at Futures Past and Present. What about the occasional detective or noir novel? Any objections there?

So, to recap: How much YA should I review? How wide a range of indie novels should I consider for review? What genres or subgenres are you (not) interested in seeing reviewed?

Yes, I know this is my blog and I’m free to review whatever I feel like. But on the other hand, I’m trying to develop a community and a brand. I want people who visit for the first or second time to have a good idea of what they’re going to find. And I don’t want to alienate anyone who’s a regular or even an occasional reader. So I would really appreciate some feedback.

Thank you.

Across the Rooftops with Kron Darkbow in the City of Rogues

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City of Rogues
Ty Johnston
various ebook formats, 0.99 (Kindle, I think this is a temporary price; Ty, correct me if I’m wrong on this) – $2.99 (Nook)

This book was a lot of fun. It was a good, old fashioned fantasy adventure novel, the first of a trilogy. I enjoyed it immensely.

Johnston does an outstanding job of juggling a fairly large cast of characters for such a short book, imbuing each of them with their own personality and characteristics. They include Kron, a young boy he befriends, his friend the city guard sergeant, a healer and his wizard mentor, the crime lord Belgar the Liar and four of his henchmen, and two swords for hire. That he is able to develop the characters to the depth that he does while maintaining the relentless pace speaks well of his ability as a writer. Along the way he drops tidbits about the greater world, its history and geography. And he does it all without harming any swans.

Here’s the basic setup:

The main character is one Lucius Tallerus, who is better known as Kron Darkbow. Tallerus has returned to the city of Bond, where he lived until his parents were killed. After their murders, he was taken in by his uncle, recently deceased, and trained as a warden for the Prisonlands. Now that his uncle is dead, Tallerus has returned to seek revenge on the person responsible for murdering his parents. He adopts the identity of Kron Darkbow and seeks his revenge. He dresses in black, prowls rooftops, has a grappling hook and an assortment of tools he carries on his person. In short, he bears a strong resemblance to a certain Caped Crusader. But whereas Batman, at least the one I grew up reading (I haven’t followed the title for a few years now) didn’t kill under any circumstances, Kron has no scruples against taking the life of someone he feels deserves to die.

He’s not a superhero by any means. He makes mistakes, costly ones at times, and he is capable of being injured. More than once, Kron is almost killed. He’s much more realistic and fleshed out as a character than many superheroes.

The other intriguing character was Belgad the Liar. At one point Johnston states that Belgad doesn’t like to lie; it seems the nickname has followed him around for years. He probably picked it up in junior high, where the names given to you stick with you for life. He’s a barbarian from the north who has risen to a knighthood and place of prestige in the city, although not exactly ethically. Like a better known barbarian who became king of Aquilonia, Belgad has grown beyond his origins to become an able administrator and businessman.

I found him to be the most interesting character in the book, and certainly the most sympathetic and likeable viallain, if you can call him that, I’ve encountered in years. He doesn’t like killing or stealing; they’re bad for business. When he came to power, he dissolved the thieves guild and the assassins guild for those reasons. He still practices extortion and doesn’t hesitate to use strong arm tactics, but despite his fearsome reputation, he didn’t seem to me to be that bloodthirsty. Nor were his inner circle of henchmen. I got the impression at times that Belgad would have preferred to run his empire without violence at all, but that it was a necessity in his line of work. He certainly wasn’t the psychotic megalomaniac many crime lords are portrayed as being.

Johnston took two characters whom he could have portrayed as coming directly from central casting, fitting their stereotypes, yet he chose to make them human, and in doing so, he transcended the typical generic revenge fantasy. There’s a reason some many heroes in fiction come back to seek vengeance for deaths, especially the deaths of parents. Those type of stories speak to us on a primal level. Many us of would like to do the same if we were to find ourselves in such situations. I think that’s why these types of plots remain popular. To use this plot is not a lack of originality on the part of an author. The lack of originality comes with the author fails to do something new with it, and in this Johnston has succeeded admirably. I found this to be a fresh take on familiar tropes, something hard to pull off.

Don’t think this novel is merely some postmodern slice of life character study, either. It’s full of action, intrigue, and swashbuckling. It would make a good movie. Unfortunately , Hollywood would probably screw it up.

There are other characters with their own stories in the book, and they all intertwine with Kron and Belgad’s story. Until the final chapters, there’s no dark lord with a demon horde. That will change in the rest of the trilogy, but this first book and its introduction of the characters is a story of conflict on a deeply personal level. I’m looking forward to what happens in the rest of the trilogy, so much so that when I finished Citiy of Rogues, I went and bought the rest of the trilogy and the sequel and prequel. I’ll report on them in the coming months. Until then, I recommend this one.

Fireside Magazine Funded

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I don’t know how many of you are aware of Fireside magazine. It’s a new startup fiction magazine that will launch in March if all goes according to schedule. It will be available in pdf and ebook formats. Print copies are reserved for contributors to the Kickstarter fundraising, and depending on the level of contribution will be signed by one or more authors. (You get to choose whose signature you receive.) The magazine has reached its funding goal, so it’s a go. The first issue will have contributions from Tobias S. Buckell, D. J. Turnbuckle, Adam P. Knave, Ken Liu, Chuck Wendig, and Christie Yant, with illustrations by Amy Houser. There’s about 36 left on the fundraising, and any money not used in production will either go to the authors or be used as seed money for future issues. To learn more or to contribute, go to the Fireside page.

Epic Fantasy Anthology Announced

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John Joseph Adams has announced he’s putting together an anthology of short epic fantasy for publication in the fall. He’s soliciting stories for consideration, so if you have a favorite, drop him a line at the link provided in his announcement.

More Glenn Lord Tributes

Sailing the Serpent Sea

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The Serpent Sea
Martha Wells
Night Shade Books
Trade Paper, 342 p., $14.99

If you’ve read The Cloud Roads, or my review of it, or just looked at the cover of either it or The Serpent Sea, you can probably guess that I’m using the term “sailing” in the title of this review somewhat loosely.

I’ve been looking forward to this book since I read The Cloud Roads last year, and Night Shade Books was gracious enough to send me a review copy. It should be hitting store shelves any day now, if it hasn’t already. I’ve not seen a copy yet, but that doesn’t mean the book isn’t available. You should pick up a copy (of both if you haven’t read the first one). That way you can join me in one of my New Year activities, looking forward to the next book in the series.

The story picks up shortly after the close of The Cloud Roads, with the Indigo Cloud court returning to their ancestral home. This happens to be a Mountain Tree, and the name means exactly what it says. It’s a tree that’s purt near the size of a mountain, as we would say where I hail from. There are entire forests of these things, and they have branches wide enough for herds of herbivores to live on. The sequences with the Mountain Tree, brief though they were, reminded me of Alan Dean Foster’s Midworld, one of my favorite creations.

Unfortunately, Moon, Stone, Jade, and some of the others don’t get to enjoy their new home for long. The tree is dying. Sometime within the last turn, the Three Worlds equivalent of a year, someone broke into the tree and took the seed containing the life essence of the tree, and as a result the tree is dying. Fortunately, the thieves left enough of a trail for them to follow.

What they find is more than any of them expects, with wonders and surprises outside the predictable. Part of the story involves tracking the thieves, but the bulk of it involves trying to retrieve the seed once they locate the parties responsible for taking it. Along the way they encounter a number of races, most we’ve not seen before.

Whereas much of the excitement and suspense in The Cloud Roads came from the threat of the Fell and some intense aerial combat scenes, in The Serpent Sea the suspense comes from the group’s efforts, especially Moon and Stone’s, to locate the seed and retrieve it. The book is no less suspenseful. It’s every bit as good as the first without being repetitive.

Nor is this just a suspenseful novel. The characters continue to grow, as do their relationships, and Wells makes it all look easy. Even some of the characters who only show up for one or two scenes come across as individuals.

Of course, since this book is told from Moon’s point of view, his character development is where the emphasis is. Much of this revolves around Moon trying to make a place for himself in the court, something that becomes harder after the group visits a neighboring court. Moon commits a faux paus that results in Jade having to engage another queen in combat. By the time the book is over, Moon will experience a number of things and will grow into a true leader.

A few weeks ago, Martha Wells wrote in a post on The Night Bazaar, that after her last contract ended in 2007 and five novels “died on the vine”, she was on the verge of giving up writing for good when the book that became The Cloud Roads resurrected itself. I’m glad it did, and I hope those other novels come back and are published, either by Night Shade, someone else, or Martha herself. There was a time, more in science fiction than in fantasy, where authors created detailed worlds or universes, such as Known Space (and especially Ringworld), Dune, or more recently Karl Schroeder’s Virga, places unique and filled with that sense of wonder that seems to be missing from so much of contemporary fantastic literature. The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea are brim full of sense of wonder. It would have been a shame if Martha had given up before these books got published. Kudos to Night Shade for publishing her, and the other new writers they’ve brought into print. It’s one of the reasons I listed Night Shade as a publisher to read in 2012.

As I mentioned, there are a number of races in the Three Worlds. I hope when Martha is done telling the story of Moon, or if she just wants to take a break, she’ll introduce us to more of them. The Three Worlds is a fascinating place, and I, for one, am eager to explore more of it. With these books Wells is writing at the top of her game, and given their breath, originality, and complexity, this series is showing indications it could become one of the landmark series of the genre.

RIP, Glenn Lord

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Several Robert E. Howard related websites and blogs are reporting that Glenn Lord (1931-2011) passed away sometime yesterday, New Year’s Eve. In case some of you don’t recognize the name, Glenn Lord was the person most responsible for helping to get Conan and Howard’s other work back into print in the 1960s and 1970s. I only met Glenn a couple of times and never really knew him. By the time I became active in Howard fandom, Glenn wasn’t attending many Howard Days, at least that I can recall. There’s nothing I can say that those who knew him well can’t say better. There really hasn’t been time for any lenngthy tributes to be written (you can’t rush that type of writing), by read these brief tributes and announcements by Mark Finn, Damon Sasser, James Reasoner, Al Harron, and check the REHupa site periodically for more information. Glenn touched many people in a significant way, and as tributes are posted over the next few days, I’ll provide links to all the ones I see.
Sigh. I really didn’t want to start 2012 with this type of post.

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