This post's purpose is to collect my common tags in one place, so readers (and I!) can easily access entries on several subjects.

For a Philcon panel I'm moderating this weekend on fantasy from non-European sources, does anyone have suggestions? I already made notes on questions to bring up and made my own list, mostly of young adult fantasy (Goto, Okorafor, Pon, Farmer, Wein), but your collective brain is better, and some of you might have read more brand new books than I have. I do plan to bring up colonialism, institutional racism, and "what this book needs is a honky." I intend to focus mostly on books, but of the panelists, one is a source for anime/manga and another for gaming.

I particularly want fantasy by non-white authors, but suggestions of non-Euro fantasy by white authors will also be useful. I've looked at various compiled lists, but don't mind links to those, either, just in case I missed them.

Books you didn't think did a good job will be valuable for the panel as well.

Thanks!!!

I finished reading Margaret Ronald's Spiral Hunt earlier this week. It's a contemporary fantasy set in Boston--really in Boston, with all sorts of distinctive local detail--in which magic users are considered part of the Undercurrent. The magic system in this book was just amazing, realistically dangerous and addictive and limited, and I'm really glad there is going to be another book in the series so I can learn more about it.

The heroine, Evie, has a natural talent, or "blood magic," for finding things. I really loved the way her power worked, and how it was described. She works part-time as a finder, part-time as a bike courier which helps to ground her and keep her from being lost in her magic. She exists on the edges of the Undercurrent, deliberately trying to keep out of trouble, but is swept back in when an old friend is in danger, and finds out many things aren't as they've seemed to be.

There's a cast of supporting characters I would like to read more about, as well--a female cop who doesn't quite believe in magic, the owner of a magic shop who's heavily involved with her coven, and an intriguing friend from Evie's high school days who serves as a parent for his little sister.

I think this would definitely appeal to readers of romantic urban fantasy--there are some romantic elements which are not resolved by the novel's end.

Spiral Hunt

I finished Jeri Smith-Ready's Wicked Game yesterday. It was one of the best urban fantasy novels I'd read in a long while. For those who read Carrie Vaughn's Kitty series, there were similarities to that - setting at a radio station, smartmouthed heroine - but also a lot of good things that were all its own.

The heroine, Ciara, is the daughter of jailed con artists, and is using small cons to work her way through college so she can go straight. She gets a summer internship at a small radio station where the DJs are all vampires.

The cool part is that vampires in this world become stuck in their "life times" and find it really difficult to cope with change and the passage of time. So being DJs helps them cope, in that they are immersed in the music of their life, but also have to read the news reports, which helps tie them to the present day. Smith-Ready also links in vampiric obsessive-compulsive behaviors in a way I really liked, so that it was a way the vampires could control small things while the world went quickly past them.

The other thing I really liked is that the heroine enters a relationship with the vampire - if you read this subgenre, that isn't a spoiler - but it's not glowingly, instantly perfect. She doesn't like the idea of being bitten, she has to come to terms with the disadvantages of his condition, and she worries about herself as much as she worries about him. The reality of the relationship really involved me in the story.

There's plot, too. *heh* There's a Secret Government Agency, there's a Vampire Commune/Enclave, there's an evil corporate radio monopoly. That's all good, too.

So, I'm going to read the sequel. And add this one to my recs when people ask about paranormal romance/urban fantasy.


Wicked Game

I've read a lot of good books lately.

Carol Berg's Flesh and Spirit was first, a large but very involving fantasy about an outcast who stumbles into plots upon plots. I devoured it in two days, mostly because I loved the protagonist, who doubts himself and denies his kind impulses but proves himself all the same; also, he makes real mistakes, which made the story almost compulsive for me. The book ends on a semi-cliffhanger, and I have the second one ready to go as soon as I have a couple of days where I can read non-stop!

Flesh and Spirit


The rest are historical romances, all set in England.

Jo Beverley, The Secret Wedding: I'm a Beverley fangirl, so I enjoyed this, even though I felt that the characters hiding their identities from each other was a bit contrived (though they did have good reason to do so). The secret wedding happens when the two are teenagers and one rescues the other from a nasty seducer; they're then forced to marry. The cool part is that she works in details about new Georgian marriage laws and when they came into effect. The hero and heroine go their separate ways and each eventually is told the other is dead. Until they realize that wasn't true and try to discover the truth, which leads to pseudonymous adventures, affairs, etc.. The ending is engineered somewhat by Rothgar, the series Deus ex machina, but I didn't really mind.

The Secret Wedding

Meredith Duran, Bound By Your Touch: second book by this author. It's a Victorian setting, featuring a frivolous uncaring hero at war with his father and a classically educated heroine who serves as her archaeologist father's agent in England. They're drawn into working together by a possible forgery plot in which they are both involved, and the heroine, initially disdainful, begins to realize the hero is much more than he seems; smarter, for one thing, and also truly attracted to her. And it's pretty hot. The overall tone reminded me of Judith Ivory, so yes, I really liked this. She has a third book out which I'm saving for a bit.

Bound by Your Touch


Tessa Dare, Goddess of the Hunt: this is a new author, whose second book comes out today. It's a Regency, and uses a lot of tropes common to Regency historicals, but makes them seem new by giving new twists or simply by having her characters react in unexpected ways. Her hero is the heroine's brother's grim and angsty friend; the heroine is a tomboyish, independent young woman who thinks she's in love with someone else. Despite the familiarity of the setting, and elements of the plot, it felt fresh. Which is pretty impressive, I think. I've pre-ordered her next two books already.

Goddess of the Hunt

I finished reading my ARC of N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms a couple of days ago, and having been thinking of how I can be interesting about saying I really liked it.

Here's the official blurb:
"Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with a pair of cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's bloody history.

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate - and gods and mortals - are bound inseparably together."

For me, the prose was the major selling point; that along with the angst and audacity of holding gods captive. Jemisin's prose is, put simply, gorgeous. It has a rhythm that effortlessly drew me into the fantasy world she created. Never once did I doubt Yeine's voice, and every sentence made me crave more of it.

Yeine is young - not yet twenty - but before the novel begins, she's chief of her people in the matriarchal country of Darr. She's also grieving for her mother, whose recent unexpected death was suspicious. Now she's a stranger in a strange land, given privileges she didn't expect, doesn't want, and distrusts. There's a lot in this novel about privilege: privilege granted by the gods' favor, privilege of wealth and attendant political power, privilege of social rank. The human privilege on display interacts with the implications of captive gods in ways I found fascinating.

So far as the plot went, Yeine's cousin and grandfathers were in opposition to her, but to me they weren't the point at all; the point was Yeine's developing relationships with two of the captive gods, Sieh and Nahadoth, and even more importantly, Yeine's coming to terms with her mother and the choices her mother made. Those relationships were incredibly deep; the gods in this novel have the same depth and complexity as gods taken from "real world" mythology - Sieh is a child god, but also a trickster, and an adolescent torn by grief and doubt, and an old god borne down by grief; Nahadoth is darkness and glory and fear and danger, but also poignant grief. Yeine's mother was just as complex and contradictory, both a loving mother and a ruthless politician, and in some ways more privileged than the captive gods, because she had power over them.

All in all, a wonderful book, and one that I think will reward rereading.

Amazon link to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which will be out in February 2010.

Susan Grant, Once a Pirate: I'm reading some pirate romances while I write The Duke and the Pirate Queen; I'm taking note of plot elements to try and see how necessary they are, and how they're used. This one also involved time travel, and possibly reincarnation--I got a bit confused by what was physical and what was psychic.

The cool thing about this one is that the heroine is a U.S. Navy pilot, who has to eject from her jet into the ocean, and a few times her training is very useful. She gets to do an especially cool thing near the end.

Plot elements: heroine is stranger in a strange land; hero is ship captain. Pirates have been wronged by society, are seeking revenge, and have a code of honor. Pirates have a base on a tropical island. Heroine befriends various of the crew, who are loyal to her. The equator is crossed, with appropriate rituals. There is a perky cabin boy. There is a sea battle, with cannon. Bonus heroine crossdressing; she wears her flight suit, which is strange to her hosts.

Avi's YA novel The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle isn't really a pirate novel, but a sea adventure. Charlotte ends up alone on a ship with an evil captain, whom she initially trusts because he is of her own social status, despite warnings from the ship's cook, an old black man. One of the best things about the book is that her opinions are very much of her time, and when her opinions change, it's fairly realistically portrayed. After she realizes the captain is evil, she sides with the crew and learns to be one of them, working the sails, etc.. When she is returned to her parents, she can't handle the restriction and refuses to forget her experiences; she is out of place in her own society, and returns to sea.

Plot elements: heroine is stranger in a strange land and also hero. Most of the sailors have a code of honor. Heroine befriends various of the crew, who are loyal to her. Bonus heroine crossdressing.

I've got a couple more pirate romances on the TBR.

I blogged over at the pro blog about not liking vampires and why, but currently am reading a vampire book, Marta Acosta's Happy Hour at Casa Dracula, which is awesome.

I don't think it really is a vampire romance, though I got my copy at the Romance Writers of America conference. I mean, it has some, but it treats them completely differently from other vampire romances. The book is really about the first-person narrator, Milagro De Los Santos, her voice and her life; the vampires are secondary. Also, her voice is strongly Latina, which is a nice change.

I'm not even done reading it yet and I already think everyone else should read this book and tell me what you think.

I started reading a fantasy novel I'd been saving for some time, in great anticipation, but I had to put it down. I doubt I'll ever get any further into it. I'd read everything else this author had written, but this one...no.

The book has a great concept, making magic a bit like vampirism. The magic-users know that, by doing magic, they are causing someone's death, bit by bit. There's a conspiracy of silence about it. The book is mostly from the pov of the magic-users.

That was the problem for me. I couldn't bear to read their pov for very long, I couldn't bring myself to become involved in their story because I was so opposed to it, even though I knew by the end it was likely change would occur.

I didn't want to read it, so I stopped. Sometimes it's just easier that way.

I read the new Eileen Wilks novel, Mortal Sins (World of the Lupi, Book 5) over the weekend, and really enjoyed it. I think it's one of the best in the series so far.

For those coming in late, her series has a species of werewolves, all male, called Lupi. The first book introduces detective Lily Yu, who ends up psychically mate-bonded to a Lupi. And for once, I didn't mind a psychic mate bond! The books are set in a roughly contemporary US where magic works, and lately has begun to work much better, with accompanying problems. Lily can detect magical gifts in humans, and goes to work for the FBI in a special unit that deals with magical and related issues. There's also been some travel to other dimensions, but I like the "magic is awake right here!" plots best.

Mortal Sins has a number of conflicts going. First, Lily's Lupus mate Rule is dealing with being temporarily appointed as heir to a Lupus clan other than his own, which has a psychic component, at the same time as he has to go to court with an estranged partner to gain custody of his son. (As all Lupi are male, they breed with regular humans. They breed true, if I remember right, always having male children who are Lupi.) There's the relationship with his son's grandmother, who's raised the child, as well. Then he finds murdered bodies.

Wilks continues to address issues of race, sometimes explicitly. A local cop is black, and is angry when Lily calls him on prejudice against Lupi; in another scene, Lily reminds someone that she is not white. There are several places where racial prejudice is mentioned in conjunction with prejudice against people who have magic. When Lily speaks of going public with her magical ability, however, she likens it to a gay person coming out.

I am really interested in seeing where Wilks goes with this next.

Y.S. Wilce, Flora's Dare: ZOMG so good. Ummmm...most of what I loved was spoileriffic, and I really don't want to spoil, so, ummm...it's second in a series, and the world is really cool, it's an alternate California that is a client state of the Huitzals, nicknamed Birdies, who are alternate-world Aztecs. Also, Wilce has a really great prose style which I love.

Flora is the youngest child of a family of soldiers; her mother is a general, and her father was tortured by the Huitzils and is a wee bit shellshocked. Flora doesn't want to be regular army, she wants to be a Ranger, which is essentially a spy. Her idol is Nini Mo, the Coyote Queen, greatest ranger ever, and she religiously reads the yellowback novels depicting Nini Mo's adventures as well as Nini Mo's guidebook to ranger skills. Whenever she gets the chance, she practices her ranger skills, which get her into and out of scrapes. And it's much better than I can describe. Just read it.

I highly recommend this and the first book in the series, Flora Segunda.

Rachel Vincent, Stray: paranormal featuring werecats, with a powerful, rebellious first person narrator. I was annoyed with the heroine for a while, but grew to admire her, and was very pleased the author did the brave thing on some important plot elements. I'd be interested to know how other readers of paranormals and urban fantasy think this heroine matches up. I found it amusing that she has a whole crew of hunky brothers and friends who, in any other series, would scream sequel-bait, but not from the heroine's point of view!

There are some bits that are a bit horrific, so if you don't like bloody scenes, this book is not for you. I don't think it's worse than anything on television, though.

( Spoiler. )

Claudia Gray, Evernight: this was awesome fun. It's a YA, told from the first-person POV of a red-headed girl whose parents insist she attend high school at the creepy private boarding school Evernight Academy, which looks like a castle and has strange traditions such as all students eating meals in their rooms. They're reading Dracula in English class. Dead squirrels keep turning up all over campus. Arrogance among the wealthy students and dislike of outsiders seem the order of the day. And the one chivalrous boy who becomes the heroine's friend is worried that the other students are out to cause them harm.

All that sounds like every other scary YA novel, but there are a couple of really good twists that moved it up about ten notches in my mental list of vampire books I actually like. Read!

I've figured out the main reason why I didn't love either the movie of THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE or PRINCE CASPIAN, which I saw yesterday.

What I miss in the movie versions is the author's voice. barbarienne pointed out to me that a lot of PRINCE CASPIAN is narrative rather than action. That narrative is what I read so many times, what imprinted on my brain, and what says "Narnia" to me. It's not the characters and events per se. It's seeing them through Lewis' eyes and voice. In my mind and heart, the author's voice is inextricable from the story. Without that, the movies fall flat.

I spent most of Sunday either sleeping or reading. One of the books I read in its entirety was Ginn Hale's Wicked Gentlemen, a gay romance, which in my opinion was really more of a gay-spec-noir book with some romance in it.

It's set in a world with a Dickensian/steampunk feel, in which fallen angels left hell three centuries earlier; their descendants mostly occupy a ghetto called Hells Below, and are an oppressed minority, easily recognizable by their odd pallor and black fingernails. Some of them also have paranormal abilities. They're referred to as Prodigals. Humans government and banks are church-based; bankers are priests, and so are the police, who are called Inquisitors and do in fact torture for confessions. There's also a suffrage movement going on, to enfranchise both women and Prodigals.

The book is divided into two sections. The first is first person, from the point of view of Belimai Sykes, a Prodigal who, thanks to torture at the hands of the Inquisitors, is addicted to a drug called ophorium. Enter William Harper, an Inquisitor who needs Sykes' help. Harper and Sykes have a sexual relationship (all fade-to-black) and also begin to develop a working relationship. The second section is third person, and I found I missed Sykes' ironic voice; however, the author used the pov to give a more nuanced view of Harper and of Sykes as well. Their relationship continues to develop in the second half, and there was some Francis Crawford of Lymond-esque angst for Sykes which amused me greatly.

In short, I liked it, and wished it had been longer, to more fully explore the world; also, I wished that the novel had more sex scenes. That is, more than one brief one. Why yes, my prurient interest was roused! And I felt that sex scenes would have been a way to more deeply explore the differences and similarities between humans and Prodigals, as well as between the two men, whose actions throughout spoke louder than their words.

I've started reading Colleen Gleason's Regency vampire slayer novel, Rises the Night. So far, rather than reminding me of other paranormals, it reminds me of Madeleine Robins' Sarah Tolerance books. I think it's tone; neither author over-glamorizes the period, and of course both are alternate universes. And although set in a period usually used for romances, aren't romance novels, even though the heroines' journeys have romantic/erotic aspects.

I'm not very far into the Gleason, so I can't comment farther yet.

Nalini Singh, Caressed by Ice: Third in the futuristic series about changelings and psys. The hero of this one is a massively messed-up psy soldier whose attempts to control his emotions are literally killing him. And the heroine, who's recovering from an attack by a serial killer, is swimming in angst as well. I ate it up with a spoon. Possibly two spoons.

Patricia Briggs' Moon Called seems to be part of a trend in fantasy/paranormal romance, in which the romance continues over several books and its outcome is uncertain, as in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. Once the situation is resolved and a definitive pairing is established, though, different techniques come into play to maintain the readers' interest, as in J.D. Robb's In Death series, or Eileen Wilks' paranormals. The Briggs book had a satisfyingly complex plot, which I think bodes well for the series.

I am only guessing that Briggs' series is going to follow the first pattern; it might well follow the second. The romance is very low-key in Moon Called; Mercy's first love reappears, and another love interest looms nearby. It would be fun if she ended up with neither one. An added complication is her species--she's a changeling coyote, but not a werewolf, which means she has advantages werewolves don't but are very interested in, for example fertility.

The worldbuilding is fairly dark. It's set in contemporary America, in which the fae have only recently "come out" in public, and the werewolves and vampires are poised to do so. Werewolves in this world are made, not born, and a large percentage of those who attempt the change, usually young teenagers who are the children of werewolves, die. Their overall fertility rate is also very low. This could lead to some interesting plot complications down the road, given that Mercy and her first love are both different enough from most changelings to avoid most of their problems.

Werewolves in this world are not like real wolves. Their aggression, even in human form, is a powerful impetus to their behavior and is another reason newly-made werewolves might not survive (if they can't control themselves, they are killed by their alpha). In animal form, the werewolves are huge and more agile, strong, and fast than a normal wolf. They're organized into packs, each one under an alpha (we only see male alphas) and those overall beneath a head alpha, also male. Again, this doesn't follow the pattern of true wolves, whose alphas may change frequently, and might be female depending on the circumstances. But it makes an opportunity for commentary on gender roles in human society.

Though the book started a little slowly, I was soon involved in the complex plot. It really took off when Mercy had to drag herself out of the shadows and take charge, which she did in a very realistic and satisfying fashion. I've put the remainder of the series on my list to read.

I never did finish blogging the books I read over the winter holidays.

I enjoyed Diana Wynne Jones' The Pinhoe Egg, but don't have any detailed comments on it. I liked that the adult characters were not guaranteed to be trustworthy, and I liked the way that characters' perceptions of each other changed throughout the book, as they learned more about each other. And I always like it when a girl gains power.

Kate Elliott's The Spirit Gate was a deep and satisfying read, as I've come to expect from her. I liked the complexity of her worldbuilding. Even the good guys had shades of gray, that made me want to read more about them. She made people being carried around by giant eagles seem realistic, and made the eagles individuals. She did not make the eagles at all cute, for which I was extremely grateful. I think one of the reasons it was so gripping was that I as a reader did not doubt she would kill off characters, so their safety was not assured. To find out who survived, I had to read on.

There was one white-skinned character who was considered an exotic oddity by all the other characters, and passed from hand to hand as a slave.

( Spoiler. )

Various point of view characters had terrible things happen to them. Some ended up reasonably happy. Some ended up changed. I was interested in all of them, even the ones I didn't particularly like.

I'm definitely up for reading the sequel.

I wanted something different from Gail Dayton's The Eternal Rose than I'd gotten from the two previous novels in the series, but didn't get it, in most ways. Except for being several years on, and there being children as part of the complex familial arrangements (ilias, or group marriage) of the Godmarked, I felt as if I were reading one of the earlier books over again. I know some readers find that comforting. I was just bored. Not so bored that I didn't finish the book; I was curious to see if the story would be tied off. Just not thrilled and rushing through the pages. I fear this series is not for me; despite being heterosexual, I don't want to read only about male/female relationships. It makes me want to write something else that responds to it, though, which is a good thing.

( Major spoilers. I am cranky, too. )

My opinions are more based on what I wanted to read than anything else. There are plenty of group marriage models in real human culture that are solely heterosexual. I just find that boring in a fantasy novel.