#SpecFicByWomenOfColor

This year I focused the bulk of my reading on books of the speculative fiction genre written by women of color (WOC). Why? Here is what I posted at the beginning of the year.

I didn't get to read as many as I'd hoped, for various reasons: some books I started but couldn't continue because the writing was just not good; I had some reading promises to keep to others; and, then, once in a while I found something else I wanted to read that just so happened to be either not spec fic or not by a WOC.

After certain recent events, I researched online ways I could support small, Black-owned businesses. On one website with a list of Black-owned online retailers, an idiotic commenter asked, "What about a list of White-owned businesses?"

The answer to that is, I think, similar to the reason why I focused this year on spec fic by WOC: Because White is already considered the norm, especially White and male. I'm betting that anyone reading this can name, offhand and without a lot of thought, at least five White, male fantasy/sci-fi writers. I know I can.

Now, can you name five women?

Can you name five women of color?

When you come from a place of privilege it's easy to have a blind spot when it comes to the "other." As a White woman I felt it my duty to make the conscious effort to expand my literary world.

Between the hideous and utterly misogynistic "social movement" Gamergate and the Ferguson, MO court ruling, I think that right now is the perfect time to support female writers (and all lady geeks!) and geeks of color. Female writers don't have cooties; they don't all write romance (my short stories have 0% romance in them, and only one of my novels has a romantic relationship in it, which is more of a side plot than the feature); they don't all write about periods and babies and shoe shopping. Writers of color don't only write about how hard their lives are, or how exotic their native lands are, or how much they hate White people. Certain things are universal, and that's the main takeaway I found in this project: Alienation. Longing. Acceptance. Fear. Growth. Guilt. Redemption. Regret. And yes, love. Love is not a woman thing. It's not a girly thing. Even men need love in their lives, whether it's romantic or something else...something more.

Black writers do not write only for Black people. Women do not write only for women. To think so, and to go through life enjoying only books that match your demographic, is to miss out on some of the greatest, most interesting and entertaining works out there. And, that's also sort of missing the point of being into spec fic, isn't it?

I'll be keeping this list in the column to the right up on my blog for the foreseeable future, and as I go forward and read more spec fic by WOC I'll add them to the list. For now, here are some resources I have been using throughout 2014 to find books to read, as well as some other links I like.

The Carl Brandon Society works "to help build further awareness of race and ethnicity in speculative literature and related fields." http://carlbrandon.org/index.html

Worlds Without End's Award Winning Books by Women Authors. You might have to dig a little to find the WOC, but they're there. https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_women_winners.asp

The Nerds of Color. Just an all-around great geek site. http://thenerdsofcolor.org/

An article on Asian spec fic writers. http://carriecuinn.com/2013/06/18/list-94-asian-speculative-fiction-authors-with-links/

Another good all-purpose list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction_by_writers_of_color

This list is YA-heavy, but hey, there is some damn fine YA out there. https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/36880.Speculative_Fiction_by_Women_of_Color

For 2015 I will not be focusing on authors; rather, I'm going to attempt to put a dent in my rather large pile of unread books I already own. Some of them might be by writers of color; some are by women of color. I'll keep you posted. 

Reading Project: 2015

A few years ago, my husband decided to dedicate an entire year to a specific theme in his reading. His first reading project was to choose a book from each decade of the 20th century. Some books he enjoyed; others he did not. Either way, he was glad to have chosen a theme in which to pick his books, and he opened his mind to some of the great works of the last century.

Inspired, I've spent this year reading genre books by Women of Color. Not exclusively, but still making an effort to include as many as I could find. In fact, had I not taken a break from my project to read "Sword & Sorceress 29," I never would have discovered Rabia Gale. Some books were easy to get: Octavia Butler is a pretty big name in speculative fiction. Others were tough: I still have "The Bone Whistle" on my to-read pile, and so far it's the only spec fic by a Native American woman I've been able to get my hands on. Other books were a pleasant surprise, like the recently read "Rainbird" by Rabia Gale.

Other books, which I will not name, I started and could not finish because they were just not good, and my desire to support non-white female authors within the speculative fiction genre was not great enough to overcome the truly awful writing.

Now that we're into the last quarter of the year, my thoughts have necessarily turned to my reading project for 2015. For a while I considered read genre and historical fiction outside my comfort zone. In genre, I gravitate towards urban fantasy, magic realism, paranormal, and dark fantasy/light horror. In historical fiction, I tend towards British Dark Ages/High Middle Ages (5th-12th centuries), the Japanese Samurai period, and early 20th century American. My idea was to branch out into other subgenres -- steampunk, space opera, alien invasion, high/epic fantasy -- and other time periods -- the Wild West, ancient China, pre-history, the American Revolution.

Then yesterday something caught my attention: several books in my bookcase I hadn't read yet. When I went through the shelves I discovered five print books I own, which I had not yet read. They've been on my shelves for at least a year. I then dove into my e-reader library and discovered twelve more unread books. That's seventeen books I own which I have not read.

Seventeen.

Ok, three of those -- one print and two e-books -- are part of my Spec Fic by Women of Color project. But even if I read those this year, that leaves over a dozen unread books in my to-read pile. Fourteen! Even taking a break to read other books, I should be able to finish those by the end of 2015.

The unread books on my shelves both virtual and physical break down as follows:

7 genre/spec fic
6 non-fiction (including a memior by Joan Rivers)
4 literary/classic fiction (including The Count of Monte Cristo)

Challenge accepted! My reading project for 2015 will be to read all the books I own which have languished unread in the ethers of my nook and the dusty shelves of my big bookcase. I vow to put myself on a book-buying freeze until I either finish them or declare them unreadable after the first three chapters/50 pages, whichever comes first.

Random collections of ghost stories, humorous essays on parenting, and ARCs I won from a "Fantasy & Science Fiction" magazine contest, here I come!

Spoiler-Free Book Review: "Rainbird" by Rabia Gale

Before I go into my review of Rabia Gale's novella, I take great pleasure in announcing that my short story, "Atheists in the Cemetery," has been accepted for publication in Burial Day Book's upcoming anthology, "Gothic Blue Book 4!"

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Just as the halfbreed title character of Rabia Gale's 31,000-word novella "Rainbird" belongs to neither one world nor the other, the story itself is neither one genre nor another. It has elements of Steampunk, but isn't, quite; there's a great deal of future noir, but it isn't all that; and the story itself is very heroic fantasy, without actually being heroic fantasy. It's a hybrid, like Rainbird herself.

And I love it.

I first discovered Rabia Gale while reading Sword & Sorceress 28. Her story about a kite-maker and the children she helps was done so well, the writing so tight and so ethereal, I had to look her up. I found "Rainbird" on her site and bought it without a second thought.

"Rainbird" takes place in some undisclosed time, presumably in our world, though even that's neither confirmed nor denied. What is told to the audience is that there is no more sun. No giant yellow ball of gas in the sky to provide light, heat, and life. Instead, the role of the sun is played by a giant heat lamp of sorts called the Day Sun, which travels on a track called the sunway across the land.

Oh, and that track? Runs along the spinal cord of a long-dead, continent-sized dragon who fell to earth.

Yeah.

Did I mention how much I love this?

Rainbird is half-human through her father Petrus, and half a species called eerie, angel-like creatures who resent the humans and their sunway and their Day Sun. The eerie have very specific rules about half-breeds, and Rainbird's mere existence is not part of those rules. As such, Petrus keeps her in hiding as his assistant inspector. They live and work in the skeleton of the dragon, helping the Company to keep the sunway running.

I. Love. This.

There's nothing about any of this I don't love. Gale's writing itself is strong and descriptive. She knows when to crank up the action and when to let you breathe. She knows exactly how much detail to give, and when. She's created a fantastical, whimsical, dark, world that is simultaneously familiar and utterly strange.

I love halfbreed stories, and I love stories of underdogs who become the hero through chance and circumstances. I love the sunway on the dragon's spine, I love the black market on Rib Three, I love the egg and mushroom houses along the dragon's bones. I love that a dragon fell to earth and got used in this way. I love the eerie's snark.

And I love the ending. Not giving anything away, but with a story like this it would have been very easy for Gale to take an extreme: either a very happy, sappy ending, or a very dark and sad one. She chose neither, and I respect that and love the choice she made.

I look forward to many, many more quality works from Rabia Gale, one of my new favorite writers.

Interview With Winifred Burton, Author of "Girl Out of Water"

As I've posted about before, my Reading Project for 2014 is to read as many speculative fiction books - sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and all their subgenres - by Women of Color as I can. On Twitter, I've been using the hashtag SpecFicByWomenOfColor to chronicle my journey...and through that hashtag, I found Winifred Burton, author of the Cryptid Coterie series, fellow nerd, and Seattle-based WoC.

Girl Out of Water is the first book in the Cryptid Coterie series. If you're looking for a little science with your magic, plenty of well-drawn female characters, and urban fantasy without the ubiquitous alpha male love interest, check it out.

Here, Winifred Burton and I chat about creating magic worlds, the portrayal of women in spec fic, starting your own indie publishing company, and geek out over dragons and Hogwarts.

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Meredith Morgenstern: It was fun to read some urban fantasy in which the main character has to be introduced to the world of magic, rather than already being a part of it. That situation reminded me a lot of Lev Grossman's book, "The Magicians," in which the MC has to both cope with his/her new reality while simultaneously battling a big baddie. Why do you think it's important for the main character to start off as a "muggle" in some stories? Why did you make that choice for Tabitha?


Winifred Burton: I enjoyed The Magicians incidentally.

I think it's important because it mirrors the way most of us go through life. Very few people start out with enormous advantages, and I think it's probably more interesting as a narrative to watch someone create themselves in the midst of that struggle.

Also it gives those of us on the Muggle grind hope that our invitation has been delayed, but it's still coming.

MM: I'm 38 and still waiting for my invitation to Hogwarts...

Do you think it's kind of a coming-of-age thing? Tabitha's a little old for puberty, but she's still starting a new chapter in her life.

WB: Same.

And yes I do.

Part of it, part of Tabitha's story is about what it's like to be a grown up (the magical power to eat cereal at midnight and do as she pleases), but then what do you do with that? Is it what you thought it would be?

I also think for women, puberty has an especially subtle emotional process that you can't see until you're on the other side of it. Tabitha's old for omg, I have boobs, but she's still inexperienced and fumbling emotionally.

MM: I like your blending of elemental magic and science fiction, in terms of genetics and physics. Do you think that straight-up "sci-fi" and straight-up "fantasy" are becoming old-fashioned as genres get blended?

WB: I hope not because in many ways I am very much addicted to the traditional tropes and stories. Some things are just better with dragons for instance.

MM: ALL things are better with dragons, IMO. Dragons are like cheese, chocolate or bacon: There's nowhere they don't belong.

WB: We agree about these things! I think classic science fiction and fantasy don't get less interesting, as much as maybe our approaches to them aren't as fresh.

Robot overlords, mining planets, magical macguffins. They never get old for me.

One of my favorite little novels is One for the Morning Glory, and it's about as old-fashioned as I think fantasy comes.

MM: Do you see technology seeping into fantasy more?

I'm thinking of things like, stories with scientific explanations for vampirism, for example.

WB: I honestly think the line between technology and magic is pretty thin.

So yes I think we'll see more of that. As leaps are made in technology there's a weird gap in the time it takes for us to accept and adopt it. I think our understanding of it in that gap is blind faith and magic. Irene and Tabitha are...In many ways on opposite ends of the same spectrum. Irene has some very interesting origins. And Tabitha is somewhat less intentional as an elemental.

MM: What they both had in common was a kind of reluctance to accept their powers. They both try so hard to be normal.

WB: I live in Irene's backyard in a way, Hanford is just a few hours away, and they've had some very scary congenital issues in their population [trigger warning for disturbing image after link]. Writing them, I wanted the reader to feel like Irene had potential as a protagonist and Tabitha had potential as a villain.

MM: It's so rare these days to read paranormal fiction in which romance takes the back seat. Your story not only has a female protag and antag, but almost exclusively female supporting characters. Was that a conscious decision on your part?

WB: Absolutely. I think the Bedchel test is fantastic but a fairly low bar.

MM: Agreed. Yet it's depressing how many films, books, and TV shows still can't pass that very low bar.

WB: I'm pretty vocal about how boring I find the standard love triangle, or quadrangle even. I wanted to explore the range of female relationships and their complexities.I also didn't want to fall into a trap of "we're all women here", so everything and everyone is harmonious.

MM: Yes! Life is not "Sex and the City." Not all women get along all the time.

WB: I tried to make the characters as real as possible, and then I gave them bizarre environs and objectives.

It was important to me to have women in competition with each other, in a totally non romantic way.

I think we so often are, but those impulses are fed into a body image/romantic context and so you lose the subtleties of it.

Also, can we just agree that if you have superpowers, falling in love is slightly less...cool isn't the right word. It's out there, that's a part of the experience, but it's odd to make it THE experience, if you can also say, move things with your mind.

MM: Who are some of your influences in both fantasy and sci-fi? Or, what movies, books, TV shows?

WB: Without seeming too fangirlish, certainly Joss Whedon, Jane Espenson, Octavia Butler, Clive Barker. I've always wanted to be the lovechild of Clive Barker and Toni Morrison actually.

MM: Let's talk about your experience in publishing. Why did you choose Cirrina Books?

WB: Creating a small imprint to publish my work was my first choice. I may yet in the future, but I never queried agents or the Big 6.

MM: Why?

WB: I knew it would be more work, oy such work, but I don't see myself as a good fit for that model.

Control is massive, and while I don't think self-publishing is the gold rush some people think it is, I know traditional publishing is even less so. Creatives in other areas like music, have opted out of the studio and record label system and I've admired that for a long time. I created Cirrina almost without a second thought. Maybe my entrepreneurial influences like the Ani DiFranco of my girlhood made that seem normal to me and less stigmatized. 

When I was Tabitha's age it was common for people making things to strike out on their own in the hopes that someday some nice company would later ask them to sell out.

MM: Like the Riot Grrrl zines of the early 90s.

WB: Exactly.

MM: To that end, do you have any advice for other writers considering this option?

WB: Much like adulthood, it's full stop responsibility and reward.

It doesn't require much money but it will require an enormous amount of time and dedication.

Also people like Hugh Howey have pulled back the curtain on the data for publishing this way and made it less about who's good enough to be chosen and more about who's willing to assume all risks and responsibilities.

MM: Do you think, then, that the future lies with all authors self-publishing, or creating small presses?

WB: I think the future will be more hybridization.

I think we'll see the odd self-published title,even from the big names. I have no idea what consumption via subscription will do to content generation, but I think the era of indie vs. trend will mellow a bit. Readers don't care how something is published if they like the content.

MM: Anything else you'd like to share, either about Girl Out of Water, or Cirrina, or writing in general?

WB:  I am tidying up a final edit of Broken Wave the follow up to Girl Out of Water. And I have a stand alone paranormal thriller called Mercies that just needs a cover of all things, that will release sometime this fall.

MM: Thank you! Good luck with Cirrina!

WB: Thanks!

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Winifred Burton can be found on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/winnaburto

At her website here: http://winifredburton.com/

And you can purchase Girl Out of Water here: http://winifredburton.com/2013/12/19/girl-out-of-water-coming-january-28th-2014/

Post-Vacay Check-In

Hello world!

Last week the whole family went for a much-needed vacation to my parents' house in Miami. During that week, the husband and I drove up to Club Med in Sandpiper Bay, Port St. Lucie for four days and three nights of child-free time to ourselves, which we badly needed. I've posted some photos below to make you jealous. ;-)

While on vacation from Brooklyn, I also took a "reading vacation" from my 2014 reading project: Spec Fic by Women of Color. When I travel, I like reading travel essays, so this trip I read most of John Waters' hitchhiking book, "Carsick." I highly recommend it if you have a strong stomach: that man has quite an imagination. He's funny and a good sport, though, and reading his book has made me wish I could take a cross-country road trip just so I could pick him up.

Now that I'm back to Real Life, I'm ready to return to my 2014 reading project and to my writing. I've got my second novel to revise, two short stories to send out, and two works by my critique partners I have to edit; not to mention some more blog posts. Next week I have an interview with "Girl Out of Water" author Winnifred Burton, and in the next few weeks I'll have more sf/f influences, more book reviews, more Lost Scenes, and more Geek TV. Keep checking in!

Until then, enjoy the photos from Club Med: Sandpiper Bay!

Sunset over the St. Lucie River

Morning in Sandpiper Bay, Port St. Lucie, Florida

Our view at breakfast

Club Med has six Hobie Cat sailboats. Hubby and I had an
awesome time going for morning sails on the Port St. Lucie
River. One morning we went so far out we saw dolphins!

Hobie sail

Enjoying a well-earned mimosa after driving the Hobie Cat along the river

One afternoon it rained, so we drank rose wine at the lounge. Of course.

Spoiler-Free Book Review: "A Conservation of Shadows" by Yoon Ha Lee

I'm bad at math, and I don't mean that in a girlie-girl, giggly, "Tee hee, math is so hard!" hair-twirling kind of way. What I mean is, I think I have some sort of undiagnosed math learning disability. I struggled through pre-algebra, twice. In my junior year of high school I failed algebra II, despite the tutor my mom hired to help me, and had to go to summer school in order to graduate. The only math class I took after that was the one the College of Arts and Sciences at NYU required for gen ed; they might as well have called it "Math for Lit Major Morons." I barely passed with a "D."

So I'm a little bit in awe of people for whom math comes easily: my mom, my best friend of 26 years, and now, Yoon Ha Lee. I now have two reasons to be envious of her: she's good at math, and she's a brilliant writer.

To my mind, math and literature are two separate animals, but Yoon Ha Lee - a Korean-American math major - manages to seamlessly weave the two together in beautiful, almost poetic ways. "Conservation of Shadows" is both the title of the collection of short stories, as well as one of the stories contained within. It took me longer to read than I had anticipated because some of the stories get quite detailed with science and technology, and those are not my native reading languages.

As with most short story collections, some are more hit and some are more miss. With a few exceptions, I tend not to read a lot of space opera. Because of this, the stories "Ghostweight," and "The Unstrung Zither" were not my favorites; I could not finish "The Battle of Candle Arc." Yet I loved "Swanwatch," and "Between Two Dragons," arguably both space operas.

The stories in the collection I enjoyed most were the ones that did away with fancy theories of space travel or complicated technology. "The Shadow Postulates" has a brilliant plot device in the form of living shadows on a university campus. "The Bones of Giants" I wished was a full-length novel, with such strong world-building I was sad when the story ended.

Four stories stand out to me as favorites:

In "Blue Ink," a young woman is faced with a parallel version of herself who requests her help in a war. I love the idea of parallel universes and of traveling between them to visit other versions of ourselves. What would we say? What would we do? Would we be shocked by our otherselves? Would we help them? Would they help us? It's such a rich topic, yet so hard to do well. In this story, Yoon crafts clever and creative answers to those questions.

"Iseul's Lexicon" is my second-favorite story, and probably one of the most intelligent works I've ever read. How would a conquering culture best erase all traces of the previous culture? By, quite literally, erasing their words from existence. Not only was this story hyper-creative and stunningly written, but as an American, with full knowledge of Yoon's Korean-American background, and with full knowledge of my nation's recent history and current cultural hegemony around the globe, it was hard to read this and not feel a potent mix of guilt and sympathy. I mean that in a good way; Americans should not shy away from difficult topics, and white people definitely need to not shy away from stories that present points of view told by the victims of empire and colonization.

I really loved reading "The Book of Locked Doors." It was one of those stories I could have read forever. In addition to the subject matter at hand - what, exactly, is "terrorism" when you are defending your own homeland and cultural identity? - I love the idea of a living book that talks to you, a sort of self-aware Book of the Dead. Again, this story speaks to Yoon's fascinatingly deep levels of creativity and intelligence.

The last story in the collection is the title story, "A Conservation of Shadows," and it is far and away my favorite. Written in gorgeous, but not flowery, prose, it reminds me of one of my favorite short story writers, Cat Rambo. The story, so I've read, was inspired by Yoon's love of the Sumerian myth of the Descent of Inanna, but, like most well-written stories, could be interpreted in any number of ways.

Although this is a collection of unrelated short stories, a few common themes unite them: civil war, military occupation, lost of culture and language. Many of the worlds in the stories have Eastern influences, rather than the usual Medieval European influence, which I welcomed with open arms. One of the reasons I embarked on my "Speculative Fiction by Women of Color" reading project for 2014 was to explore new world building and cultural influences, and I wasn't disappointed here.

I will absolutely be seeking out more of Yoon Ha Lee's stories. Maybe one day, when she invents time travel, she can travel back to the early 1990s and be my math tutor so I don't have to go to summer school in 1993. A girl can dream.

Spoiler-Free Book Review: "Who Fears Death?" by Nnedi Okorafor

See my sidebar to the right for the other spoiler-free reviews I've posted on the books I'm reading for my 2014 project: Speculative Fiction by Women of Color. Follow my reading project on Twitter with the hashtag #SpecFicByWomenOfColor


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Trigger warnings for discussions of the book's themes of rape and other brutalities of war.

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"Who Fears Death?" has won so many awards, and been reviewed so many times, I now find myself almost paralyzed with writer's block at trying to do justice to this amazing novel. There are so many different ways to talk about it, so many different themes that tie together, so many different ways of approaching such a complex, complicated work. Since I am a spec fic writer, I'm going to stick to that aspect of the book, and let other elements flit in and out as they need to do.

At some unspecified point in the future, after events only ever alluded to in general terms, an unnamed (until the very end) part of Africa has become a vast dystopian desert. Oceans are things of myth, rivers are unheard of. Water for consumption and bathing is collected with mechanized appliances that pull it out of the air.

And the Okeke people are in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth by the Nuru people.

The people of this place and time, Okeke and Nuru alike, worship a creator goddess called Ani. In The Great Book, it is written that Ani created the dark-skinned Okeke as slaves and turned her back on them; she created the golden-skinned Nurus, people of the sun, as the superior of the Okeke in every way. The Nurus no longer feel it is enough to oppress and humiliate the Okekes; they are now out to obliterate the entire race of Okekes. Part of the Nuru method involves the systematic use of rape of Okeke women in order to create mixed-race Ewu babies. Ewus are feared as strange and violent creatures, inheriting in their natures the very evil that conceived them. They are shunned by Nuru and Okeke alike.

After a particularly brutal rape that literally takes her voice from her, the young woman Najeeba stays out of towns and villages, birthing and raising her daughter alone. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, an Igbo Nigerian word meaning "Who Fears Death?" At six years old, Najeeba moves them to the eastern town of Jwahir and marries a blacksmith. For a while life seems almost normal for little Onye; the people of Jwahir slowly learn to tolerate Onyesonwu, even if they never fully accept the Ewu child.

As with all great heroes, as soon as Onye gets comfortable in her life, things start to get weird. She falls asleep and wakes up in a tree. She goes invisible during a rite of passage ritual. She touches her dead step-father and he moves.

Jwahir's resident sorcerer, Aro, will not take Onye under his wing because she is a woman. Only after Onye nearly kills Aro with her psychic powers does he relent. As she studies and learns to harness and control her vast power, Onye becomes aware -- as heroes do -- that the Nuru massacres and brutality against the Okeke in the west is tied to her own fate, and even to her very conception. Aro, Najeeba, the Jwahir high priestess, even Onye's love interest, are all linked together. Because of this, Onye must endure a terrible initiation into mystic teachings and embark on a quest of destiny.

I make no secret of the fact that I am a huge fan of the "Child of Destiny" trope -- my own first novel, BLOODSISTERS, is a variation on that -- and with "Who Fears Death?", Nnedi Okorafor delivers a story worthy of the great canon of other CoD stories like "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter." There is even a Jesus-istic element to "WFD?" with Onye knowing she must go forward to her fate in order to save both the Okeke and Nuru peoples, and in accepting her role in this thing that is much bigger than herself.

The entire novel is wonderful and well-written, but where Okorafor really shines is in character development and world building. She manages to paint a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland that is both terrifying in its vastness and harshness, yet also full of life and color and hope. Onyesonwu is a child of the desert, both literally and figuratively, and her love for that land comes through from beginning to end in the book, even when she's shown a vision of lush green landscapes.

"WFD?" contains some of the best relationships I've ever read in fiction. There are so many good connections in the book - between Onye and her mother, between Onye and Aro (who I think should be played by Laurence Fishburne, because The Matrix, and I Tweeted as much) - but the two relationships I enjoyed most were between Onye and Mwita, and between Onye and her initiation "sisters" Binta, Luyu, and Diti.

So rarely do we get to see, even by women writers, real female friendships with their ups and downs, and their changes and growth over many years. When Onye meets Luyu, Binta and Diti, they are eleven years old. It would have been so easy to lump the three of them together, but they are written far from interchangeable. Onye's relationship with each woman is distinct and follows a unique path through the next nine years of their lives. How refreshing to read about a group of female friends that actually reflects real life friendships!

Speaking of realism in fictional relationships, my favorite in the book by far is Onye's with Mwita. As the two Ewus of Jwahir, they are bound by their common status as outcasts and weirdos. Mwita is Aro's original apprentice, yet Onye has naturally superior powers, adding a jealous rivalry between the two. They are passionate with one another and love one another with a Romeo & Juliet kind of fatality. They would die for each other, and do irreparable and outrageous harm to any outsider unlucky enough to cause harm to each other; yet they squabble and bicker and act like sulky, petulant, petty children with each other. They are very real, and I love that about them.

"WFD?" is the kind of book that stays with you when you're not reading it; I hesitate to use the ubiquitous word "haunting," but that's exactly how it feels. Okorafor doesn't shy away from frank and graphic descriptions of the terrible things that happen to the Okeke at the hands of the Nuru, from dismemberment to rape -- and of things the Okeke do to fight back. The book brings up things most of us living comfy lives in the First World don't like to think about: how far removed we are from the awful things happening elsewhere in the world, whether or not our passive witness implicates us in perpetuating these problems, and how much we can reasonably be expected to do about what we know is going on. Should we make a sad face and feel bad? Give money? Send our children off to fight for us? Sacrifice our own lives? What's the "right" thing to do when other human beings are being tortured in the world and we know about it? Can we look the other way? What if there's *nothing* we can do?

These are tough questions, ones I have not stopped thinking about since picking up "WFD?" a few weeks ago. And that right there is the sign of a well-crafted, well-written, well-told novel: when days, weeks, months, years pass, and I'll *still* be thinking about Onyesonwu and her destiny.

There is so much more I could have said about this book, but this review is already quite long. Perhaps at some point I'll do a Part 2, and discuss the Red People (my favorite part of the book) and other themes the book tackles. For right now, I'll end here and ask: Has anyone else read "Who Fears Death?" What did you think? What's a book that has struck you so deeply that you carry it with you for life?

Spoiler-Free Book Review: "Kalpa Imperial" by Angelica Gorodischer

WARNING: While no spoilers for "Kalpa Imperial" are included in the review below, spoilers for HBO's "True Detective," Anne Rice's "Interview With the Vampire," AMC's "Breaking Bad," and ABC's "Lost" are there.

During the last two months I became obsessed with HBO's show "True Detective." Like so many others around the internets I bought a copy of "The King in Yellow" and scoured it for clues; I read into everything every characters said, every twitch of the eyebrow, every seemingly subconscious gesture. After the show ended, I read one post-mortem that summed it up pretty neatly: We, the media consumer public, have become so used to the idea of "twists" thanks to shows like "Lost" that it's become the twist to not have a twist. "True Detective," it's been argued, ended exactly the way it should have ended: They caught the bad guy, he got his just desserts, they moved on. Rust didn't do it, Marty didn't do it, Marty's father-in-law didn't do it, Marty's daughters weren't involved at all, and none of the other big internet theories happened. (And believe me, if I didn't explore them all before the show's finale it wasn't for lack of trying.) It was exactly the guy it was supposed to be. He got caught. The end.

While most of us enjoy a nice surprise at the end there's also certain satisfaction in a no-twist plot and ending. "Breaking Bad" lacked a surprise ending, too. I jumped on the "Breaking Bad" bandwagon late in the game, after the series had ended. I worried that I'd accidentally see spoilers all over the internet. Turns out, spoilers were a non-issue for that show. Everyone got what they deserved, Walt died, the show ended. The end.

Making this review spoiler-free is easy because there's nothing to spoil. No one returns to the island, it wasn't all a dream, Lestat doesn't show up to turn Daniel into a vampire. Walt dies, Rust and Marty solve their case, "Kalpa Imperial" ends.

I bring this up because for the first third of "Kalpa Imperial" I kept waiting for a twist or turn. At first, I theorized that the unnamed empire in each story was a metaphor for Europe or for Western culture in general. I gave up that idea pretty quick.

"Kalpa Imperial" is pure story. Sure, some writers are more concerned with craft or gimmicks, or in capturing the everyday. Me, I roll my eyes at the thought of having to hold a book up to a mirror to read it; I lack my husband's patience for David Foster Wallace's pages and pages of footnotes. In my opinion, story trumps all. I can forgive a lot of bad writing if the story itself is really good.

Thankfully, Angelica Gorodischer is a talented writer who can pack more punch into a single sentence than most writers can do with an entire novel. Each word is carefully chosen, each sentence artfully constructed, each story within the story perfect in its own way. Nothing is wasted here. This is pure, 100% story, my personal Holy Grail. It's escapism at its best, but also a mirror of our society. It's imagination and reality. There's no larger story here, just a collection of smaller bits and pieces of the fictional empire's history. In a lesser writer's hands this would come off as too dry, too textbook-like. In Gorodischer's hands the empire unfolds in lush, sensual details and characters so rich and deep you wonder they aren't really real. Like a song you know you've never heard before that, nevertheless, sounds as familiar as a lullabye, the stories in "Kalpa Imperial" feel as real and entrenched as our own society, while remaining unique, new, and imaginative. Any reader with even a small amount of intelligence will be able to figure out some of the subtler things the stories don't say -- yes, the kid's father is probably one of those two guys; yes, the narrator and the Empress probably had an affair -- but that's not what "Kalpa Imperial" is about. It's not trying to outsmart you, just entertain you with some well-told tales of this fantastical, fictional, forever empire.

Of course, a lot of this is due to Ursula K. LeGuin's masterful translation. She needs to get quite a lot of credit for translating this whole book so well. Translations, as most of us know, can make or break a book written in a language not our own. (See: Proust.) I only wish I could read this book as part of a university course, with an instructor who could help me decipher all the things I'm missing by not knowing enough about Gorodisher's life, her influences, and the context in which she wrote this.

"Kalpa Imperial" may very well be my new favorite book. I certainly plan to read it again and again. I might even get it's cover tattooed somewhere on my body. Who knows?

I have not come close to doing this book justice in my review. Please take a look at these three others who did a better job:

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040119/kalpa.shtml

http://www.sfsite.com/11b/ki164.htm

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/02/the-beauty-of-lists-angelica-gorodischers-kalpa-imperial


Now, go buy this book for yourself and read it. You're welcome.

Spoiler-Free Book Review: "The Iron Hunt: Hunter Kiss, #1" by Marjorie M. Liu

My reading project for 2014 is Speculative Fiction by Women of Color. To read more about this project, click here.


I love urban fantasy. I remember when I picked up Laurell K. Hamilton's "Guilty Pleasures" one day and got hooked, so much so that I could not read the Anita Blake books fast enough. Since then I've tried other authors, to greater or lesser success. My favorites are the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews; while I love Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson books, they sadly always seem to fall to the bottom of my to-read pile. 

So when I heard about Marjorie M. Liu's "Hunter Kiss" addition to the world of urban fantasy, I picked it up with expectations both good and bad: I expected a new twist on a by-now-well-known subgenre, but I also knew going in that the heroine, Maxine Kiss, would probably be tough but with a heart of gold, reluctant, but always doing the right thing. 

I was right on both counts.

This is far from the worst book in urban fantasy I've ever read; at least Liu isn't a lazy writer. She has clearly worked hard to create the world of Hunter Kiss, and it shows. Details are well-thought out, magic has rules, new types of monsters are introduced, and old monsters are given new twists. There's even a unicorn, something more urban fantasy needs to start featuring. Liu's strengths lie in set-up, setting, and in sticking to the rules she creates for her world. 

To that end, I can't say enough about how much I love the five little "boys" and how they work. Zee, Raw, Mal, Aaz, and Dek. Adorable little demons that live in Maxine's skin as tattoos from head to toe during the day, acting as sort of live-in body armor that renders her nearly invulnerable to weather and brute force; and in the dark they slither off, stick close and act as sort of pets/bodyguards/companions/familiars. The "boys" have done this for every Hunter in Maxine's lineage. Liu is clever enough to give each of the boys enough personality to make them distinct, but not so much they bog down the story. I wish I had my own little tattoo demons.

If this isn't the worst urban fantasy I've ever read, it's also not the best. I love the set-up, I love the concept, I love the boys. I love the idea of a demon-hunter. But Liu's execution is flawed. 

Her writing style is choppy and breathless, better suited to stream of consciousness or action scenes. Those of you familiar with genre writing know how action scenes read: imagine a whole book like that. The result is a book with action scenes that don't pop and quiet scenes that feel white-knuckled. This style of writing also lends itself too easily to lots of sensory description of Maxine's emotions, resulting in a confusing blend of metaphor and what's really going on. A quick scan of other reviews on GoodReads shows I'm not the only one who felt this way while reading the book: it's just too damn hard to stick with it after a while. Urban fantasy should be a fun escape, not one long gasp inside the MC's psyche. It's an exhausting read at times.

And while the world Liu created is very well-thought out, it's not very well executed at times. Characters keep popping up with little or no explanation as to how they fit in the overall story (the Tracker); there are too many demons and too many things going on with them (some possess the living as zombies; others are stuck in an otherworld prison veil; others are Maxine's boys); and the plot, at times, is just all over the place (travels through time; visions of other planets). Finally, Maxine Kiss is little more than a trope of urban fantasy heroines: she's kick-ass, she's tough-as-nails, she's cynical, she's world-weary, she is afraid of getting emotionally hurt yet can't help but care so deeply. That's pretty much every urban fantasy heroine.

I'll probably revisit the Hunter Kiss series at some point. I'm curious to see whether or not the writing evolves, like LKH's Anita Blake series did up to and including Obsidian Butterfly. I really hope it does. Not that I need things to always be an easy read, but it shouldn't be this confusing, either. 


Read my spoiler-free GoodReads review of "The Iron Hunt: Hunter Kiss #1" here.

Spoiler-Free Book Review: "Dawn" by Octavia Butler

My reading project for 2014 is Speculative Fiction by Women of Color. To read more about this project, click here.

Even though I don't read a lot of sci-fi -- I'll take vampires, swords, and princesses over aliens and spaceships any day -- I couldn't start a project like this with anyone other than Octavia Butler. Whenever I Googled "Spec fic by women of color" or asked friends and family for recommendations, her name came up first and most often. And good reason: she's won just about every major award out there for her writing, including Hugos, Nebulas, a PEN Lifetime Achievement award, and a MacArthur Genius grant. Clearly, Ms Butler is not only a WOC sf writer, she's a damn good writer, period.

Part of the reason I'm doing this project - in fact, the biggest reason I'm doing it - is to demonstrate how fiction written by the "other" - any non-cisgendered, non-heterosexual, non-white, non-male - can be and usually is still universal. Not every author of color has to (wants to, or should) write about being a Person of Color. Not every woman writes about "feminine" topics. Some topics are universal, and science fiction, fantasy, and their subgenres are great places to explore that universality.

And Ms Butler's "Dawn," the first in her Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood trilogy, masterfully exemplifies just that: the universality of themes like isolation, survival, and (quite literally) what it means to be human.

Lilith Iyapo Awakens in a strange room. As she comes fully Awake and her memories come back to her, we learn this is not the first time she's Awoken. She's been Awoken many times before, always in a different room, where she's questioned by unseen captors. She cannot leave any of her rooms, but she's not mistreated. Eventually, one of her captors comes into her room: an tentacled alien called an Oankali. As Lilith learns in the first few chapters, and we the readers along with her, the Oankali have "rescued" as many human survivors as they could from a nuclear holocaust that has devastated the Earth. For 250 years aboard their living spaceship, the Oankali have put humans into cryostasis and periodically Awoken them in order to ask questions, perform experiments to see how each individual reacts, and study them.

But, there is a price to the Oankali's saving of humanity: The Oankali consider themselves "traders" in genetics. They will rebuild humanity with certain Oankali modifications in order to spread their race to Earth -- whether the humans want them to or not.

None of this is a spoiler; all is found out in the first few chapters of the book. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two thirds of the book, learning along with Lilith and discovering as she did the world of the Oankali. The pacing is good, the details unfolding in a natural rhythm.

My only complaint is the pacing of the last third of the book. There is a huge shift in time and events, and it felt too forced after the gradual revealing of the first two thirds. Whether this was done on purpose, to create in the readers the same sense of being overwhelmed that Lilith experiences in the story, I don't know. But it's a minor complaint for an otherwise near-perfect book.

After I read a few more books for my project, I'll almost certainly be returning to the Xenogenesis trilogy for books 2 ("Adulthood Rites") and 3 ("Imago").

Read my full GoodReads review of "Dawn" by Octavia Butler here.

Has anyone else read "Dawn?" What did you think?

The Great THE STAND Epic Read: Wrap-Up

It took me four months to read THE STAND, longer than it's taken me to read any other book. Then again, I don't think I've ever read a book as long as THE STAND. The next runner-up for length is probably THE MISTS OF AVALON, which I read when I was 19, and even allowing for its oversized pages still only clocks in at just shy of 900 pages - and that took me just two months to read. So, THE STAND was a huge commitment for me. I knew it going in, but I also knew I was going to finish the book no matter how long it took me to read. I read the "Complete and Uncut" version, which a friend suggested.

The god-awful (pun intended) cover of the version I read.

If I had had nothing but downtime, sure, I probably could have breezed through it in a couple of months. If I were still working outside the home and had 30-90 minutes of commute time on the subway every day, it would have gone much faster. But I'm a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) and writer, with two little ones, and was lucky if I got to read for 10 minutes every day. This isn't an excuse, because I still think four months is pretty good for a 1200+ page book, I'm just saying.

From this point on, WARNING: THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD!

*
*
*

Most of the book I really enjoyed. I would not have been able to stick with it if I didn't like the story. Even knowing most of the plot points and the ending, from having seen the 1994 mini-series, I still liked the story. Call me morbid, call me pessimistic, call me cynical (and my husband has called me all three of those at one point or another), but I'm a gal who enjoys a well-told end-of-the-world yarn. I liked the idea of this particular end of the world coming about as a result of a simple government oversight: the lag time for the lockdown of a top-secret facility in which they are creating a deadly superflu. That's all it takes, and weeks later 99% of the world's population are goners.

The rest of the book chronicles what the survivors do: how they meet up, move on, the prophetic dreams they start having that compel them to either Mother Abigail in Nebraska (then Boulder), or to Randall Flagg in Las Vegas. As the post-superflu days in the book start to become weeks, the survivors realize they are being given a choice to side with either the "good" guys in Boulder or the "bad" guys in Vegas.

If you haven't seen the miniseries yet, I
have two words for you: Gary Sinise. You're
welcome.

Where Stephen King excels is in building complex, deeply sympathetic characters. Even two of the "bad" guys in THE STAND -- Lloyd Henried and Trashcan Man -- are given the chance to reveal their pasts, their weaknesses, their incredibly flawed and pitiful human sides. Only King can make you root for the bad guys the way he does during Lloyd's starvation scene or Trash's pyromaniac scenes. In "On Writing," King mentions having been forced to cut hundreds of pages from THE STAND for its original publication, including some of Trash's background. I honestly can't imagine reading the book without Trash's backstory; it adds a level of complexity to that character so deep and sorrowful that you almost cry for him. For me, every moment spent among the "bad guys" - even Flagg - is a study in the greyer, more interesting, areas of human nature and the myth of real, pure, evil. I also had been wondering about children in the "bad" Las Vegas group, and would have liked more of a chance to explore how those kids got there.

I would have loved it if the book did spend more time in Las Vegas overall. I found some of the scenes in Boulder to be excruciatingly long and pointless. I certainly did not need the minutes from the council meetings, or most of the domestic scenes between Stu and Franny. As a writer I can almost understand why King may have put those in there: possibly to lull the audience into the same sense of anticipation and passage of time that was going on for the characters. And I did appreciate the debates about whether or not to send spies, and who to send, and the scenes between Harold and Nadine once they hooked up. Honestly, though, from the time the group gets to Boulder to the time they send Larry, Glen, Stu and Ralph to Las Vegas, could have been cut by quite a lot. Same with Stu and Tom's journey back to Boulder: I get that there's a certain white-knuckle quality to rooting for those two to make it back, but after a while white-knuckle gets exhausting and you just want things to move on. At least, I did.

This cover is, like, a bajillionty
times better than the new cover.
Maybe more.

Aside from those parts, and a few minor info dumps that could have been taken out (like Nadine's entire realization that she is to go to Flagg), it's an oddly quick read for such a big book. That is, the length of time it takes to read THE STAND is in perfect proportion with how many pages it is. It's not difficult reading, it's not touchy subject matter. It's straightforward and fairly mild (for King), with most of the scary stuff being implied and of the raised-hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck variety. Not a lot of gore here, no monsters (except Flagg, who is less of a monster and more of a creep), no boogeymen jumping out at you. It's well-though out, which I always appreciate in a book. There's a slight deus-ex-machina quality at the end, but I can forgive that because, honestly, how else would you end an epic like this? With the way King has his characters set up, there was just no way the "good" guys could have actually fought and defeated the "bad" guys without becoming exactly that which made the "bad" guys, well, bad. Sometimes good guys can fight and still be the good guys; not in this case. It ended the way it needed to end.

I'm glad I read it, and I do highly recommend it - especially if you have more free time than I have.