Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling
by Stella Atrium 2/12/13
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I love castle stories. What could be better than a 350-page fantasy novel that starts with three companions on horseback carrying swords and Radly bows crossing a frigid field to escape the bad guy or to rescue the princess?

I celebrate that there’s no end to these horse-and-castle stories, and I investigate whatever’s new. Some novels like A Quest for Heroes by Morgan Rice are calibrated for a juvenile audience and the heroine is too young for insights I would seek. Some stories follow the new trend of heaps of gore and lists of knightly heraldry like The Wilding by CS Freidman.  For some stories I don’t buy the second book in the series because not enough surprises held my attention during the first outing, like Blood of the Falcon by Court Ellyn.


I picked up Luck in the Shadows because I had enjoyed all three Bone Doll’s Twin stories, and especially the gender-bending twist.  The witch who lived in the forest and the young magician who she trained were diverting enough for use of magic.  Though the three stories lagged in places, a whimsical holy man arrived like a breath of fresh air to resolve some plot difficulties.  A 15-year-old girl in full armor and long sword at the head of an army to save the empire was a bit of a stretch, but at least she was a girl, and she had female relatives who had roles in the plot (more than decorative).

But…  I would call Flewelling’s Luck in the Shadows a lighter version of The Golden Fool by Robin Hobb.  Over the past two decades, Hobb wrote four series (series-es) around the enduring friendship between a fool with a mysterious background and an apprentice to a wizard.  There are same-sex undertones, but each becomes the beloved to the other through their many adventures.


Flewelling’s Book I of her Nightrunner series presents a watcher with a longer life than many, a wizard who commands spells for shape-shifting and message bubbles, and an orphan (why is it always an orphan?) who is a quick learner (why is he always more gifted at picking up dark skills?). Without a girl/boy love story to carry the reader through the MANY discussions of the heroics of former queens, and more discussions of the dead wizards who helped the dead queens, getting to the end was a struggle.

I don’t care about those old queens.  I have no context for those old queens. More living female characters who have roles in the plot -- other than decorative -- please.


Flewelling presents a bad guy (why do they always have no redeeming value?) who pursues our watcher and apprentice, but she drops this story line in the middle of the book in favor of describing the needed lessons in swordplay for the apprentice (why are long descriptions of training with swords required for fantasy writers?).

The struggle in the final act means the watcher and apprentice fight on the side of the current royal family for whom only three scenes were spared, and vanquish a long-simmering blood feud for which only two scenes were constructed.

Again, the reader doesn’t feel invested in solving the problem at hand, especially since the resolution was a matter of home invasion and a fire contained in a single room. A comparison to Hobb’s white queen in Fool’s Fate comes to mind, wherein the queen lost her captain, her familiar, her ice castle, and her hands before her suffering ended.

The bad guys in Flewelling’s story had not shown their faces again by the end of Book I, but the homoerotic undertones were coming to light. If there were more surprises, fewer long-winded stories about dead queens, less description, more jeopardy, more hetero romance – then I could overlook the disjointed plot.  I doubt that I pick up Book II.

Among Others by Jo Walton: A Review
by Stella Atrium 2/9/13
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As my next review for the WWE 2013 Women in Sci-fi Genre Reading Challenge, I chose Jo Walton’s Among Others, which I assumed was written in the 1980s since the main character discussed at length classic sci-fi stories available in Britain during that decade. I’m glad I finished the story before I read the press about Jo Walton and how she edged out GRR Martin for the Hugo Award last year for this work.

Her Hugo win is only logical considering that the story is more about engagement with classic sci-fi books than any other theme. The reviewers for the Nebula and Hugo awards must have thought Among Others was a smorgasbord!

I’m equally glad I didn’t know the story was called a ‘reverse Harry Potter’ because I would not have started it for that very label.  Derivative works are not my cup of tea. The story is written in the voice of a Welsh girl named Mori who doesn’t know her father and hates her witch mother and is sent to an English boarding school that harbors NO magic – no possibility of magic since objects are held in common. I can see how that plotline gained the label.

**spoiler alert here**

Mori and her twin Mor spend a rich childhood communing with Welsh fairies and avoiding the cruel acts of a demented mother. The fairies enlist them to diminish the powers of the mother, but along the way Mor is killed and Mori is crippled.

Two facets of the story make it a classic. First is the unfolding explanation of the magic of English fairies and how ‘it’s so deniable’, expounded through the filter of a sheltered 15-year-old who reads too much and is overly concerned with ethics. The second is the genuine responses to sci-fi stories Mori reads that are placed ahead of friendships among school chums, or reconciliation with a distant father, or a budding romance with a town boy.
I had read many of the sci-fi stories Mori claims to love (and at that same age), so I was in on the in-jokes. Defining the events of her life through examples from the stories – looking to Asimov and Zelazny for direction in a crisis – was unique, funny and delicious.

I liked that Walton choose the decade of the 1980s for her setting, ignoring world events but celebrating the gift of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, newly published. The world of Wales and Britain seemed quaint (County as Walton called it) and confined without the internet or a true connection with America that was the center of sci-fi publishing. The discovery of local fan conventions seems like finding Nirvani to Mori.

Sci-fi fans and would-be writers today discuss systems of magic all the time on Reddit – who got it right and who was copying from the other – high and low fantasy; soft and hard magic. Walton takes a respect-for-magic approach, and Mori worries that changing one event means so many events in the past and future must also change. Mostly, Mori uses magic, of which she seems strongly imbued, only when asked by the fairies and then only if the act does no harm. The one time Mori uses magic on her own as protection against her mother, and also requesting a karass, she worries later that all friendly gestures toward her are magic-bound.

This is a coming-of-age story, though, with no save-the-world tropes and few insights beyond what a perspicacious 15-year-old can glean from family and books.  The book is brill, wholly charming and worth the investment of a rainy afternoon. And I ordered out-of-print Zelazny books for my next read.

Remnant Population: A Look at First-Person Narration

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Stella Atrium

 
Elizabeth Moon is a controversial writer both for her writings and for her stance on social issues.  She’s a favorite of the feminists in science fiction crowd and broke ground for women writers competing for awards in a genre that was claimed for many decades as men-only. Because of her notoriety, many female writers received a fairer hearing from agents, publishers, readers, and award groups. Kudos!

Characters in the works of Elizabeth Moon are often women past the age of romance and child-bearing who struggle to find voice in a repressive family or community – one of my favorite themes. I will mention specific plot points in this review, so **spoiler alert**.

Remnant Population is narrated by a solitary 80-year-old woman named Ofelia who secretly stayed behind when the failing colony was evacuated offworld. She resisted decisions made for her by her son, by the corporation that owned the colony, and (implicitly) by her long-dead husband.  When a rescue team arrives years later, she must find her voice to resist deportation, but also to negotiate the relative rights to technological advances for the indigenous and intelligent creatures.


Ofelia reminds me of Grandma in Edward Albee’s An American Dream who has no voice within family. She is constantly shipping out boxes, and eventually follows her shipments to escape a repressive domestic fight.

This archetype follows the idea of the “affirmative no”, meaning that to realize her complete self, she must say no to loved ones. This concept was articulated in Martin Esslin’s Theatre of the Absurd where he discusses the plays by Albee along with Brecht, Beckett and even Sam Shepard.

Ofelia achieves her “affirmative no” when she hides to avoid the shuttle flight. She enjoys the solitude of the abandoned village even though she worries about her age and failing health.  The pacing is good. The number and difficulty of obstacles Ofelia overcomes is engaging for the reader (similar to Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood).

Additionally, Elizabeth Moon deftly handles a classic problem of how to report plot events that are beyond the sightline of the first-person narrator. Ofelia hears the struggle over an abandoned “weathersat” when a colony ship 200 kilometers distant has to abort the landing mission because the indigenes mount a successful attack. Ofelia is sorry for the offworlders who she identifies with, and is afraid of the indigenes who she eventually befriends. The reader quickly sees that later in the story Ofelia will serve as an ombudsman between these groups.

Herein lies the problem. How does the writer present the worldview of the indigenes? How does the writer present the group dynamics of the rescue team before they step off the shuttle? A solitary narrator can only assess what is in her sightline and from her POV.

Moon resolves this writerly problem by inserting scenes from the group-think of the indigenes using a specific vocabulary, and scenes from the POV of one member of the rescue crew named Kira. These scenes are not separate sections, but presented as the next paragraphs within a chapter. But then, I read the story on Kindle where standards for section breaks are still evolving.

I found the group-think scenes charming and valuable for increasing the nuance of later encounters with the indigenes. I found the POV scenes for Kira wholly unnecessary. The crew was stereotypical for arrogant scientists, and their gestures after landing told the story of tensions in the group.  In fact, Moon includes a well-written scene between Ofelia and the “enforcers” of the crew who are not included in the expedient exposition of Kira’s POV scenes.

For overall balance, though, if the Kira POV scenes were deleted, what justification remains for the occasional group-think scenes from the indigenes? Both or neither may have been the final (editor/publisher) decision.

Aspiring writers who struggle with the temptation to pause the first-person narration and present an alternative POV within the story can take a lesson from how Moon resolved that need in Remnant Population.

Twitter Friends vs Fans
by Stella Atrium
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Before iTunes, Smashwords and 99¢ eBooks on Kindle, the rule of thumb for a performer who wanted to attract the attention of industry big wigs was to show that he had 1000 loyal fans. We are in the Wild West stage of selling books just now where anything goes and the lowest bidder wins the most traffic.  But traffic and fans aren't the same creature.

A fan tells friends about his favorite performer (like a review), plays the tunes at parties (like a book chat group), and wears a t-shirt with the band logo (like buying a paperback). A fan RETURNS for more products from the same performer and puts down her money at retail prices.

I don't understand free ebooks on Kindle or Smashwords.  The writer spends all her life writing this book at the sacrifice of so many other activities and time with loved ones. Why devalue the product?

I'm not convinced Twitter traffic translates to sales, either. I see writers promoting each other, or cross-promoting with reviewers and handlers.  The writer is like a candidate surrounded by members of the press and cannot reach past the loud-talking reporters to find a voter willing to shake hands.

Maybe the audience we are seeking aren't even among our followers on Twitter.

Years ago I fooled around in non-profit theater in Chicago where attendance was one-quarter house on a good night and theater groups lived for reviews in The Reader and grants from Thorten Foundation. The truth was that no matter how well produced the performance for acting, directing, or set direction — the audience for live theater was sparse, even at low ticket prices. A producer in this arena could not expect to see returns on her investment.

The plethora of giveaways on sites trying to build loyalty (for the site, not for the writer) is similar to non-profit theater in Chicago. Except for a couple break-out sites that facilitate the reading community like GoodReads and LibraryThing, the audience just isn't there.

How does the self-publisher gain those "1000 loyal fans" for convincing evidence that her writing rises above the pack and is worthy to become a book-of-the-month choice for reading clubs?

Reputation is everything. There are several levels of reputation, though. Listed are 10 types to avoid.

    1.    The Situation — Anyone can show his navel and get others to look.  Be sure there's integrity and a reason the fan should return.
    2.    Always free — If it's free, that means you couldn't get anybody to buy it. Have a little dignity.
    3.    Trading favors — My back doesn't needs scratching. Because you asked, I know you haven't found true fans yet.
    4.    Inflated claims — "If you liked Jurassic Park, you're gonna love my self-published book." I always turn away when the writer claims to be like some other writer.
    5.    Five-star fan reviews on Amazon — Really? Were they posted by your mother?
    6.    Twitter Blanket — the same note every two minutes announcing the launch of your book. Your followers already read the announcement. Nobody else sees it. Who are you talking to?
    7.    Begs for reviews or retweets — Be patient, a quality reviewer will find a quality book soon enough. Building brand loyalty only happens over time.
    8.    Writer blog tour — Sponsored by another writer in a chat room where only writers sign in.
    9.    Salacious claims to increase traffic — Fool me once and "unfollow" is my next gesture.
    10.    Purchasing followers — Get real!

The Lovely Bones: a Study in Writerly POV
by Stella Atrium
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The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold was published in 2002 and a Peter Jackson movie followed, so I’m not giving away secrets when I reveal that the narrator is a dead girl. This review includes specific plot details, though, so **spoiler alert**.

The story is about how family members work through grief, and a little about cosmic justice. If the reader recently lost a loved one, reading the novel may be heartrending.

Sebold managed multiple perspectives in each scene since the narrator spies from heaven and tells the story through the eyes of a suburban schoolgirl. The creative use of verb tense and simple sentence structure reinforces the deep but flat POV. Aspiring writers can take a lesson here about how to integrate “double voiced” sentences (see: Mikhail Bakhtin).

After she is murdered, Susie exists in “my own heaven” and frequently views family members, school chums, and the man who murdered her. For the first hundred pages, Sebold restricts the narration to the perspective of a 14-year-old girl who discovers secrets her parents hold dear and also how the world works. For example, she follows the rabbit that carries poison in the garden back to the burrow where the whole family dies.
Susie can spy on individual members of the family and school friends. Later she seems to view the whole town during a specific event (the escape of her murderer) for what each person is doing at that moment.

There are several stories (made into movies) about a return from heaven. http://www.moviecus.com/movie_search/heaven/relevance/1

Who can forget Warren Beatty in Heaven Can Wait? or A Pure Formality with Gérard Depardieu and Roman Polanski?

The Lovely Bones has a strong presence in this crowd, even though the Peter Jackson movie with Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, and Stanley Tucci did the novel no favors.
In her own heaven, Susie can call into existence comforting objects and the company of favorite dogs. She is guided to a tree where her heaven overlaps with the personal heavens of other murder victims, and later as spirits they ride along with the bad guy during his downward spiral.  I’m glad the dénouement didn’t offer a cliché ending, but rather a drawing away – like a boat receding from shore – so heaven is not restricted in scope.

Discovery by other characters for needed plot points is managed deftly. Susie is a passive observer, for example, when her sister Lindsey deduces by the presence of a red scarf that her mother slept with the detective assigned to Susie’s case.

As the months and years pass, Susie’s perspective matures and the insights grow world-weary. While she follows siblings and school chums into adulthood, her connections with them allow her to travel to areas she never knew in life, and see what they were and were to become in the same paragraph. This development feels rather like she has the help of the ghosts of Christmas past and future simultaneously. And much later she flies with her dead grandfather while they chase birds skimming treetops in several states.

Some of the events are sugar-sweet, and the double loss (sister and absent mother) experienced by an inarticulate younger brother is underdeveloped. The reanimation of Susie for sex with the high school sweetheart is silly. I had sex with my high school sweetheart when we were adults and it was not transformative, as she describes.

When the story ends, we have the same number of characters as in the beginning. Nobody commits to an outsider. Even when the sister and her fiancé want to refurbish a strange old house, the owner turns out to be the father of a school chum. Maybe that’s how life works in the suburbs. That feature, however, keeps the story in its own little world, tight and self-abusive.

Aspiring writers who struggle with managing a narrator’s voice or multiple views for the same scene can learn much craft from Alice Sebold.

Reading in 2013

by Stella Atrium 1/3/13
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My resolution for 2013 centers on more structured reading, maybe with a group, and posting reviews where the group discusses results. Goodreads is a great place to start, but the smaller challenges are fun too. Here's two that I embrace in January:

My Love/Hate Relation with Gene Wolfe
by Stella Atrium 12/8/12
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Gene Wolfe inspired me to write when I was younger, and by example expanded my courage to take chances for breaking the rules and following my characters into new territory. But his stories also make me pull my hair out, like he betrays the reader after so carefully gaining her trust. Do you have a similar frustration with Wolfe or with a favorite author?

Below are examples of my ongoing love/hate relationship with Gene Wolfe: only a taste, I could talk about this frustration all day long.

Language:

 

Love – Wolfe has no fear of made up words, mostly based on Latin such as dimarchi for soldiers. In the combined four books of Shadow & Claw, I viewed the peppering of strange words like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

Hate – He carries this habit too far in The Urth of the New Sun where sunset is nightshade and sunrise is shadeup, along with many other simple word changes. The one-to-one transposing is only irritating and slows the reader who recognizes the device. Less is more.

 Narrator:

Love – The narrator is identified as writing from a place of long experience, injecting his later-gained wisdom into the story of a young man’s adventures.

The narrator often starts a new section within a chapter with a sidebar about his present visceral responses – left to answer a summons, but returned after dark –  without explaining the gap between where he sits and how he got there.

Hate – The narrator changes voices! I hate that! At the end of Book I of Shadow & Claw, he adds an appendix that tries to explain the use of Latin words as substitutes for translations of a dead language, thus casting himself as a translator rather than the writer of the memoir/adventure story.

Hate – In On Blue Waters, the narrator who again is an older version of the protagonist starts with a remorseful description of how he lost his wife, but never mentions her again after he rescues a mermaid who he maimed (naked, of course). The reader suspects the short piece of remorse, written separately maybe as a short story, utilized as impetus for starting the adventure, was inserted to get the reader going without a connection to the ultimate outcomes.

 Characters:

Love – Gene Wolfe is a great favorite among guys who are sci-fi fans because the point of view is from a soldier or executioner. The brooding philosophy adds moments of considering life on a larger scale and his place in the stream of events.

In Shadow & Claw, again, the protagonist named Severian has executioner skills and delivers a sucker punch better than Jason Bourne. He wins all fights, and women all want to bed him, stripping at a moment’s notice, even those women who are about to betray him.

Hate – Minor and long-term characters are often underdeveloped, only in the scene to help Severian unravel the present mystery. His nemesis Racho comes and goes posing as any convenient character and seems a paranoid delusion much like Moriarty to Sherlock Homes.

Hate – Characters are varied and described for personal quirks that are endearing but not revealing of motivation. Coincidences that force paradigm shifts are taken in stride. Female characters have no occupation and never wield decision-making power, only there to hold his sword.

Storyline:

Love – The worlds are complex and the gods are kept at arm’s length. The powers-that-be seem about to arrive with punishment for infractions. The hero’s impetus is well-drawn and his daily motivation is steady.

Love – Often a side adventure while the protagonist is trying to retrace his steps while lost in the city, or an engaging dream while the hero is healing from a fight, add to the reader’s enjoyment of myth and otherworldliness.

Hate – Plot developments are dependent on coincidence, and change-ups happen out of the blue. The characters shrug and drift in a new direction without anger or worry about where to gain tomorrow’s meal.

In Lathro in the Mist, for example, the writer covers this habit of disjointed plotlines because Lathro is brain-damaged and doesn’t remember yesterday without the help of his diary. However, the denouement of the plot is so general and poorly connection to characters (Lathro is rescued by the Roman soldiers – deus ex machina  –  who think he’s a great warrior) that the reader, once again, feels cheated after the investment of time to read 600 pages.
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Of course I will continue to read, and re-read, Gene Wolfe in order to feed my soul. But I may soon be bald from pulling my hair out from frustration. Feel free to add your ideas about his genius and bad habits, or mention an author who has a similar effect on you.