And I am back!

So I disappeared for a while with the something and the somethings that were holding up my creative flow, but behold, I have returned and full of glad tidings. My next novel, Sheep that Stray, is now moving into production. It's the modern Breakfast Club, only instead of being stuck in a gym, the diverse band must do some fleeing--chased by an otherwordly mob. All the while, the group must discover some hard and odd truths about themselves. This book has a couple of interesting quirks for me, and is very near and dear to my heart. The first interest is that in junior high, the saga begins with a dream. Yes, yes, I know that many authors say a book began with a dream. This one included every core character but one, added later, pretty much as they are now. It still started in a classroom. The initiating events were the same. The characters basic attributes from looks to personality still exist in the characters today. Obviously, much of it has been changed by time, since I began writing when I was sixteen. I began this book at the final frustration that I could not figure out how to make the My Little Ponies grow up. There, obviously, time has healed all writing gaps (I must insert here that no one has gone out of their way to win my prize. One original name from the group of characters you saw on Youtube. All you need is one of the many My Little Pony databases). Sheep that Stray is another one of my babies that went fallow. In the end, it also saved my sanity. I fell in love with this book when I first wrote it. More, perhaps, than any book before or since. I sat in my room and hand drafted or later computer edited with one tape playing throughout the entire process. My brother had sent me, from University of Michigan, a tape that had Uh-oh by David Byrnes on one side and Squeeze's Singles and 45's on the other. When I went for walks to think about the book, I brought that tape. (tapes are the things we played music on even before CDs, if you are wondering) Some later critique groups, exchanging their affinity for Last of the Mohicans as writing music, felt my music choice explained some of my offbeat tone. I wrote the book in an obscenely short period of time I could never live up to again. Then I myself went away to the University of Michigan. Nobody but a literary novelist can make the word "genre" drip out of the mouth with such contempt and condescension you would think they spit out a mouthful of crude oil. I hid away my fantasy genre ways. Sure, I pulled them out and looked at them from time to time and even made a half hearted attempt to write another fantasy novel. It was college. I wasn't adjusting well. The freedom that the other new students reveled in as if they had found a new religion--that was my life back home. Now I just lived in an eight by ten room and had to put up with people so entitled they didn't know they were entitled. I spent my energy writing for my advisor Warren Hecht, who I owe a lot of refinement and tightening to, all in a gentle tone. But I worked in my narrative classes not just on short stories, but at first thinly veiled and then not at all veiled accounts of growing up in my artistic liberal house in a prison city town. I set the fantasy aside, and embraced memoir. I couldn't get much farther away. I went on to Mill's College, a small, female only underclass, all in graduate class campus in Oakland, Michigan. It was a beautiful place, and after U of M I reveled in the small class sizes and individual attention. My class mates were finally all people who got it. Some wrote novels, some poetry, some YA, some memoir, and some a mix. But we understood the strange thought processes and ticks of being a writer. The examination of the world all that more closely, because you are secretly all writing about it in their mind. Memoir was a strange place. We were still the red headed step child of the others. One step above genre. We were an odd bunch. We learned each other's most secret pains, greatest humiliations, and the huge joys, all before we learned each others' last names. Turning life to art is a creature with literary demands like no other. We learn different arc methods and ways to represent not what we can completely manipulate, but what we must carry the heart of to truth. I worked hard. My last semester I blew out my back. No worries, however. Mills had a program where you took one credit for one more semester so that you could write your thesis in a concentrated semester, rather than juggle it with every other class. It meant I could finish. It didn't mean I wasn't in pain. It wasn't the best of times. Theses, even creative ones, make decapitating yourself feel like fun even without wanting to rip your spine out of your body as well. One day as I read over my work for the thousandth time to make sure I had my throughlines and motifs correctly arced, I did a weird thing. I hit on my file off my old computer. It stared at me. The folder "Novels". An old drug bubbled through my veins. Two clicks later, and I stared at the last version of Sheep that Stray. I just meant to read a little, to clear my head. Well, then. Maybe this wasn't so bad. I bet that I could fix this. I could turn this into something good. I know. It is insane. My writing was driving me insane. Therefore I found something else to write. But fantasy was balm compared to everything else in my life I dealt with. I worked off paper and in bed or the only chair I could sit in tiny amounts till I finished my thesis. It was my treat between coffee and ice baths. When my thesis was finished, I returned to my first love. I was a fool to think I could ever stay away from it forever. I was amazed I left it alone for eight years. I write poetry. I have long and short memoir in my to do box. But, see, right now I have this trilogy to finish, and another book besides to write, and three other fantasy books to write. You might say for a long time I was like that kid with his finger stuck in the duck (name that quote, choose your book) to keep back the waters of fantasy. Only one day I took my finger away from the dike, and let the damn thing blow.

Fifth Quarter by Tanya Huff

Once more into the way back machine, Sherman!!  And yes, I'm still offering a free copy of Rebirth for whoever can tell me what I'm referencing.

Fifth Quarter by Tanya Huff

Summary:  I was going to write down the book blurb but it is stupid so you get my version instead.  The first thing you should know is that this is the second in a series.  The end is definitely a set up for No Quarter, but the first book need not be read in order to read this one.  I thought about starting with Sing the Four Quarters, which was a good enough book on the caliber of take it on vacation and read it when the day is rainy.  A good enough book so that I thought, eh.  I'll get the sequel.  The sequel blew the first book out of the water.  Besides the fact that having just read a series religiously, and I don't feel like doing that again, I am focusing on Fifth Quarter and perhaps No Quarter  because especially Fifth Quarter is what makes Tanya Huff so very Tanya Huff.  More importantly, Fifth Quarter is a beautiful fusion fantasy book of fantasy and horror with Huff's trademark complications in romance and attraction.  However, even though I believe you can skip the first book, I'll give a few pointers you learn in the first book.

In Shkoder, Bards hold powerful positions, either stationed or wandering.  They sing the kigh--approximately the souls or the spirits--of the four quarters, or elements.  When doing so they can ask the kigh to perform certain ways--rising up or settling down.  While they live by a strict code, they may also sing to perform tasks like becoming invisible or compelling truth.  Magic, yes.  Good at math, no, as when they discover that humans have kigh--a soul or spirit--that they may be able to learn to sing to--they call this the "fifth quarter."  In Sing the Four Quarters, the fifth quarter is theory, and not much discussed.

Now, Fifth Quarter, as the title suggests, is all about the fifth quarter.  Vree, 21, and Bannon, 20, are sister and brother born and raised in the Havalkeen Imperial Army.  Vree has always cared for Bannon.  When their soldier mother died when she was seven, it was her job to tell Bannon.  As orphans, they had the chance to become assassins--the best of the best.  They become the best of the best assassins, trained as a team.  Two bodies, one single purpose, they work in a complicated couples choreography for each kill.  Once back in the army camp, Vree's life still revolves around Bannon in every possible way.  Including eroticism.  Bannon, however, a charismatic golden boy, lives his life surrounded by people and revolving around himsef.

On a mission only they could pull off, Vree catches up to Bannon to discover someone has stolen Bannon's body, and the only way to save his life is to take his kigh into her body.  Not just a body swapping book, but a body double.  Desperate to get Bannon's body back, they desert--a death sentence for an assassin.  What they find is Gyhard in Bannon, a man whose kigh has been around the block plenty of times in plenty of bodies.  They strike a deal.  Vree, with her assassin abilities, will help Gyhard into an Imperial Prince the assassins have sworn to protect.  Only the siblings plan on forcing Gyhard out before they have to turn to treason and Gyhard plans on having them killed once he can make it so.

Before the trio/duo make it to the prince, the real villain of the piece shows and steals the prince.  Khars is rather sweet, and kind, ancient.  If only in his insanity didn't choose his friends by raising the dead--Singing the Fifth to force a dead body's kigh back inside.  He cares for his rotting, impaired children with gentleness and sorrow.  Then he sees the prince.  By those deep lashed, dark eyes, Khars knows he has finally found what he has been looking for--his heart.  Now Gyhard knew Khars a few bodies back, and is torn up to find him alive and still torturing souls back into bodies.  Gyhard needs to stop Khars.  Vree and Bannon both follow Bannon's body and need to save the prince.

The characters are well drawn.  Bannon and Vree, at the beginning of the book, only have each other--especially Vree.  A study of their relationship if rife with nuance even before he ends up in her head and the distinction between the two begins to shred and blend.  I'm wracking my brain, but I can't remember anyone take on incestuous feelings and reliances between equal siblings in Huff's honest way.  Being Tanya Huff, yeah.  That's sticky sweet hot with a twist up against a wall.

 Gyhard and Vree's growing warmth relies on the fact neither one of them has had someone to be truly open with their entire lives(ssss).  Meeting in raw honesty produces a heady attraction.  I've said that I hate I-hate-you-so-I-love-you-so-I-hate-you relationships, but that isn't the way Vree and Gyhard are relating.  Both of them want something.  The something will cause the other's death.  They are both business people on the concept of death.  As they travel together, get to talk to each other like they haven't to anyone, and slowly merge to a goal, their affection, though awkward, feels natural.

One thing I absolutely love about Huff and it is in this series more than any other:  her honest and absent use of same sex relationships.  There is no stigma attached, and many appear to move back and forth between the sexes based on the individual relationship.  The fact that it is such a NON issue makes it a) not feel like she's cramming an issue down our throats while b) being able to cram an issue down our throats.  And I applaud her on this one.

Her army is also lovely in it's non sexist status.  If she writes "the corporal", don't assume any gender until she writes the pronoun to go with it because that corporal is just as likely to be female as male.

The book could be honestly called a nonlinear.  And we do know how much I love a nonlinear.  She moves into sections of her characters' pasts not in past perfect or swimmy flashbacks and italics, but by ending a scene, and starting the next scene (she has really short scenes) in the past.  The following scene will most likely be in someone's present, but not always.

A book in which two people in one body think to each other, especially as they slowly become more aware of each other's thoughts and dreams and emotions, able to take over movement of the body from each other till their selves shred--it is not an easy thing to do.  She uses *thought* for when they are purposefully thinking to each other.  Italics when Vree is just thinking to herself.  It is quite clean and easy to follow, even as they descend into being each other.

I will complain that I felt her third omniscient view on top of all the thought dancing got awkward.  I'm never a fan of jumping pov mid scene, and she jumped it all over the place.  As much as I was engrossed in the material, I found this distracting and it sometimes pulled me out of the story.  Especially in a story where within one character the pov may be switching, I felt as if I really didn't need any more switching around per scene.

I also accuse her of having a desperate "seems" problem.  She uses the damn dumb word in what feels like every sentence.  I will note I am nitpicking here, however, as I have read other books with as big seems problems and never mentioned it because I had way bigger things to talk about.

I did like the army.  And I never say that.  Armies bore me.  I've never met an assassin that felt remotely realistic.  Until now.  I liked the highlights of how Vree and Bannon worked.  I loved the detail they immediately knew.  I liked the images of the army as a family to Vree and Bannon--all they had ever known.  A great creature that their tiny selves made up a part of.

Now for the horror:  Khars.  He was meant to be a bard.  He was tortured.  His slim hold on reality slipped at some point and now death is his best friend.  His zombies didn't lurch around with their arms out.  Their brains appear intact.  They knew they were dead.  They could speak until their mouths or tongues rotted.  I had to appreciate that.  Not just the walking dead, but the way they slowly rotted around him--the woman holding her desiccated baby.  The leg that snaps when the foot has worn away.  Finally the guts rupture.  This stuff is grotesque but made creepy because Khars truly loves his little family, and he descends the prince to near madness.

The horror and the fantasy blend seamlessly.  They are both born out of the same basic concept which drives the entire book:  the fifth quarter.  The book has an apt name and a guiding concept which both allows her characters to be directed exactly where they need to go without breaking character, and gives the book a cohesive drive.