Before all else, note that the book I promised you--the one that is no longer about little ponies but still holds a heart of my coming-of-age experiences--is now for sale to one side of this blog and on my web page. If anyone who reads the book can identify the pony that goes with by the pony's original name (so some research will be involved), you get a free be on a copy of Weaver's Web.
So I may have mentioned a few times that I want my own bassoon. It is a long standing obsession ever since I lost access to a bassoon to play my first year in college. Unfortunately, unlike playing the flute, a bassoon is a hefty investment I have never had the room to justify. However, after selling several family heirlooms none of us wanted to be heir to, I have the money for a midgrade bassoon and the search will start!
Some of you slicker readers may have put together that Weaver, in Weaver's Web, is a concert level bassoonist. Does this mean I use my own life as grist for the mill?
Absolutely. Somewhat. I do believe that reality works best in fiction. I know about bassoons. Why would I choose an instrument for my main character that I would have to pretend to know about? Though, yes. I also do research. Some obviously requires books. In Rebirth, I had to research ancient Celts. No way of getting that first hand.
The places in urban fantasies I most often have visited, if I specify them. Houses and apartments are usually ones I've visited. In a week, I'm taking a trip to New Orleans and the Ozarks to research settings for Wood Weaver, the next book in the Weaver series.
The other question becomes, do I use me in my characters. For years I denied it. I categorically denies it. I never set out for them to do so. I dedicate hours to creating characters lives, back histories, and quirks, but in the end an aspect of me always appears. For the same reason I end up using reality in other aspects of my writing. What I know best is me. When I relate to my characters, which I must to write well, I relate to a touch of me. What would make that character my friend if we lived in real life together (okay, I probably wouldn't be friends with most of my villains, but I do understand why they do what they do)
Hello, my name is Bets, and my writing reflects me.
Fusion Fantasy by Bets Davies Put your favorite genres in a blender and put it on high.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
My Little Ponies Massacred!!!!
So Shining in Darkness, my first non-urban fantasy is coming out Feb. 15. I've been thinking, maybe I need to find yet another way of whoring my thoughts to the world. Movie is generally my big bro's territory, but I figure I can handle a trailer. Have you ever seen book trailers? We've already discussed this. Pitiful. It is painful to watch them. So how could I be different, fun, and hip while examining sprites (as in fire sprites etc) doomed to a bloody Prophecy?
The answer was obvious: My Little Ponies and a lot of gore:
or click here
Now, you loyal few will be privy to what few have known before. The answer to why they are fat little ponies:
I got my start writing before I could actually write. Mom and Dad would staple together typing paper I would draw on. Then I would tell them the words I wanted and they would show me how to form them. I got a few awards for short stories, but my writing career swallowed my life whole when I was nine. My friend RoseAnna and I already had a so called friend teasing us for still playing with toys. Junior high loomed. We had to sit down and have a serious talk. Our childhoods were about to end, sitting there on my bedroom floor, my entire room made into a terrain for My Little Ponies. We knew every detail of our main character's lives. We knew every trial they faced, and could always elaborate on them or come up with another.
RoseAnna was glum and probably hating me for bringing this up. Neither of us wanted the fantastic out of our lives. Staring at the plaster and plastic Golden Knight, who was the Eldrins' (we didn't call them ponies) God. He had a whole tragic back story too, which explained his hated brother Exidor, also a God, who always tried to kill the Eldrins and the Golden Knight.
At this moment, I had a fantastic ah-ha. Now, let me explain my mother had already made me privy to the creation of novels. She spent my childhood writing them and trying to publish. I knew what to do with stories. And we had stories. "What if they were sort of novels--or two. One, like, about the Eldrins, and then a prequel about how everybody got to be gods and fated and everything?"
At 9, I began my ambitious project in a notebook covered in puffy endangered species stickers. RoseAnna ended up writing the prequel, while I wrote about the Eldrins. It was originally supposed to be the other way around.
Laugh. I know I do. But in less than three years, I had an, albeit long hand, 1500 page draft. RoseAnna topped me. By now the Eldrins were more like multicolored, slim elves. Horses were too hard to work with. Esp. since I'd ridden one twice. Also, privately, I thought the horse thing was dumb and babyish. I worked on editing that book until I was fifteen. I memorized characters, scenes. I knew when I had changed a word where and why.
Then it just became apparent to me. The duo books didn't work. It was impossible to keep all the connections between the two we wanted to draw on without crippling one or both of our writing. Plus, RoseAnna and my styles were pulling so far apart I couldn't guarantee someone who read one wouldn't have a rude shock reading the other. At that point, she was far more epic. I already tried to break the epic mood every chance I got. Hers were the characters getting married in the end, but mine were the ones having sex. She had an ethereal beauty in her words. True to my childhood, I liked to get down in the mud and sink my hands in. RoseAnna still struggled to make her book work. And it was unfair of me to make the decision without her, but my My Little Ponies and I finally parted. I simply told her I had finished the final draft, and I was more than ready to move on to the next book that had gotten into my blood.
RoseAnna eventually moved on to a different fantasy project, too. It must have been late college before we admitted to each other that our first novels were flawed, mainly in that they depended on each other.
But years later and a few fantasy books on, I found myself in a masters and certificate program in secondary education at U of Mich. Don't get me wrong, I love being a teacher. My student teaching placement kids will be etched in blood in my soul forever. But as it was a year long program, we pulled very long days. And three hour classes. I had been a great student, up till this point in my life, but I am tired, and they are talking jargon. The light is fluorescent and it is already dark outside.
Something deep, deep within my soul stirred. Covered in mud and made of bright plastic. One thing you learn in teaching school is what not to do. Telling all of your students they absolutely must bring and use a MacBook in your class--not so smart. I was on facebook more than the rest of my facebook using altogether. Everyone in class had friended each other, so a constant, second conversation took place. But I needed something even more. It was visceral, bloody and wild. It was childhood.
Almost all the ponies had belonged to RoseAnna. I had given away my handful to her when we broke off the games, rather than have them separated.
But eBay helped me get the old gang back together. Over the course of many classes, I searched out each of our most loved characters (so, like, 30). When I finally did get to go home, little boxes would wait for me, filled with magic.
As I sat, stroking plastic hair and drinking in the colors, I could touch each pony's personality. Each history. Each foible and triumph.
Of this moment, the ah-ha struck again. Divorced from the prequel except for some references, strip almost every aspect of the plot away--the characters weren't bad. I had to age them up a bit so that they felt like teenagers instead of what a kid thinks teenagers are like. At first it was just my doodling puzzle. But the temptation was too much, and the bait tasted great.
So my ponies rose to be sprites--beings of one particular streak of magic--fire sprite, dream sprite, rock sprite, fertility sprite--nothing left but the echoes of personalities that once had been.
Don't worry, the book doesn't sound like a nine-year-old wrote it now. But I sometimes wonder if we ever leave that which we truly love, that formed us.
So when it came time to publicize Shining in Darkness, I could only think of one thing. A stop motion, gore fest tribute to the book's humble beginnings. For those who didn't know me when I was twelve, who didn't read this blog--no earthly reason the two connect. Is the video still amusing and eye catching at least? How can you not like those cute little ponies kicking ass?
The answer was obvious: My Little Ponies and a lot of gore:
or click here
Now, you loyal few will be privy to what few have known before. The answer to why they are fat little ponies:
I got my start writing before I could actually write. Mom and Dad would staple together typing paper I would draw on. Then I would tell them the words I wanted and they would show me how to form them. I got a few awards for short stories, but my writing career swallowed my life whole when I was nine. My friend RoseAnna and I already had a so called friend teasing us for still playing with toys. Junior high loomed. We had to sit down and have a serious talk. Our childhoods were about to end, sitting there on my bedroom floor, my entire room made into a terrain for My Little Ponies. We knew every detail of our main character's lives. We knew every trial they faced, and could always elaborate on them or come up with another.
RoseAnna was glum and probably hating me for bringing this up. Neither of us wanted the fantastic out of our lives. Staring at the plaster and plastic Golden Knight, who was the Eldrins' (we didn't call them ponies) God. He had a whole tragic back story too, which explained his hated brother Exidor, also a God, who always tried to kill the Eldrins and the Golden Knight.
At this moment, I had a fantastic ah-ha. Now, let me explain my mother had already made me privy to the creation of novels. She spent my childhood writing them and trying to publish. I knew what to do with stories. And we had stories. "What if they were sort of novels--or two. One, like, about the Eldrins, and then a prequel about how everybody got to be gods and fated and everything?"
At 9, I began my ambitious project in a notebook covered in puffy endangered species stickers. RoseAnna ended up writing the prequel, while I wrote about the Eldrins. It was originally supposed to be the other way around.
Laugh. I know I do. But in less than three years, I had an, albeit long hand, 1500 page draft. RoseAnna topped me. By now the Eldrins were more like multicolored, slim elves. Horses were too hard to work with. Esp. since I'd ridden one twice. Also, privately, I thought the horse thing was dumb and babyish. I worked on editing that book until I was fifteen. I memorized characters, scenes. I knew when I had changed a word where and why.
Then it just became apparent to me. The duo books didn't work. It was impossible to keep all the connections between the two we wanted to draw on without crippling one or both of our writing. Plus, RoseAnna and my styles were pulling so far apart I couldn't guarantee someone who read one wouldn't have a rude shock reading the other. At that point, she was far more epic. I already tried to break the epic mood every chance I got. Hers were the characters getting married in the end, but mine were the ones having sex. She had an ethereal beauty in her words. True to my childhood, I liked to get down in the mud and sink my hands in. RoseAnna still struggled to make her book work. And it was unfair of me to make the decision without her, but my My Little Ponies and I finally parted. I simply told her I had finished the final draft, and I was more than ready to move on to the next book that had gotten into my blood.
RoseAnna eventually moved on to a different fantasy project, too. It must have been late college before we admitted to each other that our first novels were flawed, mainly in that they depended on each other.
But years later and a few fantasy books on, I found myself in a masters and certificate program in secondary education at U of Mich. Don't get me wrong, I love being a teacher. My student teaching placement kids will be etched in blood in my soul forever. But as it was a year long program, we pulled very long days. And three hour classes. I had been a great student, up till this point in my life, but I am tired, and they are talking jargon. The light is fluorescent and it is already dark outside.
Something deep, deep within my soul stirred. Covered in mud and made of bright plastic. One thing you learn in teaching school is what not to do. Telling all of your students they absolutely must bring and use a MacBook in your class--not so smart. I was on facebook more than the rest of my facebook using altogether. Everyone in class had friended each other, so a constant, second conversation took place. But I needed something even more. It was visceral, bloody and wild. It was childhood.
Almost all the ponies had belonged to RoseAnna. I had given away my handful to her when we broke off the games, rather than have them separated.
But eBay helped me get the old gang back together. Over the course of many classes, I searched out each of our most loved characters (so, like, 30). When I finally did get to go home, little boxes would wait for me, filled with magic.
As I sat, stroking plastic hair and drinking in the colors, I could touch each pony's personality. Each history. Each foible and triumph.
Of this moment, the ah-ha struck again. Divorced from the prequel except for some references, strip almost every aspect of the plot away--the characters weren't bad. I had to age them up a bit so that they felt like teenagers instead of what a kid thinks teenagers are like. At first it was just my doodling puzzle. But the temptation was too much, and the bait tasted great.
So my ponies rose to be sprites--beings of one particular streak of magic--fire sprite, dream sprite, rock sprite, fertility sprite--nothing left but the echoes of personalities that once had been.
Don't worry, the book doesn't sound like a nine-year-old wrote it now. But I sometimes wonder if we ever leave that which we truly love, that formed us.
So when it came time to publicize Shining in Darkness, I could only think of one thing. A stop motion, gore fest tribute to the book's humble beginnings. For those who didn't know me when I was twelve, who didn't read this blog--no earthly reason the two connect. Is the video still amusing and eye catching at least? How can you not like those cute little ponies kicking ass?
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Fairy Tales
Let's take it to the Way Back Machine, Sherman. The way, way, way, way the hell back.
We're talking fairy tales, or so they are termed now. We're talking fairy tales because we are still reading and writing and watching them. Disney, of course, jumps to mind. But our fantasy literature is rife with adaptations of fairy tales. I've already mentioned Beastly, movie and book. Robin McKinley spawned two "Beauty and the Beast"--the first, Beauty, being an all time favorite of mine. Tam Lins crop up everywhere. Beagle, Jones (twice) and Dean, among others, guilty. Making me doubly guilty as Weaver's Web is a hard twist on Tam Lin and even Rebirth includes a Tam Lin sequence. I even have a Beauty and the Beast slated, but I have to get through this series first. So, why are we so fascinated? Why do modern authors and readers return to these primal, Jungian stories over and over? Where do they come from?
I had a fascination with fairy tales from an early age. Even our Disney-ified versions are not the usual child's fair. In Snow White, a step mother is so jealous she repeatedly tries to kill her step daughter. Why were we fed this stuff?
So I did my high school term paper on Grimms' fairy tales. Only they were originally Household Tales, and meant for adults. The Grimms had changed up the stories to fit the every day sensibilities. A father eating a stew made from his son being, obviously, the modern sensibility ("The Juniper Tree").
So here's the dish. The Grimms used fewer sources than they made it sound. Most of their sources were easily accessible. These were the nannies and cooks of the places the Grimms frequented. I do not believe for a second that a nanny of the Grimms' best friend told a perfectly honest account of what she told her friends. That aside, the Grimms set out to save the oral stories of the common people to publish and save. That was their platform.
Only many of the stories didn't quite suit their tastes. Interestingly, the Grimms added violence. A lot of the just deserts that were served, were served up by the Grimms, not their sources. The original tales were chaotic folklore, based on chaotic folklore and myth that preceded it, past down through the ages by an illiterate culture huddled around fires at night, trying to out-do each other.
The only notably less disturbing thing the Grimms did before repackaging their tales--all those step mothers. Why is the fairy tale obsessed with evil step mothers? The answer, it isn't. Snow White? Her own mother wanted her dead. Cinderella, the classic step mother? Not a step. Deerskin getting raped by a step father? Um. A little more incestuous. At the time, mothers were held up as paragons of virtue. They were saintly, even. The angel of the household. Man's better half. We couldn't have them running around killing their children. So the "step" got inserted.
As much as Grimms glorified in violent, bloody ends, there was something they could not stand about the tales they told, and certainly couldn't hand the high born gentry: Sex. We still like to skip it in our retellings. Possibly because we don't know, and possibly because we are still a culture that would rather have blood, guts, gore, and child eating than a little rock 'n' roll (in its original sense).
Before the Grimms had their way, for instance, in one of the versions of "Little Red Riding Hood" passed around, she did a strip tease for the wolf and got called a slut by her grandmother's cat. I love that one (another tale I'm considering adapting, once I get through the three or so books in front of it). However, it can't be beat that in more than one version of "Rapunzel," the witch (*cough*mother*cough*) found out about Rupunzel's prince climbing her long hair because the next door neighbor (so much for a tower deep in the woods) informed the witch (*cough*mother) that by the smell of it, and the flies around the window, Rapunzel would soon be knocked up and would probably run away with the best silver. Yikes. That could even make me blush.
But we don't use it. Admittedly, Rapunzel is a bit of a hard story to mess with (though I'd like to try) since she spends so much time in a tower, though if you kick it old school, she also gets thrown into a wasteland to take care of her twins (knocked up) while the prince got his eyes poked out and wandered around blind till he found her again. Which might be more interesting.
My fav adaptation is a broad range of adaptations and goes not to a fantasy writer, but to Stephen Sondheim in the musical "Into the Woods". He tackles a host of fairy tales with both the violence and some of the sex as each for their own reasons, one after another of his characters must go "into the woods". The woods represent a archetype of leaving society, leaving reality, and entering a space of dream, emotion, danger, and change. In the second act, the storyteller meets an abrupt end, and the confines of the stories we know and understand bust loose even more all over the place. Even more than in the first act, stories meet each other, and at points confuse characters into the wrong stories. Characters learn what they really want in their lives, somewhere in the woods.
This reputation of the woods--this is what I believe we are all attracted to. Be it children's movie, YLP book, YA movie, adult movie, that kind of adult movie, or a myriad of fantasy books, we all strive to walk back into the woods, to retain this portion of our lives and share it. Fantasy books and films are especially prone as the goal is so often the same anyway. We strive for this archetypal space where chaos and learning meet in twisted metaphor. This is why we write fantasy. This is why we love it, and this is why we return to those ancient stories over and over again.
We're talking fairy tales, or so they are termed now. We're talking fairy tales because we are still reading and writing and watching them. Disney, of course, jumps to mind. But our fantasy literature is rife with adaptations of fairy tales. I've already mentioned Beastly, movie and book. Robin McKinley spawned two "Beauty and the Beast"--the first, Beauty, being an all time favorite of mine. Tam Lins crop up everywhere. Beagle, Jones (twice) and Dean, among others, guilty. Making me doubly guilty as Weaver's Web is a hard twist on Tam Lin and even Rebirth includes a Tam Lin sequence. I even have a Beauty and the Beast slated, but I have to get through this series first. So, why are we so fascinated? Why do modern authors and readers return to these primal, Jungian stories over and over? Where do they come from?
I had a fascination with fairy tales from an early age. Even our Disney-ified versions are not the usual child's fair. In Snow White, a step mother is so jealous she repeatedly tries to kill her step daughter. Why were we fed this stuff?
So I did my high school term paper on Grimms' fairy tales. Only they were originally Household Tales, and meant for adults. The Grimms had changed up the stories to fit the every day sensibilities. A father eating a stew made from his son being, obviously, the modern sensibility ("The Juniper Tree").
So here's the dish. The Grimms used fewer sources than they made it sound. Most of their sources were easily accessible. These were the nannies and cooks of the places the Grimms frequented. I do not believe for a second that a nanny of the Grimms' best friend told a perfectly honest account of what she told her friends. That aside, the Grimms set out to save the oral stories of the common people to publish and save. That was their platform.
Only many of the stories didn't quite suit their tastes. Interestingly, the Grimms added violence. A lot of the just deserts that were served, were served up by the Grimms, not their sources. The original tales were chaotic folklore, based on chaotic folklore and myth that preceded it, past down through the ages by an illiterate culture huddled around fires at night, trying to out-do each other.
The only notably less disturbing thing the Grimms did before repackaging their tales--all those step mothers. Why is the fairy tale obsessed with evil step mothers? The answer, it isn't. Snow White? Her own mother wanted her dead. Cinderella, the classic step mother? Not a step. Deerskin getting raped by a step father? Um. A little more incestuous. At the time, mothers were held up as paragons of virtue. They were saintly, even. The angel of the household. Man's better half. We couldn't have them running around killing their children. So the "step" got inserted.
As much as Grimms glorified in violent, bloody ends, there was something they could not stand about the tales they told, and certainly couldn't hand the high born gentry: Sex. We still like to skip it in our retellings. Possibly because we don't know, and possibly because we are still a culture that would rather have blood, guts, gore, and child eating than a little rock 'n' roll (in its original sense).
Before the Grimms had their way, for instance, in one of the versions of "Little Red Riding Hood" passed around, she did a strip tease for the wolf and got called a slut by her grandmother's cat. I love that one (another tale I'm considering adapting, once I get through the three or so books in front of it). However, it can't be beat that in more than one version of "Rapunzel," the witch (*cough*mother*cough*) found out about Rupunzel's prince climbing her long hair because the next door neighbor (so much for a tower deep in the woods) informed the witch (*cough*mother) that by the smell of it, and the flies around the window, Rapunzel would soon be knocked up and would probably run away with the best silver. Yikes. That could even make me blush.
But we don't use it. Admittedly, Rapunzel is a bit of a hard story to mess with (though I'd like to try) since she spends so much time in a tower, though if you kick it old school, she also gets thrown into a wasteland to take care of her twins (knocked up) while the prince got his eyes poked out and wandered around blind till he found her again. Which might be more interesting.
My fav adaptation is a broad range of adaptations and goes not to a fantasy writer, but to Stephen Sondheim in the musical "Into the Woods". He tackles a host of fairy tales with both the violence and some of the sex as each for their own reasons, one after another of his characters must go "into the woods". The woods represent a archetype of leaving society, leaving reality, and entering a space of dream, emotion, danger, and change. In the second act, the storyteller meets an abrupt end, and the confines of the stories we know and understand bust loose even more all over the place. Even more than in the first act, stories meet each other, and at points confuse characters into the wrong stories. Characters learn what they really want in their lives, somewhere in the woods.
This reputation of the woods--this is what I believe we are all attracted to. Be it children's movie, YLP book, YA movie, adult movie, that kind of adult movie, or a myriad of fantasy books, we all strive to walk back into the woods, to retain this portion of our lives and share it. Fantasy books and films are especially prone as the goal is so often the same anyway. We strive for this archetypal space where chaos and learning meet in twisted metaphor. This is why we write fantasy. This is why we love it, and this is why we return to those ancient stories over and over again.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Congrats to Chris!!!
Chris has won my trivia question about the Way Back machine!!! The answer, if you are curious, is posted as a comment in the review of The Fifth Quarter. He's receiving a copy of Rebirth by me. Congrats again to Chris.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The Shirley Temple Effect
Happy Holidays, everyone.
So, as I look around at pop culture the last few years, I have to ask myself, when did we get so damn popular?
Fantasy used to have its own little hole in the wall cafe where fantasy people met and talked to each other. You knew better than to mention it among mixed company. We all had our own set of hand gesture signals to let each other know we were in the club. Whether you said "fantasy" to the outside world with pride or shame, there was a good chance you would get ridicule. Now I've already talked about this some with nerd evolution (see post), but I am asking specifically, why fantasy, why now? Harry Potter is a blow up pop culture life style. Even straight adult men could be caught reading Twilight. People love The Lord of the Rings series and yet may not even know who Tolkien is. Clash of the Titans just got remade, which to me is insanity. How can you top Ray Harrihausen? I could keep going with examples from movies to books to video games. The mass public loves fantasy. Why?
I'll tell you. It is the Shirley Temple Effect. During the Depression and to some extent the following war, the world loved that crazy, overly cute tap dancing mop head. People actually got off on watching pretty-fied versions of the old South where some loyal slave like Step N Fetchit followed her around her daddy's plantation and pretended like he wasn't getting paid a fraction of her salary just to pretend he could dance medium to well, instead of dance the boards off the floor. What the hell was that all about?
People had no money. Their lives sucked. They didn't want to see violent films or films about how much life sucked. They were living it. They wanted escape. They wanted to watch a five-year-old tap dance. They wanted to see the Old South with beautiful plantations and mansions and know that all had been better, simpler, and might be that way again.
Well. They had Shirley Temple. We have Harry Potter. Our economy has been in the gutter for over a decade. We're scared of terrorists. We are fighting one or two wars at a time for reasons unclear to many of us. I recently celebrated that my home state's, Michigan's, unemployment rate is under %10. My home town doesn't even have a bookstore. You can find parking anywhere downtown. Sure, we've always been known for our prison, but now we own four hand job massage parlors and drug related crime is on the rise.
Detroit is a wasteland. Let's not get started on their schools other than to say I worked a whole winter there with a broken classroom radiator because they couldn't afford to fix it.
Don't get me started on Flint.
The world is a mess. I honestly believe it is getting better over the past few years, slowly, but in the meantime, everyone loves Frodo. Our world sucketh in so many ways. So we borrow someone else's world. We slip into a world of Quidditch, hobbits, moralistic vampires, and flying horses. Yes, they have nothing to do with reality, no matter what J.K. Rowlings aspires to, and that is why everyone flocks to fantasy. Forget the mortgage, the school systems, what your health program does or does not pay for, and who is dying where in the greater world for an hour, just a couple of hours of respite when we can worry over such exciting prospects as finding out you are magical, being in a magical place. Even the scary isn't that scary because the tension isn't happening to us. Just the characters.
It's rolling up to 1212. Hurry. We need Shirley Temple to tap dance through the discovery she's a secret race commonly mistaken for vampires.
So, as I look around at pop culture the last few years, I have to ask myself, when did we get so damn popular?
Fantasy used to have its own little hole in the wall cafe where fantasy people met and talked to each other. You knew better than to mention it among mixed company. We all had our own set of hand gesture signals to let each other know we were in the club. Whether you said "fantasy" to the outside world with pride or shame, there was a good chance you would get ridicule. Now I've already talked about this some with nerd evolution (see post), but I am asking specifically, why fantasy, why now? Harry Potter is a blow up pop culture life style. Even straight adult men could be caught reading Twilight. People love The Lord of the Rings series and yet may not even know who Tolkien is. Clash of the Titans just got remade, which to me is insanity. How can you top Ray Harrihausen? I could keep going with examples from movies to books to video games. The mass public loves fantasy. Why?
I'll tell you. It is the Shirley Temple Effect. During the Depression and to some extent the following war, the world loved that crazy, overly cute tap dancing mop head. People actually got off on watching pretty-fied versions of the old South where some loyal slave like Step N Fetchit followed her around her daddy's plantation and pretended like he wasn't getting paid a fraction of her salary just to pretend he could dance medium to well, instead of dance the boards off the floor. What the hell was that all about?
People had no money. Their lives sucked. They didn't want to see violent films or films about how much life sucked. They were living it. They wanted escape. They wanted to watch a five-year-old tap dance. They wanted to see the Old South with beautiful plantations and mansions and know that all had been better, simpler, and might be that way again.
Well. They had Shirley Temple. We have Harry Potter. Our economy has been in the gutter for over a decade. We're scared of terrorists. We are fighting one or two wars at a time for reasons unclear to many of us. I recently celebrated that my home state's, Michigan's, unemployment rate is under %10. My home town doesn't even have a bookstore. You can find parking anywhere downtown. Sure, we've always been known for our prison, but now we own four hand job massage parlors and drug related crime is on the rise.
Detroit is a wasteland. Let's not get started on their schools other than to say I worked a whole winter there with a broken classroom radiator because they couldn't afford to fix it.
Don't get me started on Flint.
The world is a mess. I honestly believe it is getting better over the past few years, slowly, but in the meantime, everyone loves Frodo. Our world sucketh in so many ways. So we borrow someone else's world. We slip into a world of Quidditch, hobbits, moralistic vampires, and flying horses. Yes, they have nothing to do with reality, no matter what J.K. Rowlings aspires to, and that is why everyone flocks to fantasy. Forget the mortgage, the school systems, what your health program does or does not pay for, and who is dying where in the greater world for an hour, just a couple of hours of respite when we can worry over such exciting prospects as finding out you are magical, being in a magical place. Even the scary isn't that scary because the tension isn't happening to us. Just the characters.
It's rolling up to 1212. Hurry. We need Shirley Temple to tap dance through the discovery she's a secret race commonly mistaken for vampires.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Sabriel by Garth Nix
This one is for you, Rick.
Okay, once more, Sherman (and I'm getting depressed no one knows this! Free book!), to the Way Back Machine.
Sabriel by Garth Nix:
Sabriel In the first scene, we realize Sabriel, an 18-year-old girl school in the country of Ancelstierre, just graduated her rather old fashioned boarding school for young women. Not old fashioned for Sabriel, however, as Ancelstierre appears to be set in a slightly rearranged version of the twenties or early thirties in geography we don't know.
Oh. And we know she is a necromancer.
In Ancelstierre, no one much believes in magic, nor does it work much beyond the Wall that shuts the Old Kingdom and its Charter Magic, within the world and order, necromancy, and Free Magic, outside the Charter and corrupting all exist and the people live in a more medieval setting. Just with no government.
Sabriel was born in the Old Kingdom, but her father brought her here at five. He is Abhorsen--the necromancer against necromancers. A Charter mage and necromancer both, it is his job to make sure the Dead pass all nine gates of death, and stay dead. Which they don't like to do in the Old Kingdom, especially lately.
Only scant pages after Sabriel shows her hidden necromancy, a sending brings Sabriel her father's Charter Magic imbued sword, and his bells--the tools of Abhorsen. He may only be dead, or trapped in death.
Sabriel walks away from all she has known in thirteen years and goes to the Old Kingdom in search of her father. Already, those who don't know her call her her father's title, Abhorsen, and that title means her father is assumed dead.
The problem is, she has no idea where he is. In finding out how, she attracts the attention of a Mordicant, a free magic creature made of peat moss and flames with a Dead's spirit stuffed inside. She has to make a mad run to find her father's house. At her father's house, she meets Mogget, a white talking cat, who is most likely far more than just that. Mogget travels with her in search of her father. The Dead trail them at all times. They come to believe a Greater Dead, Kerrigor, a powerful Dead creature who was also a free magic adept tracks them down, as he tries to free himself from Death once more. All over, they find broken Charter stones--stones that hold the kingdom together with charter magic and keep the Dead down. The corrupted, broken stones make it all the easier for the Dead to roam.
Along the way to Belisaere, which was the capital until twenty years ago--now overrun with Dead, and where Mogget and Sabriel guess her father's body is--Sabriel gets to discover a little more about Mogget, and discover Touchstone, a fool's name but he will give no other. Touchstone last lived two hundred years ago. He says he remembers little, but it is possible he remembers more, and is no more what he says than Mogget.
Eventually the small group makes it to the palace, but all does not go as planned. The book takes a further magical twist as Sabriel and Touchstone must make it back to where Kerrigor has hidden his ace in the hole--his physical body.
Sabriel is one of those books I could just read over and over. While it is aimed at a YA audience, it is meant for a mature audience in that Nix does not talk down to his customers and, more than that, perhaps, this book is a fantasy/horror fusion. It would be hard for it to be much else. The main character is either walking around in Death or fighting disgusting, scary dead creatures a fair percentage of the book. Nix creates fear of the creatures, especially the Mordicant, dogging her trail, with an artful suspense. The where, when you are reading, you keep looking over your shoulder.
Nix's world building is superb. Ancelstierre feels more based on a version of human history. However, the Old Kingdom is a complex work of art. As one of the great puzzles of the book, which you must delight in either discovering or guessing, is how exactly the world works and why exactly everything has been going wrong the past two hundred years and the past twenty esp. So I'm not going to tell you. I will tell you that once you have learned all the secrets, the book falls together beautifully. Rather than ending up with many convolutions in order to keep us guessing, every card that Nix lays eventually lines up into a stunning hand.
Characterwise--I actually rescinded my ban on talking cats because of sardonic, not quite to be trusted, sideways Mogget.
Sabriel was drawn well as a girl who has known more about Death than most of us ever will by the beginning of the book. However, her father did not prepare her for who she truly was, or what it meant to be an Abhorsen in the Old Kingdom. She shows bravery that is highlighted and made believable by her moments of terror, of wanting to run away from it all, from feeling she wasn't meant to cope with any of this, for her exhaustion and pain and putting up with wearing dirty, stinking armor. Because of all these details, we understand her full courage as well as her fragility.
Touchstone is a man of secrets that weigh on him, even after all those dormant years. However, he has a graceful curve from the servility to he treats Sabriel, the Abhorsen, when they first meet, to his expertise and skills breaking through to show confidence, to his and Sabriel's growing camraderie, to, of course, becoming the love interest.
Believe me. I didn't just give anything away on that one. From the moment he appears on the screen, you are nodding your head--okay. Cue love interest. Not that that is all the character is for. Touchstone makes a great companion, someone Sabriel can actually talk to (Mogget can be a pain), someone who works beside her. Then he gets love-interesty. And here I feel Nix does fall down on the job. I know it is YA, but I expect some sort of build in romance. I expect catching the person out of the corner of the eye. Wondering about him/her. Knowing you're smiling too much or that the other person is. One of my least favorite convenient writing phrases is, "it was if he was seeing her for the first time," or "he had never noticed before how . . . ." Falling in love is a million microseconds of falling downhill. You may not know or accept consciously what is going on, but you feel it. It's cheap to use "He never noticed. . . " right at the end of the book because here is where it is convenient for you to stuff it in. Also, after deciding he is in love, Touchstone's character does go downhill rather. He's being soppy, protective, or grimly fighting.
Let's talk about that grimly fighting. While the first half of the book wasn't hysterical laughter, it had its moments. Towards the end, it is grim after grim. It gets a little old. There isn't even any gallows humor.
So finally, let's talk about the grim after grim effect. Nix creates a crazy, terrifying, emotionally explosive end. Only it isn't the end. The book ends. And then it goes into a frenzy of action and ends all over again. And without near the emotional effect, I felt. I realize what Nix was attempting to do, bringing some of the emotional impact full circle. However, I felt he did an amazing job of this with the first ending, and that if he needed them (since there are sequels), some of the more important ending elements could be moved in as elements to the same ending. It would change a little, sure. But it would, I believe, hold together a little more thoroughly.
Either that--if you all think I am talking out of my ass--he needed to work on the pacing. I got done with the first ending and I was done. I was emotionally drained. To me, the book was finished. Then I had to keep reading. I kept reading, but I never got my adreneline rush back. The book had peaked for me. I'd blown my wad. I wasn't getting it back to feel very invested in the rest of the book.
Also, one of the stupidest last paragraphs ever.
Having gone through my nitpicks, though, this is still a book that I return to over and over. Sabriel is well executed with some of the most vivid world building I've seen. The characters, if occasionally wooden, are by the whole people I would love to hang out with.
If you are thinking of continuing with the series, my two cents: Lireal is totally worth buying the book for that first section of creating a world and characters and Disreputable Dog, but skip anything that doesn't have to do with Lireal and consider just putting the book down after Lireal leaves the mountain. Abhorsen: I love you, Garth, but I still have to say to your readers, you'd be better off going back and reading Sabriel again.
Okay--I'm still waiting for someone to answer where the Sherman/Way Back Machine references come from. A copy of Rebirth hangs in the balance.
Okay, once more, Sherman (and I'm getting depressed no one knows this! Free book!), to the Way Back Machine.
Sabriel by Garth Nix:
Sabriel In the first scene, we realize Sabriel, an 18-year-old girl school in the country of Ancelstierre, just graduated her rather old fashioned boarding school for young women. Not old fashioned for Sabriel, however, as Ancelstierre appears to be set in a slightly rearranged version of the twenties or early thirties in geography we don't know.
Oh. And we know she is a necromancer.
In Ancelstierre, no one much believes in magic, nor does it work much beyond the Wall that shuts the Old Kingdom and its Charter Magic, within the world and order, necromancy, and Free Magic, outside the Charter and corrupting all exist and the people live in a more medieval setting. Just with no government.
Sabriel was born in the Old Kingdom, but her father brought her here at five. He is Abhorsen--the necromancer against necromancers. A Charter mage and necromancer both, it is his job to make sure the Dead pass all nine gates of death, and stay dead. Which they don't like to do in the Old Kingdom, especially lately.
Only scant pages after Sabriel shows her hidden necromancy, a sending brings Sabriel her father's Charter Magic imbued sword, and his bells--the tools of Abhorsen. He may only be dead, or trapped in death.
Sabriel walks away from all she has known in thirteen years and goes to the Old Kingdom in search of her father. Already, those who don't know her call her her father's title, Abhorsen, and that title means her father is assumed dead.
The problem is, she has no idea where he is. In finding out how, she attracts the attention of a Mordicant, a free magic creature made of peat moss and flames with a Dead's spirit stuffed inside. She has to make a mad run to find her father's house. At her father's house, she meets Mogget, a white talking cat, who is most likely far more than just that. Mogget travels with her in search of her father. The Dead trail them at all times. They come to believe a Greater Dead, Kerrigor, a powerful Dead creature who was also a free magic adept tracks them down, as he tries to free himself from Death once more. All over, they find broken Charter stones--stones that hold the kingdom together with charter magic and keep the Dead down. The corrupted, broken stones make it all the easier for the Dead to roam.
Along the way to Belisaere, which was the capital until twenty years ago--now overrun with Dead, and where Mogget and Sabriel guess her father's body is--Sabriel gets to discover a little more about Mogget, and discover Touchstone, a fool's name but he will give no other. Touchstone last lived two hundred years ago. He says he remembers little, but it is possible he remembers more, and is no more what he says than Mogget.
Eventually the small group makes it to the palace, but all does not go as planned. The book takes a further magical twist as Sabriel and Touchstone must make it back to where Kerrigor has hidden his ace in the hole--his physical body.
Sabriel is one of those books I could just read over and over. While it is aimed at a YA audience, it is meant for a mature audience in that Nix does not talk down to his customers and, more than that, perhaps, this book is a fantasy/horror fusion. It would be hard for it to be much else. The main character is either walking around in Death or fighting disgusting, scary dead creatures a fair percentage of the book. Nix creates fear of the creatures, especially the Mordicant, dogging her trail, with an artful suspense. The where, when you are reading, you keep looking over your shoulder.
Nix's world building is superb. Ancelstierre feels more based on a version of human history. However, the Old Kingdom is a complex work of art. As one of the great puzzles of the book, which you must delight in either discovering or guessing, is how exactly the world works and why exactly everything has been going wrong the past two hundred years and the past twenty esp. So I'm not going to tell you. I will tell you that once you have learned all the secrets, the book falls together beautifully. Rather than ending up with many convolutions in order to keep us guessing, every card that Nix lays eventually lines up into a stunning hand.
Characterwise--I actually rescinded my ban on talking cats because of sardonic, not quite to be trusted, sideways Mogget.
Sabriel was drawn well as a girl who has known more about Death than most of us ever will by the beginning of the book. However, her father did not prepare her for who she truly was, or what it meant to be an Abhorsen in the Old Kingdom. She shows bravery that is highlighted and made believable by her moments of terror, of wanting to run away from it all, from feeling she wasn't meant to cope with any of this, for her exhaustion and pain and putting up with wearing dirty, stinking armor. Because of all these details, we understand her full courage as well as her fragility.
Touchstone is a man of secrets that weigh on him, even after all those dormant years. However, he has a graceful curve from the servility to he treats Sabriel, the Abhorsen, when they first meet, to his expertise and skills breaking through to show confidence, to his and Sabriel's growing camraderie, to, of course, becoming the love interest.
Believe me. I didn't just give anything away on that one. From the moment he appears on the screen, you are nodding your head--okay. Cue love interest. Not that that is all the character is for. Touchstone makes a great companion, someone Sabriel can actually talk to (Mogget can be a pain), someone who works beside her. Then he gets love-interesty. And here I feel Nix does fall down on the job. I know it is YA, but I expect some sort of build in romance. I expect catching the person out of the corner of the eye. Wondering about him/her. Knowing you're smiling too much or that the other person is. One of my least favorite convenient writing phrases is, "it was if he was seeing her for the first time," or "he had never noticed before how . . . ." Falling in love is a million microseconds of falling downhill. You may not know or accept consciously what is going on, but you feel it. It's cheap to use "He never noticed. . . " right at the end of the book because here is where it is convenient for you to stuff it in. Also, after deciding he is in love, Touchstone's character does go downhill rather. He's being soppy, protective, or grimly fighting.
Let's talk about that grimly fighting. While the first half of the book wasn't hysterical laughter, it had its moments. Towards the end, it is grim after grim. It gets a little old. There isn't even any gallows humor.
So finally, let's talk about the grim after grim effect. Nix creates a crazy, terrifying, emotionally explosive end. Only it isn't the end. The book ends. And then it goes into a frenzy of action and ends all over again. And without near the emotional effect, I felt. I realize what Nix was attempting to do, bringing some of the emotional impact full circle. However, I felt he did an amazing job of this with the first ending, and that if he needed them (since there are sequels), some of the more important ending elements could be moved in as elements to the same ending. It would change a little, sure. But it would, I believe, hold together a little more thoroughly.
Either that--if you all think I am talking out of my ass--he needed to work on the pacing. I got done with the first ending and I was done. I was emotionally drained. To me, the book was finished. Then I had to keep reading. I kept reading, but I never got my adreneline rush back. The book had peaked for me. I'd blown my wad. I wasn't getting it back to feel very invested in the rest of the book.
Also, one of the stupidest last paragraphs ever.
Having gone through my nitpicks, though, this is still a book that I return to over and over. Sabriel is well executed with some of the most vivid world building I've seen. The characters, if occasionally wooden, are by the whole people I would love to hang out with.
If you are thinking of continuing with the series, my two cents: Lireal is totally worth buying the book for that first section of creating a world and characters and Disreputable Dog, but skip anything that doesn't have to do with Lireal and consider just putting the book down after Lireal leaves the mountain. Abhorsen: I love you, Garth, but I still have to say to your readers, you'd be better off going back and reading Sabriel again.
Okay--I'm still waiting for someone to answer where the Sherman/Way Back Machine references come from. A copy of Rebirth hangs in the balance.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
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.
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.
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