EARTH LOGIC – Laurie Marks

Shaftal has a ruler again, a woman with enough power to heal the war-torn land and expel the invading Sainnites from Shaftal. Or it would have a ruler if the earth witch Karis G’deon consented to rule. Instead, she lives in obscurity with the fractious family of elemental talents who gathered around her in Fire Logic. She is waiting for some sign, but no one, least of all Karis herself, knows what it is.

Then the Sainnite garrison at Watford is attacked by a troop of zealots claiming to speak for the Lost G’deon, and a mysterious and deadly plague attacks the land, killing both Sainnites and Shaftali. Karis must act or watch her beloved country fall into famine and chaos. And when Karis acts, the very stones of the earth sit up and take notice.

Let me tell you the ways in which these books are awesome:

1. They are homonormative.
2. They are egalitarian.
3. They do not automatically make women’s bodies sexual objects.
4. They alerted me to the idea that a very large, very muscular woman can be searing hot.

I now want a woman I have to climb like a tree just to kiss. Oh my god. I’m not even tall, that should be doable.

 

Laurie Marks – FIRE LOGIC

The earth witch who ruled Shaftal is dead, leaving no heir. Shaftal’s ruling house has been scattered by the invading Sainnites. The Shaftali have mobilized a guerrilla army against these marauders, but every year the cost of resistance grows, leaving Shaftal’s fate in the hands of three people: Emil, scholar and reluctant warrior; Zanja, the sole survivor of a slaughtered tribe; and Karis the metalsmith, a half-blood giant whose earth powers can heal, but only when she can muster the strength to hold off her addiction to a deadly drug.

Separately, all they can do is watch as Shaftal falls from prosperity into lawlessness and famine. But if they can find a way to work together, they just may change the course of history.

I put off reading this book for a long time. For, well, obvious reasons: the cover art, the summary, everything about this screams generic fantasy. But since being generic has never impeded the commercial success of a fantasy novel, I would like to demand: why isn’t this more widely read?

Because though the setting is generic, this is a book that’s packed with some very large ideas, and some of the very best execution of those ideas I’ve ever seen in the genre.

 

Helen Oyeyemi’s MR FOX, dead women, and stories

Celebrated writer Mr. Fox can’t stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It’s not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently.

Mary challenges Mr. Fox to join her in stories of their own devising; and in different times and places, the two of them seek each other, find each other, thwart each other, and try to stay together, even when the roles they inhabit seem to forbid it. Their adventures twist the fairy tale into nine variations, exploding and teasing conventions of genre and romance, and each iteration explores the fears that come with accepting a lifelong bond. Meanwhile, Daphne becomes convinced that her husband is having an affair, and finds her way into Mary and Mr. Fox’s game. And so Mr. Fox is offered a choice: Will it be a life with the girl of his dreams, or a life with an all-too-real woman who delights him more than he cares to admit?

The extraordinarily gifted Helen Oyeyemi has written a love story like no other. Mr. Fox is a magical book, endlessly inventive, as witty and charming as it is profound in its truths about how we learn to be with one another.

The idea of a lovely woman muse coming to life and getting between a writer and his real-life wife is not precisely a startlingly new one. I’m sure there must be a Stephen King book like that somewhere. Not that I’m berating Mr Fox for being derivative; it isn’t, though it builds on and subverts familiar themes. Whereas most narratives about a dude writer being tortured by the beautiful muse and the wife are about him–the man–Helen Oyeyemi’s most excellent novel posits women’s perspective as the center of gravity around which other elements of story must orbit.

 

Last Exile – Fam the Silver Wing: girls, girls, girls!

Fam is amazing, Giselle is amazing, Millia is amazing, Tatiana is amazing, Liliana is amazing, Alister is amazing.

And all of them are women. You can now probably guess just why I’ve fallen head over heels for Last Exile: Fam the Silver Wing.

 

STEAM-POWERED 2 – more lesbian steampunk stories!

The formatting of the ebook is, unfortunately, kind of rubbish. I’ve half a mind to reformat it and reconvert back to the Kindle format, but meh. But it really is rubbish. So much so that each story’s title isn’t formatted any differently from any other text (no bolding, no up-sizing), there is no table of contents, and sometimes there’s text that must have been meant to be italicized but… isn’t. It’s a shame. A crying shame.

It’s probably fair to disclose that I’m a) not a fan of steampunk (in that I have no real interest in it as a subject or sub-genre) and that b) I’m not generally into multi-authors anthologies due to their natural unevenness in quality, and I always prefer longer stories over short ones, which makes it a little tricky to appreciate many of the pieces in Steam-Powered 2 since some tend toward the shorter end of the scale. But despite all that, in the end I found many of the stories contained in this anthology amazing, moving, affirming. This is the kind of collections we need, the kind of material that should exist and be encouraged to thrive, and I can’t praise Joselle Vanderhooft enough for making it happen.

 

guys guys guys, let’s talk about Christine Love!

I adore Christine Love. She blogs about a lot of lovely stuff, much of it wonderfully queer-lady friendly. Er, not least because she is a queer lady! I’ve discovered many a yuri title through her blog.

My first exposure to her was via don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story, a visual novel. Now there’s some thematic weakness to it, and the very odd tangent into privacy and the future, and a creepy teacher-student relationship you may potentially pursue… but it’s just a lovely lovely thing in spite of all that. It’s well-written, well-told, quirky and sweet and insightful. It’s about adolescence and love, and mostly it’s about queer teenagers finding love (Kendall and Charlotte! oh Kendall and Charlotte), and it incorporates Internet culture in an amusing fashion with a nod to 4chan subculture. Kendall talks pretty much entirely in memes.

Forever laughing. Love at first said she kind of hated Kendall, but then discovered the opposite. Which makes me happy, because I quite enjoyed Kendall. Yes, she’s obnoxious, but on the other hand she’s bright and bold, and very forward in her pursuit of getting back together with her girlfriend.

 

Catherynne Valente’s HABITATION OF THE BLESSED

This is the story of a place that never was: the kingdom of Prester John, the utopia described by an anonymous, twelfth-century document which captured the imagination of the medieval world and drove hundreds of lost souls to seek out its secrets, inspiring explorers, missionaries, and kings for centuries. But what if it were all true? What if there was such a place, and a poor, broken priest once stumbled past its borders, discovering, not a Christian paradise, but a country where everything is possible, immortality is easily had, and the Western world is nothing but a dim and distant dream?

Brother Hiob of Luzerne, on missionary work in the Himalayan wilderness on the eve of the eighteenth century, discovers a village guarding a miraculous tree whose branches sprout books instead of fruit. These strange books chronicle the history of the kingdom of Prester John, and Hiob becomes obsessed with the tales they tell. The Habitation of the Blessed recounts the fragmented narratives found within these living volumes, revealing the life of a priest named John, and his rise to power in this country of impossible richness. John’s tale weaves together with the confessions of his wife Hagia, a blemmye–a headless creature who carried her face on her chest–as well as the tender, jeweled nursery stories of Imtithal, nanny to the royal family. Hugo and World Fantasy award nominee Catherynne M. Valente reimagines the legends of Prester John in this stunning tour de force.

This is a difficult book to review. It’s The Orphan’s Tales all over again, a reminder of just why I fell in love with Valente’s writing. Not necessarily because I haven’t liked her other works, but Habitation of the Blessed has much more in common with The Orphan’s Tales duology than anything else she’s written–it keeps you reading not simply to find out what happens but to find out what a boundless, fresh imagination will present you with next: something lovely, something surprising, because Valente has what so many author lack, which is the ability to invoke the sense of wonder.

I made the conscious decision to read this slowly. Good, rare things need to be rationed out. Even then I went through it much faster than I meant to. It’s that absorbing, that demanding.

 

underrated: Tricia Sullivan’s DOUBLE VISION

Combining William Gibson’s mistrust of consumerism with Philip K. Dick’s ability to twist reality through ninety degrees, DOUBLE VISION is the stunning new novel from the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of MAUL. When shy, psychic bookworm ‘Cookie’ Orbach watches television, she sees things. But not the things that you or I would see. Cookie sees The Grid – a strange, shifting landscape where human forces battle against an enemy they dare not kill. Her employer, the mysterious Dataplex Corporation, pays her well to watch this war, and asks only that she report her observations but take no direct action, which suits her passive demeanour just fine. But Cookie’s quiet life is about to be shattered. Her two very different worlds are threatening to merge in  a way that shouldn’t really be possible, and everything is about to change. And we do mean everything…

I’ve always wondered why Tricia Sullivan isn’t talked of very much within the genre, nor feted as she she deserves. I loathe the usual “like Tolkien meet Rowling!!!” or “like Chandler meet Philip K. Dick!” (and if ever you see the latter brace yourself for a lot of misogynistic dipshittery) marketing claptrap, but I think in this case the comparison has some use. So: yes, this will make you think of Dick. If Dick only wrote good books instead of a lot of samey stuff with the occasional gem, and weren’t a sexist.

Double Vision most strongly recalls Ubik which is in turn one of Dick’s best. It was the first Sullivan I ever tried, and easily one of my favorite SF titles.

 

SKIN FOLK: Nalo Hopkinson’s collection of wonders SF, F, and fairytale-esque

A new collection of short stories from Hopkinson, including “Greedy Choke Puppy,” which Africana.com called “a cleverly crafted West Indian story featuring the appearance of both the soucouyant (vampire) & lagahoo (werewolf),”"Ganger (Ball Lightning),” praised by the Washington Post Book World as written in “prose [that] is vivid & immediate,” this collection reveals Hopkinson’s breadth & accomplishments as a storyteller.

This has quite a lovely cover.

Skin Folk is, like most short story collections, somewhat hit-or-miss–but it’s Nalo Hopkinson, so the ratio of hit to miss is firmly skewed to the former, and when a story hits it can hit hard. Beware: I’m going to wax rhapsodic about this book.

 

DELIRIUM’S MISTRESS: in which Tanith Lee makes me cry

In the age of demons, when the Earth was still flat, a daughter was born to a mortal beauty and Azhrarn, Demon Lord of Night. This Daughter of the Night was called Azhriaz, and she was hidden away on a mist-shrouded isle, spirit-guarded, to spend her life in dreams. But Azhriaz was destined for more than dark dreaming. For if her father was the Lord of Night, her mother was descended from the Sun itself. 

And her beauty and power soon called to another mighty demon lord, Azhrarn’s enemy, Prince Chuz, Delusion’s Master, who worked a magnificent illusion to free Azhriaz from her prison and transform her into Delirium’s Mistress. 

As Mistress of Madness and Delirium would she become known in realms of both demon and humankind. And her destiny would make her goddess, queen, fugitive, champion, seeress – and her to whom even the very Lord of Darkness would one day bow down…

Tanith Lee, Tanith Lee. Why are you such an inconsistent writer?

Delirium’s Mistress is part of the Flat Earth series, which is Tanith Lee’s take on sword and sorcery. I’ve never been able to really tell if Lee identifies as a feminist, but her output varies wildly. There are really excellent female characters in her stories, and then there are really passive ones, and then there are ones whom the narrative shafts 24/7. Death’s Master is a terrible saga of gender essentialism and sword-and-sorcery misogyny. And yet, at the same time, she’s written Disturbed By Her Song which is amazing in many kinds of ways. I’m willing to attribute it to her growth as a writer, but again, I don’t know enough about her.

Delirium’s Mistress is, for the most part, of the “gender essentialist” category with borderline misogyny. And then… it becomes something else and it almost made me cry sad, sad tears. Like the balloon things in Dan Abnett’s run of The Authority only subtler.