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The Impossible Cube: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire by Steven Harper

Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Roc (May 1, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0451464508

In an age where fantastic inventions of steam and brass have elevated Britain and China into mighty empires, Alice Michaels faces a future of technological terrors…

Once, Gavin Ennock sailed the skies on airships and enchanted listeners with his fiddle music. Now, the clockwork plague consumes his intellect, enabling him to conceive and construct scientific wonders—while driving him quite mad. Distressed by her beloved’s unfortunate condition, Alice Michaels sought a cure rumored to be inside the Doomsday Vault—and brought the wrath of the British Empire down on them.

Declared enemies of the Crown, Alice and Gavin have little choice but to flee to China in search of a cure. Accompanying them is Dr. Clef, a mad genius driven to find the greatest and most destructive force the world has ever seen: The Impossible Cube. If Dr. Clef gets his hands on it, the entire universe will face extinction.

And Gavin holds the key to its recreation…

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In the 104th episode of the Functional Nerds Podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome Scott Andrew to the show to talk about recording.

About Scott:  Scott Andrew lives in Seattle, writes songs and plays in bands. He thinks you’re pretty cool.

Links:

• Scott Andrew (website)
• Scott on Twitter
• Scott in Explone
• Scott in Kirby Krackle
• Scott in Kin to Stars
• Patrick on Twitter
• John on Twitter

© 2012 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This podcast features original music written and performed by John Anealio.

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The Hammer and the Blade

Egil and Nix are thieves.  Good thieves, as a matter of fact.  True, they have side interests and pasts. Nix knows something of magic.  Egil was trained as a priest of the Momentary God. Both of them have pasts and long careers as thieves, years of tomb robbing and other unsavory jobs.

Now, the results of their last and most profitable mission come back to haunt them, as a consequence of their looting of a demonically haunted tomb leads a noble house with their own pacts with demons to need their services. Under false pretenses, of course, and whether or not Nix and Egil are willing to take the job…

The Hammer and the Blade, by Paul S. Kemp, brings us into a world reminiscent of Fritz Leiber’s Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser, the underbelly of the city of Sanctuary, the Novaria stories of L Sprague De Camp, Michael Shea, and many others.

In other words, yeah, The Hammer and the Blade is Sword and Sorcery, if Sword and Sorcery has any meaning as a term or subgenre. And Old School Sword and Sorcery at that.

The strengths of the novels are many. In a Sword and Sorcery novel, with a focus tightly on a couple of protagonists, the novel rises and falls on those characters appealing to the reader. The author hits this solidly with Nix and Egil. We immediately get the sense that this pair has known each other for quite a while, knows each others foibles and get along well together. I hesitate to use the word bromance, but the relationship between the pair is indeed close. Its too crude to say that Nix is an expy of the Grey Mouser and Egil is an expy of  Fafhrd, but the author seems to be trying to make at least a gentle evocation of those two classic characters. Nix is the street-rat, Egil is from the out-country. Egil is power and force, Nix is stealth and skill.  Nix has a minor affinity for magic.

A quibble on this characterization though–I would have liked a little more Egil.  Nix is clearly our major character of the pair, and we learn a fair bit more about him than we do Egil. In fact a key part of Egil’s background is only given out as a reveal to explain character motivation a good way into the book.  Nix is most definitely the voice of the book, and his sometimes smartass personality leavens things when things are looking not at all good for our heroes. Or just when Nix gets bored. This tendency for Nix to babble at the drop of a heat even gets lampshaded by one of the antagonists.

We get a good sense of the motivations of the antagonist, enough that one can sympathize with his plight, even if his methods are deplorable.  Similarly the plot, initiated by the actions of Nix and Egil, and driven by the needs of the protagonist, is just the right sort of scale for a sword and sorcery novel. The fate of the world is not at stake, the fate of a nation is not at stake.  Its a very personal scale, even if the action is larger than life.

And what action there is! In roleplaying game terms, we do not meet Egil and Nix as first level characters. They are talented, competent, and very very good at what they do. Their first mission, in the prologue, has them taking on a demon, and the action only ramps up from there as we progress through the novel. The author describes this action very well indeed, be it fighting dangerous monsters in a tomb or a barroom fight. The two protagonists have clearly done this many times before, and together, and work as an excellent pairing.

The setting is described in the typical leanness of prose in the sub-genre. There isn’t a tremendous amount of worldbuilding. Instead things get parceled out as the reader goes along, building up bit by bit a decent knowledge of the world. Would I have liked more? Absolutely. I’m a big fan of worldbuilding. But we do get enough of a sense of the city and the rest of the world that the duo travel through.  There’s a real sense that the city is old, and I have no doubt that Egil and Nix cut their teeth exploring sewers and dungeons beneath the city before taking up the more dangerous profession of tomb robbing.

The magic in the novel is mysterious, chaotic and not to be trusted. Although Nix himself uses what roleplayers would call magic items, there is an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons feel to this use, rather than the blander 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Artifacts are capricious, mysterious things that don’t always work as intended or desired. Dark magic is suitably repellent and tinged with a sense of danger.

The author keeps the action of the story moving. Just when things seem to simmer down, Kemp knows its time to “add ninjas” to the story and keep the story from ever flagging. There are some really nice set-pieces of battles as Egil and Nix, as talented as they are, face every more dangerous foes and perilous situations. The book remained consistently entertaining and I would love to see more of the worlds and its characters. I’d also like, one day, for Kemp to write his own “Ill Met in Dur Follin”  and show how Nix and Egil go on to forge their friendship.

Female characters? Well, given the subject matter, we don’t have any viewpoint female characters. As far as the genre buzzword of the year, agency, after the fact its clear that one of the female characters does have far more agency than we see.  This appears to be a result of point of view and framing and a deliberate withholding of a reveal on the part of the author to increase the impact in the denouement.

I’m not sure about the ending, though. I am conflicted if the fate of the ultimate antagonist once defeated fits perfectly with the two protagonists, given how their characters have been presented, their motivations and their actions. Is it just desserts for the antagonist? Yes.  But is it something that in the end Nix and Egil would have done? I’m not so sure. I will say that the ultimate fate of the antagonist is definitely foreshadowed by a running theme through the novel. It’s a well done Chekov’s Gun, at any rate.

Aside from my concerns about the ending, though, The Hammer and the Blade is old school Sword and Sorcery with an appealing pair of protagonists whose feats of derring-do and likeable personalities kept me turning the pages. If you have any interest in Sword and Sorcery, I am confident you will find the same.

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Pod by Stephen Wallenfels

Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Ace; Reprint edition (April 24, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 193700743X

Official Description:

When the black spheres filled the sky, anyone caught beneath them would vanish in a flash of blue-white light. Huddled indoors, the survivors were unaware if what was happening in their neighborhoods was happening worldwide.

Josh is trapped at home with his father, whose sanity is starting to erode from the endless confinement. Megs struggles to survive in a hotel parking garage where she sees human nature at its worst. For both of them, food, water, and time are running out.

And hovering patiently above them is an extraterrestrial enemy that has inexplicably declared war against humanity…

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In Blackbirds, Chuck Wendig tells the story of a modern day Cassandra. Miriam has had the visions for years. All it takes is the touch of another person’s skin on her own, and she sees their death. When she meets a trucker named Louis, she sees him call her name before he dies. Can she stop it? Or is she merely the instrument of his destruction?

Miriam is a dynamic, manic person – half crazed by the visions she’s forced to endure, scavenging from the dead whose deaths she’s foreseen. Scarred by her past, angry at her own impotence, she punishes herself with bad choices and her own tormented imagination. This struck me as a very real and believable state of mind for a person who has suffered something this emotionally devastating.

The pace throughout the story never lets up. There is always something dramatic going on – always a dangerous situation, a race for safety, another devastating vision. The use of present tense gives everything a greater sense of urgency, as though a choice can be made to save someone whose death is preordained.

The story is not told linearly, so sometimes the action is hard to follow – mimicking Miriam’s disjointed state of mind. Scenes shift from one time and place to another; lines between reality and delusion blur. Is what she sees real, or is she losing her mind?

One of the things I did not enjoy was the excessive profanity. In the beginning, Miriam’s non-stop cussing was not only original but creative. However, it wore thin quickly. There is a sadistic sex scene, and Miriam also jokes about women saying no they really mean yes. Considering the source of this information is a half-crazed prophet of doom, this might not seem so bad, but I still didn’t appreciate it.

I would not recommend Blackbirds to the easily offended or the very young, but it makes a great guilty pleasure book. It’s a fast-paced, easy thriller with plenty of interesting death scenes that the horror junkie is sure to enjoy.

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The Thirteenth Sacrifice: A Witch Hunt Novel by Debbie Viguie

Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Signet (April 3, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 045123636X

Official Description:

When young women start dying, Boston cop Samantha Ryan is the perfect person to investigate, for only she knows what the archais symbol carved into their flesh means. The last in a long line of ruthless witches, she grew up in a coven seduced by power and greed. And now she’s sure that bad witches have returned to Salem. Reluctantly, Samantha goes undercover-into a town obsessed with black magic, into her terrifying past, and into thedark, newly awakened heart of evil.

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In the 103rd episode of the Parsec Nominated Functional Nerds Podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome Jeff Patterson and Paul Weimer to the super-secret lair of the Functional Nerds to talk about: Marvel Comics.

About Jeff:

By some fortuitous circumstance Jeff Patterson was born on September 1, 1962, the day the White House announced that the world population had exceeded three billion people, so he figures that was him. In ancient days he had stories published in obscure, short-lived, low-paying and generally unread periodicals. These days he runs Bad Day Studio, known mainly for its annual Holiday Cards. These were collected in a book called Solstice Chronicles. He  blogs at Gravity Lens.

About Paul:

Not really a Prince of Amber, but rather an ex-pat New Yorker that has found himself living in Minnesota for the last 8 years, Paul Weimer has been reading SF and Fantasy for over 30 years and exploring the world of roleplaying games for over 25 years. Almost as long as he has been reading and watching movies, he has enjoyed telling people what he has thought of them. In addition to his reading and gaming interests, he can be found at his own blog, Blog Jvstin Style, the Functional Nerds, the SF Signal Community, Twitter, Livejournal and many other places on the Internet. And one day he will write his own “trunk novel”.

Links:

• Jeff Patterson (website)
• Jeff on Twitter
• Paul Weimer (website)
• Paul on Twitter
• Patrick on Twitter
• John on Twitter
• Special Mention: BookLifeNow.com
• Patrick’s Post on BookLifeNow (with link to download template)

© 2012 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This podcast features original music written and performed by John Anealio.

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It’s the early 17th century. Elizabethan England. The scene is London,  a diverse and eclectic metropolis.  Maliverny Catlyn is a skilled but down on his luck swordsman and gentleman who is trying to scrape together a living on the hard streets of London, manage his relationship with his lover Ned, and keep his tortured twin brother in some sort of care and comfort in an asylum. As much as 17th century England can provide, anyway.

However, the mysterious, seemingly magic-using skraylings from the new world, already present in the city in a mercantile capacity, have decided to send a formal ambassador to the Queen’s Court in England. And Mal is the perfect person to act as the skrayling ambassador’s bodyguard against threats both foreign and domestic. An offer he literally can’t refuse.

Naturally, as good Queen Elizabeth has mostly retreated from public life following the death of her husband Robert Dudley, dealing with such matters are generally in the hands of her two sons. Francis Walsingham still plots and keeps secrets for the crown, including taking an interest in this new bodyguard for the Ambssador.

In the meantime, a theater company, Suffolk’s Men seeks to finish their new theater in time to put on a play to celebrate the ambassador’s arrival (and win a contest!)  and their handyman Coby has secrets of his own. As in the fact that, straight out of Shakespeare, Coby is really a young woman making her fortune and way as best she can.

But even they all working together might not be enough to keep the skraylings safe, or unravel their secrets., or uncover the plot that has far larger stakes than any might guess or believe. And why does the Ambassador seem to know Mal from before they met, or think he does?

Wait, What? What?!

This is definitely not the Elizabethan England you were expecting, now, is it?

The Alchemist of Souls is a debut historical fantasy novel by Anne Lyle.  Set in an alternate 16th century London, the novel, clearly the potential first in a series, mostly follows the lives of the two main characters, Mal and Coby, and the machinations that surround them.

16th century Elizabethan London is, to riff off of the Gurps supplement Cabal, a nexus point of history, myth and fantasy. Its a popular setting for authors and their stories and novels, almost irresistibly so. In keeping with that, there are two elements that one or the other often seems to always crop up in them. And a fair number of stories have both of them appear together:

Shakespeare, and Faerie.

Oh, its clear that Shakespeare exists in this already alternate history Elizabethan London. In novels and stories by Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Hoyt, Harry Turtledove, William Saunders, and many others (even a Doctor Who episode!),  he is a character, major or minor.

Anne Lyle makes it clear that Shakespeare exists. He just never takes the stage himself. The degrees of separation between the main characters and the Bard is not large, but the author felt no need to include him directly in this story.

Faeries in Elizabethan England, as an overt or just as a theme, is an equally powerful and common theme for Elizabethan England set novels and stories. In addition to Hoyt and Bear, listed above, you can add Mark Chadbourn, Mercedes Lackey, and many others.

As far as the Faerie component, while the Skraylings are exotic and alien (I can’t seem to decide and the author makes it uncertain if they are a strange branch of the genus Homo, or are ultraterrestrials), they are definitely *not* Elves. They do have strange technology which might or might not be magic, again, the author makes it ambiguous as to what it really is.

I thought it was refreshing, and different, to have a novel set in this time period which didn’t mine this already popular duo of motifs.

As far as the writing, I kept comparing it to those other 16th century Elizabethan England novels and stories. While I don’t think the author is at the sublime heights that some of them reach (especially the Elizabeth Bear diptych), her research and authenticity are extremely strong. Its clear this is a first novel, but a decently written one.

This is not a disneyfied Elizabethan England you do find in a unhappily large percentage of works set in this time period. The author evokes the world well. The action and adventure, the beats of the story, hit very well in time, and there was more than one or two scenes that reminded me of techniques and tropes as old as The Bard himself. Elizabethan England, London in particular, for all of its cosmopolitan nature, is a very different place, and the author gets that.

As far as the characters, the author works hard to make the two main characters appealing. With the close third person perspectives, we get into their heads, and understand where they are coming from, their flaws and strengths, expertly done.There is definite growth and change in the characters, major and minor, and the author makes them as familiar as friends and colleagues to the reader.

The plot does get to be a tangled and tormented mess as the conspiracy and what really is going on gets untangled, in a proper Shakespearean fashion. Crossdressing characters. Secret trysts. Swordfighting and adventure. Barbed words and dialogue. And I was strongly reminded of the Minbari of Babylon 5 during one reveal about the nature and society of the Skraylings.

Oh, and if I didn’t make it absolutely clear, the novel is a lot of fun. Swashbuckling, adventure, intrigue, and yes, a tiny hint of romance. I enjoyed the novel immensely. And I suspect that the author is only going to get better as she gets more words under her belt.

The end of the novel sets up future adventures for Mal and Coby in a neat fashion. Dare I guess that a trip to the dangerous French court at Versailles might be in order for the sequel? (Which immediately puts me in mind of the Nebula winning classic The Moon and the Sun by Vonda Mcintyre).

And there are still mysteries galore, and intrigue, and machinations revolving around the Skraylings, those allied to them, and those opposed to them. The epilogue of the story is a “wham” that suggests that the protagonists are going to have bigger problems than they realize.

I’d definitely be up a sequel, which I understand is already in the works.

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I listen to a lot of audiobooks (nine last month; 70 last year), but recently I was having one of those “I have 400 books on my to read list and still can’t pick what to read” bouts of choice paralysis. Then I stumbled across my copy of Howl’s Moving Castle, bought on sale a year or two ago, and it was just what I needed. Narrated superbly by Jenny Sterlin, we follow Sophie Hatter, tragically the eldest of three sisters in a land of fairy tale rules and seven-league boots, after she’s cursed by a witch and transformed into an old crone. She gains entrance to the legendary moving castle of the wizard Howl and strikes a bargain with Calcifer, a fire demon, to be cured in exchange for freeing Calcifer from his contractual servitude to the wizard. It’s just a wonderful book with a wonderful protagonist in Sophie, who quickly embraces the authority to lecture and cajole that her apparent age gives her; a book which doesn’t take itself too seriously; and an audiobook which is done so well, so earnestly, and so authentically that those with an ear for dialects might begin to wonder why Howl speaks with a “tapped r” long before we find out what’s sewn across one of his shirts.

But I’ve had the audiobook sitting in my digital library for quite a while, unheard. It’s thanks to the Diana Wynn Jones 2012 Tumblr, which has been posting and encouraging guest blogs up to and through an April 22 public celebration in Bristol of Wynne Jones’s life and work, that enough pieces of the cosmos came together to finally convince me to press play, leaving me very glad indeed that the universe contains books like Howl’s Moving Castle. It was a delightful pit stop on a month of mostly Serious Business, superbly narrated, and highly recommended, and a book I look forward to sharing with my kids over the years.

And now: an overview of Diana Wynne Jones’s books available in audio, all from Recorded Books. The links here are for Audible.com, but you should be able to find or order them in physical media from any bookstore, or in the iTunes music store and various other digital audiobook stores, or (and I think Wynne Jones wouldn’t have minded at all) in your local libary. (One sour note, however, is that only four of the audiobooks are available at Audible.co.uk.)

Sterlin provides a consistent voice for all three books in Wynn Jones’s “Howl’s Castle” world: Howl’s Moving Castle (1986), companion Castle in the Air (1990), and more direct sequel House of Many Ways (2008).

Gerard Doyle voices the Christomanci series:  A Charmed Life: The Worlds of Chrestomanci, Book 1 (1977),  The Magicians of Caprona (1980), Witch Week: Chronicles of Chrestomanci (1982), The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988), Conrad’s Fate: The Worlds of Chrestomanci (2005), and The Pinhoe Egg (2006). A last standalone novel for teens, Enchanted Glass (2010), is narrated by Steven Crossley.

Lastly, there’s a few more of the very short variety (1-2 hours in length) for even younger readers:

Wild Robert (1989), narrated by Jane Asher;  Stopping for a Spell (1993), narrated by Judy Bennett – a collection of 3 fantasies; and Earwig and the Witch (2011), narrated by Charlotte Parry, published shortly after Wynn Jones’s death.

Whether you are discovering Wynn Jones’s books for the first time, or rediscovering them, these stories were meant to be read aloud — as all stories are. Recorded Books has done a wonderful job casting, directing, and producing these stories, and they are an aural legacy of Wynn Jones’s works of which any author can be proud, and which will reward any listener.

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In the 102nd episode of the Functional Nerds Podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome Stina Leicht and Chris Holm.

About Stina:

Stina Leicht is a 2012 Campbell Award nomineee and author of two books: Of Blood and Honey, And Blue Skies from Pain published by Night Shade Books.  Stina Leicht‘s debut novel Of Blood and Honey, a historical Fantasy with an Irish Crime edge set in 1970s Northern Ireland, was released by Night Shade books in February 2011. And Blue Skies from Pain (a sequel to Of Blood and Honey) was released March 22, 2012 and is available via Indie Bound, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Night Shade Books, BookPeople and Powell’s. She also has a flash fiction piece in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s surreal anthology Last Drink Bird Head.

About Chris:

Chris F. Holm was born in Syracuse, New York, the grandson of a cop with a penchant for crime fiction. It was the year of punk rock and Star Wars, two influences that to this day hold more sway over Chris than perhaps his wife would like.  He wrote his first story at the age of six, which got him sent to the principal’s office.  Since then, his stories have appeared in a slew of publications, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Beat to a Pulp, and Thuglit. His novella “The Hitter” was selected to appear in THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011, edited by Harlan Coben and Otto Penzler.  He’s been an Anthony Award nominee, a Derringer Award finalist, and a Spinetingler Award winner. His debut novel, DEAD HARVEST, is available February 2012 via Angry Robot Books, with its sequel, THE WRONG GOODBYE, to follow that October.

Links:

• Stina Leicht (website)
• Stina on Twitter
• Chris F. Holm (website)
• Chris on Twitter
• Patrick on Twitter
• John on Twitter

© 2012 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This podcast features original music written and performed by John Anealio

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Many of us not only do our socializing online, but we also work online as well. Whether we’re employed in the creative arts as artists, writers, or musicians, or we’re self-employed (plumbers, landscapers, babysitters) there’s a Internet site to promote our services. While web-savvy businesses have been working online for years, even more traditional companies are adding blogs to their business websites. We live our lives in a broader public than ever before.

“Technology has rendered the conventional definition of personally identifiable information obsolete,” said Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy division. “You can find out who an individual is without it.” via The New York Times

Spammers search for our personal information all of the time, in order to trick people into handing over money or financial information. Companies commonly “mine” our data, logging it and selling it to other companies. You may have seen news articles about how Highlight, a free phone app, could enable predators to stalk, manipulate, or even harm unsuspecting victims. How do you protect yourself when not being online isn’t an option?

1. Disable cookies in your Internet browser. This means you’ll have to enter your password more often, but it also means that your passwords aren’t being saved somewhere they can be stolen from you.
2. Don’t put your full date of birth on your public profiles. You can go into your account settings on Facebook, for example, and set it to just display the day and month. That way people can still celebrate your birthday, and you get the added bonus of not having to reveal your age.
3. Don’t use Facebook apps from outside of the United States. All of those games and social apps that seem like they’re being built into Facebook come from outside companies, and the ones which operate outside of the US don’t have to follow the same laws regarding your personal data. It’s best to avoid them entirely.
4. Make your Facebook account private. At the very least, make your profile “friends only”. You can even create custom settings to further separate which of your friends gets to know which information. You can find these settings at http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy
5. Google yourself. Find out what people can find online. Is your email address, date of birth, or even phone number posted on the Internet? Once you know what’s there, you can take steps to get it removed.
6. Clear your Google search history. Go to https://www.google.com/history/ to clear your history and also turn off “Web History”. Until you do it, Google will automatically track your online searches.
7. Close old accounts. Do you still have a Livejournal account you’re not using, or a Myspace account? What about music surfing sites like Pandora? If you’re not using it, shut it down.
8. Create an email address for junk. These days so many sites require you to give an email address when you log in. When you Google yourself, chances are good you’ll find your email address shows up. If you create a junk mail address, and use that for anything that isn’t important, you’ll find that most of your spam email will get directed there instead.
9. Create a Google Voice account to have your non-personal calls sent to. If you’re self-employed and trying to grow your business without giving out your cell phone number online, try a Google Voice account. It’s a free service that lets you direct customers to a new number that still rings your phone of choice.
10. Let your boss know that you’re concerned about what appears on your company website. You can ask that photos only be tagged with first names, or that company party pictures aren’t posted. You can opt out of any “what I did this weekend” emails that might get sent around.
11. Be vague. I have a twitter account but under the setting for location, I don’t have anything listed. Sure, my friends know where I live, but at the moment I don’t feel the need to share that with the world. I know people who list the name of the largest nearby town instead of their little village, so that they can still connect with people who might have common interests without pointing people right to their house. You can talk about the kind of work you do without revealing the name of your employer, or say you “ate lunch at a nearby burger joint” without telling people you ate at Five Guys at 12:24 pm. Simply put, don’t put anything on the Internet that you don’t want strangers to know. Even when you think it’s protected by privacy settings, it’s still on the web. Gossip still exists in the digital age, and information can be passed along by friendly acquaintances who share your news to people you didn’t intend to know about it.

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In the 101st episode of the Functional Nerds Podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome singer / songwriter Jonah Knight.

About Jonah:

Jonah Knight performs Paranormal Modern Folk: songs about ghosts, monsters, super heroes and steampunk with a roots folk base.

Links:

• Jonah Knight
• Jonah’s Music
• Jonah on Twitter
• Patrick on Twitter
• John on Twitter

© 2012 Patrick Hester & John Anealio

This episode features original music written and performed by Jonah Knight.

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The magic returns (or comes into being) to our technological modern day world is not a new idea in fantasy.  Rachel Pollack’s Unquestionable Fire. The novels of Alyx Dellamonica. The roleplaying games Shadowrun and GURPS: Technomancer hypothesize what would happen if magic erupted into the modern world. Other novels and stories ponder a return of magic, once lost. Larry Niven and his compatriots wrote stories in a “The Magic May Return” anthology as a counterpoint to his “The Magic Goes Away” stories. Operation: Chaos by Poul Anderson shows what would happen if magic, lost for centuries thanks to the industrial revolution, is regained and fused with technology.

Given that fantasy is often a genre of restoration, of regaining what was lost or has diminished, its a powerful and recurring theme that many writers find themselves attracted to.  And yet, for all of that, the expressions of that theme have for the most part (Poul Anderson perhaps excepted) ignored an 800 lb gorilla of an organization that would have very definite and strong ideas on what they would do if confronted with a change in the rules of reality.

The greatest fighting force on the history of the planet, the modern U.S. Army. With hundreds of thousands of members from all strata of society, and a bureaucratic nightmare on top of it, the Army is itself a foreign land to most civilians, and one whose members, structure and outlook would definitely shape and be shaped by the return or appearance of magic.

So, then, what do you get if you combine the theme of “The Magic Returns” with the messy bureaucratic complexity of the U.S. Army, throw in lots of 4th generation warfare tactics, and take this all  from the perspective of a soldier, and have the writer be someone intimately familiar with that perspective and the nature of the army?  You have a new and very different take on the theme.

And that is what Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole really is.  A hard-military modern fantasy novel. An ecological niche that has been sitting, waiting all this time, waiting for someone to take full advantage of it. And the author makes a strong claim at first rights to this niche.

Shadow Ops: Control Point is the story of Lt. Oscar Britton. Oscar is a member of the U.S. military, and we open the novel with him and his team acting in support to an Supernatural Operations Corps,SOC, operation, to stop some rogue magicians with out of control powers. Rogue magicians who happen to be teenagers. The author puts us, and his protagonist in a moral quandary right from the get-go.

In the course of this tragic encounter and its aftermath, Oscar himself erupts previously unsuspected magical abilities, and worse, as a type of magic, Portamancy, that is expressly forbidden. Opening gates into a hostile world full of magical creatures is not an approved school.  Oscar’s attempts to go on the run eventually have him land at a very secret and very unofficial SOC training facility, and it seems that the government has a use for forbidden talents like his. And ones very unlike his…

Worldbuilding is the other strength of this novel. The U.S. Army is a foreign country to most of us who have never served, even if we have relatives who have. The experience of being in the army is just like going any other gigantic bureaucratic institution, except this is one where armed conflict is their business. The author brings that to vivid and very real life, rather than a cartoonish version of that reality that you find in most genre novels. I found his extrapolations of what the U.S. Army would do and how they would adapt to the return of magic to be highly plausible. This is how it would happen.

The strongest part of this novel is the action. The author has been in combat situations, knows how they work, and knows how to describe them in an exciting and realistic way. The novel opens up on an action scene as mentioned above, and it seems that every time the novel threatens to flag, the action returns, ranging from hand to hand combat training to some truly harrowing situation for Britton and his team.

And on the other side of the coin, I loved the expression and development of the magical abilities as shown in the novel. Its not an overly complex magic system the likes of Brandon Sanderson might do, and the powers do appear to be extremely influenced by, say, Marvel mutant powers, but even then, there are subtleties and nuances to the magic explored. I also highly enjoyed the bits of

From clues in the text, the novel takes place in the near future, and the eruption of magic has been relatively recent. Certainly the point of divergence is no earlier than the Iraq War, since Fallujah is mentioned (and not mentioned that there are magicians about). The book is replete with little cutaways and references that illuminate that the world is indeed not taking the return of magic entirely peacefully. I did find one of these that confused me and seemed to break the pattern of the timeframe and history of the world otherwise set in the novel.

The plotting is not spectacular, but is a serviceable clothesline that keeps the beats of the action as outlined above going. I do admit that my expectations for the resolution of the plot did not match up with the denouement, but I don’t think this quite is a case where a promise to the reader was broken. (I can see, however, that if the author wanted this to be a one-book world, just how it would have been resolved instead).

Themes of duty and sacrifice and honor run through the book, no surprise given the military perspective. The situation around the facility is explicitly as well as implicitly compared to the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so the practice and effectiveness of things like COIN (Counterinsurgency) tactics and methods are debated. The author’s politics are not so much on display in this so much as a general criticism of the stupidity of actions, ideas and methods. Readers fearing a political message at odds with their political beliefs (whatever those political beliefs are) should relax–they aren’t going to find one. I can’t even recall the use of the word Democrat or Republican in the entire novel.

Where the novel doesn’t work for me so well is the characterization, especially the main character. While I can and do expect vacillation from Oscar given his situation and status, sometimes I felt more than a little whiplash between extremes in his story. As a result, the character arc is at best extremely fractured, and at worst, the character growth is delayed.

I also fear that this whiplash extremes of personality was the only way the plot would allow for the key escape of a character, the “Magneto” of the setting,  who I am dead certain will be returning in future books.

While I suspect that readers looking first and foremost for deep characterization in their genre reading aren’t likely to pick up Shadow Ops: Control Point anyway, it should be noted that this is the major thing I would put on the scales against the numerous positives previously outlined.

Overall, though, despite this, the characterization of this novel as “Black Hawk Down meets the X-men” doesn’t even do it justice. This is a pure hit of exciting and entertaining modern action fantasy from a military perspective. The Baen favoring military SF crowd looking for a good entree into modern fantasy should look no further and try this. Cole knows how to write action, he knows the military and does it right, and he never lets the action flag for long before cranking the wurlitzer again and transporting the reader into another situation for Oscar and his teammates. As far as the Urban and contemporary fantasy loving crowd, this is the book you want to read if you want a jolt of magical action.

As for your humble reviewer, given his proclivities, I kept trying to work out in my head just how you could adapt, say, the Dresden Files Roleplaying game to run a game set in this world. What I would love even better is for Cole to be successful enough with this series that Fred Hicks and his Evil Hat crew, or perhaps Ken Hite, Robin Laws and the folks at Pelgrane instead, will want to do a straight up Shadow Ops RPG. I’d not only buy that, I’d run that.

As a running tagline in the book says, Skill beats Will.  Cole as an author clearly has Will, and he is developing and working on those skills. And the author’s skills and experience are likely only to get better from here. I look forward to what he can do with that additional experience and skill-building, be it in the world of Shadow Ops, or elsewhere.

So how DO you think an Apache would do against a bullet-resistant Griffin, Myke?

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Welcome to All Things From My Brain.

eBooks.

Ugh.

Recently paid $13 for an eBook.

I know, I know – you’re thinking, “What the Hell?”  Me too.

I did it because I was curious about the author, Elmore Leonard, whose stories about a U.S. Marshall named Raylan Givens, served as inspiration for the FX TV Series, Justified – which I love.  But it took me the better part of a week to buy that book.  My finger kept guiding the mouse to the ‘one click’ button and hovering there before navigating away to view other things on the Internet.  Amazon was kind enough to remind me, when I navigated back to the site, that I had recently viewed ‘Raylan’ by Elmore Leonard.  Helpful little bugger, Amazon.

There was this internal conflict going on inside my head.  You see, eBook pricing is still kinda stupid.  No one has figured it out yet.  If they tell you they have, they’re full of shit.  (Sorry if you think you have it figured out).

The problem is perception and some preconceived notions, plus some facts that always seem to get in the way.  I myself suffer from this, making it difficult for me to pay $13 for an eBook.  I know that publishers don’t want to hear anyone say that.  I can’t help it.  I’ve been conditioned to see eBooks a certain way, and to undervalue them compared to a print book.  Not the writing or the art or any of that, but the process by which they are produced.  The world we live in tells us that digital is cheaper than physical, whether it actually is or not.

Here’s the facts as I understand them:

Fact No 1: Publishing is a business.  Publishers are in the business of publishing in order to make money.  They make money by turning a profit.  Profit is whatever you have left over after you have absorbed all of your costs, overhead, etc.  If they aren’t making money, guess what?  They aren’t going to stay in publishing.  If an author isn’t doing well sales-wise, they will reduce what they are willing to pay that author for their stories.  If the sales just aren’t there, they might drop the author altogether.

Fact No 2: Overhead includes all the costs associated with doing business, including: taxes that you pay, people you employ, the office you rent, electricity for the office, equipment like computers, phones, etc., paper, glue (books, binding), art (covers, maps) — You get the drift?  Someone, somewhere, takes all of these things into account and comes up with a ‘cost’.  Then someone sets a ‘price’.  The difference between the two is ‘profit’.  (Really simplifying this)

Fact No 3: Overhead producing an eBook is different than producing a printed book.  I should clarify that this is something that I fervently believe because I produce things digitally and physically as a marketing person.  Are there some overlapping costs?  Absolutely.  But there comes a point where the two diverge because they have completely different distribution models.  One is physical and the other is digital.  In the physical model, you have to print the book, look at proofs, change the type size or font, run more proofs, pick a paper.  You have to print (maybe) a dust jacket.  Then there’s printing and binding on a mass scale (usually on a web-press).  Next, you have to store your printed books somewhere.  Probably use a ton of cardboard boxes, tape and shrink wrap for that.  Then you have people loading pallets, and a guy driving the forklift (tow motor if you’re from the south) around the warehouse (warehouse rental, insurance), and loading those pallets on a truck.  The truck drives cross-country (have you seen the price of diesel?) to deliver your books to bookstores, maybe goes through a local hub where the pallets are broken down into smaller bites for delivery.  Any or all of this could be true and is part of your overhead – for the physical book.

The eBook would have it’s own course.  No need for a warehouse because there’s nothing to store.  Maybe you have a server farm somewhere – easily pennies on the dollar versus a physical location full of employees – where you store your finished, ready to go eBooks.  Maybe you have them on a tower in such n such’s office – I don’t know.  Probably have a person, or persons, whose job it is to submit that eBook to all the major distributors, your Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.  I don’t see that as costing anywhere near the same as a physical book’s overhead for distribution.

Maybe I’m completely wrong.  This could totally be that preconceived notion I mentioned above.  See, in my dayjob, I create marketing materials.  There is a clear delineation after the materials are created as to how much they cost once I distribute them.  If I create a flyer, double sided, 4/4 color, full bleed, for example, and I push that out through email (digital distribution), the cost becomes pennies on the dollar compared to if I send it to the press (physical distribution), where I will pay a little extra for full color, also for the full bleed (the color goes to the edge of the paper and is then cut to size), extra bit for folding (if it needs to be folded), so on and etc.  I might pay $1.65 per piece by the time I’m done.  Less if I order in the 2500 qty range.  More if I order in the 20 qty range (much more).  But digitally, I can send out tens of thousands of copies and come nowhere near the cost of 2500 physical copies.

I admit here and now that I am overlapping my own experience dealing with digital versus physical overhead and cost, and in that experience, printing anything at all costs more than not printing.  So in my mind, how can an eBook cost the same (which I have been told before that it does) as a printed book?

I’m willing to accept that overhead for producing an eBook could be around the same, only with different built in costs that maybe I’m not seeing.  This idea has been bothering me lately.  You see, it’s entirely possibly to eliminate the costs of the physical distribution model only to replace them with new and different costs that add up to around the same thing.  Looking at my dayjob example above: I could pay $50,000 a year for an Enterprise Level marketing platform (yes, they exist) that does email, websites, print marketing, etc.  The cost of that system, while bloated and probably way more than I need, would have to be factored into the overhead costs, so much so that it might actually change the dynamic completely and make the digital distribution method more expensive versus the print model.

Which is a depressing thought.

And really doesn’t help me with the $13 eBook.

Another thing that has been bothering me, is the realization that publishers are in what I believe to be a unique situation.  Traditional publishing has gone in cycles.  Hardcover comes out first.  Could be on the market for a year, making publisher and author money, before the paperback comes out.  Some people buy the hardcover, others will wait for the paperback.  Today, a hardcover has a retail price of $30 on it, give or take.  The paperback $8, give or take.  Rising in popularity has been the trade paperback, which falls in-between hardcover and paperback in size and in cost, usually between $12 – $16.

The eBook effectively breaks this cycle.  People with eReaders want to be able to read the book when it comes out (the same time the hardcover is released).  They don’t want to wait a year.  Or a day.  They want it now.  That’s part of the whole digital distribution revolution – instant gratification.  Want a song now?  Download it.  Want to watch the tv show you missed last night?  Stream it.  Movies too.

This forces publishers to compete against themselves.  Think about that for a second.  A hardcover doesn’t compete against the paperback.  They come out at different times.  Most of the people who will buy the hardcover already have by the time the paperback comes out.  If they released them at the same time, I’m sure they would lose a lot of hardcover sales because who doesn’t want to save money when they can?

Now, the publishers have a problem.  That $30 hardcover will get sold at a discount when it’s first released, maybe another discount for club members at their local bookstore, or on Amazon, so you might pay around $20 for it.  Overhead/cost is figured in, profit is made, everything is good.  But if the eBook is released at the same time at a price point of only $9.99, that might encourage people to get an eReader or software for their computer/laptop to save $10, which cuts into the profits on the hardcovers.

If paperback readers demanded that the paperback be released at the same time as the hardcover, what do you think publishers would do?  Give in?  I don’t think so.

Unique situation.  Two competing products.  Two overhead/cost/profit structures on the market at the same time leading me to pay $13 for an eBook copy of Raylan.

Ugh?

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In episode 100 of the Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome J.C. Hutchins and Chuck Wendig on to talk about Transmedia.

About J.C: 

J.C. Hutchins is an award-winning fiction and nonfiction storyteller, with 15 years of professional writing experience. His two novels – 7th Son: Descent and Personal Effects: Dark Art — were published in 2009 by St. Martin’s Press.

About Chuck:

Chuck Wendig is equal parts novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He is the author of the novels DOUBLE DEAD, BLACKBIRDS, and MOCKINGBIRD. In addition, he’s got a metric boatload of writing-related e-books available, including the popular 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with wife, dog, and newborn progeny

About Transmedia:

“Transmediation” can refer to the process though which individuals select and translate data to represent it in another media forms. It may utilize more than one media form. All the components of a transmediated work are interlinked with each other to form the whole network. Therefore, transmediated works are closely linked to semiotics and technology in the context of digital media.

Links:

• J.C. Hutchins
• J.C. on Twitter
• Chuck Wendig
• Chuck on Twitter
• Patrick on Twitter
• John on Twitter

© 2012 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This episode features original music by John Anealio

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When last we left Liam Kelly, the slow revelation of who and what he was had left him if not in a happy place, at least a relatively stable place. True, he had lost much in discovering his true heritage, lost his wife, lost friends, lost (or should we say, walked away) from his place as a wheelman for the Irish Republican Army.  Heavy costs, and the costs are not done yet.  However, some basic knowledge of what he is and what his nature is, in Celtic tradition, what has been gained for such a heavy cost. Even better, a cold peace might yet be forged between the Church and the Fey.

The question is, what is done with such knowledge and such a cold peace, especially in the powder keg of a Northern Ireland where the overt war of the IRA versus the British is paralleled by the three way conflict between the Fey, the Fallen and the Church?

Such is the matter of And Blue Skies from Pain, the second Of the Fey and the Fallen novel by Stina Leicht, on the heels of her debut novel Of Blood and Honey (Reviewed by me on the Functional Nerds here: ) . Liam continues to explore and learn who and what he is, as well as his place amongst the Fey.  The Fey in turn want to take the measure of this half-breed puca and test his mettle. The Church wants to determine once and for all if the Fey (that is to say, Liam) is a demon or not.  The Fallen have their own plans, and are not well inclined to Liam after his role in disrupting their plans.  And of course, we still are in Northern Ireland during the troubles, and if you think the best wheelman the IRA has ever seen is going to be allowed to walk away forever, you have another thought coming.

There’s lots to like in And Blue Skies from Pain, and, as it so happens, they are emphasized by the contrast to the first novel, rather than the continuations.  The first novel, in many stretches, a historical novel with only the thinnest overlays of magic.  It was a gritty and inescapably realistic and fully in-focus look at what life in the 1970’s in Northern Ireland is like, from Bloody Sunday to the horrors of prison.

To continue to use the  photography metaphor, in And Blue Skies by Pain opens up the aperture of the camera, and allows the mise en scene of Northern Ireland to blur a bit. The shorter time frame of And Blue Skies from Pain allows the author, confident that the reader has a firm sense of the place, to focus on other things.  Like, for example, Liam’s Fey family, a glimpse at the otherworld of the Fey, and a more comprehensive look at the Church and their own operations in this area as well. In addition to being a lab-rat for the Church as they try to determine what he really is,  Liam explores what it means to be a puca (including a truly cool set-piece where Liam puts his abilities all together), and learns that the Fey, including a half-breed like himself,  have definite and distinct weaknesses and vulnerabilities as well as strengths.

The writing is again top-notch, and the development of Liam as a character, especially his Fey side, make the novel for me. And yes, if you are afraid that there wouldn’t be one, there is a wonderful set-piece car chase/run with Liam behind the wheel. I found myself wishing I had a copy of the old game Midtown Madness after I finished reading the passage. And if I had been thinking before the sequence that Northern Ireland was *too* blurred in bokeh, the sequence certainly put that notion to bed.

A few of the things I wasn’t sold on in the first novel reappear here, but, paradoxically, they appear to have been sold off a bit better here. I might have to revisit in my mind some of the criticisms I had about the first novel, or consider the pair of novels as a whole in regards to Liam’s character and motivations.  In addition to those things, there is plenty from the first novel that is carried forward from the first novel, as Liam faces fallout from his actions and things that have happened to him.  I do think that this so enriches the text that reading And Blue Skies from Pain without having read its predecessor won’t work very well. Such a reader would be missing out on a lot.

The clarification on how the Church works does also deepen the first novel, as well.  And, a real sense of the motivations and the nature of the Fallen given here helps enrich the otherworldly aspects of this universe further. I’ve read a few novels in my time where the modern church (or relatively modern, 30 years ago here) deals with supernatural entities as adversaries and rivals. Leicht stands head and shoulders above most of those counterparts in making the conflict, concerns, motivations and actions realistic.

Things that I think could have been improved? Well, there are a few minor characters that tantalizingly appear but dance away from the narrative that I would have loved to have seen more of, or take a greater role than they do. Its not precisely that the author makes a promise that they will have a role in the denouement, but I was hoping it was such.  Also, there is a resolution of a seemingly important plotline that seems to end in a bit of a wet firecracker, abruptly, and to this reader, perhaps too soon in the context of the rest of the narrative.

Overall, though, in  And Blue Skies from Pain Leicht shows that she can tune down the historical aspects of her work, and successfully turn up the fantastic elements, and still keep the top-notch writing I’ve now come to expect from her.  Given the very pointed and violent politics of the IRA in the 1980’s, and given the ending, I expect that Leicht is unlikely to continue Liam’s story in Northern Ireland in a linearily temporal fashion. Whether she brings Liam to the future in her next book, or turns her hand to something else, Leicht has firmly put herself on my radar to pay attention to.  Once you read And Blue Skies from Pain (and Of Blood and Honey of course if you haven’t), I bet that you will agree with me.

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Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel

Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Publication date: 4/24/2012
ISBN-10: 1937007502

Official Description:

Sylvie Lightner is a P.I. specializing in the unusual—in a world where magic is real, and Hell is just around the corner.

After escaping secret government cells and destroying a Miami landmark, Sylvie’s trying to lay low—something that gets easier when a magical force starts taking out her enemies. But these magical attacks are a risk to bystanders, and Sylvie can’t let that slide.

When the war between the government and the magical world threatens the three people closest to her—her assistant, her sister, and her lover—Sylvie has no choice but to get involved with hidden powers bent on shaping the world to their liking. Now, with death and disaster on the horizon, even if Sylvie wins, things will never be the same.

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In episode 99 of the Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick Hester and John Anealio welcome Brad Torgersen, Jean Johnson and Bryan Thomas Schmidt to discuss the Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 anthology.

About Brad:

Brad R. Torgersen is a healthcare computer geek by day, a United States Army Reserve Warrant Officer on the weekends, and a science fiction writer at night. He was won the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future award, the Analog magazine AnLab readers choice award, and is currently nominated for the Nebula award, the Hugo award, and the Campbell award.

About Jean:

Jean Johnson is the author of several national bestselling novels ranging from military science fiction to fantasy romance, and was recently nominated for the Philip K Dick award for Best Outstanding Science Fiction of 2011 for her military scifi novel A Soldier’s Duty.

About Bryan:

Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of The Worker Prince, The Returning, 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Jokes For Kids and The North Star Serial Part 1. His first anthology as editor, Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 Just released from Flying Pen Press and is headlined by Mike Resnick and Jean Johnson. He also hosts #sffwrtcht on Twitter and various blogs and can be found online via Facebook, Twitter, or his website www.bryanthomasschmidt.net

Links:

• Brad Torgersen (website)
• Brad on Facebook
• Jean Johnson (website)
• Jean on Twitter
• Bryan Thomas Schmidt (website)
• Bryan on Twitter
• Space Battles Anthology (preorder)
• Patrick on Twitter
• John on Twitter

© 2012 Patrick Hester and John Anealio

This episode features original music by John Anealio

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Songs of the Earth

Book Review: Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper.

Gair has been keeping a secret. Although he a good warrior for the Church, he has a talent for magic that the Church decries as witchcraft. It comes as a terrible song that he cannot stop hearing, and when it manifests too strongly, the magic manifests uncontrollably, and visibly. Magic. Witchcraft.

With his secret revealed, the law and doctrines straight from the holy book of the Church he serves are clear: Suffer not a witch to life. Witches are to be killed, with fire. A strange intervention gets his sentence commuted to exile, but elements of the church, led by a witchfinder, are not content to let Gair just walk away.  And it soon becomes clear there are others interested in Gair and his burgeoning abilities. Parties Interested enough to follow his journey and education as well.  Can even a secret society devoted to magic protect and allow Gair to grow into his abilities in time to stop the troubles ahead and save those he cares about?

Such is the matter of Songs of the Earth, a debut novel from British author Elspeth Cooper.

In addition to Gair’s story, Songs of the Earth revolves around a couple of other plotlines, most notably intrigue and politics within the Church itself, as signs and portents are convincing an elderly statesman of the church that the church’s dogma just might possibly be wrong.  This as younger hard-line elements of the church are looking for new leadership.

And did I mention there is an unconventional (by epic fantasy standards anyway) romance, and intimations that there is a much bigger threat on the Weimer Stakes score than the coming of age of a magic user, a militant church’s internal politics and a witchfinder’s Javert-like quest to find Gair?

Most of Songs of the Earth is from Gair’s POV, with breaking away to the church intrigue, and a couple of other minor POV’s. Thus, the book rises and falls on the strength of his story and how engaged I was with it. But frankly, in many cases, I found the non-Gair elements more compelling in many instances than Gair’s himself. I don’t know why, but when the action and point of view broke away from him, in many ways the book seemed to gain strength and interest for me when it did.

The writing is adequate but not scintillating for me. There were instances where a bit of description was a deft touch and well done, but for the most part, it wasn’t magical.  I admit that her description of the action and combat scenes, and especially how she handles the description of the Song were well done. But the writing of many other scenes did not come alive for me, or didn’t come alive as much as it should have, as the author seemed to be reaching for.

As far as plotting, again, I think the author’s reveals were a little too parsimoniously parceled out.  We discover that Gair has a rare sub-talent with the Song with no warning, suddenly and with little build up.  Some more foreshadowing of that would have more appreciated by me as a reader. We also learn some key facets about other, minor characters relatively late in the book. While the twists make some facets of their personality, motivations and actions clearer and more logical, I think the reveals could have been better handled. I do admit that tedium did occur in a few stretches of the book. It never was to the point where I stopped reading, but I did notice it.

The setting isn’t entirely original, especially given some of the innovative fantasy I’ve been reading lately. Songs of the Earth was a return to well-explored territory, in terms of the matter and inspirations.  The parallels between the church and a militant medieval catholic church are obvious and not precisely innovative. I understand the author is not a cartographile and doesn’t care overmuch for maps, but I would have liked one for the book, to anchor a sense of place. But even if its bog-standard in many respects, aesthetically it came off well enough.

What this book reminds me of in many ways is another debut author I’ve read recently, and that’s Peter Orullian.  Most of the basic details are completely different of course, but in many ways I felt the same way about The Unremembered as I did about Songs of The Earth and I would put them in the same weight class. Potential, glimmerings of something really special, but in the execution, found frustratingly lacking to this reader.

I am going to use a photographic metaphor to sum up Songs of the Earth, and please forgive my digression for doing so.  In a real sense, if the Functional Nerds were to have a Photography Nerd, it would be me.

Think of Songs of the Earth in terms of a photo.  Many of the components of the image are there or can be seen. Clear subject, even if not a unique one. Good lines and angles and composition of the photo.  Maybe a couple of stray elements that could have been cropped out or recomposed better, but nothing terribly serious. However, in the processing of the image, the image has come off as extremely flat, without enough definition and contrast to make the colors pop. Or, alternatively a circular polarizer should have been used in the taking of the image to get crisper and deeper tones from the sky and the subject.

I do think there is potential here for the author’s future work. But as such, right now, the author has plenty of room to grow and develop and I hope does so. I’d like to read what she writes with some more experience and developed skill under her belt.

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Magic Without Mercy: An Allie Beckstrom Novel

Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Roc; Original edition (April 3, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0451464486

Official Description:

Allison Beckstrom’s talent for tracking spells has put her up against some of the darkest elements in the world of magic. But she’s never faced anything like this.

Magic itself has been poisoned, and Allie’s undead father may have left the only cure in the hands of a madman. Hunted by the Authority—the secret council who enforces the laws–wanted by the police, and unable to use magic, she’s got to find the cure before the sickness spreads beyond any power to stop it.

But when a death magic user seeks to destroy the only thing that can heal magic, Allie and her fellow renegades must stand and fight to defend the innocent and save all magic…

About the Author: Devon Monk has one husband, two sons, and a dog named Mojo. She has sold over fifty short stories to fantasy, science fiction, horror, humor, and young adult magazines and anthologies. Her stories have been published in five countries and included in a Year’s Best Fantasy collection. When not writing, Devon is either knitting, remodeling the house-that-was-once-a-barn, or hosting a family celebration.

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“The work is challenging, the public is hostile, and the monsters are hungry, but the MMD crew has science, teamwork … and a secret weapon on their side. Together, they can save Japan, and the universe!” – from the back cover

Hiroshi Yamamoto’s novel, about an alternate history where all of those rubber suit monster movies are actually based on real events, was published in Japanese in 2007, but the English translation (by Nathan Collins) just hit the shelves last month. MM9: Monster Magnitude is about a low-budget government agency trying to handle the problem of  keeping each monster incursion from becoming a natural disaster.

The Meteorological Agency Monsterological Measures Department (MMD for short) is made up of a mix of field agents, scientists, and bureaucrats. Their job is to track and eliminate (if necessary) kaiju*, which range in size and are rated on the level of damage they could produce. There’s an adorable nod to the Fujita scale**, and some theories about why there are mythological creatures wandering around in the first place. Most of the book, however, is dedicated to following the MMD as they do their job. They’re not 100% successful in keeping the monsters from reaching the shores of Japan, though they frequently are. This leads to another kind of problem: when you fail, the government and your people blame you, and when you succeed most people don’t even know they were in danger.

In addition to the monsters, the lack of funding, and the public unhappiness, the MMD also has to deal with working with the various military agencies and, oh yes, the media. There are also the yokai, the things which shouldn’t be but we all know exist. They’re mostly harmless, and cover things like talking animals and friendly spirits. Some of the yokai can even masquerade as human, but there are so few of them that it doesn’t make much of an impact on the general population. At least, until they decide that they have a personal stake in whether the kaiju get wiped out.

There are a lot of pop culture references and in-jokes in this book. There are so many bits that I want to share but can’t without spoiling the book for you. I loved all of the little “Oh, yes! I know that!” moments in the novel. Yamamoto clearly knows his monster movies, both the Japanese and US classics, and treats them as historical occurrences. He mixes in physics, philosophy, and old legends, to come up with a framework in which all of these crazy monsters could actually make sense. His characters take their jobs very seriously, and the reality of a kaiju world is never as campy as the movies make it out to be. It’s dangerous, scary, and aggressively enthusiastic!

The interaction between the male and female characters was refreshingly modern. There are many references in the dialogue to the Japanese cultural ideas of what women should be and what they’re capable of (which is sadly still skewed toward an old-fashioned, male-dominated society) but Yamamoto  doesn’t let his women simply bow and wait to be rescued by a man. The female characters are smart, capable, and frequently it’s their ideas or actions which save the day. Japanese culture is pushing its way into a more equal future, and he’s letting his fiction both reflect and influence that.

I had so much fun reading this novel. There were a few lines that felt clunky but overall both the writing was light and enjoyable to read, which to me suggests that the translation was very good. The English trade paperback, published by Haikasoru, is 251 pages long, with open-space page setting, so I finished it off in a few hours on a slow afternoon. I strongly recommend it to anyone who loved Godzilla, Ultraman, or THEM! You won’t be disappointed.

*which translates loosely as “strange beast”

** The Fujita scale was created by a Japanese scientist, working with the NSSFC (National Severe Storm Forecast Center) in the United states, to calculate the intensity of tornadoes and the amount of damage caused by one. The MM scale in Yamamoto’s novel is created by an American scientist working in Japan to calculate the potential damage of a monster attack.

Note: The book was adapted into a live-action television show in Japan. Check out the website here. It’s available on DVD and in iTunes.

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Devil's Punch: A Corine Solomon Novel

Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Roc; Original edition (April 3, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0451464494

Official Description:

The power swelled inside me, burning, hurting, but I let it center me. Pain means I’m still here, fighting. I envisioned it swelling in my hand in a seething rush, gathering, gathering, and then I sent it out on my resolve like a dark and winged thing riding the magickal wind.

As a handler, Corine Solomon can touch any object and learn its history. Her power is a gift, but one that’s thrown her life off track. The magical inheritance she received from her mother is dangerously powerful, and Corine has managed to mark herself as a black witch by dealing with demons to solve her problems.

Back home, Corine is trying to rebuild her pawnshop and her life with her ex Chance, despite the target on her back. But when the demons she provoked kidnap her best friend in retaliation, Corine puts everything on hold to save her. It’s undoubtedly a trap, but Corine would do anything to save those she loves, even if it means sacrificing herself…

About the Author: In her life, Ann Aguirre has been a clown, a clerk, a voice actress, and savior of stray kittens, not necessarily in that order. She grew up in a yellow house across from a cornfield, but now she lives in sunny Mexico with her husband and two adorable children who sometimes do as they are told.