My life in books

The Dyke and the Dybbuk, Ellen Galford

I’m somewhat at a loss to describe this book, other than to say that it’s a hilarious and brilliant feminist romp through Orthodox Judaic tradition and contemporary British lesbian culture. The title characters – Rainbow Rosenblum, London taxi-driver, alternative press film critic, and unmarried niece in a family full of matchmaking aunts; and Kokos, a dybbuk recently freed by a stroke of lightning from the tree she was sealed inside for two hundred years by the incantations of a famous rabbi – are brought together because it is Kokos’ long-delayed assignment to fulfil a curse on Rainbow’s maternal line onto the 33rd generation, something she must carry out or face downsizing in a truly disturbing corporate version of Hell.

It’s really, really funny. Really. Funny.

Minion, L. A. Banks

I must confess to being deeply disappointed by this book. So much of today's urban fantasy is being written by white women, about white heroines, that I really wanted to enjoy an urban fantasy about a black heroine, by a black writer.

Unfortunately, I found Minion to be overly derivative, unnecessarily complicated, slow-moving and poorly plotted, and, what I actually found most jarring of all, annoyingly inaccurate in its attempts to give the ornate edifice of its mythology an occult underpinning.

See, there are master Vampires who occupy the seventh level of Hell, and lesser vampires who hang around in the lower levels, except when they hang out on earth (at one point, I thought someone was describing a D&D adventure), and there are only so many lines, one for each continent. And then there's the Guardians, who are empowered by all the lovely forces of light, and come in all the rainbow colours of the races and faiths of the earth, and there are always 144,000 of them (a tribute to the original 12 tribes, but whether that's for the 12 Tribes of Israel or for some idea about 12 tribes of humanity I'm not sure) and they protect sacred texts and do good deeds and fight vampires and other nasties and whenever a super-duper vampire slayer is about to be born, they try to find him or her (at least there's some gender parity here) and protect and teach the slayer until he or she is ready to complete the change and kick mega-vampire ass.

But this time, Damali Richards, the slayer, or Neteru, is a super special "millennium bridge" female, who was conceived in one millennium and will come to power in another. To make her even more special, her father was a cleric who hunted vampires until he was seduced and turned by one, and her mother was touched but not turned by the same vamp while pregnant with Damali. And there's some other stuff having to do with mystical triangles in the sky that haven't been seen for 3,000 years and the slayer's mama having been an innocent who unknowingly cast a revenge spell over the buried coffin of a master vampire who then supernaturally mated with the vengeance demon to create a new breed of super special demonised vampires that are now running loose and killing both the guardians surrounding Damali and the family and "business associates" of her childhood boyfriend and gangland leader Carlos, who now owns a major night club and runs drugs and a prostitution ring.

Oh, and Fallon Nuit, the master vampire who killed her daddy, is trying to seduce Damali in her dreams, because a Neteru can somehow, if properly seduced by a vampire at just the right time when she's begun to mature but hasn't come fully into her power, become pregnant with a daywalker, a vampire who is invulnerable to light. Naturally Damali hasn't told any of her teacher/guide/protector/fellow warriors of light about this, in part because her mentor hasn't told her that all the master vampires within psychic range of her would be compelled to do this, even one the time to try and get her pregnant is passed, because a mature Neteru gives off psychic pheromones that make vamps of the opposite sex go crazy trying to turn him/her... and maybe I should just stop now, even though I haven't even got to the point where the rogue master vamp Fallon Nuit owns one of the biggest urban music recording and promoting companies in the world and he's planning simultaneous concerts in five cities that will form a pentagram over the world and... do something creepy, I'm sure.

Now I'll admit that mob and gang-related crime is not something I tend to enjoy reading, and Banks situates the war between the vampires and the Warriors of Light in the interface between producers and creators of urban music and performance art and various gangs based on ethnic membership (black, Latino, Asian and Russian gangs are referenced at various points, and many of them work for Fallon Nuit). Hell, I didn't even enjoy Mario Puzo's The Godfather, one of the classics of the criminal association genre. So I start out struggling with the setting. But I could have dealt with that.

However, Banks has taken bits and pieces from almost every variation on the vampire story that I know of, from European, Chinese and African folk traditions though the early literary imaginings such as Dracula and Lord Ruthven, to modern media treatments from Anne Rice to Buffy, many of them not ordinarily compatible, and shoved them together with some strange mixture of Christian and New Age spiritualism (and some very dicey astrology), and tried to make a coherent mythos. It doesn't work, and it's way too complicated to permit the suspension of disbelief, For me anyway. Come to think of it, it's not all that crazier than the Book of Revelations, and lots of people manage to suspend reason as well as disbelief long enough to swallow that.

The structure reminded me of a bad police procedural, only instead of the cops going back to the same witnesses over and over again each time one of them changes his or her story (Cold Case is one of the worst of the current lot in this regard, I find), the Warriors themselves keep going back to their wisewoman/seer, Marlene, everything something new happens, only to find that she knew about it all along but couldn't tell them because the time was not right, and even though she's telling them something now, there's still shit she's not sharing because the time still isn't right. Like warning Damali to watch out for vampires invading her dreams.

There really wasn't much plot for the first nine-tenths of the book, just exposition of the complicated mythos and setting and the backstories of the characters, much of the former extracted slowly and painfully from the seer Marlene. The characters talk a lot, and have lots of internal monologues, and that actually assists the one good thing I found about the book - one does get a good sense of the characters, their stories, their motivations. And I liked many of those characters, especially Damali. She's a young woman on the verge of a terrifying destiny, unsure and over-confident by turns, eager to do what she's been trained to do but at the same time, rebellious and loning to be like every other young woman who gets to go hang out with her friends at clubs and meet boys.

If someone out there could assure me that Banks manages to tone down the overblown and ritualistic origin stories and slayer mythology and just tell a story, either in the later books of the Vampire huntress series, or in any of her other urban fantasy books, I'd be willing to try her stuff again, just on the basis of the strong characterisation - because all of us need to be reading more books about strong women of colour, and that's one thing that Damali surely is.

But they've got to be better written than this.

Night Child, Jes Battiss

I have to admit, I’m picky about my urban fantasy. Two of my favourite urban fantasy writers are Tanya Huff and Mercedes Lackey – Huff’s Blood books were among the first urban fantasy I read, and I also like her Smoke trilogy and her Keeper novels. Lackey’s Tregarde mysteries and her series of novels featuring Bard Eric Banyon are also favourites. I used to like the Anita Blake novels before they became all about how many different supernatural species you can squeeze into one BDSM play party. And I think R.A. Macavoy’s Twisting the Rope is one of the best urban fantasies ever written.

The thread here is, broadly speaking, the detective story format. I read classic detective novels (Conan Doyle, Sayers, Christie, Marsh to name a few of my favourite authors over the years), I watch a fair selection of police procedurals on TV, particularly the ones focusing on forensics, and I like urban fantasy that involves paranormal beings and abilities in a crime-solving format.

Which is why I was so interested when I happened across the author’s website and read the background for his first novel, Night Child, featuring occult special investigator Tess Corday, who works out of Vancouver’s Mystical. The premise is that, unbeknownst to most of us, all sorts of paranormal beings live around us, and like us, some of them are criminals. So naturally, also unbeknownst to us, there is a secret police organisation dedicated to solving crimes involving paranormal creatures when they impinge on the world of ordinary humans.

The biggest plus for me was the abundance of female characters on all sides of the investigation. Tess Corday is an interesting protagonist in that she isn’t always super-strong or super-right, and she has a backstory that is only partly unravelled by the end of this, the first book in a planned series (Battis was working on the third book in the series as of the last interview I read).

One of the biggest weaknesses was that the complex histories of the various groups of paranormal beings, and the nature and origins of the relationships between human and paranormal species, communities and organisations wasn’t as clearly explained as I would have liked, so that at times I was a bit lost as to exactly what was happening.

I also found myself a little disappointed in one respect. The author makes a point in his forward to the book that one of his goals in writing this novel – and, one hopes, a number of sequels – is to write positively about queer characters in an urban fantasy setting. After making such a point, I was disappointed to find that the only obvious recurring queer character so far is the female protagonist’s sidekick. Going back to Huff and Lackey, both of these genre writers and others have been writing positive, openly queer characters – leads as well as secondaries – in their novels for 20 years now. Yes, there’s plenty of room for more, but in that context, it hardly seems appropriate for the author to present the novel as something different or new for its treatment of queer characters.

Still, I enjoyed the mystery and the crime solving, and I do look forward to reading more of the occult forensic adventures of Tess Corday.

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Two more volumes in Mercedes Lackey's Bedlam's Bard series, both co-authored with Rosemary Edghill:

Mad Maudlin
Music to My Sorrow

Two new installments in the tale of Eric Banyon, modern day Bard, friend to elves of the Bright Court, associate of Guardians, and defender of the right against sundry otherworldly nasties. Actually, these two books are rather more closely linked than some others in the series, as relationships highlighted in the first book are crucial plot points in the second.

As is true of many of her novels, and particularly those dealing with elves, much of the narrative hinges on developments surrounded abused children, in this case, three New York street-kids (Lackey has re-interpreted the traditional stories about elves stealing human children to turn elves into protectors of abused children, who are drawn to help, and when necessary, rescue and foster Underhill, children without caring adults to raise them). In an interesting turn on her usual trope, one of the runaways is an elven prince, heir to a lord of the Dark or Unseleighe Court who would much rather dwindle into a coma from overdosing on caffeine (poison to Lackey's elves) and living in a city of metal (also poisonous to elves) than claim his inheritance. The other children are also, each in their own way, rather out of the ordinary in terms of abilities that most humans lack. To top it all off, a ghastly figure known as Bloody Mary is haunting the streets of NYC, striking terror into the hearts and minds of the kids on the street. Naturally, Eric is soon drawn into the mix, only to find that his life is in for some major changes when he learns the identity of one of the two human runaways, and it is the particularly unwholesome family situation of the other human street-kid that fuels the plot for the second of these novels.

Fans of Lackey's urban fantasy adventures should find exactly what they have come to expect, and enjoy every minute of it.


Bedlam’s Edge,, edited by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill, is a collection of short stories set in the universe Lackey has created for her urban (and historical) fantasies of elves and their interactions with humans. Lackey and Edghill are contributors, as are a number of Lackey's other collaborators in this and other fantasy universes, including Roberta Geillis, Dave Freer, Eric Flint, India Edghill, and Ellen Guon. and other fantasy writers. Lots of fun.

I have been reading a lot of novels in series lately. I like series. I love plots that go on for volumes and volumes and characters that grow and change and themes that are developed layer upon layer.

Lately, I have begun reading, or completed reading, or read a few more books in the middle of, the following series. All of these series, obviously, are ones that I have or am enjoying highly, because if I weren't, why on earth would I have read more than the first volume?


The Miles Korkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance

What is there not to love about a runty little hero with a brittle bone disability, a brilliant mind and a gift for profound deviousness and intrigue who's trying to face down a birth culture in which physical prowess and manliness is everything, while making a name for himself as a mercenary captain and concealing his mission as an interstellar intelligence agent?

I read the first novels in this series a long time ago, when they first came out, and then a couple of years back, when I happened to notice just how many more of them Bujold had written, I re-read the older ones and am now in the process of reading the neweer ones. Bujold's is smart, and often funny milsf adventure with some very nice exploration of both gender politics and disability issues, and some very nice political intrigue.


The Diana Tregarde Mysteries, by Mercedes Lackey
Children of the Night
Jinx High

Completing my re-read of this urban fantasy series, which alas has only three volumes. Diana Teegarde is a Guardian, a person who is gifted with strong supernatural and/or psychic gifts and the ability to perform magic, and has accepted the responsibility to use these gifts to oppose those - both human and inhuman - who would use such powers for evil.

As with many of Lackey's novels, there's a distinct pagan-friendly and queer-positive vibe, a strong female protagonist, children at risk and some clearly defined heroes and villians.


The Jenny Casey trilogy by Elizabeth Bear
Hammered
Scardown
Worldwired

Ok, if you like hard sf, strong female protagonists, cyberpunk (although Bear has argued that it is actually post-cyberpunk), geopolitical sf, or just plain good writing with great characters and complex, action-filled plots about important human issues, go read Bear's novels about Master Warrant Officer Genevieve Casey. If you want some details first, you can find them at Elizabeth Bear's website.

I was enthralled by these books - quite literally, I read them one after another over the course of about two days. Compelling, thought-provoking, and exciting reading.


The Dragon Temple Trilogy, by Janine Cross
Touched by Venom
Shadowed by Wings
Forged by Fire

These are not easy books to read. I'll give you that warning right now. Over the course of these three novels, the young female protagonist - who is only a child when the books begin - experiences just about every kind of abuse you can imagine, as a child, as a female, as a slave, as a political prisoner, as a gender rebel, as a racial minority, as a member of an oppressed socio-economic class, as an addict, as an enforced victim/participant of a religious cult, as a recruit in a brutal quasi-military training program, and probably as several more identities that are traditionally targets of institutionalised as well as individual abuse that I hadn't noticed.

Some people have dismissed these works as violent pornography, others have seen them as a deeply disturbing dystopia with a profound feminist and anti-oppression stance. I'm defintely in the latter camp on this - sometimes it's important to remember just how bad things not just can be, but are for people who are not privileged (as I imagine many of the readers of this blog are, at least in some ways).

There is a great review by Liz Henry up at Strange Horizons that not only looks at the first book in the series from a feminist and anti-oppression perspective, but also examines the vastly divergeant opinions people have voiced about the book.


The Company Novels, by Kage Baker
Sky Coyote
Mendoza in Hollywood
The Graveyard Game

I read the first volume in the series, In the Garden of Iden, earlier this year, and was very much intrigued with the set-up - time-travelling for profit, with entreprenuers from the future conscripting orphans throughout history to become immortal collectors of vanished artworks, cultural histories, extinct specimens, and all sort of other things worth saving - if someone is going to profit by it. It was claer from the very first that there were some unanswered questions about the whole enterprise, and as the series has continued, that's proving to be even truer than I'd expected.

The key continuing characters - Mendoza, saved from the Spanish Inquisition as a child, and Joseph, her recruiter, himself rescued from a massacre of his family group in 20,000 BCE by Budu, an even older Immortal of whom much is heard but little is seen in the books I have read so far - find themselves and their associates withing the Company increasing confronted by mysteries about who really runs the Company, the source of the technology that made both time travel and their own immortality possible, the real motives of the increasing large number of factions associated with the Company, its operatives and controllers, the growing number of disapperaing immortals, and most mysterious of all, what happens after 2355 - the year in which all communications from the future to the operatives and immortals stationed all throughout human history (and pre-history) cease.

Political intrigue on a truly grand scale. I'm loving this series.

The Wyrdsmiths are, according to their blog profile, “a group of pro and semi-pro writers in Minneapolis & St. Paul, MN, with over 20 novels and 100 short stories published, collectively. The Wyrdsmiths blog on writing, publishing, and genre, particularly Science Fiction and Fantasy.”

I found the group’s website because two of my favourite authors (out of, admittedly, a longish list of favourite authors), Eleanor Arnason and Lyda Morehouse, are members of Wyrdsmiths. And once I knew the this writers' collective had published both a chapbook and a full anthology of short stories by its members, and that each of these collections contained stories by both Arnason and Morehouse, well, I simply had to get them.

Tales from the Black Dog: A Wyrdsmiths Chapbook (ed.) William G. Henry
New Wyrd: A Wyrdsmiths Anthology (ed.) William G. Henry
(There's a link on the website to order New Wyrd; email wyrdsmiths@gmail.com to order Tales from the Black Dog)

Both collections were a real delight for me. It was one of those exciting moments when you buy an anthology because you know there are one or two stories in it from authors whose work you expect to enjoy, and find out that every single piece speaks to you on some level.

The two books arrived at the same time, and I read them both one after the other, so instead of discussing the stories in the two collections separately, I’m combining both in one – because I assure you, you will want to read them both. Works from Tales from the Black Dog are indicated with TFBD, and those from New Wyrd with NW. Both contain a mixture of stand-alone short stories (even though these may be part of a series, or set in a universe shared with other works by that author) and excerpts from larger works in progress or seeking publication.


The Short Stories

“The Ballad of the Pterodactyl Rose” (TFBD), by H. Courrages LeBlanc
This is a light, lyrically written, and very funny space pirate story. Just perfect for every girl or boy who ever wanted to be a pirate, and since that describes me to the core, I loved it.

“How Many Horses” (NW), by H. Courrages LeBlanc
A more serious and thoughtful piece, this story, like most fairy tales, this examines some universal truths – in this case, truths about power, corruption, and the human heart – in the guise of a simple story of magic. LeBlanc has a real gift for the language and rhythms of ritual story-telling, which is displayed very effectively and very differently in the two stories in these collections.

“Tutivillus” (TFBD), by Lyda Morehouse
One of the things that I love about Morehouse’s work is that she tackles issues ingrained in our culture by centuries of religious tradition, head-on. Often science fiction writers tend to shy away from issues arising from the real history of human spirituality and religion, while fantasy writers tend to approach these issues from the side, creating new religions that may showcase similar ideas, but lack the punch of the names and symbols we all grew up with. This stories takes all the traditional imagery of demons, sin and salvation, and gives us an evocative, moving characterisation of redemption in a way that completely inhabits and at the same time transcends traditional Christian/Catholic themes. I cried at the end. Literally.

“Jawbone of An Ass” (NW), by Lyda Morehouse
Morehouse describes this story as “a modern retelling of the story of Samson’s first wife, who slowly comes to realise the horror of knowing that she, through no fault of her own, is on the wrong side of the wrath of angels.” The history of religion is full of praise for heroes doing God’s will – but aren’t those who oppose them doing God’s will as well? Who weeps for them? This story also seems to be at a deeper level, about what religious conflicts look like from the inside, to those who believe that they really are doing the will of a god, and who believe in the necessity of martyrs, the manipulation of people into their divinely appointed roles, the impossibility of negotiation or compromise, that leads to the unending escalation on all sides.

“Shatter” (TFBD), by Kelly McCullough
This is a very strong story of grieving, guilt and personal responsibility. At the same time, it is a wonderful and original take on the standard urban fantasy where unearthly creatures lurk in alleyways and shopping malls: if the Fae are the creatures of hills and forests, why would you expect find them in cities – and once you realise that you wouldn’t, then what kind of power would you find instead? McCullogh notes that this is a story set in a universe he is returning to, and I can hardly wait to see the development of this new urban mythology.

“The Basilisk Hunter” (NW), by Kelly McCullough
This is the truly funny sequel to McCullough’s “When Jabberwocks Attack” (available online as part of the Wyrdsmiths contributions to International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day) about an unfortunate young classics student who falls under the spell of wizard turned entertainment impresario Merlin (yes, that Merlin. In his The Sword and the Stone incarnation, more or less).

“Spirit Stone” (TFBD), by Naomi Kritzer
This story, set among a semi-nomadic desert folk in a post-Mage Wars setting, where unknown and possibly dangerous objects from times long past lie in wait for the unwary, is a powerful parable about the nature and uses of power. At the same time, it raises questions about the assumptions that we may have about how best to provide freedom to those we believe to be in need of our help. Enjoyable as a simple fantasy, but with thought-provoking depths.

“Masks” (NW), by Naomi Kritzer
Set in the world of her earlier novels, Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm (which I have not yet read but now feel I must rapidly acquire and consume), this is a story about a young man who discovers the depths of betrayal that can be reached when it is necessary for otherwise decent people conceal and even deny what and who they really are in order to fit in to their society and perform their calling in life.

“Maelstrom” (TFBD), by Sean M. Murphy
The first in a proposed series of works to be set in the same universe under the name The Mendarin Evolution, this is a stand-alone “origins” story that definitely leaves one wanting to know where it goes from here. Looking at a not uncommon science fiction premise – some kind of alien influence or symbiosis that heightened humans’ mental abilities to the point where there is a kind of networking, linking or even uniting of all affected minds, the story explores some of the not-always-considered implications and consequences of the situation. Murphy’s notes about the story indicate that he will be continuing to investigate what this kind of change means in terms of the development, even the evolution, of his characters, and I’m very much looking forward to finding out where he’s taking them.

“Cloverleaf One” (NW), by Sean M. Murphy
This is a relatively light and humorous piece, though with some harrowing moments and some very interesting overtones. Set in a situation that’s all too familiar to the academics among us – the incomprehensible, unfathomable and seemingly ridiculous if not outright impossible demands of one’s thesis supervisor – this is tale of a apprentice, er, graduate student about to discover the existence of a modern alchemical brotherhood and the secrets known only to its initiates. It presents the ancient tradition of magical mastery known only to the workers of such crafts as smithing or masonry in a modern and science-fictional setting, and makes us think twice about whether there is more than one reason why things are made the way they are.

“Mammoths of the Great Plains” (TFBD), by Eleanor Arnason
Although intended as part of a larger work, this piece stands alone, so I’m including it as one of the short stories rather than one of the excerpts. This is rich work, with so many interwoven strands: respect for nature, preservation of ancient wisdoms, the need for living in harmony, the utter necessity of sensible ecological planning and conservation, the importance of storytelling as a means of conveying truths. Arnason is, to me, in much the same class of writers as Ursula K. LeGuin – her works resonate on so many levels of thought, the personal, the political, the historical, the ecological in the broadest sense, as well as being wonderful entertainments in their own right.

“Big Black Mama and Tentacle Man” (NW), Eleanor Arnason
This is just hilarious. Feminist to the core, it’s the best antidote ever created for a surfeit of hentai and overwhelming male privilege. Oh, it’s got all that other stuff I mentioned above in it, too, but you have to read carefully or you might laugh so hard you miss it the first time. Spend a few minutes savouring the introductory section before you get into the fun and you’ll see what I’m talking about.


The Excerpts

It’s harder to give a thumbnail review of an excerpt from a larger work, because you don’t always get much more than a glimpse of some key characters and themes – even though, naturally, the author is going to pick a selection that she or he hopes will both showcase and intrigue. I do know that of the three books excerpted in the collections, I’m going to want to read all of them.

From The Commission by Willian G. Henry
“Laila Ahara” (TFBD)
Here we are given a brief introduction to a potentially interesting heroine as a young girl, with a look at what one anticipates will be one of the formative periods of her youth..

“Bird of Fire” (NW)
an introduction to another female character, who appears to have had significant dealings with the Lalia Ahara’s father, and a look at an adolescent or young adult Laila herself, from that character’s viewpoint.

The writing and characterisations in both these excerpts are good. These excerpts sell the characters more than they sell the story, in that I still have little sense of what is going on or where these characters might be headed. Even so, I’m very interested in finding that out and I hope that it’s somewhere I want to follow them to.


From Kyria Zulie by Rosalind Nelson
“A Candle For the Dead” (TFBD)

This gives the reader an introduction to what would appear to be the main character of the novel, a warrior/soldier/guard of honour named Iltani. We learn something about who she is, the kind of society she lives in, and one of the issues that drives her – remorse or guilt, or perhaps fear of a haunting by the dead. There are indications of a strongly developed religious system in the novel, which is something I always find interesting. Plus, as I said, woman warrior.

“A Game of Beasts” (NW)
Another brief and intriguing glimpse of the novel’s heroine, Iltani, and of her quest and the world she lives in. Political intrigue seems to be coming into the mix, which is also something I enjoy in an sf novel. I hope someone hurries up and publishes this.


From Dust and Steel by Douglas Hulick
“An Inconvenient Corpse” (NW)
This looks to be an interesting fantasy with an ambiguous hero – think of a mob enforcer, but in one of the classic fantasy environments of deserts and tradetowns. I’d swear that if I turned the corner and looked down the next street over from the one where this novel’s action is happening, someone like the Grey Mouser or maybe Terazin the thief would by up to his or her neck in something not quite on the right side of the law. And that’s a kind of universe I like to read about.

I’m way behind on the grand project I embarked on almost a year ago, which was to actually keep an annotated record of the books I read. So, to try to get back on an even footing for the all-too-quickly-approaching New Year, here are some thumbnail sketches of some of the the science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction novels that I’ve read in recent months (actually, more like the past six months or thereabouts) and haven’t yet written about.


The World of the Fae Trilogy – Anne Bishop
Shadows and Light
The House of Gaian

I wrote briefly about the first volume in this series back at the beginning of the year. It took a while, but I have at last finished the trilogy. It’s interesting – what first interested me about the series was Bishop’s elves – the fae – and their relationship with the witches – almost all women – who are the physical and mystical bond that maintains the link between the human world and the world of the fae. However, what came to dominate my perceptions of the books as I read them was the horrifying and all-too-believable war on women that drives the storyline. Think of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, of the male-dominated society portrayed in the early books of Suzy McKee Charnas’ Holdfast Chronicles, of the utterly evil misogyny that almost destroys both elves and pagan humankind in Gael Baudino’s Strands series. In many ways, Bishop’s trilogy reminds me most of Baudino’s work, in fact, because in both, the answer to hatred and misogyny comes from the mingling of traditions, elven, pagan/wiccan, and human.


The Darker Jewels Trilogy – Anne Bishop
Daughter of the Blood
Heir to the Shadows
Queen if the Darkness

A very different setting and cast of characters from Bishop’s World of the Fae series, although it’s interesting to see that the themes of gender-based power struggles, separate but interconnected worlds or dimensions, and the discovery of lost heritages are also strong elements in the Darker Jewels series. This series is an interesting exploration of power – political power, psychic or magical power, sexual power, the power of conviction and honour, the power of love and hate. And there’s also a nice twist on the standard light=good, dark=bad iconography in a great deal of modern fiction: The devils and the undead are, as much as anyone can be, the good guys here.


The Big Over Easy - Jasper Fforde

Jack Spratt is a detective. He works the Nursery Crimes beat. His latest case: who killed Humpty Dumpty and why? Only Jasper Fforde could have written this book, and I’m glad he did. Absolutely hilarious, and full of not-so-subtle digs at the entirety of the detective genre.


Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein

After I did the “50 most influential” meme, I just couldn’t resist. I have, after all, been on a project to reread some of the science fiction I grew up with, and Heinlein is a big part of that. I’ve written elsewhere about my love-hate relationship with Heinlein, and this is one of the ones that really pushes all of those buttons. It’s a fun action story, but, and but, and but… tell me again how flogging people publicly makes for a crime-free state. And why military service is the only kind of service to the state that demonstrates one has a sense of responsibility and commitment. And why men are big infantry lugs and women are dainty ship’s pilots and in the future there are no tough ass-kicking grunts like Jenette Goldstein’s Vasquez in Aliens who can smash Bugs with the best of them.


The Puppet Masters - Robert Heinlein

This was the uncut version, although to be honest, it’s been so long since I’d read the original that I didn’t realise this until my partner pointed it out. Then it was sort of obvious – the sex wouldn’t have been quite so explicit in the early 50s when this was first published, but I’ve read so much of Heinlein’s later work, where the sex is pretty much unending, that I didn’t notice. glaurung, who actually compared the versions as part of a grad school paper on Heinlein, also tells me that the first publication had also toned down some of the elements intended to evoke the horror of being possessed, but I remember finding it chilling back in the 60s when I first read it, and it’s still chilling at that level. What I didn’t see so clearly when I first read the novel, although I’ve long since figured it out, was how the puppet masters are so openly paralleled with Russian state communism/totalitarianism. And how much this is a cold war, McCarthyist horror tale in which the communists could be anywhere, even in bed beside you, and you’d never know unless you practised unrelenting vigilance.

One thing that I had not noticed before was that for once, Heinlein’s super-competent, super-sexy, gun-toting female protagonist has a real psychology behind her. Mary, who we learn in the last chapter of the book has undergone horrifying experiences as a child including one of the more traumatic kinds of abandonment imaginable, is almost certainly overcompensating out of a form of PTSD – even if Heinlein didn’t have a clinical description of the condition available to him at the time. Which finally clears up one aspect of her behaviour that always bothered me – her about-face virtual submission to the male protagonist after he rejects her emotionally and assaults her.


Smoke and Mirrors - Tanya Huff

The second of the Tony and Fitzroy novels, though this one is somewhat Fitzroy-light. Doesn’t matter, Tony does just fine. And let me assure you, this is one killer of a haunted house story. With all the insanity of a TV location shoot thrown in for laughs. I’m really loving these books.


The Wizard of the Grove duology – Tanya Huff
Child of the Grove
The Last Wizard

I first read Child of the Grove years ago, alerted by a friend who knew Huff and had read the book in manuscript, and it was this book that made me an instant fan of Huff’s work. It’s always been an interesting duology – the first book is heroic, mythic, epic in nature, all about the wars of nations and the clashes of ancient powers, a classic good versus evil scenario, although with a greater degree of sophistication than many such. The Last Wizard is much smaller and more personal book – what is the life of the hero after the quest is over. Of course, there’s magic and adventure and all of that good high fantasy stuff, but it’s more about the last wizard herself, and what does she do now that she’s met her destiny and survived. An unexpectedly mature sequel to a fine high fantasy epic.


More to come....