My life in books

In Aliette de Bodard’s novel, In the Vanishers’ Palace, a young girl is forced by the elders if her village to offer herself to a feared dragon, in return for the dragon’s gift of healing to the daughter of the village leader. Fearful of the worst, Yên finds that the dragon, Vu Côn, wants her as a tutor to her two adopted children, Dan Thông and Dan Liên.

Vu Côn lives in a vast palace, built by a long-gone race called the Vanishers. In Yên and Vu Côn’s world, the Vanishers once ruled the world, humans and spirits such as dragons alike, with a science so advanced that it seemed the highest of magic. But the Vanishers went elsewhere in great ships, and behind them they left chaos - destructive diseases, dangerous artefacts, a world broken and need of healing. Vu Côn, in her own way, is committed to understanding the lost science of the Vanishers, focusing primarily on the horrific genetic diseases they created and unleashed, and trying to undo at least some of the damage they caused.

In a tale that owes something of its origins the the old tale of Beauty and the Beast, there is a strong but unacknowledged attraction between Yên and Vu Côn, but the latter is all too aware of the imbalance of power and shies away from Yên, indeed from all unnecessary contact with her, while Yên is conflicted by her awe and fear of the dragon, and her desire. Yên, meanwhile, learns to work with the children, and navigate the treacherous Vanishers’ palace. But great changes are waiting for all of them.

Malaysian author Zen Cho made an impressive debut with her fantasy novel The Sorcerer and the Crown, which I found delightful and engaging, and hope will have a sequel one of these days. In the meantime, I have widened my experience of Cho’s writing with her short fiction collection, Spirits Abroad.

These stories are rich with the history and traditions of Cho’s homeland, but make enough reference to Western sensibilities to be wholly relevant and meaningful to the ignorant reader such as myself, in large part because the themes, though they may be clothed in different cultural realities, are universal human experiences - love, family, a need to belong.

As the title suggests, the stories in this collection are mostly what one might class as fantasy, with some more sciencefictional settings, drawing on Malaysian traditions of supernatural beings and forces - but they are often situated in what seems to be perfectly normal situations. The collection is divided into four sections, titled Here, meaning Malaysia, There, meaning the West, Elsewhere, and Going Back.

The first story of the collection, “The First Witch of Damansara,” is a darkly humorous story about a family preparing for the funeral of their matriarch, fondly referred to as Nai Nai - who is continuing to communicate with one of her granddaughters through dreams. Nai Nai does not want to be buried where her daughters now lives, but next to her long dead husband - not because she loved him, but because it’s the proper thing to do. The task of persuading Nai Nai to be happily buried where her family lives falls to the Americanised Vivian, who is more concerned with finding the right wedding dress - traditional Malaysian, or Western white? It’s funny, and it’s heart-warming, and it’s about family and traditions and legacies that go beyond material things.

“First National Forum on the Position of Minorities in Malaysia” begins as an account of an NGO organising and opening a conference, and in the process gives the reader unfamiliar with Malaysia a sense of the diversity of peoples and religions in the country, but then it morphs into a recollection of a bittersweet interspecies love story, as the two lovers meet again for a last farewell.

“The House of Aunts” features a young girl who is also a pontianak, an undead woman similar to the western vampire. Having become a pontianak while still an adolescent, Ah Lee lives much like other young girls - she goes to school, has crushes on handsome boys, and struggles over her homework. She lives in a house of women, all pontianak, all her relatives - her grandmother, great-grandmother, and several aunts - who watch over her, give her endless advice on staying in school, going to university, maybe becoming a doctor. And they distinctly disapprove when she falls in love with a boy from school - but are ready to stand by her when she reveals her secret to him, and is rejected. This is another story that centres on the primacy and importance of family, and particularly the love and support that women can give each other. I also suspect that Cho is telling us something about what it means to be a woman of reproductive age in Malaysian society, as traditionally pontianak are created when a woman dies while pregnant or in childbirth - for one family over the course of several generations to produce so many pontianak suggests a social issue with maternal morbidity.

“One-day Travelcard for Fairyland” takes place in England, at a private college prep school in the countryside that caters to international, largely Asian, students. Hui An wanders outside the school gates one day, and accidentally stumbles, stepping into a hole in the ground and killing a sleeping fairy. The next day, the fairies arrive in full force, angry and violent, and the teachers have vanished, leaving the students with only a few words of advice on dealing with fairies.

In “Rising Lion — The Lion Bows” we meet a troupe of lion dancers living in Britain who offer a special sideline to their regular performances - they also exterminate ghosts. But on this particular occasion, they just can’t bring themselves to terminate the ghost in question - a young African boy brought to England a century or more ago to be a servant. “Seven Star Drum” is also set among the members if this lion dance troupe, and tells the story of Boris, the troupe’s founder, who was born with the ability to see ghosts and other supernatural creatures.

“The Mystery of the Suet Swain” features Sham, a tall, hawk-nosed, brilliant but socially awkward lesbian, and her only friend Belinda, both university students. Belinda has a problem - she attracts stalkers, men who mistake her friendliness for something more. But there’s something different, scary, even dangerous about her latest mystery stalker, and Sham sets out to find out who - or what - he is. And to protect Belinda from him. And yes, Sham and Belinda remind me very much of another famous literary duo, and I hope to see more stories about them.

In “Prudence and the Dragon,” medical student Prudence Ong has to deal with a besotted dragon named Zheng Yi, who wants nothing more than to take her back with him to his own dimension to be his consort. Prudence, however, isn’t really interested, especially not now, while she’s still in med school. And not when his attentions seem to be casing trouble between Prudence snd her best friend Angela. Although even when the friends become reconciled, Zheng Yi’s presence is a problem for Angela as we read in “The Perseverance of Angela’s Past Life.” But, as Angela says, “Angela wasn't going to stop hanging out with her best friend just because doing so literally split her in two.” Friendship between women means something in Cho’s stories, which is a wonderful thing to see.

“The Earth Spirit’s Favorite Anecdote” is a charming little story about the beginning of a rather unusual partnership between an earth spirit and a forest spirit - funny, but with Cho’s familiar focus on the importance of relationships, and on understanding tradition, when to observe it, and when to break it.

“Liyana” is a tragic story, one in which a great evil is done for the good of others. I suppose in a way, it reminds me of Le Guin’s “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas” - a child, in this case non-human, but precious and loved, sacrificed because there is no other way to honor a previous, willing sacrifice, or keep a family alive.

“The Four Generations of Chang E” is a story about change, about leaving the past behind and moving forward, but still being tied to what has been before, at least for a time. In this story, the first Chang E flees a desolate future, escaping to the Moon, only to find herself out of place among the Moonites. Her daughter and granddaughter are, like her, between two worlds, still tainted by their immigrant past, nit quite a part of the future. But when the fourth Chang E fulfils her mother’s dying request to be buried on Earth, she discovers that she, the fourth generation, is finally of the Moon.

“The Many Deaths of Hang Jebat” is just what it says... a series of vignettes, each of which involves a character named Hang Jebat, being killed, blocked on social media, fired... experiencing some form of physical or social annihilation. Each vignette also involves his childhood friend, Tuah - who sometimes is killed by him, and sometimes kills him. In the background, a shadowy authority figure, Mansur. The permutations of events and settings, though, show some kind of connection, and some kind of slow change in the relationship of Tuah and Hang Jebat. It’s a story to contemplate.

“The Fish Bowl” is a dark story, about a girl living in a culture of achievement, expected to do well in so many things, to be excellent, until the pressure if it drives her to erase herself to escape. It hit me very hard, partly because a friend of mine, back in school, was in the same place, and erased herself completely, finally, irrevocably. But it’s an excellent story, and at the same time a caution about demanding more of a person than they have the resources to give.

In Malaysia, they hold a festival of the Hungry Ghost. Ghosts who have died violently, or with unfulfilled longings, or otherwise still hungry for life, can return to the earth for this one month, experience old things, or new ones. In “Balik Kampung,” Lydia is a newly deceased ghost, who does not remember how she died. But she is a hungry ghost - she thinks it is because her parents were always quarreling, more focused on their own pain than her happiness. She want to go back to the place where she lived with her husband, the only time she believes she was truly happy. But even the dead must face the truth in order to move on.

There’s not one weak story in the collection, in my opinion, and Cho provides notes for each story at the end of the book to provide context and help readers with some of the more specific cultural references. The ebook version contains an excerpt from the author’s novella, “The Dangerous Life of Jade Yeo,” which quite caught my interest and is now on my “must get very soon” list.

The final volume in Marie Brennan’s Lady Trent’s memoirs recounts perhaps the most adventurous, and certainly the most fantastical, of all of the famous naturalist’s expeditions. In Within the Sanctuary of Wings, Lady Trent takes on the virtually impassable Mrtyahaima mountain range which separates Antiope - this secondary world’s version of Europe - from the Asian-inspired Yelang and its neighbouring countries, in her quest for new species of dragons.

The political situation is volatile. While full-scale hostilities have not broken out, there have been an increasing number of clashes between Scirlander and Yelangese forces around the world, and both sides are scouting their respective sides of the Mrtyahaimas, looking for ways of moving troops across the mountains and launching a formal attack.

Lady Trent is drawn into this when Thu Phim-la, formerly a scout for the Yelang army in the Mrtyahaima region, arrives at a lecture being given by Suhail in Scirland. He tells her that he has seen the remains of a hitherto unknown dragon species in the mountains, and promises to lead her to the region if she will argue the case of the Khiam Siu, a dissident movement within Yelang, who are seeking Scirland’s aid in deposing the current emperor and placing their own candidate on the throne. As it happens, the Queen of Scirland is somewhat in sympathy with the Yelangese dissidents, and after some political wrangling, the deal is struck. Scirland will support the Yelangese dissidents, in return for peace with Yelang, and as thanks for her involvement, Lady Trent will have the aid of the Scirland army, in the form of air transport - three of the zeppelin-like craft referred to as caerligers - and pilots, to transport her group into the mountains, and the guidance of Thu Phim-la, to pursue her quest in the highest mountains of the known world. Accompanying Isabella and Thu are her long-time associate Tom Wilkers, her husband Suhail, and Lieutenant Chendley, a military attache and mountaineering expert.

Naturally, things do not go well. They encounter winds that blow them off course, and are forced to land, but one of the caerligers misses the emergency landing and crashes, and must be destroyed to prevent it from falling into Yelangese hands. With only two airships, the full expedition can travel no further by air, so the army men proceed on their own covert mission, leaving Isabella and her companions to travel on to their destination on foot.

Thu leads them to a village not far from the site where he found the unusual specimen, but due to various delays, they have arrived in the wrong season for climbing into the high mountains, and are forced to wait. But eventually, they set off to climb to the point where Thu found the first specimen, and where he believes ha saw evidence of a second. The climb is perilous, but they are finally rewarded, with the discovery of the fully preserved body of a draconic species unlike anything any of them have seen before - except in the murals and other artwork depicting, it was believed, the gods of the ancient Draconean civilisation.

Before they have a chance to move the frozen remains, a massive avalanche separates the party, leaving Isabella alone, injured, and lost in the snow, not knowing if any of the others have survived. But then three of the beings long thought to be the Draconean gods rescue her from certain death and take her to their village. By the time her injuries have started to heal, winter is beginning, and even if the Draconeand were inclined to let her go - which they are not, though she is well treated - travel would be impossible.

Though she is deeply worried about the fate of her husband and companions, Isabella does what any scientist would do - she observes, collects data, and attempt to find a means if communication. A large part of the book is devoted to her experiences during the winter spent in the area that Isabella calls the Sanctuary, cared for, and guarded, by her three rescuers - Kahhe, Ruzt and Zam, sisters who are tending the yak herds belonging to their village while the other villagers spend the winter in hibernation. During this time, she learns their language, and a great deal about their ancient history, and current ways of life.

Eventually, Isabella meets the leaders of the Draconeans, and convinces them that she is not a threat to them, and they agree to let her go, knowing that eventually humans, who destroyed their ancestors, will find them. Isabella hopes to find a way to prepare humanity for the knowledge that they are not the only intelligent species on the planet, and to create a measure of sympathy toward this small community of survivors - but neither she nor the Draconean elders are confident that she can.

And of course, nothing goes according to plan. How it all works out is a triumph of many coincidences, but history often works that way, and this is a history, albeit that of an invented world. But it is a welcome conclusion, one that provides the best possible outcome for the Draconeans, and that made me very happy indeed.

And it is with this, her most challenging expedition, her greatest discovery, and her most important involvement in the politics of her world, that the memoirs of Lady Trent come to an end.

Throughout the entire series, Brennan’s message has been that while science, the quest for knowledge, can sometimes bring about unintended consequences due to the imperfect passions of human beings, it is nonetheless a vital enterprise, that the increase of knowledge is a good in itself, and it is up to us to use our knowledge wisely and justly. As Lady Trent says at the conclusion of her memoirs:

“If there is any conclusion to my tale (apart from my death, which I hope is yet a good way off), it is that the heart of it will never truly end. Although my memoirs are of course the story of my life and career, they are also a story of discovery: of curiosity, and investigation, and learning, not only regarding dragons but many other topics. I take comfort in knowing that others will carry this tale forward, continually unfolding new secrets of the world in which we live, and hopefully using that understanding more often for good than for ill.”

Voyage of the Basilisk is the third novel in Marie Brennan’s delightful series concerning the adventures of Isabella Camhurst, Lady Trent, scholar, naturalist, explorer, and student in particular of the fascinating subject of dragons. Lady Trent’s adventures take place within a secondary world that is inspired, in some very obvious ways, by nineteenth century England and Europe, and shares in both the sexist and colonial prejudices of that time, prejudices to which Lady Trent herself is a prime source of resistance.

As the novel opens, Isabella is about to embark on an extended sea voyage on the RSS Basilisk, captained by Dione Aekinitos. Her goal is to study dragons and related species in their native habitats all around the world. Travelling with her are her assistant Tom Wilkins, her young son Jacob, and Jacob’s governess, Abby Carew.

Lady Trent’s voyages take her into the Arctic, where she and Tom necropsy a sea serpent killed by the crew of the Basilisk, attempting to determine if the arctic sea serpents are of a different species than those found in tropical climates. She observes wyverns in the mountains of northern Lezhnema. And across the ocean, in Otholé, she studies the quetzalcoatl, the feathered dragons native to that continent. And in Yelang, she swims with the dragon turtles and ventures into the interior to seek out the tê lêng dragons, one of many draconic and related species known to inhabit that part of the world. In the Broken Sea, she examines komodo dragons and fire lizards.

As she recounts the events of her voyage, through to its truly magnificent and unexpected climax in a sea battle in the Broken Sea, Lady Trent often makes side comments about what the reactions to her exploits have been, often dwelling on the impropriety of many aspects of her adventures. As a woman, unmarried and often unchaperoned (the governess Abby not being the extremely adventurous type, and some of her expeditions being unsafe for her son), Lady Trent faces a great deal of rumour and scandal. Her associate Tom is assumed to be her lover, as is almost every other man she mentions in her dispatches home to the news organisation that has partly funded her world voyage. Perhaps the most scandalous alleged liaison is her growing friendship with an archaeologist she meets in Otholé, who is studying the ruins left behind by the ancient people known as the Draconiand. Suhail is Akhian, this world’s parallel to the Middle East and Muslim cultures, the speculation among those reading her dispatches - which do not quite conceal her appreciation of Suhail’s intelligence and charm - is intense.

The charm of the Lady Trent novels is their close resemblance to the journals of the extraordinary women of our own world, the Hester Stanhopes and Gertrude Bells who explored parts of the world deemed ‘exotic’ by European standards, some if them, like the imaginary Lady Trent, scientists in search of new truths, others simply wanderers with a desire to encounter different cultures - though more often than not, doing so from the perspective of presumed European superiority.

The other aspect of the Lady Trent novels that attracts me - beyond the whole ‘woman who engages in wonderfully transgressive activities like the pursuit of knowledge and a life of adventure and discovery’ thing - is the way that Brennan depicts the way that science was conducted when in its early years. The feeling of the world as an open book with so little known, and the hands-on researches that established the foundations of methods of research and deduction, hypothesis and testing, refinement and correction of earlier theories as more facts are observed. It’s a perfectly imagined look at how the pioneers of intellectual discovery did science.

Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series has been nominated for a Hugo award, and so, I checked out the first book in the series, Discount Armageddon. So far, the best thing about it is the Aeslin mice, but I’ll get to them a few paragraphs down the line.

So, this is a fairly standard urban fantasy, of the “not all monsters are really monsters” variety. The protagonist, Verity Price, is a member of a family with a mission. Once they were part of the Covenant, a secret society devoted to killing anything that isn’t human, or found within the pages if a standard zoology textbook. Though, being religious zealots of a Christian flavor, they put it as “anything that was not on the Ark.” A couple of centuries back, Verity’s ancestors turned heretic - the Covenant is big on terms like blasphemy and heresy - and instead of killing monsters, which they call cryptids, indiscriminately, they study them, try to protect, or at least stay on good terms with, the ones who are not actively harming people, and try to reason with, relocate, or otherwise neutralise the harmful ones, killing as a last resort.

Verity Price, like the rest of her family, calls herself a cryptozoologist more often than a monster hunter, although it’s true that she’s trained in all sorts of armed and unarmed combat and able to take out a nasty critter aimed on destruction if need be. But what Verity really wants to do is be a professional competitive ballroom dancer. So she moved from the family stronghold in the northwest to New York, where she waits tables at a strip club run by a bogeyman, studies the local cryptid population, patrols for nasties, and tries to get established in the local competitive dance scene under a stage name.

The plot, which given the set-up isn’t all that unexpected, involves Verity and a hot young Covenanter lad, who views her as a heretic to be killed with just as much fervour as he woukd any other blasphemous creature, having to team up to deal with something bigger than both of them. I’m probably not really spoiling anything by saying that sex occurs, and Verity manages to do some deprogramming on said hot Covenanter lad.



Right, now for the mice. Actually, the plot introduces us to a fair number of interesting non-human species, but really, the mice, as it were, take the cake. Aeslin mice are sapient mice-like cryptids, who live in social units called colonies. They are very religious and very enthusiastic about their objects of worship. Verity shares her tiny flat with a branch colony of Aeslin mice, who are part of a larger family of mice who have worshipped the founders of Price family for seven human generations. Verity is their Priestess, and they spend most of their time celebrating one of the endless religious observances in their mousey calendar, such as sixth day of the Month of Do Not Put That in Your Mouth!, and the Festival of Come On, Enid, We’re Getting Out Of Here Before These Bastards Make Us Kill Another Innocent Creature. They also become filled with the holy spirit whenever Verity mutters things to herself, or talks to them, which means that her homelife is filled with mousey choruses of “Hail the buying of new socks” and “Hail the shower!” Most of the novel is pretty standard sardonic somewhat unwilling heroine-centred first-person narrative urban fantasy, with some solid development of legends and speculations about various sorts of imaginary beings from cultures around the world. Fun but not what I’d call spectacularly good. But the Aeslin mice are brilliant.

Cassandra Khaw is an author I’ve only recently come to appreciate. I’ve read a few short stories, and one novella - A Song for Quiet, which rocked me deeply. The pieces I’d read up to this point have been dark fantasy and horror, which she does very well, so well that I thought I’d acquaint myself with her other work.

Hammers on Bone, another novella, and I believe the first one featuring John Persons, who also appeared in A Song for Quiet, is a horror story with a difference. It draws on parts of the Lovecraft mythos for its characters and situations, but the real horrors are all too human - domestic and child abuse. Persons is an interesting character, definitely in the anti-hero mode. A private detective by trade, and a Yith by nature - one of the time travelling, body snatching entities found originally in Lovecraft’s stories, he has otherworldly powers, but also a detached, inhuman perspective that is partly influenced to occasional human responses by the faint presence of the human whose body he wears. Being who and what he is, his cases tend to have something of the supernatural and monstrous about them, and he does not necessarily handle these the way a human PI would. Khaw does an excellent jib if capturing the alienness of Persons, and the desperate humanity of those he deals with. With two Persons stories written, I rather hope there Khaw intends there to be more.

Bearly a Lady, on the other hand, is supernatural chick lit comedy. Zelda Joshua Andreas McCartney is a werebear, which is hard on all sorts of things, like underwear and dating. Her best friend and roommate Zora is a vampire. And she has, thanks to Zora’s pushing, a hot date with a very sexy werewolf she’s been lusting after for a very long time. And she’s still got a bit of a crush on co-worker Janine. Then her employer assigns her to act as a bodyguard to her visiting nephew, an arrogant, entitled fae lordling with full-tilt glamour. It’s Bridget Jones for the fantasy-reading woman, and it is as different from Khaw’ dark fantasy as it can be and still occupy the same broadly-defined genre.

There’s a lot of good stuff in here about female friendship, and some pointedly cautionary advice for the modern female wereperson who wants to have a bit of romance in her life. It’s a delightful change fir this author, who says in her afterward, and with perfect truth, “Because there’s a place and time for darkness and grim ruminations, and there’s a place and time for bisexual werebears with killer wardrobes and a soft spot for pastries.”

And then there’s the Rupert Wong stories: Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef and Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth, two novellas which I read packaged in omnibus format and titled Food of the Gods. I’m not entirely sure how to categorise these stories. Not exactly horror, though certainly full of horrific things. Not humorous, really, although the main character does use humour to deal with the improbabilities in his life. Definitely supernatural, full of gods, ghosts, ghouls and monsters from multiple cultural traditions. But whatever you decide it is, it’s certainly interesting.

Rupert Wong is a self-described “superstar chef to the ghouls and liaison for the damned of Kuala Lumpur.” His specialty is preparing human flesh and blood for the consumption of the various undead. He employs a large number of kwee kia, ghouls created from unborn fetuses, and despite the blood bind between them - he feeds them ritually from his own wrist - but he’s the kind of guy who believes in educating the exploited workers, and now they’re threatening to unionise. But that’s hardly the worst if his problems.

He’s a hard-working chef with a commitment to satisfying his employer, and not just because his employer is a powerful ghoul who’s likely to kill and eat him if he doesn’t. He’s a devoted family man, though both his wife Minah and their son are undead themselves. A sad story - Minah was pregnant when her first husband murdered her, and so when she awoke from the dead to take vengeance, her unborn child did as well. Rupert feeds both of them, too. And he has a lot of other responsibilities, too.

Rupert, you see, has a past. A very bad past. And when he finally realised that his bad past was going to seriously affect his afterlife, he made an arrangement with the gods to start working off his time in the Courts of Hell early. As he explains: “So now I’m working off my karmic debt through community management. I mediate arguments. I listen to complaints. I exorcise stubborn ghouls. I push pencils on hell paper and do the books every Hungry Ghost Festival.”

In the first of these tales, Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef, it’s this reputation that brings the Dragon King to him, with a demand that he investigate the reasons why the Erinys killed his youngest child. It’s not a request he can refuse. He wants to, of course, but the Dragon King isn’t just threatening to kill him if he declines - or takes the job and fails. The dragon holds a trump card. He can procure a reincarnation for Minah, a chance to work out her own karmic debt for killing her ex-husband. And Rupert would do anything for Minah. But as he begins his search for the Erinys, complications compound and he repeatedly runs afoul of various persons living, dead and divine, it begins to look as though there is no possible solution that doesn’t end in death, or worse.

Rupert does find a way through the maze of conflicting loyalties and demands, surviving to return in Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth. Due to various repercussions from his mission for the Dragon King, Rupert is now persona non grata among certain Asian pantheons, and his patron loans him to the Greek gods - currently based in London - to get him out of Kuala Lumpur. With his wife Minah reincarnated, and thus lost to him, there’s not much to keep him there anyway.

Being in London as the chef of the Greek gods is not a pleasant experience. No one seems to want to tell him what’s going on - why, for instance, a band of men in suits with guns suddenly appear on his first day in Demeter’s soup kitchen and gun down most of the homeless people eating there. As best as he can figure, he’s caught in a war between the old pantheons and the new gods created from human needs. And he has no idea what are the rules of engagement, or what role he’s supposed to play.

These stories are not for the squeamish. Rupert is, in his own way, a kind of a hero, but he does cook people for a living. And the gods and ghouls of the new and old pantheons around him are generally rather bloody and violent beings. But there’s a certain pleasure in watching Rupert as he survives the machinations of the endlessly powerful and manages to keep body and soul more or less intact.

I avidly read the first five volumes of Naomi Novik's wonderful alternate Earth/historical fantasy series featuring the unforgettable Imperial dragon Temeraire, but for some reason (possibly a combination of illness and the "too many books, too little tine" syndrome, I did not continue reading the rest of Novik's Temeraire books as they were published - an oversight I now wish to remedy. So since the events were a bit clouded in my memory, I decided to reread the last volume I had completed - Victory of Eagles, which I read when it was published in 2008 - before continuing.

The storyline of Victory of Eagles - of the defense of England against the invading French and their eventual expulsion from that scepter'd isle - was a good read, of course, but what continues to interest me most about the series is the growth of both Laurence and Temeraire as characters. Maturing both emotionally and ethically, Laurence is more and more becoming his own moral compass, and questioning the assumptions of his culture, while Temeraire learns empathy and understanding of the complexities of living with humans and dragons in a complex society. With my memory refreshed, and my curiosity about the next developments revived, I dove into the next three books of the series.

Sadly, I gather from reading Novik's website that there is only one book remaining in the Temeraire series, to be published sometime next year. It's going to be interesting to see how she ends the Napoleonic Wars... And also to see just where Laurence and Temeraire end up after all their journeys.


Tongues of Serpents

The ethical education of Laurence continues apace - and we as readers are seeing more and more of the ugliest side of colonialism and imperialism as Temeraire and Laurence, exiled to New South Wales as punishment for foiling the British plan to infect all continental European dragons with plague, undertake an exploration of the Australian interior, where they discover diverse difficulties from bunyips, wildfires and thunderstorms to smugglers who steal one of the dragon eggs intended to be the foundation of a colonial dragon-borne military corps. Following the trail of the stolen egg, they cross the continent and arrive on the north coast, where they find a thriving seaport where Chinese merchants, working harmoniously with the indigenous people of the region, are conducting trade via ship and accommodating sea serpents with just about anyone with a presence in the Indian Ocean or China Sea - to the considerable annoyance of the British, who want to control trade in every corner of the earth. There's also mention of an arrangement between Napoleon and the dragon-led empires of Africa to invade the New World and end the slave trade, repatriating all Africans kidnapped and taken overseas.


Crucible of Gold

With this novel, Novik continues to expand the geopolitical borders of her variation on the high period of European imperialism, and prepares us for further examinations of the ways that two sentient peoples can live together. The international relationships of Temeraire's world are getting increasingly interesting, and Laurence and Temeraire are becoming increasingly important to what shape the global alliances will take. Equally important is the moral development of the main characters, as Temeraire's sense of justice becomes more clearly defined and Laurence becomes more and more the owner of his own conscience.

The action in this novel is driven by the declaration of war by the Tswana - supported by Napoleon - against the Portuguese in South America in a bid to liberate Africans stolen from their homelands and sold into slavery. Laurence is offered full reinstatement of rank if he agrees to travel from Australia to Rio to negotiate in the conflict.

A mutiny on the ship carrying them to Rio leaves Laurence, Temeraire and their companions cast off on an island near the west coast of South America; making their way to the continent, they encounter an isolationist Incan Empire which was able to resist early Spanish adventurers and maintain its sovereignty. Here we encounter yet another form of relationship between human and dragon - among the Inca, dragons are the property owners and humans live for the most part as serfs in the fiefdoms of their dragon masters. The situations in both the Inca lands and the portuguese colonies on the eastern part of the continent bring the on-going themes of freedom and equality which have been woven into the story of Temeraire from the beginning into greater prominence.



Blood of Tyrants

Their mission to South America completed, Temeraire and Laurence are on their way to China when Laurence is swept overboard during a storm off the coast of Japan. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Temeraire refuses to believe that Laurence is dead, and demands that the British dragon transport they were travelling on make port in make enquiries in Nagasaki - the only city in Japan currently open to foreigners - to start inquiries into Laurence's fate. While in the harbour, he meets an American dragon - a merchant trader in his own right - who gives us - and the British dragons - a glimpse of another society where dragons are integrated into society and enjoy the rewards of engaging in free enterprise. As it turns out, Laurence is alive, but is on the run through enemy territory, as it is forbidden for any foreigner to set foot in any part of Japan outside of the controlled trade port, and his life has been judged forfeit by the local dragon aristocracy. Worse, he has lost his memory and has no idea how he came to Japan. Worst of all, he no longer remembers Temeraire or any of what he has learned since becoming Temeraire's captain.

In an interview found on the Suduvu website, Novik says:

As the book opens with it, I won’t be spoiling too much to say that at the opening of the book, Laurence has been separated from Temeraire, shipwrecked in a hostile country, and to make matters worse has suffered amnesia. I am always looking for ways to make my characters struggle, as I think that’s what makes them fun to read about. But also, this is the second to last volume in the series, and I really wanted to have a moment where I looked back at the distance Laurence has traveled. He’s come a long way from the person he was when the series began, not just in a practical but in an emotional sense, but it’s been a journey of a thousand small steps, not any single moment. I also am conscious that it’s a long series, and I wanted to give new and old readers both a place to refresh their memory and rejoin the story before we head down the final blaze of the rollercoaster to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. (http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2013/08/new-release-interview-blood-of-tyrants-by-naomi-novik.html)

Reunited, and with Laurence very slowly regaining his memories (to the great distress of Temeraire), their next port-of-call is China. There, they become involved in palace politics thanks to Laurence's position as an adopted son of the Imperial family, and hear that news that Napoleon is invading Russia. The Emperor offers military aid, and the small British contingent set off across Asia, escorted by several companies of the highly disciplined and organised Chinese military force.

With part of this book set in Japan and China - both countries where dragons are fully integrated into society along with humans - and the rest in Russia, where dragons are treated as slaves, with those who will not serve hobbled by cruel hooks and chains embedded in their flesh that prevent them from flying, we see in one volume the best and the worst of relations between humans and dragonkind - but we see as well the beginning of an end to that treatment.

As one character in this volume notes, Temeraire and Laurence are, as a result of their own changes, changing things the world over, catalysts for shifting alliances between nations and changing relationships between dragon and human. Given that there is only one remaining volume in this series, I hope that Novik gives us at least some glimpses into the future of her alternate Earth - or perhaps comes back to it some day to tell new stories about dragons and the humans they share their world with.

The Starry Rift, Jonathan Strachan (ed.)

In this anthology, Strachan has assembled a roster of fine SF stories from established authors, all of the sort that older readers like myself read with wide-eyed excitement and wonder in the pulp magazines of our youth.

Strachan says of his intent in editing this anthology: "I turned to a handful of the best writers in the field, asking them to write stories that would offer today’s readers the same kind of thrill enjoyed by the pulp readers of over fifty years ago. The futures we imagine today are not the same futures that your grandfather’s generation imagined or could have imagined. But some things in science fiction remain the same: the sense of wonder, of adventure, and of fearlessly coming to grips with whatever tomorrow may bring. Some of the stories here are clearly the offspring of those grand old space adventure tales, but others imagine entirely new and unexpected ways of living in the future. The Starry Rift is not a collection of manifestos—but it is both entertainment and the sound of us talking to tomorrow."

These are stories with younger protagonists and presumably intended for a YA audience; however, it should be noted that the quality of the work herein is such that most adult readers should enjoy the anthology as well; I certainly did.



Wings of Fire, Jonathan Strachan and Marianne S. Jablon (eds.)

I am fascinated by dragons, and have ben for as long as I can remember. So how could I resist an anthology of dragon stories? And such wonderful stories, too, including some of the finest of t)the classic dragon tales, from Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea-based The Rule of Names, to Elizabeth Bear's Orm the Beautiful, to Anne McCaffrey's first tale of Pern, Weyr Search, to Lucius Shepard's haunting The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule.

Other, perhaps lesser-known, but compelling visions of dragonkind include Michael Swanwick's King Dragon (an excerpt from his novel The Dragons of Babel); Naomi Novik's In Autumn, A White Dragon Looks Over the Wide River, set in her Temeraire alternate history universe and featuring the Imperial dragon Lien; and Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg's heart-rending The Dragon on the Bookshelf. And more. A delicious diversity of dragons.



Shattered Shields, Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt (eds.)

Enjoyable anthology of fantasy stories focusing on warriors, some set in established fantasy worlds developed by writers such as Glen Cook (The Black Company novels) and Elizabeth Moon (the Paksennarion novels), others stand-alones, and all quite readable. Standouts for me were: Bonded Men by James L. Sutter, a story based on the legends of the Theban Band of warriors who were also lovers; Hoofsore and Weary by Cat Rambo, about a small group of warriors - all but one of them female centaurs - cut off from their main force and making a desperate retreat through dangerous territory; and The Fixed Stars, by Seanan McGuire, about a fateful battle between the children of the great lords of Fae, Oberon and Titania, and their own mixed blood descendants.

Fans of milsff of the fantasy variety should find something here to suit their fancies.

Some interesting anthologies and collections of short stories came my way last year. The anthologies included two nicely edited theme anthologies by John Joseph Adams (dystopias and homages to Barsoom), a vamipre themed antholgy edited by Nancy Kilpatrick, a survey of urban fantasy edited by Peter Beagle and a dragon-themed anthology edited by Jack Dann.

Of particular interest were two volumes edited or co-edited by Connie Wilkins: the second volume in a new annual series of anthologies featuring short stories with lesbian protagonists; and an uneven but engaging selection of alternate history short stories with a focus on queer protagonists as nexi of change.

I was also delighted to be able to obtain a copy of an anthology edited by Nisi Shawl of short stories written by authors of colour who attended Clarion as Octavia E. Butler Scholars. The anthology was offered by the Carl Brandon Society for a limited time as a fund-raising project and is no longer available.

Peter Beagle (ed.), The Urban Fantasy Anthology
John Joseph Adams (ed.), Under the Moons of Mars
John Joseph Adams (ed.), Brave New Worlds
Nancy Kilpatrick (ed.), Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead
Jack Dann (ed.), The Dragon Book: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy
Nisi Shawl (ed.), Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars
Connie Wilkins & Steve Berman (eds.), Heiresses of Russ 2012
Connie Wilkins (ed.), Time Well-Bent: Queer Alternative Histories


I also read several collections this year, including two more volunes from PM Press's Outspoken Authors series, featuring work by and interviews with Nalo Hopkinson and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Other collections of works by SFF writers included: a set of novellas from Mercedes Lackey featuring two familiar characters, Jennifer Talldeer and Diana Tregarde, and a new heroine, techno-shaman Ellen McBride; a collection of short stories by Elizabeth Bear featuring forensic sorcerer Abigail Irene Garrett; short stories by Maureen McHugh; and forays ibto the fantasy realm of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.

In honour of Alice Munro, this year's recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature, I read a collection of her more recent short stories (and plan on reading several more in the coming months - I've always loved her work and am delighted that she has been so deservedly recognised). Also worthy of note was Drew Hayden Taylor's collection of stories set among the residents of the fictional Otter Lake First Nations reserve, and Margaret Laurence's short stories set in Ghana. In the realm of historical fiction, There were stories by Margaret Frazer featuring medieval nun and master sleuth Dame Frevisse; I discovered and devoured Frazer's novels last year, and will speak of them in a later post.

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Lucky Strike 
Nalo Hopkinson, Report from Planet Midnight
Mercedes Lackey, Trio of Sorcery
Elizabeth Bear, Garrett Investigates
Maureen McHugh, After the Apocalypse
Lloyd Alexander, The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain

Margaret Laurence, The Tomorrow-Tamer
Margaret Frazer, Sins of the Blood
Drew Hayden Taylor, Fearless Warriors
Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

All in all, I found a wide range of short fiction to enjoy this year.

The genre of fantasy is rapidly subdividing these days, and I'm not entirely certain what the distinctions are any more. I am sticking with urban fantasy as something that ha
a definition of urban fantasy as something that involves humans interacting with non-humans (vampires, demons, werewolves, elves, whatever) and the use of magic or psychic powers virtually indistinguishable from magic, in an urban setting that is directly based on real world settings (modern-day Toronto or Chicago or whatever). It may involve crimes or mysteries, or it may involve supernatural romance. Or both. I"m not all that fussy.


Jes Battis, Inhuman Resources

Battis' OSI series has held my interest through three volumes to date, and I have the fourth in my TBR pile. The premise is that there is an investigative force, CORE, complete with Occult Special Investigators, that is charged with the responsibility of dealing with all sorts of non-human and occult communities (vampires, necromancers, sorcerers, and so on) secretly co-existing with "normate" human society, investigating crimes involving members of these communities, and keeping the whole business quiet so those ordinary humans can never know. The stories focus on OSI Tess Corday, a woman of mixed heritage (and by that I mean human and demon) and her investigative partner (and roommate) Derrick Siegel. Together they solve crimes! - with the aid of an interesting collection of supporting characters, of course. But behind the episodic nature of the occult crime procedural is a sweeping arc that has to do with Tess' demon heritage.


Katharine Kerr, Licence to Ensorcell

With her lengthy Deverry Cycle epic fantasy series completed, Kerr has decided to explore the urban fantasy/paranormal romance genre, and in my opinion she quite nails it with this first volume in the new Nola O'Grady series. O'Grady is a an operative with a secret agenct whose mandate you can probably figure out right away, and her new case is to find a serial killer targeting werewolves. It's personal - O'Grady's brother was one of the victims. Her partner on the case is a hard-boiled Isreali operative, assigned to work with her because the serial killer has claimed victims in both Israel and the US. I like this new series, and the next volume is in my infamous TBR pile.


J. A. Pitts, Black Blade Blues

This is a first novel from author J. A. Pitts, and there is some roughness to it, but the premise - a lesbian blacksmith who moonlights as a props manager and is part of a medieval reenactment society - was not the sort of thing I could resist. And there are dragons! To continue the refrain, the next volume is in my TBR pile.


Kevin Hearne, Hounded

Another first novel, and a very fine one too. But how could I resist a novel about the last of the Druids, currently living in Arizona under the unlikely name of Atticus O’Sullivan. The rest of the cast of characters includes his Irish wolfhound, a werewolf and a vampire who happen to be his lawyers, several Celtic deities, the spirit of an ancient Hindu sorceress and a coven of witches. And it's funny too - Hearne has a pleasantly dry wit that is well integrated into the style and storytelling. The next volumes is... oh, you know where it is.


Tate Hallaway, Almost to Die For

You, constant reader, already know that I think very highly of Lyda Morehouse's work, and of course you are aware that Tate Hallaway is the name Morehouse uses for her contemporary supernatural urban romance fantasy work (did I cover all the bases there?). This is the first volume in a new YA series about a teenaged girl whose father happens to be the leader of the vampires in her city, and by vampire tradition, that makes her his heir. I liked it, and... you guessed it, the next volume is in my TBR pile.


Tate Hallaway, Honeymoon of the Dead

And, to balance all these new series, this is the last volume in Morehouse/Hallaway's Garnet Lacey series. Garnet and her vampire lover Sebastian von Traum are finally married - but Garnet's past gets in the way of their planned honeymoon in Transylvania. A good ending to an enjoyable series. No more volumes to put in my TBR file. Sniff.