My life in books

Cynthia Ward’s The Adventure of the Dux Bellorum continues the exploits of Lucy Harker, not exactly human daughter of Mina Harker by the vampire Dracula, adventuress and spy in the employ of the WWI era British secret service, where she works for the consummate spymaster known as M, short for Mycroft Holmes - who is also her stepfather.

Her mission, to protect Winston Churchill, who, currently out of favour and out of cabinet, has decided to join the army and fight the Germans at the front if he cannot fight them in the halls of power. But some things not even a dhampir can fight. When a squad of 20 German created and controlled wolfmen attack, kidnapping Churchill and leaving Lucy for dead, then the only choice is for Lucy and her lover Clarimal - the 300 year old upior, or vampire, Carmilla von Karstein - to go behind enemy lines in search of him. But there is much worse waiting for them than wolfmen.

I’m really enjoying this series, not the least because of all the material from texts that form the basis of science fiction and fantasy, and other genres from the adventure fiction of the Victorian era to the classic mystery. References to characters, milieus and events from authors as diverse as H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Agatha Christie are found here, intermixed with historical characters such as Sophia and Catherine Duleep Singh.

Definitely a series that I hope will continue.

European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman is Theodora Goss’ second novel featuring the members of the Athena Club - Mary Jekyll, Diana Hyde, Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherine Moreau, and Justine Frankenstein, all the female creations of men of science, members of the secretive organisation the Société des Alchimistes. The monstrous gentlewomen have a new mission - a journey to the Continent, to rescue if they can another woman they feel is by nature a member of their unusual club, Lucinda Van Helsing - whose existence they have become aware if through Mary’s former governess, Mina Murray Harker (who readers of Victorian science fantasy will recognise as the bride of Jonathan Harker). But something is brewing among the English members of the Society, so the gentlewomen decide to divide their numbers - while Catherine hunts down the clues to what is happening in England, and Beatrice takes care of Diana, who Mary feels is still too young and impetuous to be left to her own devices, Mary and Justine (passing as a man) will go to Vienna. Thanks to Mary’s employer, the world’s only consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, Mary and Justine will have help once they reach Vienna, as Holmes has armed them with a letter of introduction to a well-positioned woman of society, the widow Irene Norton, née Adler. As one might expect, this division of labour is rejected by Diana, who follows Mary and Justine, disguised as a young boy, and ultimately proves to be as essential to the mission as the others.

Of course, with the names Harker and Van Helsing so prominent in the narrative, it’s no surprise that this Athena Club adventure deals with vampirism, drawing not only on the original Bram Stoker Dracula, but also on the less familiar novella by Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla, as basis and inspiration for some of its key events.

The literary nerd in me loves what Goss is doing in these novels, playing with the tropes of the foundational literature of both the sf and mystery genres, integrating real cultural history (such as the pivotal role played by Sigmund Freud in the rescue of Lucinda Van Helsing, and ongoing references to the suffragette movement) into the fictional accounts of these “monstrous” women. Goss’ treatment of Irene Adler is a thing of beauty, and her mentorship of Mary, Justine and Diana - giving them an example of an intelligent, accomplished woman fully the equal of any man and prepared to work outside of convention and the law to achieve her goals - is a delight to read.

The novel is written in the same style as the first, largely a standard narrative, but interrupted at regular intervals by conversations after the fact among the members of the Athena Club, in a kind of meta-narrative that is occurring after the fact, back at home, as Catherine reads her account of their adventures to the others and they discuss what really happened, and how Catherine has portrayed them. This technique adds to our understanding of the characters and their relationships, and provides just enough release of tension to reassure us that our heroines will survive, without giving away too much of the story in advance.

The story ends on a cliff-hanger - while the main plot, the rescue of Lucinda and the confrontation with the Société des Alchimistes - is brought to a conclusion in one case, and a suitable resting point in the other, other concerns which had seemed peripheral to the narrative suddenly take prominence, and suggest the shape of the next novel, which I most eagerly look forward to.

The Hugo finalists are out, and while quite a few of the short fiction pieces were ones I’d nominated, there are a few I hadn’t read. So, I’ve gotten my hands on those (much thanks to Sarah Pinsker for making a pdf of her novelette available on her website) and corrected those gaps in my reading.

Short Story

“The Martian Obelisk,” Linda Nagata; tor.com, July 19, 2017.
https://www.tor.com/2017/07/19/the-martian-obelisk/

The Earth is dying. Slowly, from ecological breakdown and climate change and loss of infrastructure and antibiotic resistant diseases and natural disasters and sporadic violence and all the things we’ve been fearing in recent years. A series of slow apocalypses. Susannah is an architect, and with the backing of one of the world’s remaining millionaires, she has spent the last 17 years building a soaring monument to the memory of humanity - on Mars, remotely accessing the technology of a Mars colony that was prepped but never settled. And then the unthinkable happens. A message from a survivor of the last functioning Mars colony, previously thought lost, is received. A woman and her children, the only ones left alive on Mars, have battled halfway across Mars and are asking for the resources of the monument to build a place where they can survive just a little longer. Susannah must decide, what will be the final shape of the Martian monument - the obelisk she’s spent years building, or a few more years of life for a doomed family. Powerful story, both in its depiction of the end of the world - not with a bang, but a long slow series of whimpers - and in its examination of the irrational, irrepressible, persistence of hope.


Novelettes

“Wind Will Rove,” Sarah Pinsker
(Originally published in Asimov’s September/October 2017, available for download as pdf on Pinsker’s website: http://sarahpinsker.com/wind_will_rove)

In this novelette, Pinsker explores the tension between preservation of the past and creation of the future through the situation of a generation ship that, through an act of sabotage, has lost its cultural and historical databases. This results in a concerted decision by the passengers to restore and preserve as much of the lost material as possible, not just through the creation of new databases, but through continued repetition and accurate reproduction of the restored material - music, plays, art, and Earth’s history. The narrator, Rosie Clay, is a history teacher and traditional fiddle player, challenged by one of her students who rejects the emphasis on the history and creations of the past, of an Earth that means nothing to them. Forced to look beyond the truism that those who forget history are destined to repeat it - questionable in a world that is entirely different from the Earth where that history took place - Rosie finds herself examining her own assumptions. Quiet but very thought-provoking.


“Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” Aliette de Bodard; Uncanny Magazine, July/August 2017
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/children-thorns-children-water/

This novelette is set in the world of de Bodard’s Dominion of the Fallen series, and requires some familiarity with that world to be fully understood. It’s a world where Fallen angels wield magic and rule Houses, life for the houseless is bleak and often violent. The novels are set in an alternate late 19th century Paris and deal largely with relationships, politics and power - within houses, between houses, and in the larger postcolonial society. In this story, Thuan, a dragon in human form and member of the Dragon kingdom based in the waters of the Seine - the dragons, being drawn from Annamese (Vietnamese) tradition, are water beings) seeks to enter one of the Houses, House Hawthorn, as a spy, to gain information on what the tensions between houses might mean for the dragon kingdom. The day of testing, when new house dependents are chosen, is interrupted by a magical assault by creatures made of thorns, manifestations of House Hawthorne itself. Thuan proves useful to the Fallen in charge of the the tests in dealing with the crisis, and thus wins his place in the House. It’s a well-written piece, but I’m not all that fond of this secondary world. I read and enjoyed the first novel in the series and found it interesting - but not compelling enough to have pushed me to read the second volume. Good story, not quite my cup of tea.


Novellas

River of Teeth, Sarah Gailey

In her foreword, Gailey says: “In the early twentieth century, the Congress of our great nation debated a glorious plan to resolve a meat shortage in America. The idea was this: import hippos and raise them in Louisiana’s bayous. The hippos would eat the ruinously invasive water hyacinth; the American people would eat the hippos; everyone would go home happy. Well, except the hippos. They’d go home eaten.” It was this unfulfilled notion that spurred Gailey to imagine the alternate history of this novella, though she places the introduction of hippos into the American ecology and economy some decades earlier. In Gailey’s version of the American South, marshes have been encouraged to allow for the development of hippo farming. Hippos serve instead of horses for cartage and personal transport, and there are canals and pools for the animals to use as rest stops, and instead of stables. Part of the Mississippi has been dammed up, forming a marshy lake area called the Harriet where feral hippos range, interfering with water trade along the river. This lake region is controlled by a shady - and very wealthy - man named Travers, who operated gambling riverboats on the lake, and is known to feed people he dislikes to the feral hippos. The story begins when adventurer Winslow Remington Houndstooth is hired by a government agency to clean out the feral hippos. The general plan is to get them through the barrier at the downstream end of the Harriet by any means necessary, and encourage them to migrate south into the gulf, freeing the river for trade, and not quite incidentally interfering with Travers’ business. In addition to the large payment offered to him and any members if the tram he pits together, Houndstooth has a strong personal motivation for injuring Travers, who burned out his hippo farm sone years ago, leaving him penniless.

The first part of the novella is devoted to assembling the team, which could not be comprised of a more diverse group of characters: Regina “Archie” Archambault, a cross-dressing conwoman; Hero Shackleby, a nonbinary demolitions expert; Cal Hotchkiss, fast gun, card shark, and former employee if Houndstooth who may or may not have betrayed him to Travers; Adelia Reyes, a pregnant lesbian assassin; and Houndstooth himself, a mixed race Immigrant from England whose dream and passion is to rebuild his hippo farm. Gailey also spends time letting us get to know, not only the characters, but their hippos, their personalities and distinguishing traits. It’s clear in this society that people form bonds with their hippos not unlike those with other working or companion animals like dogs, cats or horses. As for the plot - everything goes wrong, of course, and there are double-crosses and hidden motivations and a tangle of cross purposes, and this is not a light-hearted caper, not everyone survives. But it is very entertaining, and I hear there’s a sequel.


Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire

McGuire uses a delightfully arch and ironic tone in beginning this story - the backstory of Jaqueline and Jillian, Jack and Jill, two of the distinctly different children from the first of the Wayward Children series, Every Heart a Doorway - by introducing Chester and Serena Wolcott, two self-absorbed people who chose to have children to complete the image of their perfect nuclear family. Things go wrong, of course, from the beginning. As soon as they knew they were having twins, they assumed they would have a boy and a girl, thus efficiently creating the ideal family in one swoop. They never considered the possibility of two girls.

Parenthood does not suit the Wolcotts, being too disorderly and entirely too loud and messy. Chester’s mother is almost immediately recruited to actually raise the girls. At least until it becomes inconvenient to have her around, so at age five the twins lose the only person in their lives who saw them as people to be encouraged to grow, rather than accessories to be programmed for the benefit of their parents.

Those who have read Every Heart a Doorway already know a little of what happens to Jack and Jill. One day, they find a doorway where no doorway should have been and it takes them to a strange land where nightmares are real, but at least here they have some choice over which nightmare they will live in, where their parents gave them no choices at all. It is a strange place, a cruel place, and each child is changed in ways that do not bear much thinking about.

This is part of why, while I appreciate McGuire’s skill and invention in writing these stories, I don’t like them. I am not good with reading about abused children who don’t get to really escape their abuse - because we know that while Jack and Jill will someday find their way home, they will be damaged, perhaps permanently, perhaps beyond any hope of being ... normal, happy, able to function in a world of ordinary people. Of course, you can say that of many traumatised children, because the scars of some hurts never heal. So there is a fundamental truth underneath the fantasy here. As it happens, it’s a truth I live with, and reading about it requires accommodations that McGuire doesn’t offer, like the possibility of grace and hope.

The Tiger’s Daughter is K. Arsenault Rivera’s first novel, and it is both lovely and problematical. Which leaves me conflicted in talking about it.

It’s a love story between two warrior women who are destined to inherit the rulerships of their respective peoples. That’s what’s lovely about it. The childhood friendship that grows into love, the fact that we have two ‘chosen ones’ both with warrior mothers who pass on their skills, both with special abilities, both with extraordinary abilities and courage. Two women who will grow up to fight demons and to love each other, parted for a time by fate but never forgetting one another. That’s the wonderful part.

What is not so wonderful is that this is a secondary world which is based on actual Asian cultures, uncomfortably exoticised.

Shizuka is the daughter of a warrior and a poet, the niece of the childless Emperor, the Son of Heaven. Her homeland is Hokkaro, and there is a lot of talk about calligraphy and chrysanthemums and jade, and how important it is to use the correct honorific with a person’s name, and these are the things that define Hokkaran culture.

Shefali is the daughter of a Kharsa of the Qorin, a nomadic people who are masters at horsemanship and archery, live in felt tents called gers, and drink fermented sheep’s milk. These are the things that define Quorin culture.

Other than these blatant borrowings from Sino-Japanese and Mongolian traditions, we really don’t learn much more about either culture. Only the Gods of the Hokkaro seem to have ben developed originally, rather than taken from an existing Asian culture. And the gender equality.

And of course there is racism between these peoples, and colourism - Shefali and her brother are the children of a political marriage between their mother and a Hokkaran noble, of mixed race, taunted by other Qorin for their colour and their “rice-eater” ways. It can be argued that racism exists, colourism exists, they are things that humans do, and Rivera is only being realistic when she includes such behaviour in her story. And I would not dispute this if these were wholly invented cultures. But this is racism as the white people of this world have directed against the real peoples the Rivera has imported into her fantasy. And the relationship between Hokkaro and its client states replicate some of the most difficult parts of the history of relationships between Asian nations. This is neither a true secondary world fantasy, nor a historical fantasy. And that’s what makes this a problem.

There are other problems, too, structural ones. This is an epistolary novel in the extreme. The entire scope of the novel occurs within one extended scene, in which Shizuka, now the Empress Yui, receives a thick packet from Shefali, a letter in which Shefali recounts the entire history of their early lives together, their meetings and adventures as children, and her own adventures while they were apart. Shizuka, reading, occasionally pauses to recollect events that Shefali was not present for, to eat and drink and sleep before continuing to read Shefali’s letter.

It’s a very distancing device, although it does allow for some poetic language intended to underline the intensity of their ever-deepening relationship. But the implausibility of it all detracts more than it adds. Does Shefali really believe she has to rehearse every aspect of their past lives together, as if Shizuka will have forgotten these precious experiences?

So, there it lies. I loved the love story, the characters, their long struggle to be together, the twists of fate that kept them apart, the wonderful, heartwarming ending, the underlying story that still remains, of two strong warriors, wife and wife, who have a destiny to battle the demons that still infest their lans. But the worldbuilding is deeply flawed and appropriative. And that is not something that can be ignored.

"The Jewel and Her Lapidary," Fran Wilde; Tor.com, not available online.

Fran Wilde's novelette "The Jewel and Her Lapidary" is a seductive piece of worldbuilding that tells an otherwise straightforward (though inspiring) story about betrayal, invasion and resistance. What marks the story as something different is the setting. Ironically, just as an intricate and captivating setting can heighten the beauty of a relatively ordinary gem, the world that Wilde creates - one of rulers known as Jewels bound to, sustained and protected by Lapidaries, people with the gift of manipulating the magical energies of gems - enhances the narrative of two courageous young women, one of whom sacrifices everything to enable the other to survive and help their people resist a conquering enemy.


"A Burden Shared," Jo Walton; Tor.com, April 19, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/04/19/a-burden-shared/

The premise: in the future, technology will allow one person to take the pain felt by another, leaving the other without pain - though still with the underlying condition causing it. The story focuses on a mother and father, now divorced but still co-operating in bearing the pain of their adult daughter, born with a chronic degenerative disease. There are a great many levels and approaches to the story. As a person living with chronic pain, my first response was "this is so seductive, the thought of being able to spend even some of my time pain-free - but how could I ask another to take this pain, even if they wanted to?" In a way, it's a literalisation of the way that the burden of care for disabled family members is negotiated, even down to an exploration of the ways in which even a man devoted to helping with his daughter's care can't help but manipulate his ex-wife into accepting short-notice changes to the pain-sharing schedule that will help his career but make it difficult for her to manage commitments she's made in her professional life.

At first, one thinks there is something noble about the ways in which people in this society take on the burden of pain that others they care about would otherwise face. However, the more one dwells on this, the more it seems to be making obvious the potentials for dysfunctional and damaging interpersonal relations around the issue of care, especially privatised care where the disabled person must depend on love, loyalty, guilt, and sometimes the kindness - or financial need - of strangers in order to have any semblance of a life. And I wonder, where's the app that takes the pain and sends it instead to /dev/null?

I found this story very thought-provoking, but ultimately unsatisfying.


Peter S. Beagle, "The Story of Kao Yu," Tor.com, December 7, 2016
https://www.tor.com/2016/12/07/the-story-of-kao-yu/

Peter S. Beagle is a master craftsman when it comes to short fiction, and his metier is fantasy. It's hard to imagine sitting down to read a Beagle short story and not feel moved in sine way, if not always satisfied, at the end. This is a story set in medieval China, and tells the story of a travelling judge, a supernatural chi-rin, or unicorn, who is the essence of justice, and the unrepentant thief who changes his destiny. It is not a happy story, and it is not a comfortable story, because it looks closely at temptation and corruption as much as it does justice and honour. But it is a very moving story, and a thoughtful one.


Kelly Robson, "A Human Stain," Tor.com, January 4, 2017
https://www.tor.com/2017/01/04/a-human-stain/

Robson's novelette is a beautifully written Gothic horror story, set in a remote castle with all the requisite mysteries, from the taciturn servants and unnatural child to the crypt in the cellar and the curious creatures in the lake. The protagonist, an Englishwoman adrift in Europe - is a young woman of unconventional desires. She drinks, smokes, and chases pretty girls, and she has accumulated debts that she would prefer to avoid, being unable to pay. Her salvation would appear to lie in her friend's need for a governess to teach his orphaned nephew, but once Helen is left alone with the child, Peter, and the servants, the mysteries prove too much for Helen to ignore, and too dangerous for her to resist.

Well written, and it left me with a distinct feeling of dread at the end. My only criticism is that it's another one of those stories where the 'bad' girl - she smokes and drinks too much, and is a lesbian - is punished for her desires.


K. M. Szpara, "Small Changes over Long Periods of Time," Uncanny Magazine, May/June 2017
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/small-changes-long-periods-time/

I'm a sucker for vampire stories. So this novelette started out several points up on the 'do I like it' scale. It's well-written and entertaining. It also explores some things that are not often explored in vampire literature, such as the idea that being turned regenerates the body and what that might mean to a trans person whose body has been deliberately changed through surgery and hormones. The author is a trans man, and the story touches very realistically on multiple issues related to being trans, from dysphoria to transphobia to denial of medical service.

It also looks at issues of consent and the strange human connection between danger and lust which are fairly standard in a vampire story. As this is a society in which vampirism is acknowledged and vampiric behaviour strictly codified, it's also a story about assimilation, and regulating dangerous behaviours - i found myself wondering if the laws that exist in this novelette about registering as a vampire and only taking blood from a blood bank or from a known consenting donor were in some way a commentary on safer sex in this time of AIDS where HIV positive people have been charged with attempted manslaughter for having sex without informing their partners of the risk. Lots to think about as well as enjoy.

Many Bloody Returns, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Keiner, is a vampire anthology with a twist. The theme that ties them all together is the idea of birthdays - birthday parties, birthday gifts, public or private ways of commemorating birthdays.

I picked this anthology up because it had a Henry Fitzroy story by Tanya Huff (Blood Wrapped, in which Henry and Tony hunt monsters and debate what to give Vicky for her 40th) and a Garnet Lacey story by Tate Halloway aka Lyda Morehouse (Fire and Ice and Linguini for Two, in which Garnet and Sebastien encounter some unnatural weather en route to Sebastien's birthday dinner). While that's enough reason for me to acquire an anthology of vampire stories, there were quite a few other tasty treats on hand, most notably stories by several other authors whose well-known vampire series I'd always meant to try but hadn't yet.

I know this may be difficult to believe of someone who really likes vampire lore, but this collection was my introduction to Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse universe, in the rather amusing Dracula Night, where the birthday in question is that of the great Vlad Tepes himself. In The First Day of the Rest of Your Life, I met Rachel Caine's Morganville vampires, and found myself in great sympathy with a young woman who chooses not to accept her family's vampire Protector on her 18th birthday. And, while I've always meant to read the Harry Dresden series - and did watch and enjoy the short-lived TV show based on the books - the Dresden tale in this anthology, It's My Birthday Too, which features Harry's vampire brother and a nasty after-hours dust-up in the local mall, was my first foray into Jim Butcher's work. Also new to me was P. N. Elrod's vampire detective Jack Fleming, who takes on a fake medium with plans for his victim's birthday in Grave-robbed. Kelley Armstrong contributed Twilight, a short story set in her Women of the Otherworld series featuring Clarissa duCharme, whose birthday into her vampiric life brings with it a requirement she is having trouble fulfilling.
Completing the anthology were various stand-alone stories, some of them by first-time vampire fiction writers.

Most of the stories in this collection fall into the category of paranormal fantasy or supernatural romance, with sex and humour filling out the spaces between blood-drinking and death - including Jeanne C. Stein's The Witch and The Wicked, Bill Crider's I Was a Teenage Vampire, and one of my favourites, Elaine Viets' Vampire Hours, a revenge fantasy about a woman who finds a unique way to get back at a cold, controlling and adulterous spouse. Several, of course, are about vampire detectives of one sort or another - though not always exactly urban fantasy, as in the case of Toni Kelner's How Stella Got Her Grave Back, in which 82-year-old Stella returns to the small town where she was born and died, only to solve the murder of the unknown woman buried in what had been her own grave.

Two of the stories - The Mournful Cry of Owls by Christopher Golden, about a young woman who discovers the truth about herself on her 16th birthday, and Carolyn Haines' The Wish, about a woman who sees Death - fall into the realm of more classic supernatural horror, and perhaps for this reason are two of the strongest entries.

All in all, it was a fun bit of reading, and if none of the stories are masterpieces of supernatural fiction, certainly all of them were entertaining.

the story that unfolds in Drew Hayden Taylor's The Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel, is on the surface quite simple. Once, long ago, an adventurous young Anishnabe boy ran away from his home and persuded fur traders to take him to Montreal; from there he was taien to France as an amusement for the court of the King. Soon enough he discovered that he longed to be home again, but instead he fell sick with a disease his people had never been exposed to - measles - and as he lay dying, something else his people had never known came to him and gave him a second life as a vampire. Now, some 350 years later, Pierre L'Errant has finally come home to the modern-day reserve of Otter Lake, where his village once stood. And here he changes the future of an unhappy young Anishnabe girl who sees nothing in her life worth living for.

A fascinating blending of an ancient European myth-figure and a contemporary coming-of-age and dealing with trauma YA story, the overriding theme that brings both vampire and human teen together is the need to reconnect to one's roots, one's culture, one's history. For the vampire, the connection is what allows him, at last, to die. For the teenager, a vision of the history and place she shares with her ancestors gives her the desire to live.

I did a lot of catching up with various series in 2013. The Completed series:

David Anthony Durham, the Acacia series
Acacia: The Other Lands
Acacia: The Sacred Band

N. K. Jemisin, the Inheritance series
The Broken Kingdoms
Kingdom of the Gods

Christopher Paolini, the Inheritance series
Brisingr
Inheritance

Glenda Larke, the Mirage Makers series
The Shadow of Tyr
The Song of the Shiver Barrens

Charles Saunders, the Imaro series
Imaro: The Naama War

C. J. Cherryh, the Chanur Saga
Chanur's Homecoming
Chanur's Legacy

Elizabeth Bear, Jacob's Ladder series
Chill
Grail

Kage Baker, The Company series
Not Less Than Gods
(Probably the last, given Baker's untimely death)

Michael Thomas Ford, Jane Austen, Vampire series
Jane Goes Batty
Jane Vows Vengeance

It seems that there has been a recent rebirth of the novella. I've been finding all sorts of books that are collections of three or four novella-length pieces - most of them in the urban fantasy and paranormal romance categories. Also, some publishing houses, notably Subterranean Press and Aquaduct Press, have been publishing a number of works in the novella to short novel range. And one finds novella-length pieces on various author and magazine websites all over the net. In the list below of novellas I've devoured this past year, if a novella was not acquired as a standalone publication (paper or edoc), I've tried to indicate the name of the book, or website I found it in/on.

As for the novellas themselves, there's quite a range. Many of the urban fantasy/paranormal romance novellas are much of a muchness. I was delighted to find a novella by Michelle Sagara set in her Cast universe, and found the novellas by Yasmine Galenorn and C. E. Murphy interesting enough that I intend to explore their novels.

On the other hand, I was very excited to read more tales set in Elizabeth Bear's New Amsterdam - Abigail Irene Garrett is a character I am very fond of. The same is true of the late and much lamented Kage Baker's steampunk sequence of novellas associated with her Company books. And I do like Diana Gabaldon's Lord John sequence of novels and novellas. And my devouring of Margaret Frazer's published oeuvre would not have been complete without the domina Frevisse novella.

Marjorie M. Liu, The Tangleroot Palace (Never After)
Marjorie M. Liu, Armor of Roses (Inked)
Marjorie M. Liu, Hunter Kiss (Wild Thing)

Yasmine Galenorn, The Shadow of Mist (Never After)
Yasmine Galenorn, Etched in Silver (Inked)

Mercedes Lackey, A Tangled Web (Harvest Moon)
Mercedes Lackey, Moontide (Winter Moon)
Mercedes Lackey, Counting Crows (Charmed Destinies)

Rachel Lee, Drusilla's Dream (Charmed Destinies)
Catherine Asaro, Moonglow (Charmed Destinies)
Michelle Sagara West, Cast in Moonlight (Harvest Moon) 
Cameron Haley, Retribution (Harvest Moon)
Karen Chance, Skin Deep (Inked)
Eileen Wilkes, Human Nature (Inked)
Maggie Shayne, Animal Magnetism (Wild Thing)
Meljean Brook, Paradise (Wild Thing)
Tanith Lee, Heart of the Moon (Winter Moon)
C. E. Murphy, Banshee Cries (Winter Moon)
Sharon Shinn, The Wrong Bridegroom (Never After)

Elizabeth Bear, In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns (Asimov's)
Elizabeth Bear, Seven For A Secret
Elizabeth Bear, The White City
Elizabeth Bear, Ad Eternum

Diana Gabaldon, Lord John and the Succubus (via author's website)
Diana Gabaldon, Lord John and the Haunted Soldier (via author's website)
Diana Gabaldon, The Custom of the Army (via author's website)
Diana Gabaldon, Lord John and the Plague of Zombies (via author's website)

Margaret Frazer, Winter Heart (Smashwords)

Kage Baker, Rude Mechanicals
Kage Baker, Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea
Kage Baker, Speed, Speed the Cable

I follow a lot of authors who write both science fiction and fantasy series. New volumes in ongoing series read in 2012:


Tanya Huff, The Wild Ways

The second novel about the Gale family, whose women are strangely gifted and powerful and whose men - rare in a family of many sisters, aunties and nieces - are the embodiment of the Horned God. The full story of what and who the Gales are is slowly unfolding as Huff tells stories about its various members, and I'm sure there is more to come.


Lois McMaster Bujold, Lord Vorpatril's Alliance

Now that Miles Vorkosigan is settled into a title, important court function and family, Bujold has turned her attention to one of the people in Miles' inner circle. An improvement on Cryoburn, largely because the new focus lets Bujold play wild games with her characters again.


Elizabeth Moon, Echoes of Betrayal

This follow-up series to Moon's Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter series just keeps developing more and more twists and taking a wider scope with each volume. I'm thinking by the end that we will know a lot more about the history and future of this world, and that's a good thing.


Charles R. Saunders, The Trail of Bohu (Revised)

The third volume of Saunders' exceptional Imaro series was first published decades ago, and revised recently now that the new era of self-publishing has finally allowed him to complete the series. Although I had read the original version when it was first published, between revisions and the passage of time, thiswas very much a new book for me. And it sets up the coming confrontation between Imaro and his life-long enemies very well.


Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Burning Shadows

Somehow I never tire of the Count Saint Germain, warrior, healer, alchemist, vampire. This one is set in 5th century Hungary and Romania, where the Count faces the coming of the Huns.


Michelle Sagara, Cast in Silence
Michelle Sagara, Cast in Chaos
Michelle Sagara, Cast in Ruin

Finally almost caught up with Sagara West's Elantra Chronicles featuring Private Keylin Neya.


Todd McCaffrey, Dragongirl
Todd and Anne McCaffrey, Dragon’s Time
Todd McCaffrey, Sky Dragons

Fare thee well to Anne McCaffrey, creator of Pern and other worlds. I've been reading her work for most of my life, it seems, and while I have issues with her gender politics, still I can't ignore what a key figure she was in science fiction. And as Todd McCaffery cones into his own as inheritor of his mother's creations, I'm hoping to see more originality and more of the greater awareness of sexual and gender diversity and equality that he has been bringing to the series.


Kevin Hearne, Hexed
Kevin Hearne, Hammered
Kevin Hearne, Tricked
Kevin Hearne, Two Ravens and One Crow (novella)
Kevin Hearne, Trapped

Atticus O'Sullivan (born Siodhachan O Suileabhain), the 2000 year-old Druid with a sharp wit and enough magical power to take on a god or two, is one of the most enjoyable new characters I've encountered in some time. The Iron Druid Chronicles are fast-paced and truly funny. I hope Hearne has quite a few more brewing in the back of his mind.