I've read two really good books recently, and I wanted to tell people about both of them. (It's a good problem to have, I swear.) Then, I realized that both books take place in San Francisco, and figured I'd go with that. So:
BREATH OF EARTH by Beth Cato takes place in 1906 San Francisco on an alternate Earth where people draw magic from the earth and use it to power airships, where the United States and Japan are in a powerful alliance and a great many mystical creatures are real, and where the heroine is possibly the only woman magic-user of her type.
HEROINE COMPLEX by Sarah Kuhn takes place in a modern San Francisco where several years ago, a demonic invasion gave some people superpowers, and follows the loyal sidekick of the city's heroine Aveda Jupiter as they deal with demonic attacks (some of which involve cupcakes and karaoke bars) and a bevy of all kinds of personal issues.
Yes, these are very different books, but they're both awesome.
I don't want to give away much about the plots themselves, but both books hit on two things that I was very glad to see, and that made the stories better for me. First, they're both incredibly diverse, which only makes sense, considering where they take place. Ms. Cato clearly did her research for BREATH, and the sheer variety of people who make up SF really shows, even in the ugliness directed toward some people which is unfortunately historically accurate. The mixture of humanity is definitely present in HEROINE as well, in both the main cast and the minor characters, and it's clear that this is not a story that could happen if these people were anyone else.
Both books also feature some really damn good romances. I noticed this in particular because I've recently realized that this is a weak area of mine. >_< But while both authors handle the romances in very different ways (necessary considering the characters involved), both romances are full of heart and passion, yet free of melodrama, and they feel very genuine. The fact that both books got me interested and invested in what easily could have been Yet Another M/F Romance says a lot to me, and I'm going to study what both authors did to learn how to do this better.
The only problems I had with these books are some story structure issues. BREATH brings in so many different plotlines and, in the end, only settles the immediate one. So much is left hanging that I was genuinely surprised it ended when it did. The author's note refers to this being the first of a series, so I'm sure the next book will address what was left hanging, but "Wait, what?" is not the best way to feel about an ending. As for HEROINE, the cast does a good deal of guessing about what's happening and drawing conclusions that turn out to be right. While they were wrong about a few significant things, including a multi-part plot twist that caught everyone (including me) completely by surprise, I felt like they were right a little too often.
However, none of those issues got in the way of my enjoyment of either title. I sped through both of these books, always eager to find out what happened next, and I'd recommend them both to just about anyone. Also, they both have sequels coming out this year!
Next week: editing in an enormous character change.
Showing posts with label Recommended Reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Recommended Reading. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Monday, November 7, 2016
Recommended Reading: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
If the title alone doesn't make you want to read this book, I don't know what to tell you.
For a long time, I avoided sci-fi because I expected it to be too heavy on the science side of things to really hold my interest. Give me fantasy, I said, because anything involving magic has to be more interesting. I've been making an effort to branch out more over the years, and I've found some sci-fi books that I've enjoyed along the way.
And then along comes a book like this, which makes me wonder how much I've been missing all this time.
Planet (no, I'm not typing out the whole title every time) is about the crew of a spaceship called the Wayfarer, which is a borer ship - it makes wormholes through the universe, essentially creating hyperspace paths for other ships to follow. The book is, sort of, the story of what happens when the crew gets a big job to tunnel to a place near the galactic core, to open up an massive new route.
I say "sort of" because while that's the story, that's not what the book is about. The book is about the Wayfarer's crew, a diverse and interesting and often hilarious mixed group of humans and members of other species. We meet most of the crew in the first thirty pages, and by then, I knew I was going to love this book. I wanted to spend time getting to know every single one of these people.
And thanks to the book's structure, I got that. Each chapter or two feels more like an episode of a TV series, focusing on a smaller story or situation, rather than part of a standard ongoing storyline. This works perfectly. All of the crew members have a part in the larger story, but it's the smaller things that happen over the course of their journey that really matter. We get to learn so much about all of them, and it's written in a way that makes it feel like we're in the ship along with these people, like when we close the book we could go hang out with all of them.
It's been a while since I was genuinely sad that a book was over when it was done, because there wasn't any more. But it happened with this one. Though I did just learn that there's a sequel on the way next year, which makes me happy.
Planet contains a whole lot of things I love in a story - diverse characters, fascinating places, excellent dialogue, interspecies relationships, non-human characters that are utterly relateable, and a world and setting that feels like it could actually exist. It also has the distinction of being the book with the longest title I've read this year, barely beating out Patrick Rothfuss's The Slow Regard of Silent Things. Planet is well-worthy of the quirks and oddities of its title, though, and I'd be hard-pressed to find a better thing to call this book.
Unless that thing is "on your bookshelf". :P It has a place on mine now, and I'll continue recommending the hell out of it to anyone who likes sci-fi. Or who likes books, really. I'm sure it's not the first book to do what it does, but it's all the little things scattered through the story's pages that make it so good and so worth reading.
Next week: Boom and Break.
For a long time, I avoided sci-fi because I expected it to be too heavy on the science side of things to really hold my interest. Give me fantasy, I said, because anything involving magic has to be more interesting. I've been making an effort to branch out more over the years, and I've found some sci-fi books that I've enjoyed along the way.
And then along comes a book like this, which makes me wonder how much I've been missing all this time.
Planet (no, I'm not typing out the whole title every time) is about the crew of a spaceship called the Wayfarer, which is a borer ship - it makes wormholes through the universe, essentially creating hyperspace paths for other ships to follow. The book is, sort of, the story of what happens when the crew gets a big job to tunnel to a place near the galactic core, to open up an massive new route.
I say "sort of" because while that's the story, that's not what the book is about. The book is about the Wayfarer's crew, a diverse and interesting and often hilarious mixed group of humans and members of other species. We meet most of the crew in the first thirty pages, and by then, I knew I was going to love this book. I wanted to spend time getting to know every single one of these people.
And thanks to the book's structure, I got that. Each chapter or two feels more like an episode of a TV series, focusing on a smaller story or situation, rather than part of a standard ongoing storyline. This works perfectly. All of the crew members have a part in the larger story, but it's the smaller things that happen over the course of their journey that really matter. We get to learn so much about all of them, and it's written in a way that makes it feel like we're in the ship along with these people, like when we close the book we could go hang out with all of them.
It's been a while since I was genuinely sad that a book was over when it was done, because there wasn't any more. But it happened with this one. Though I did just learn that there's a sequel on the way next year, which makes me happy.
Planet contains a whole lot of things I love in a story - diverse characters, fascinating places, excellent dialogue, interspecies relationships, non-human characters that are utterly relateable, and a world and setting that feels like it could actually exist. It also has the distinction of being the book with the longest title I've read this year, barely beating out Patrick Rothfuss's The Slow Regard of Silent Things. Planet is well-worthy of the quirks and oddities of its title, though, and I'd be hard-pressed to find a better thing to call this book.
Unless that thing is "on your bookshelf". :P It has a place on mine now, and I'll continue recommending the hell out of it to anyone who likes sci-fi. Or who likes books, really. I'm sure it's not the first book to do what it does, but it's all the little things scattered through the story's pages that make it so good and so worth reading.
Next week: Boom and Break.
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Recommended Reading: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
First off: I want to thank everyone for their comments on last week's blog entry. I've thought for a long time that the book I'm working on was the sort of thing no one would want to read and it would never sell, but y'all have convinced me I was wrong on that first point. ^_^ And that gives me hope for the second one as well. ...which I'll worry about long after I've finished the damn thing (current word count: 71239), I swear.
Now, on to the important stuff.
It's not often that I love a book and think everyone I know should read it before I'm two chapters in. Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway is one of those rare books. This story got a hold of me and pulled me along right from the start, and for different reasons than the usual.
It wasn't that I wanted to live in this story, or to know the characters, or to experience all that they did. It was that I felt like I already had.
Every Heart a Doorway has a simple yet elegant concept. It's about a home for children who've been through doorways, gone to fantasy worlds, and returned to our world, to friends and family who thought they were kidnapped or dead or worse, and who now have to learn to live in this world again, where nothing seems to work right and everyone thinks they're crazy for talking about what they've experienced. It's the heartbreaking aftermath of every portal fantasy where the main character goes home at the end.
I also can't help but wonder if it was inspired by this XKCD comic, but that's just me.
Most of the book's characters either are or appear young, and we get to see just how much going to all their different worlds has affected them. There's a kind of beauty and sadness to everyone we meet and to all their stories, since all these people who went to all these different places want the same thing: to find their doorway again. To go back. The book truly captures that longing, and the difficulties of living in a world that just plain doesn't feel like home anymore.
There is a plot, and it's a fairly simple one; I figured it out partway through, and if I can figure out a book's plot while I'm reading it, then odds are good most anyone can. But I did not care one bit that I knew what was going to happen. I was too caught up in how the book felt to stop reading, and I was genuinely sad when it ended.
This is a short book, but it doesn't feel like it's too short. It's exactly as long as it needs to be.
I know I'm projecting here, but I can't help feeling like this is a book for we writers. It's for a lot of people, yes - it's for anyone who's ever felt out of place. But it really feels like it's especially for us. We live in our own worlds all the time, perhaps more than any other sort of artists, and that can make it incredibly hard to deal with the real world sometimes. This book was a beautiful escape into a world where people understood, even if their experiences weren't the same.
This book gets us. Which is why I think everyone should read it.
Now, on to the important stuff.
It's not often that I love a book and think everyone I know should read it before I'm two chapters in. Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway is one of those rare books. This story got a hold of me and pulled me along right from the start, and for different reasons than the usual.
It wasn't that I wanted to live in this story, or to know the characters, or to experience all that they did. It was that I felt like I already had.
Every Heart a Doorway has a simple yet elegant concept. It's about a home for children who've been through doorways, gone to fantasy worlds, and returned to our world, to friends and family who thought they were kidnapped or dead or worse, and who now have to learn to live in this world again, where nothing seems to work right and everyone thinks they're crazy for talking about what they've experienced. It's the heartbreaking aftermath of every portal fantasy where the main character goes home at the end.
I also can't help but wonder if it was inspired by this XKCD comic, but that's just me.
Most of the book's characters either are or appear young, and we get to see just how much going to all their different worlds has affected them. There's a kind of beauty and sadness to everyone we meet and to all their stories, since all these people who went to all these different places want the same thing: to find their doorway again. To go back. The book truly captures that longing, and the difficulties of living in a world that just plain doesn't feel like home anymore.
There is a plot, and it's a fairly simple one; I figured it out partway through, and if I can figure out a book's plot while I'm reading it, then odds are good most anyone can. But I did not care one bit that I knew what was going to happen. I was too caught up in how the book felt to stop reading, and I was genuinely sad when it ended.
This is a short book, but it doesn't feel like it's too short. It's exactly as long as it needs to be.
I know I'm projecting here, but I can't help feeling like this is a book for we writers. It's for a lot of people, yes - it's for anyone who's ever felt out of place. But it really feels like it's especially for us. We live in our own worlds all the time, perhaps more than any other sort of artists, and that can make it incredibly hard to deal with the real world sometimes. This book was a beautiful escape into a world where people understood, even if their experiences weren't the same.
This book gets us. Which is why I think everyone should read it.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Recommended Reading: Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines
No, I'm not turning this into a review blog. :P I am, however, shot for blog post ideas this week, so I thought I'd talk about a book I think you all should read.
Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines, first in the Magic ex Libris series, is an urban fantasy tale with a magic system that's every book geek's dream: the titular libriomancers are able to pull items out of books and use them in the real world. The main character, Isaac, is of course both a libriomancer and a massive geek, so you can imagine the sheer joy he gets from doing this. And that's what drew me in so much about this book, and why I love this series so much.
There's a kind of magic in the written word. As writers, I think we know this; whether we see it in our own work is up for debate because we know everything that goes into it, but I think it's safe to say we've all seen it in our favorite books. That's part of what makes Libriomancer so good - it makes that magic real, and takes you along for the ride with its infinite possibilities.
The sheer joy of reading also comes into how Isaac and others like him work magic, and that's actually how part of the magic works. The more readers love a book, the more they believe it could be real, the more powerful it can be. It's a unique and interesting magic system, and there's a good deal more to it than Isaac knows. Learning about it over the course of the story was fascinating.
And there's the part where Isaac gears up by putting on a long brown coat that has dozens of pockets inside, and he fills those pockets with books from his library, pages marked with rubberbands so he can get what he needs quickly. I've read a lot of "preparing for battle" scenes, but that's the only one that had me looking at my bookshelf and wondering how well I could arm myself.
If you're considering your own bookshelf right now, then yes, you should read this book.
The series itself also moves quite quickly. The second book, Codex Born, came out earlier this year, and shows that there may be no status quo - the changes that happen are the sort of things I'd expect in the fifth or sixth book of a long-running series, serious shake-ups. The third book comes out in January, and I have no idea what's going to happen.
Also, since Mr. Hines has shown himself to be a big proponent of diversity, that's there in this book as well. Not everyone's white, not everyone's straight, not everyone's male. The main woman character is Lena, who's not only strong and capable and has interesting magic of her own, but she's based on an ancient Greek ideal of beauty (long story (literally)). She's distinctly not the modern cultural ideal of what a woman should look like, but Isaac has absolutely no problem with that.
I hate to say I hope this series doesn't ever get made into a movie or TV show, but I kind of do, only because I know they wouldn't cast Lena right.
So, yes. If you like reading (and if you don't, why are you here?), and think you'd enjoy a tale with vampires of various breeds and dryads on motorcycles and mysterious magic and characters who do the kinds of things you've probably dreamed about while reading, you should check this book out. The first chapter is available through Mr. Hines's website, linked above. Share and enjoy.
Next week: IWSG. Keep it secret, keep it safe.
Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines, first in the Magic ex Libris series, is an urban fantasy tale with a magic system that's every book geek's dream: the titular libriomancers are able to pull items out of books and use them in the real world. The main character, Isaac, is of course both a libriomancer and a massive geek, so you can imagine the sheer joy he gets from doing this. And that's what drew me in so much about this book, and why I love this series so much.
There's a kind of magic in the written word. As writers, I think we know this; whether we see it in our own work is up for debate because we know everything that goes into it, but I think it's safe to say we've all seen it in our favorite books. That's part of what makes Libriomancer so good - it makes that magic real, and takes you along for the ride with its infinite possibilities.
The sheer joy of reading also comes into how Isaac and others like him work magic, and that's actually how part of the magic works. The more readers love a book, the more they believe it could be real, the more powerful it can be. It's a unique and interesting magic system, and there's a good deal more to it than Isaac knows. Learning about it over the course of the story was fascinating.
And there's the part where Isaac gears up by putting on a long brown coat that has dozens of pockets inside, and he fills those pockets with books from his library, pages marked with rubberbands so he can get what he needs quickly. I've read a lot of "preparing for battle" scenes, but that's the only one that had me looking at my bookshelf and wondering how well I could arm myself.
If you're considering your own bookshelf right now, then yes, you should read this book.
The series itself also moves quite quickly. The second book, Codex Born, came out earlier this year, and shows that there may be no status quo - the changes that happen are the sort of things I'd expect in the fifth or sixth book of a long-running series, serious shake-ups. The third book comes out in January, and I have no idea what's going to happen.
Also, since Mr. Hines has shown himself to be a big proponent of diversity, that's there in this book as well. Not everyone's white, not everyone's straight, not everyone's male. The main woman character is Lena, who's not only strong and capable and has interesting magic of her own, but she's based on an ancient Greek ideal of beauty (long story (literally)). She's distinctly not the modern cultural ideal of what a woman should look like, but Isaac has absolutely no problem with that.
I hate to say I hope this series doesn't ever get made into a movie or TV show, but I kind of do, only because I know they wouldn't cast Lena right.
So, yes. If you like reading (and if you don't, why are you here?), and think you'd enjoy a tale with vampires of various breeds and dryads on motorcycles and mysterious magic and characters who do the kinds of things you've probably dreamed about while reading, you should check this book out. The first chapter is available through Mr. Hines's website, linked above. Share and enjoy.
Next week: IWSG. Keep it secret, keep it safe.
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