That isn’t to say there isn’t humor and fun and a little bit of ranting amidst all of the deep thoughts in Lock In. But those moments feel earned by the characters, rather than imposed upon them by an author. That also isn’t to say earlier titles where Scalzi was clearly having great fun being Scalzi weren’t enjoyable, just that Lock In delves deeper and feels more genuine.
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Kaleidoscope, an anthology of YA short stories edited by Alisa Krasnostein & Julia Rios, was born from a WisCon panel. Sort of.
Krasnostein was listening to an episode of The Outer Alliance podcast, which was a rebroadcast of the ‘‘Heteronormativity in YA Dystopian Novels’’ panel. The seeds of an idea were planted and the result is a book full of YA SF/F shorter fiction that better resembles the actual world – you know, one that has more than straight, white people in it. A crowd-funding campaign was launched and the resulting book is now alive.
The first story – Tansy Rayner Roberts’s ‘‘Cookie Cutter Superhero’’ – sets up the idea of how popular culture celebrates only those who fit into very thin slices of humanity. Twice a year, an Australian teen is selected to become a ‘‘superhero,’’ which means he or she is shoved into a box that transforms him or her into one of a few different types of crime fighter, erasing most of the parts of his or her personality that make him or her interesting. The message isn’t subtle but the story about a gay teen about to undergo the process is well told.
The stories move beyond sexual identity, however, and that is what helps make this book truly stand out. There is a teen who reads as somewhere on the autism spectrum in Jim C. Hines fantasy ‘‘Chupacabra’s Song’’. The hero in Faith Mudge’s ‘‘Signature’’ is in a wheelchair. Amal El-Mohtar’s ‘‘The Truth About Owls’’ directs its force onto what it means to be a cultural outsider. Perhaps the strongest story – E. C. Myers’ ‘‘Kiss and Kiss and Kiss and Tell’’ – exquisitely captures the uncertainty of being an older teen with a mental illness.
While a couple of the stories, like Shveta Thakrar’s ‘‘Krishna Blue’’, try to veil their main character’s real world illness (anorexia) with a non-real condition (consuming colors) it doesn’t always work out well and can become a little ham-handed. These stories, however, may ring more true with their intended audience.
That difference is the point of this collection. As Krasnostein wrote in a blog post about this project, ‘‘we want any young adult reader to pick this book up and find a rapport with a character within the pages. And we also want to depict the world as we know it – filled with diversity, and colour and a range of life experiences, that challenge our own view points and perspectives.’’ Based on that rubric, Kaleidoscope exceeds expectations.
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The Revolutions by Felix Gilman opens with a great storm pushing through 1893 London. Afterwards, the town just won’t be the same – or, at least, it won’t be the same for Arthur Shaw, an underemployed newspaper writer, who is blown by the mighty wind into Josephine, a typist and part-time spiritualist. The two fall for each other at (almost) first sight and a love story ensues.
But not a traditional love story, of course, because in this London, magic (of a sort) exists. Arthur, whose income dries up, takes on lucrative employment for a strange organization, one that seems to use human minds to calculate arcane rituals of indeterminate use. Josephine finds herself in the orbit of Jupiter, not the planet, but a powerful woman who might know how to travel beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.
As you might have guessed, The Revolutions is equal parts dream-like and realistic. Gilman’s turn-of-the-century London feels like the city we know from Dickens and the Brontës, turned just a touch into some other dimension. Here, space travel is a mental act rather than a physical one and magicians battle through mirrors.
The first half of The Revolutions works well because it keeps a tight focus on the central characters’ relationship. Near the midpoint, however, the story grows diffuse. Gilman’s magnificent flights of imagination grow so gossamer thin that they can’t always hold on to the rest of what he has created and float off without much impact. Still, when the book’s central conflict is resolved, you can’t help but feel joy for our heroes, which means there’s enough there there to hold The Revolutions together.
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Getting a grip on Paul Park’s All Those Vanished Engines is impossible. It’s one of those trippy, wheels-within-wheels stories that only starts to make even a little sense after you’ve finished it. That isn’t to say it isn’t a good book – I think it is, even though I can’t quite put my finger on why – just that it’s a book you can’t sum up in a sentence or two. Or, if you tried, that sentence would be something like ‘‘I have no idea what just happened but there seemed to be aliens and Civil War Colonels and heroes who don’t actual do things.’’
Maybe the key to Engines is this sentence, uttered by a young girl who… well, let’s just say it’s uttered by a young girl: ‘‘‘How can we live,’ Paulina thought, ‘when memory tells us one thing, reality another, and imagination a third?’’’ What Park seems to be doing is telling the same story about loss from each of those three places: memory, reality, and imagination. Simultaneously.
Engines is one of those books that needs to be read about a dozen times in order to really tease out what is going on and what Park is saying. And it might be that, ultimately, it doesn’t work, but what’s here on a first read and part of a second is fascinating, especially for a reader who loves books that come at their idea slantwise. If you’re looking for an easy romp, however, look elsewhere.
–Adrienne Martini
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LOCUS LOOKS AT BOOKS: CAROLYN CUSHMAN
The Seat of Magic, J. Kathleen Cheney
The Lost, Sarah Beth Durst
Otherbound, Corinne Duyvis
The Witch With No Name, Kim Harrison
The Winter Long, Seanan McGuire
Blood for the Sun, Errick A. Nunnally
Revenant, Kat Richardson
Wood Sprites, Wen Spencer
J. Kathleen Cheney, The Seat of Magic (Roc 978-0-451-41776-3, $15.00, 384pp, tp) July 2014. Cover by Juliana Kolesova.
This sequel to The Golden City finds a new crop of supernatural murders popping up in an alternate Portugal where the mad ruler of the Golden City has banned such supernaturals as selkies, otterfolk, and the sea folk called sereia, or sirens. Half-selkie aristocrat Duilio Ferreira can hide his non-human side, but others are not so lucky, and when mutilated bodies of such supernaturals are found he is called in to assist a cousin on the police force. Meanwhile, the sereia Oriana, central to the previous mystery, has discovered treachery among her own people. Together with Duilio’s cousin, the trio investigate the killings. Add the intrigues of a despised younger prince, and a few non-supernatural bodies turning up, and it’s a complicated case that will take all of Duilio and Oriana’s wits to solve – along with questions of where their relationship is going.
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Sarah Beth Durst, The Lost (Mira 978-0-7783-1711-1, $14.95, 350pp, tp) June 2014.
Lauren Chase, unable to deal with her mother’s illness, takes off on a drive to nowhere and ends up in the town of Lost. The people there are odd, and when Lauren is told no one can leave until they find what they’ve lost, she refuses to believe until she’s tried to leave and failed repeatedly. The only person who might have helped her has disappeared, and she has no idea what she’s supposed to be looking for in a place where all sorts of lost items are inexplicably strewn about. This town is more metaphor than real place, but it’s fascinating in its own weird way, like a pile of junk that has unexpected treasures for those with eyes to see. Eventually, Lauren finds a way out. The resulting conclusion is a bit unsatisfying, but predictably so, since this is only the first book in a tantalizingly strange series.
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Corinne Duyvis, Otherbound (Amulet 978-1-4197-0928-9, $17.99, 387pp, hc) June 2014. Cover by Vince Natale.
N
olan Santiago is a 17-year-old boy with a truly unusual problem: every time he closes his eyes, he sees another world through the eyes of a mute servant girl, Amara. It’s been happening since he was five; his family believes he has seizures, and struggles to pay for medications that don’t help. Nolan has long since learned to try to hide the visions, but when things in Amara’s world get too distracting, he loses control in his, and things get distracting a lot, since Amara’s on the run with a disguised princess afflicted with a horrible curse. New medication suddenly gives Nolan some control, but it only seems to make Amara’s situation even worse, and the two struggle to stop a new evil threatening them both. For once in a fantasy, the real world is more interesting, with Nolan so damaged but determined to keep what little control he can over his life. But his struggles are mostly on a small scale, while with Amara we get magic, a princess, an evil usurper, adventure, and betrayals. Duyvis adds in issues of race, freedom, mind control, and environmental damage for spice. Maybe the layers don’t always blend evenly, but it’s an intriguing mix, and a very promising first novel.
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Kim Harrison, The Witch With No Name (Harper Voyager US 978-0-06-195795-6, $26.99, 480pp, hc) September 2014. Cover by Larry Rostant.
Rachel Morgan returns for the 13th and final book in the Hollows series – and things just keep snowballing as various threads all come together. The vampires believe Rachel can save their souls, and will do anything to force her to do it. Rachel’s finally in a relationship with Trent, but his ex pulls some dirty tricks in an effort to get custody of their child, while the rest of the elves, their goddess, and the demons are all taking an unfriendly interest in Rachel’s efforts. Even when Rachel stumbles on a possible way to recover the undead’s souls, the repercussions threaten everything she cares for – including magic itself. As usual, the world doesn’t end, but the series unfortunately does, with an epilogue that outlines enough of the main characters’ future to satisfy most readers.
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Seanan McGuire, The Winter Long (DAW 978-0-7564-0808-4, $7.99, 358pp, pb) September 2014. Cover by Chris McGrath.
An author’s note at the front of this eighth novel in the October Daye series informs us that this was the first book plotted in the series, and everything so far has led up to this. With expectations thus heightened, what follows ends up feeling rather anti-climactic – unfairly so. Certain plot threads laid down in the first book and then forgotten are suddenly picked up again, making for a tangled and twisty tale, centered on power struggles among the fae. For Toby, an old friend unexpectedly returns as a villain, much more powerful than she ever realized; an old foe returns and, while not exactly a friend, turns out to be not quite the villain Toby thought, and trusted friends turn out to have been keeping important secrets from Toby. Important revelations are made and, for those who have been following the series at least, there’s one welcome new development, though the breakneck pace and sudden reversals tend to leave little time to savor the touching moments.
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Errick A. Nunnally, Blood for the Sun (Spence City 978-1-939392-84-8, $7.95, 305pp, pb) June 2014.
A werewolf detective in Boston for reasons he can’t remember finds himself investigating the murder of a child in project housing – a murder with definite signs of occult ritual. Alexander Smith is over 100, a Black/Native American mix from Canada, back in the days when it was a refuge for runaway slaves. He’s suffering from what seems to be a form of dementia that strikes weres that live too long. His memory, both long-and short-term, is spotty at best; sometimes he finds himself in places with no idea why he went there, or what he was looking for, yet he has a vast store of obscure bits of information that come to him at odd moments. Despite his memory lapses, he’s driven to solve crimes, especially those against children, to expiate his own past crimes. His inner dialog is fascinating as he tries to hold himself together when dealing with the police, the local supernatural underworld, an unfriendly pack of werewolves, his vampire foster daughter, a magical scientist, and more. In some ways, this is a pretty standard dark urban fantasy mystery, but as damaged detectives go Alexander is a doozy, barely able to remember enough to get by at some points, but strangely likeable as he keeps plugging along without self-pity, just wondering at his condition and where it’s going to lead him.
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Kat Richardson, Revenant (Roc 978-0-451-46528-3, $25.95, 450pp, hc) August 2014. Cover by Chris McGrath
Announced as the last novel in the Greywalker series (‘‘at least for a while’’ Richardson says at the end) this ninth novel in the series brings Harper and the vampire necromancer Carlos to Lisbon, Portugal, where Harper’s boyfriend Quinton waits, having tracked his insane father there. That father has kidnapped his own granddaughter for a magic project that appears designed to lay waste to Europe, using bone mages wielding a distinctive form of death magic, illusory dragons, and carefully manipulated civil unrest. Lisbon is Carlos’s home territory from before he became a vampire, and the glimpses of his backstory (and still present ghosts) help cast him in a new light as he, Harper, and Quinton struggle to stop the bone mages’ spell. A sense of relentless sunshine and heat, history, and local color paint a fascinating picture of Portugal’s past and present, while reunions with old friends and developments in Harper and Quinton’s relationship provide a bit of resolution for long-time fans of the series.
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Wen Spencer, Wood Sprites (Baen 978-1-4767-3671-6, $25.00, $25.00, 481pp, hc) September 2014. Cover by Stephen Hickman.
Two brilliant nine-year-old twin girls manage to flummox parents, school, elves, oni, and a horde of human fans in this science fantasy novel, part of the Tinker series, but following a parallel path. Louise and Jillian Mayer are secretly producers of satirical stop-motion animations about the elves. When a special effect blows up and lands the duo in the hospital, they quickly discover from their blood types that they can’t be their parents’ biological children. Naturally, they start digging and soon uncover unknown relatives (some unborn) and an unexpected connection to Pittsburgh, the elves, and a massive conspiracy. Tidbits of news about events from the Tinker series pop up in the background, even as the twins deal with such crises as the school play, terrorists, and the unexpected discovery that their videos have avid fans around the world. It’s a delightful romp with a brilliant pair of child protagonists who manage to be both wise beyond their years and engagingly naive.
–Carolyn Cushman
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LOCUS LOOKS AT BOOKS: TIM PRATT
One-Eyed Jack, Elizabeth Bear (Prime 978-1-60701-406-5, $15.95, 332pp, tp) July 2014.
One of my favorite works of modern fantasy is the Promethean Age series by Elizabeth Bear. I adored the duology of Blood and Iron (2006) and Whiskey and Water (2007), which introduced us to her world of modern mages contending with the realms of Faerie and Hell, in addition to navigating their own contemporary problems. She explored some of the historical roots of that world in her Stratford Man duology, Ink and Steel (2008) and Hell and Earth (2008), with historical figures including Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare joining the fun. In those books she created a rich, strange cosmology that could easily support dozens of other stories – but after that fantastic four-novel flurry, we didn’t get any more. There were rumors of another book to come, one set in Las Vegas (a city Bear knows well), but the wheels of publishing grind slow, and we had to wait over five years for One-Eyed Jack.
It was worth every minute. One-Eyed Jack is my favorite Elizabeth Bear novel. The book is a standalone, and familiarity with the wider world of the Promethean Age isn’t necessary. The central story concerns a secret war between the supernatural rulers of Los Angeles and those of Las Vegas. Los Angeles wants to annex Las Vegas and consume its power, making Sin City into a magical thrall of the City of Angels. The immortal, once-human rulers of Las Vegas are the One-Eyed Jack of the title, who can look through his ‘‘otherwise eye’’ to perceive magic
, and his partner Stewart the Suicide King, who is reborn if he dies by his own hand (a surprisingly useful way to get out of awkward and difficult situations). As the novel begins they’re under onslaught from the avatar of Los Angeles, a vicious beauty named Angel, and her coterie of assassins, mages, and the ghost of gangster Bugsy Siegel, all intent on destroying the rulers of Vegas.
Jack and Stewart are very much underdogs, outmatched and underprepared for a coordinated attack by sophisticated foes, but they’re an appealing pair of rogues, and quick to adapt. By luck and design they put together their own team of unlikely allies, and Bear’s audacity is delicious here. Jack summons up the ghost of gunslinger John Henry ‘‘Doc’’ Holliday, but due to imprecise wording in the spell he calls up the other John Henry, too, the American folk hero and steel-driving man, and they make a wonderfully appealing odd couple, gliding invisibly through the city, doing reconnaissance, and making droll observations. Jack reluctantly accepts the assistance of a vampire named Tribute, a figure who fits into Las Vegas beautifully – because back when he was alive, he used to be Elvis Presley. Bear doesn’t limit herself to historical figures for this team, either. She introduces the concept of ‘‘media ghosts’’ – basically culture heroes for our modern age, fictional creations who have taken on enough substance from the love of their audiences to develop independent existence, and so Jack enlists the assistance of various characters from ’60s spy TV shows – some of whom know they’re fictional, and some of whom don’t – providing a delightful game of spot-the-reference.
Writing it all down like this, I realize it sounds like a bit of a mélange, a contemporary fantasy spun in a blender with history and fanfic (and oh, so much wonderful queerness; this is slash with heart). In the hands of a lesser writer, an approach like this could lead to a confection of cultural references, all cleverness and no substance – but Bear is a greater writer than that. Her incorporation and appropriation of fictional and historical characters works as well as it does in Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula or Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with the cultural touchstones used to enrich a story that’s powerful on its own merits. There’s real anguish in Tribute, real poignancy in the relationships of the ’60s spies, real stakes and drama in the clash between the supernatural rulers of these iconic cities. And it’s oh so damn much fun.
Locus, October 2014 Page 15
