m. c. de marco

For comic fans, history fans, and comics history fans, the Digital Comics Museum is offering downloads and scans of public domain comic books from the 1940s and ’50s. There are a massive amount of titles and issues available, from Captain Science to Sherlock Holmes to Frisky Fairy Tales to the chaste Sweet Sixteen Magazine, and many, many more. You can also find the very same horror comics that led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority.

Clear some space on your hardrive and dive in. Entertainment from decades gone by can be an amazingly personal window into societal norms of the past that we’ve since rejected, and these comics personify that to a detail you can’t quite find in movies, radio, or television from that era. It’s also fascinating to read these comics knowing that the maturation of the comic book as a storytelling device is just around the corner...

Chris Greenland thinks “Captain Science” is a swell nickname but probably not a swell occupation. Who wants to be in charge of all that science, anyway?

It’s hard not to have heard of Dexter, what with the very popular television show. I don’t mind the show; it’s one of the two or three things I actually watch on the TV. For the time being, though, let’s pretend it doesn’t exist, because I want to talk about why Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter novels are some of my absolute favorite books off of the “mystery/thriller” shelf. (If you’re curious, I also deeply enjoy Gillian Flynn and Chelsea Cain, and you may spy a pattern there.)

But they’re not purely mystery, by my standards, and that’s been one of the best narrative surprises. The construction of the Dark Passenger, especially the depths of which Lindsay explores in the third book, strikes me as… Well, as Dexter might say, secretly speculative. (The alliteration and lyrical games in these books make them a treat for writers, by the way.)

[Bear with me on this. Spoilers ahead, especially if you’ve only seen the TV show]

It would be safe to say that mystery novels about psychic detectives, for example, have a certain level of the speculative. Ditto your ghost-whisperers, magical tattoo artists, and all the other sorts who show up in the cozies. They’re still mystery novels at their heart, and so are the Dexter books, but there’s something else lurking in there, too, in the form of Dexter’s inner guide and monster-friend.

I can’t decide if I’d call the Dark Passenger (or, as Cody refers to his own, Shadow Guy) a science fictional concept or a fantastical concept. It’s described in the third book in very evolutional, scientific terms: these things that have grown up out of people are no longer people, really, and they hunt the regular types—brought on by trauma, generally, but it’s the trauma that opens a door. The Dark Passenger in its reptilian, winged, hissing and chuckling glory is what comes through.

So—it’s definitely speculative. The way Lindsay writes the Passenger wouldn’t necessarily be so if it was limited to Dexter’s internal psychosis. He could imagine anything he wanted; it could be his way of describing the urges he feels as a serial killer. However: every predator in the series with a touch of the Passenger reacts the same way and contains the same Other. They can recognize each other by the rustle of wings and the contact of eyes. If it worked that way in real life, well, I don’t know: would we have more serial killers, or less?

Having just finished the newest book, Dexter is Delicious, I’ve started thinking on this again. What makes a book cross from mystery with speculative elements to full-on speculative fiction? After all, the only speculative element of the series is the Passenger. But, it’s a huge part of the series. Its existence drives the plots of the books, the development of all the characters and how they interact with each other, whether they know that they’re conversing with a “monster” or not.

It seems to me that books cross the line into supernatural noir when there are outwardly distinguishable paranormal agents involved—vampires, werewolves, fairies, whatever. I’d never call the Dexter series supernatural noir—it’s definitely labeled “mystery/thriller” in my head.

But, but... really, they kind of are supernatural, at least in part. I suspect it’s what makes me enjoy them so much, beyond the witty writing. The Dark Passenger is a sibilant whisper for our dashing Dexter, and so it is for the reader, as well. It adds a level of scary, surreal description to the books that the TV show willingly ignores, posits a universe very different from ours in a fundamental way—after all, if all predators have a Dark Passenger guiding them, where do they come from? If they are really alien, Other, what do they want, beyond carnage and satisfaction?

They’re interesting questions. And, if Lindsay chooses to turn the series in a direction to answer them more than solve murders and do detective work, the books might make the jump to a different section of the bookstore.

Genre is such a fun toy.

Brit Mandelo is a multi-fandom geek with a special love for comics and queer literature. She can be found on Twitter and Livejournal.

Welcome to Wednesday Comics Pull-List, here on Tor.com! Every week we post reviews of a select handful of this week’s comic releases. We read less than usual, but loved more than most. One title in particular has Marvel Comics head honcho Joe Quesada proving himself wrong in the most beautiful way possible.

This week’s batch includes:

• Amazing Spider-Man #641
• Batman & Robin #14
• Billy the Kid’s Old Timey Oddies and the Ghastly Fiend of London #1
• The Calling: Cthuhlu Chronicles #3
• Dawn: Not To Touch The Earth
• Daytrippers #10
• Grimm Fairy Tales #50
• John Moore Presents: Dead Soldier #1

[Free amazing spider-hugs]

Amazing Spider-Man #641
Written by Joe Quesada
Art by Paolo Rivera and Joe Quesada
(Marvel Comics)

Chris says: This issue brings the “One Moment In Time” storyline to a close and pretty much answers the lingering questions left behind by the “Brand New Day” reboot.

I gave the “Brand New Day” experiment a chance when it first started as I wasn’t opposed to the ending of the Spider-Man marriage. I felt it was a non-issue, really. Unfortunately, the execution was handled very poorly and the following issues of Amazing Spider-Man just weren’t interesting enough to keep up with.

That said, I’ve really, really enjoyed “One Moment In Time” and I wish the title could pull off this kind of gravitas on a regular basis. Amazing Spider-Man #641 ends on something that I think a lot of folks would consider a cop out, but it feels like an organic conclusion within the story, so I’m willing to give it a pass. (And I’m more than happy to accept imperfection in our heroes if it feels genuine.) Moreover, the conclusion has me thinking about the title long after I finished it, which is always a great sign.

Although, the fact that the most interesting part of the whole 100-issue long “Brand New Day” experiment is the stuff dealing with Peter and MJ’s marriage kind of torpedoes Joe Quesada’s original assertion that the marriage doesn’t work. Funny that he does such a good job here that he ends up proving himself wrong on this point.

Pull?: Definitely. This is a high point of the entire series.

 

Batman & Robin #14
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frazer Irving
(DC Comics)

Annie says: I have been waiting for this issue for WEEKS. When DC released the unlettered previews and we saw Damien being taken over by Joker, two things went through my mind: 1.) Damien’s really not going to bash the Joker’s head in, is he? and 2.) holy crap, I have to read this.

The cool thing about this series is the cyclical nature of it. Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne are fighting the two villains who almost destroyed the original Batman, Bruce Wayne. So in a lot of ways it’s déjà vu but in all ways it’s awesome. Frazer Irving absolutely kills these illustrations, they are drenched with evil and encapsulate every emotion Grant Morrison penned onto these pages. Professor Pyg is absolutely demented, certainly one of my favorite villains, and the panel of him hanging upside down from Mother Goat are awe-inspiring.

Pull?: You mean you haven’t already?

 

Billy the Kid’s Old Timey Oddies and the Ghastly Fiend of London #1
Written by Eric Powell
Art by Eric Powell and Kyle Hotz
(Dark Horse)

Annie says: This comic picks up in London in the year 1888, a time where Jack the Ripper is roaming the streets and everyone, but mostly prostitutes, are fearing for their lives. We’re introduced to a rag-tag team of misfits (literally—they’re all sideshow freaks) who travel the world in a vaudeville act and, for some bizarre reason, Billy the Kid is also with them.

Everyone in this comic book is polite and well spoken, stereotypically British, so to speak, except for Billy the Kid, who is as boisterous, rude and ignorant as Americans seem to be portrayed in England. This was frustrating. I get it, he’s a cowboy and he doesn’t give a “hoot” about what other people think of him. He’s just sayin’ what’s on his mind, ya’ll! It’s comedic at times: “Fella, I seen all manner of putridness since I started runnin’ with these folks, but you win the blue ribbon for nasty!” How many times have you wanted to say some variation of that in a bar? Billy might be a good guy to bring out drinking, once. He’s definitely not the type of friend you invite to every occasion, maybe just the ones where you anticipate him making a spectacle of himself.

The problem with this comic is that it’s been done before. I know what you’re thinking and yes, it’s an original spin on a played out equation but the fact is, it’s still a played out equation.

Pull?: I want to say yes, but only for the panel that reads:

Fineas Sproule: “We’ll be in an area where there is an abundance of whores…”

Billy the Kid: “I’M IN!”

Now that I’ve ruined that for you, don’t bother.

 

The Calling: Cthuhlu Chronicles #3
Written by Johanna Stokes & Michael Alan Nelson
Art by Christopher Possenti
(Boom! Studios)

Annie says: Cthulhu Chronicles #2 was wordy and it seems that CthuIhu Chronicles #3 is even more wordy. I was hoping that this issue would retreat to the same vein as the first issue but it seems to have gone off the deep end. To the point where this new character, Stefano, has now confused not only me but all of the other characters in the story as well.

From what I could pull from this issue, The Dreamer was part of an experimental pharmaceutical experiment done by the same company that Clay works for. Then, Clay and Stefano go back to the pharmaceutical company to get more information and end up recruiting two more people to try and stop The Dreamer. So that’s what happened in this comic but it seemed like more information because of a lot of nonsensical banter? It was almost as if the author was trying to make it more than it was. A little disappointing.

Pull?: If you liked the first two issues, might as well. If not, I have a feeling it’s all going to be explained better in the 4th issue.

 

Dawn: Not To Touch The Earth
Writing and Art by Joseph Michael Linsner
(Image)

Chris says: The character of Dawn is the goddess of birth and rebirth, as old as life itself, and as such is always painted by creator Joseph Michael Linsner in the most sexually suggestive manner possible. As a goddess, her actions often revolve around taking lovers and fulfilling her archetypal role. Here, this plays out through an old celtic myth, with Dawn representing a Faerie queen.

The role that Dawn plays in the myth is outdated in the present day and gives Dawn’s actions in Not To Touch The Earth an uncomfortable subtext that I’m not sure was intended. The story begins with an office worker named Darian coming upon a captive Dawn in the woods. He is told to “be a man” by Dawn (a sentiment echoed a few pages before by an awful co-worker) and urged to kill the monster holding her. After that, they step into a dream realm and make love. As one might expect from stories involving Faerie, Darrian eventually meets his end because of his attraction to Dawn, although that end comes off pretty awkwardly.

It’s all very squicky. Dawn chooses her lovers, but otherwise fills a  subservient lover/male wish-fulfillment role, while Darrian is given little to no agency of his own. Nobody’s represented at their best here, and you end up feeling as if you’ve just read an illustrated romance paperback.

The art involving Dawn is, as one expects from Linsner, lusciously detailed. (It’s not hard to see why there are Dawn lookalike contests every year at Dragon*Con.) The story itself is forgettable, which, considering that Dawn books are rare releases, must be frustrating for existing fans.

Pull?: Only if you’re already a fan. The main attraction is more Dawn art, and while there are some great pin-ups at the end of the book, there’s just not enough to justify the $6 price tag for a newcomer.

 

Daytripper #10 (of 10)
Writing and Art by Fabio Moon & Gabriel Bá
(DC Comics / Vertigo)

Chris says: Damn. I wish I’d picked this title up when it started. Daytripper is a ten issue story written and drawn by twin brothers Fabio Moon and Gabriel Bá that picks out ten moments from the life of one man (Brás) and offers them up in service to a central theme: death and the continuation of life. Each issue is meant as a stand-alone story, though reading the entire series is an undoubtedly richer experience.

Fantastic circumstances and special powers are kept to a minimum here, and they’re not present whatsoever in Daytripper #10. This isn’t science fiction, speculative, action-oriented, or anything that you expect from a comic book. It’s just a well told character story. This particular issue focuses on Brás celebrating life after realizing quite matter-of-factly that he is okay with foregoing treatment for his tumors and choosing death. Aging and being a parent figure heavily into this, and even though I’ve personally experienced neither, I felt the resolution in the story brought about by these two experiences to ring simply and truly.

Pull?: Absolutely. Try and find the previous issues, as well.

 

Grimm Fairy Tales #50
Written by Joe Brusha
Art by Ralph Tedesco
(Zenescope Entertainment)

Annie says: There is absolutely nothing wrong with a little guilty pleasure to get you through a short week. Grimm Fairy Tales (GFT) #50 is a semi-perfect balance between action and suspense, with a dash or two of mindless rhetoric to keep it interesting.

The ongoing theme in this comic is choices. The choices Sela’s father made to protect her brother and her from danger frame the story for this issue. More choices are made throughout the story to demonstrate how good Sela actually is. Which is good. She’s really, really good. We get it. To the point where her virtue borders on naiveté. That’s not just my opinion, Sela says so herself: “I have to work on my character evaluation skills.” 

I really liked this comic. I know I’ve been harsh on female main characters before and Sela, more or less, fits into the mold I’ve complained about but she acknowledges her weaknesses and doesn’t pretend to be tougher than she is. I’m all for it.

This comic;s aesthetic is done very effectively. The action sequences are set up in such a way that you almost get sucked in. There’s one full page spread of good versus evil fighting and it’s gorgeous. I’d suggest picking it up just for the artwork.

Pull?: Yes, wholeheartedly, even. Guilty pleasure, people!

 

John Moore Presents: Dead Soldier #1
Written by John Moore & Richie Smith
Art by Dean Hyrapiet
(D.E.)

Annie says: I’m trying to think of a coherent way to write about this comic using actual words instead of acronyms or internet speak but I’m slowly losing control over those abilities because of how unbelievable this comic is. Let’s go with: OMG GUYS! You need to read this! Immediately! Dead Soldiers is DARK. Dark and suspenseful. Dark, suspenseful and, wait for it, well-written. A triple threat!

For a first issue in a series, this is perfect. We’re given just enough information on who the dead soldier is to keep the reader interested, with slivers of really juicy war-time action to keep the action levels up. It’s hard, sometimes, for a 30-something paged comic to keep your interest while narrating an appropriate story but John Moore’s dialogue matched with Dean Hyrapiet’s artwork (which attributes for most of my enthusiasm) is magical. The images are intense; one of the first we see is our beloved dead soldier, Colonel John Donner (who is sarcastic, demonic, and borderline charming) ripping out someone’s heart and then, from what I could tell, eating it. Anyone else finding the characters name a little… appropriate?

We’re plopped down in present day Sudan and taken inside a highly confidential level of the government where U.S. intelligent officials are trying to figure out exactly what Colonel Donner is and what happened to him. Then, something happens and, well… Just read this comic.

Pull?: YES. YES. YES.

Annie Gala is on her New York hustle.

Chris Greenland would use one moment in time to finish his lunch.

“Double identity” is a name I’ve given to a genre of books that people don’t tend to group as a genre. In fact, it’s a trope that can be used in any genre, but I think it’s interesting to consider these books together and see what they have in common, what makes them so fascinating, and how they work.

Double identity is where a character looks so much like somebody else that they could change places, and they do. The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) is a well known example. There are all sorts of variations on the theme, both in science fiction and fantasy and in mainstream novels. There are versions where the double has only a family resemblance and the original is dead, versions where the double is pretending to be a double and is actually the original, versions where almost everybody guesses about the substitution but has their own reasons for keeping quiet, and so on. Some doubles have been well drilled on the family they must deceive, others know literally nothing. The centre of these stories is the masquerade, keeping up the facade, the tightrope walk of pretending to be somebody who looks exactly like you.

[Read more: I give examples and ask for examples]

The books I’m going to be looking at are Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar (1949), published as a mystery, Daphne Du Maurier’s The Scapegoat (1957), published as a mainstream novel, Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree (1961) published as romantic suspense, and Joan Aiken’s Deception, (1988) published as regency romance. I’m probably also going to read The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) which I haven’t read for decades. I may even read George Macdonald Fraser’s Royal Flash (1985), which is one of the weaker Flashman books but which does The Prisoner of Zenda. I shall tag these posts “double identity.” If you have comments on these specific books, try to save them for the individual posts, coming soon.

Of the four I’ve read this weekend the most striking thing they have in common is the way they are about houses and families. None of these books are about royalty, the way Zenda is. The families in all of these books are respectable middle class, with servants. There’s money, but not huge amounts of money. They live in nice houses, and the houses are important. Come to that, all the details of their lives and dinners are significant, and significantly described. Because of the deception, the simplest things become charged with significance and danger. As well as domestic detail, there’s a lot of scenery in these books, and it’s scenery the text approves of.

Another point of commonality, which I only noticed when I was trying to think of more examples, is that the doubles are uniformly the heroes of the books. Trollope’s Is He Popinjoy (1878) is fiction based on the Tichbourne case in which the imposter is strongly disapproved of by the text. But in all of these examples the text is thoroughly on the imposter’s side. The joy of reading them is seeing the character getting away with it, and being constantly aware that at any moment they might plunge into the abyss. You don’t want them to be revealed as false. Generally they do better than the real person would.

The deception in these stories is sympathetic, but it’s something where the protagonist has a choice. They could walk away from it if they chose, yet they keep on with it. Their reasons for this vary, but I think this is one of the defining parameters.

There’s also the inevitable question of revelation. The substitution will at some point have to be revealed, and the way the different books deal with this in different ways—not revealing at all, revealing at different times to different people, discovery without revelation—is one of the things that makes them interesting.

What really draws me to them is the way these stories have a new angle on identity and belonging, and on seeing things from the inside and the outside at the same time.

I’ve already written about Heinlein’s Double Star, which is probably the best known genre example. In Double Star, an actor who is similar but not identical to a politician is hired to impersonate him and essentially becomes him, overcoming his aversion to Martians and changing his political opinions on the way. This is different from most of my examples in that there isn’t a house and a family—Lorenzo is deceiving the public, but those closest to Bonforte know he is an imposter. It doesn’t have the delight in domestic details—never Heinlein’s thing.

I’ve also written about Pamela Dean’s Secret Country (1985). In this, five children from our world take the places of the five royal children of the Hidden Land. They’ve been pretending to be them in games for years, now they have to pretend to be them full time and fool everybody else. There’s a house, there’s domestic detail, there’s the potential abyss and there’s also fantasy plot and magic and unicorns. No wonder I adore these books.

Tarr and Turtledove’s Household Gods (1999) which I posted about recently also kind of fits with this theme. L.A. lawyer Nicole finds herself in the body of Umma, a tavern keeper in Roman Carnuntum. She has to deal with Umma’s slave and children and friends and family as if she were Umma, and with no preparation. This is one of the things that makes the book fascinating. It’s not a deliberate deception though—Nicole has no choice. It’s all part of her passivity, which is the thing that annoys me so much about her.

The best science fiction example is Mark Vorkosigan in Mirror Dance (1994). Mark is a clone of Miles, designed to take Miles’s place and assassinate Miles’s father. He gets away from the plotters who had him made and makes his own plan, which also involves impersonating Miles, at least to start with. Mirror Dance takes this double identity trope and does a lot of really interesting and brilliant things with it. No wonder I love this too.

So, does anybody else have any double identity examples you’d like to throw in? Any genre?

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.

Following the untimely death of her aunt, twice-over orphaned Tessa Gray sets out from New York to London to live with her older brother. Virtually penniless, having spent every last cent to pay for the funeral services, Tessa makes the trip across the Atlantic with her hopes high, for at least she and Nate will be reunited again.

Upon reaching England, however, she is greeted not by her older brother but by two crones that introduce themselves as Mrs. Dark and Mrs. Black, bearing a letter written in Nate’s hand. Though Tessa is reluctant to leave with the “Dark Sisters” (as Nate refers to them in his letter), she trusts in her brother’s wishes, only to find herself trapped in a nightmare. The Dark Sisters, in fact warlocks, claim to have abducted Nate and threaten to kill him unless Tessa complies with their strange demands. Soon, Tessa learns that she is no ordinary human, but possesses the power to transform herself into another person—dead or alive. Even more unique, however, is Tessa’s ability to touch the minds of those whose forms she assumes—recalling a dead girl’s last thoughts and a vampiress’s secrets, amongst others. The Dark Sisters, finally deeming Tessa “ready,” have plans to marry her off to their master, the mysterious “Magister” of the Pandemonium Club, and all hope seems lost for young Tessa…

[Read more]

That is, until a mysterious, handsome young Shadowhunter comes to Tessa’s rescue. Soon she is swooped away again into a new world, seeking refuge with the Shadowhunters—a society of nephilim (that is, the offspring of angels and humans) charged with the duty of protecting humanity from Downworlders (that is, demons, warlocks, vampires, etc) at any cost. Tessa and her brother are keys to a much larger conspiracy, as the Shadowhunters soon discover the Pandemonium Club and its Magister have hatched a plot to rid the world of Shadowhunters altogether, by means nefarious, and mechanical.

Of course, in the midst of all this gloom and doom, Tessa finds time to fall in love with not one but TWO gorgeous Shadowhunters, who (of course!) find Tessa irresistible. Besides trying to save the world and her brother, Tessa also must come to terms with the dictates of her heart.

Clockwork Angel, published by Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), is the first book I have read from Cassandra Clare (I have been assured that the Mortal Instruments trilogy is not a necessary prerequisite to reading Clockwork Angel), and as an introduction, I must say that I am somewhat… underwhelmed. Ms. Clare’s writing is certainly readable and entertaining, but in the way of bad reality television or MTV shows.

The overarching story—that of the mystery of the Pandemonium Club, the identity of The Magister, and their plans to overthrow the Shadowhunters—lacks complexity and tends towards the hyperdramatic and predictable, but for all that is generally well-paced, fun stuff. Though the quality of the prose and general flow of the novel lacks any sort of writerly finesse in its blunt simplicity and affinity for the cheesiest dialogue I have read in a very long time (i.e. Tessa to The Magister, expressing terror at his desire to marry her: “But why? You don’t love me. You don’t know me. You didn’t even know what I looked like! I could have been hideous!”), the story in itself isn’t bad. That’s not where the brunt of my disappointment with the novel lies.

No, what I take issue with is the novel’s unconvincing period setting, its ridiculous characterizations, and above all, the same Twilightified-Mary Sue heroine meets two superhawt supernatural dudes that fall for her trope.

First, the setting and period. Purportedly, Clockwork Angel is a steampunk novel, although the only real steampunkish thing about it is the time period (set in Victorian London) and the presence of a slew of killer automatons. To me, this does not a true steampunk novel make, as Clockwork Angel lacks either necessary quality (the centrality of steam-powered aesthetic/technology, or the socio-economic critique) to be truly considered a work of the steampunk subgenre. Furthermore, the character dialogue feels as though an American author is trying—unsuccessfully—to write in the Victorian period. In truth, this novel could have taken place in any other time period, in any other country, and it still would have been the same book.

With regard to characterizations, Ms. Clare’s cast in Clockwork Angel similarly leaves much to be desired. Heroine Tessa is nothing if she isn’t a sickening hybrid self-insertion blank page heroine Mary Sue—she’s so very understanding of others’ faults (at one pivotal point in the book, for example, “Tessa felt a wave of frustrated anger, but pushed it back. Sophie had just had a friend die in her arms; she could hardly be blamed for forgetting a key”), mindlessly devoted to her beloved brother (no matter how terribly he has wronged her), generally pretty and tall, with the only drawback to her appearance being how thin and pale she is, and how her hair is brown. Most importantly, Tessa is SUPER!POWERFUL. No one knows what exactly her shapeshifting powers are or what they mean, except that the Magister wants her as his bride and that her abilities have never been seen before. Of course, the Magister isn’t the only one after Tessa—so too is best friend Shadowhunter Will (the dark, sexy, tempestuous bad boy) and Jem (the light, tempered and sensitive good guy). Neither of these boys have any real reason to fall in love with Tessa, but of course they both do, sparking a huge debate in Ms. Clare’s formidable fanbase to the cries of “Team Will!” or “Team Jem!” To that end, I will say that both Will and Jem are decently developed characters with a lot of potential; Will, with his clearly troubled and guarded past, and Jem with his own terminal illness. Both Will and Jem are passably crushworthy, if a reader is so inclined to form literary crushes and fly the Team Will/Jem flag.

The point, however, is that Tessa, the supposed heroine of this story, is not worth rooting for in the slightest. With all the personality of industrial paint, Tessa is as “blank page heroine” as you can get. As YA author Sarah Rees Brennan describes the phenomenon:

[The Blank Page Heroine] is in a lot of books—I don’t mean to pick on romance, because sadly I have seen her in every genre, including my own—and sometimes she seems to be there as a match for the hero who won’t bother him with things like “hobbies” and “opinions.” Sometimes she is carefully featureless (still missing those pesky hobbies and opinions) so that, apparently, the reader can identify with her and slot their own personalities onto a blank page. As I don’t identify with blank pages, I find the whole business disturbing.

What is it about this particular type of heroine, that she keeps popping her nondescript head into genre fiction novels? (O, Stephanie Meyer, what hast thou wrought!?) I prefer characters that are flawed, challenging, and engaging—not soppy, uninspired, oh-so-desirable-for-no-discernable-reason stand-ins.  

Doubtless, there are many fans of this book, the series, and the trope that will disagree with me. But in this reader’s opinion? Clockwork Angel, though not without its entertainment value and high points, left me cold and unimpressed.

Rating: 5/10 - Meh.

FTC Disclosure: This review is based on an advance review copy received from the publisher.

Thea James is one half of the maniacal book review duo behind TheBookSmugglers.com. When she isn’t voraciously devouring the latest and greatest in speculative fiction, she can be found idling time away on Twitter, watching bad horror movies, and making general plans towards world domination.

Pretend for a moment that I didn’t just see Brandon Sanderson for three days at Dragon*Con. Pretend for a moment that I’m not some sort of creepy stalker (along with a half-dozen or so other attendees who were at Dragon*Con) who decided to follow him to Raleigh. No, instead, picture a quaint little bookstore in Raleigh, Quail Ridge Books to be precise, and a civil group of Sanderson fans waiting patiently for the author to appear and read to them. Fortunately for us, he did.

[And he even avoided reading from the phonebook!]

But, let us go back in time a bit. Sanderson fans and Quail Ridge Books started a Facebook movement about a year ago, pleading, demanding, and begging for Brandon to do a signing for The Way of Kings in Raleigh. The idea seemed to take, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Quail Ridge has been host to Robert Jordan himself, as well as David Drake and Orson Scott Card from Tor, and also Terry Brooks from Del Ray. Combine this with the Death Star beam intensity of the “Triangle Area” of North Carolina, and it appears you get an author signing.

Although, it might have been a small part intimidation. Brandon himself told of how the Facebook movement became more and more insistent until his publicist called him and said “Brandon, I think they are going to storm the Tor offices if we don’t send you down there.” This led Brandon to the idea of including three stops on his signing tour that were not very often visited, and thus St. Louis and Orlando, which both likewise started Facebook movements after seeing how successful Raleigh’s was turning out, were added to the tour as well.

And from the crowd at Quail Ridge Books, it was easy to see that Raleigh was very sincere in wanting Brandon there and wanting him back besides. The below picture was taken some twenty minutes before the signing, and the store continued to readily fill. You can’t even see the two banks of chairs on either side of the main one. It was very much standing room only.

Brandon was somewhat chagrined, though, as it turned out there was a decent showing in the audience that had been at Dragon*Con. Not that he wasn’t happy to see us; he was impressed at the turnout himself. No, see, he had planned on repeating his reading from Dragon*Con, where he was able to read out the opening scenes of Towers of Midnight. As he wanted to give us something different, he instead grabbed the display copy of The Way of Kings that was sitting in front of him and started to tell the story of how it has three “cleverly disguised” prologues, defended himself by saying it was still half the length of Robert Jordan’s longest, then read from “Prologue Three” which is labeled “Chapter One.” Alas, he only got through about half of the chapter before he was out of time in the reading portion, but it was still fun listening. I refrained from reading along, as Brandon admitted that he was of the habit to not always exactly say the words on the page as he reads. He’s the author, he reasoned, and could change the way it was written if he wanted to.

After the reading was a short Q&A, where miraculously no one asked Wheel of Time questions in specific, despite the large number of Wheel of Time fans present. Brandon answered each of the questions at length, asides included, and then broke off the questions so he could get to the signing, although he assured us that he would gladly chat with each of us some while signing. And if you are curious, my questions to him both in the Q&A and as he signed my book were about the differences in the editorial process between The Way of Kings and Elantris (I bet ya’ll thought I was going to say Wheel of Time, ha!) His answer was more or less that his pages still bled, but not quite as significantly now as with his first book.

I am remiss that I don’t know entirely how the evening ended. Brandon started signing books around 8:30, and while there were only somewhere between eighty and one hundred people present, he still had a good clip of people left to sign when my book was reached by 10:00. As I had a two hour drive ahead of me to get back to my cave on the coast, and I was still running on some pretty heavy sleep debt from Dragon*Con, I made my farewells and got home.

Brandon had said on his Facebook that Raleigh should be sure to prove he was right to include the “not often visited” stop so that Tor would be willing to possibly send him again, and I think they more than delivered. Raleigh and Quail Ridge books, bravo. You screamed to the sky, and the sky listened.

Aside for anyone wondering: Yes, I am going to do a small series of posts about what went down at Dragon*Con. It isn’t completely like Vegas, some things get out. Just be patient, eh?

Richard Fife is a writer, blogger, totally not a Brandon Sanderson stalker, honest. You can read more of his ramblings and some of his short fiction on http://RichardFife.com. Also, you can follow him on twitter @RichardFife.

I recently had the honor and privilege to visit one of the newest attractions to Universal Studios in Orlando Florida: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I will share my magical experience with you all, along with a few helpful tips on making the most of your journey with Harry.

When my feet touched the cobblestone streets of Hogsmeade, I could hear the sweet melody of Hedwig’s theme as I approached the entrance, and truly felt as if I stepped into the fantasy world of the beloved J.K. Rowling created. With one glance from the snow-covered rooftops (that unfortunately did not do much to cool down the 95 degree temperatures) to the rust finish on the castle walls, my dreams of visiting Hogwarts had come finally true.  

[Accio the-rest-of-the-post!]

Tip #1. Avoid the Wizarding World in the early morning, wait until the late afternoon. Trust me on this, I know you die-hard fans are going to make a deadbolt run to the gates of Hogsmeade (like I did) but keep in mind that everyone else in the park will be right behind you. Waiting until the late afternoon when the crowds die down will make for a better experience. Also, the staff is much nicer in the afternoon. Obviously with the thousands of crowds to manage (mostly by teenagers) frustration enviably follows.
One of my complaints pertaining to the authenticity of Wizarding World is that the actual size of the shops are very small. Zonkos, Honeydukes, and the Dervish and Banges are the only stores where you can purchase HP goods within the actual Wizarding World section of the park. Zonkos or Honeydukes are both equally exciting stores to visit, here you can find classic Harry Potter paraphernalia. (My favorites being U-No-Poop and Dumbledore’s favorite candy, Sherbet Lemon.)

As for Dervish and Banges, I felt they should have made this store a little bit bigger, since this is where one can actually purchase wizard robes, mugs, keychains and even a wand. (Especially if you don’t want to wait on the long line, and I mean LONG, line for Ollivander’s Wand shop, which I will explain later) I’m slightly torn because I feel that you do want to experience the world as a Hogwarts student but this is a theme park with thousands of people expected to attend and participate. I do find it to be a little disappointing to wait in line just to get into a store. Unfortunately, I found myself doing that a lot of the time (especially during the morning) with little to no room to move around.

Tip# 2. You can find most of the Harry Potter merchandise in the Universal shops scattered among both parks, as well as the airport! There is a Harry Potter Store inside the Orlando International Airport, so if you forgot to get gifts for any expectant Muggles, chocolate frogs and Gryffindor t-shirts are in steady supply.

Don’t forget to try a butterbeer! Luckily you can purchase butterbeer and pumpkin juice on wheeled carts outside the stores with little to no lines. The frozen butterbeer, which is a cross between a cream soda and butterscotch ice cream, is the perfect treat for those with a sweet tooth on a hot sunny day. Pumpkin juice is a bit of an acquired taste, of course, a love of pumpkins helps a lot here.

On to the rides! And there are only three rides in the Harry Potter theme park. The first and most popular being inside Hogwarts: Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. I have to give credit to the ride designers on this one...the best part of this ride was waiting in line! About half of your wait is done inside an air-conditioned castle. You pass through Dumbledore’s office, the DADA classroom, the castle hallways complete with talking paintings, the Sorting Hat, and so much more on your way. Take your time and enjoy the sites; almost everything is very interactive and does an excellent job of distracting you from waiting on that long line.

Which brings us to the actual Forbidden Journey ride. If you’re looking for a non-stop action-packed sequence with all the scary and life threatening experiences the trio endured all wrapped up into one three minute wild ride... well, then this is for you! I’m a die-hard rollercoaster fan—I will go on pretty much anything that twists, drops, and tries to pull you apart. Hogwarts is an INTENSE combination of simulated video and animatronics unlike anything I have ever seen. You feel as if you are actually riding with Harry through Hogwarts and have joined him through all of his adventures. (Including a creepy encounter with Aragog, may he rest in peace.)

The second ride I went on was The Dueling Dragons, which is a classic rollercoaster. Here again, waiting in line is all part of the fun. You pass some of the most memorable icons from the movies, including the Triwizard cup and the flying Ford Anglia conveniently parked at the entrance.

I have to admit I skipped the Flight of the Hippogriff, mostly because Hagrid’s hut is visible from the Dueling Dragons wait line and there were simply not enough hours in the day!

After expending all of that energy you will probably need to stop into the Three Broomsticks and have a bite to eat. Luckily, this is one of the places they did expect to accommodate large groups of people. This cafeteria-style eatery has dishes similar to those found in the books, which is mostly traditional English pub food. The quality was—I have to admit—average, and I somehow don’t recall there being a smoked turkey leg in any of the books, but it certainly makes its appearance here in the Three Broomsticks. I felt this was a perfect place to relax with an ice-cold butterbeer and maybe try to solve a Harry Potter mystery or two. For those 21 and older, you can head over to the Hogs Head pub located within Three Broomsticks, a truly authentic pub complete with good old dusty grime! (I’m sure it’s completely clean, but it did look a little grungy.) No firewhiskey, sad to report, but they did have an interesting Hog’s Head Ale.

And now probably the most popular attraction of the park: Ollivander’s! Ollivander’s is actually a show in which they take groups of 30 into a small room that is connected to the Dervish and Banges store. It’s a tight fit! The store is filled ceiling to floor with wands in their boxes, just like you expect it to be—oh, and plenty of dust! This show is made to mimic Harry’s first time shopping for a wand. Only one lucky audience member is chosen to receive a wand during the show and I just happened to be the one!

Here’s what happens: “Ollivander” picks one person out of the crowd, takes out his measuring tape and begins “fitting” you for your wand. (If you’re wondering, it is exactly the same experience Harry has when he buys his first wand.) You are given three wands to “test” out. For the first two when you attempt to perform a spell, “terrible” things happen within the store, like flowers wilting or books tumbling off shelves. But have no fear, because we all know the wand chooses the wizard! For that magic moment when THE wand is placed into your hands, a gush of wind blows through your hair, a beam of light from above shines upon your head, and somewhere in the background you can hear angelic music softly humming into your ears. I promise it’s unforgettable.

Tip #3. I have a little advice if you want to be the lucky person chosen for a wand fitting. BE EXCITED! Now, I don’t recommend running and screaming around the store like a panicked Hippogriff (mostly because you won’t have room to do so), but the actor Ollivander reads the vibe of the room and obviously the people who are most excited and want to be there will be the one he chooses. My advice is to try to get yourself noticed by taking lots of pictures, talking about how excited you are so Ollivander can hear, and making your way to the front as visibly as possible.

As you can tell, Harry Potter holds a special place in my heart and it was a very thrilling experience able to have a small taste of this magical world. My last bit of advice, do allow yourself to believe, even if it’s just for one day. Universal will take care of the rest.

Stephanie Garbarino lives in New York, absolutely hates egg salad sandwiches, and has reconnected with her former love of all things SFF thanks to her job here at tor.com.

Today we were captivated by Arthur Ganson’s Kinetic Sculpture, which features mechanical art involving complex gears, apparatuses, and delicately shaped steel wire all working in tandem to accomplish a task. Some of these tasks are minor, such as the undulation of a bed of rice, and graze the very edge of steampunk, taking that design aesthetic and toning it down into something more muted. Some of these tasks look terribly complex and would fit easily within a steampunk universe, notably so with this chair that walks itself across a landscape.

These two machines only scratch the surface of the artist’s entire installation. You can see Ganson’s full range of videos and machines here.

This is kind of follow-up post to “Gulp or sip,” and like that post it arises from a conversation with a friend. (A different friend. I have a lot of friends who like to read.) This friend said that if she was getting bored with something in a book she’d skip ahead until it got interesting. “How do you know?” I asked. “I skim,” she replied. “If there’s a boring action sequence, or a boring sex scene, I’ll skim until we get back to something interesting.” To clarify—she doesn’t read all the words. She stops reading and just casts her eyes over the text, speed reading occasional phrases until she has missed the bit she doesn’t like. It’s as if she’s re-reading and she decides to skip a thread she didn’t enjoy, except without having ever read it in the first place. Or it’s like the way you might look for a particular bit on a page to quote without getting sucked in to reading the whole thing, except without having read it before. It’s not like the way you can keep reading in your sleep and suddenly realise you didn’t take in the last few pages. It’s a deliberate action—the way in a non-fiction book you might decide to not read a chapter that covers a topic you don’t need. Except, of course, that she does it with fiction, and not to a clearly marked end point, but to where the text gets interesting again.

I never do this. I’ve never even thought of it. It seems really weird to me.

So what I want to know is, do other people do this?

[Read more: I don’t, do you?]

Ugol’s law states that if you ask “Am I the only one who...?” the answer is always no. There are things absolutely nobody does, but if any one person does something, then there are others who also do it. So it seems very likely that it’s not just my friend, and other people do this.

What I want to know is, don’t you miss things? I mean it might look like a boring sex scene, but who knows that the protagonists aren’t going to break off foreplay to discuss the way neutron stars work? (Real example.) Or who knows what clever things the author might be doing in a boring battle scene? Patrick O’Brian uses them for characterisation. If a book is really too dull for me to care what happens, I might put it down altogether, but if it’s interesting enough to keep reading, I can’t imagine just skipping a chunk—nor have I really got a handle on where you’d start reading again. How can you tell? And how do you know you didn’t miss something vital that might have made the whole book make more sense?

I’m talking about reading for pleasure here. I understand how it’s possible to read boring non-fiction for information, and skip the sections labeled as containing no useful information. And I’m mostly talking about reading SF and fantasy, though goodness knows I don’t skim when I’m reading mainstream novels either.

I read in hope of little sparkling moments that are going to turn my head inside out. I increase my chances of getting them by reading the kind of writers who have done that to me before: (Vinge, Delany, Dean, Le Guin, Wilson, Schroeder, Cherryh...) where really skipping even a paragraph might leave you lost and confused at the end. I can see that there are other writers who I enjoy whose work isn’t that dense, but I still don’t want to miss anything. Who knows where that moment might be hidden? It’s either worth reading or it isn’t, I can’t see the point of half-reading it. I can’t understand how that could be fun. If it hasn’t sucked me in so that I want to keep reading it then I might as well be eating broccoli. Or reading something else.

Are there books that have good bits and bad bits so clearly defined that this makes sense as a reading strategy? Why have I never read any of them? (Hypothesis: They’re all about vampires and pirates.) How widespread is this anyway? If you do it, what do you get out of it? And if you’ve done it, do you feel as if you’ve really read the book and can talk about it afterwards?

(Health warning: If you do this skimming thing with my books, please don’t mention it. You might send me into a decline.)

“Welcome Peek...” photo/illustration by Flickr user Liber the poet

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.

Welcome to the Malazan Re-read of the Fallen! Every post will start off with a summary of events, followed by reaction and commentary by your hosts Bill and Amanda (with Amanda, new to the series, going first), and finally comments from Tor.com readers. In this article, we’ll cover Chapters 18 and 19 of Gardens of the Moon (GotM). Other chapters are here.

Before we get into this week’s summary and commentary, two quick announcements:

One: Amanda is currently on holiday and so is joining us for the first chapter only. (Though I’m sure she’s thinking of all of us, not to mention the impending doom, death, and destruction, while sitting on a beach somewhere. No really, I’m sure she is...)

Two: For those who may have missed it in our last discussion thread, Steven Erikson has graciously made an appearance—despite feeling under the weather—and had a lot to say regarding his writing process. It’s, as one would expect, well worth the read and goes a long way toward explaining why these books are so ripe for re-reading and in-depth discussion. We’ll pause a few moments while you head back to last week’s and peek behind the curtain of Steven’s story-crafting...

Thanks Steven!

[And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming]

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SCENE 1
Whiskeyjack’s squad is discussing plans for Kalam to try and contact the Assassin’s Guild again. Quick Ben tells them he can’t “find” Sorry, which probably means she’s dead. The squad confronts Whiskeyjack with his attempts to stay sane by cutting himself off, taking away his soldiers’ humanity (from his perspective) so he doesn’t think of them as hurtful losses, and that such a method will drive him crazy eventually. Whiskeyjack sees this as an offer of friendship and he acknowledges he is “finally, and after all these years, among friends.”

SCENE 2
Coll and Paran arrive at an entry gate, Coll barely alive. He tells Paran to get him to the Phoenix Inn.

SCENE 3
Rallick continues to climb toward Ocelot in the belfry.

SCENE 4
Coll is unconscious. A guard recognizes him and agrees to help Paran get him to the Inn. Paran’s attention is caught by K’rul’s tower and he sees movement on it.

SCENE 5
Rallick and Ocelot fight. Rallick kills Ocelot but not before taking a blade deep into his chest.

SCENE 6
Paran turns away from the tower, seeing no more movement. The guard gets a wagon for Coll.

SCENE 7
The Tiste Andii Serrat awakens from having been blindsided while she was preparing to attack the woman outside Mammot’s house. She disappears into her warren.

SCENE 8
Meese and Irilta discuss the arrival of Paran and Coll at the Phoenix Inn and that the Eel has told them to keep Crokus and Sorry/Apsalar at the Inn.

SCENE 9
Paran, at the Phoenix Inn bar, considers what to do with his sword. He recalls a tutor telling him once that the gods get you by separating you from others (your human contact) then offering to end the isolation they helped create.

SCENE 10
Kalam arrives in the bar and Paran orders him to get Mallet (the squad healer).

SCENE 11
Mallet and Whiskeyjack arrive. Mallet heals Coll. Paran tells Whiskeyjack he and Tattersail figured out the squad had been set up to be killed and that Tattersail had been killed (“Tayschrenn got to her”). He also tells him he (Paran) is no longer Oponn’s tool though the sword is and that the adjunct has a T’lan Imass with her.

Whiskeyjack uses a magical artifact to contact Dujek. Dujek tells Whiskeyjack that Tayschrenn was “last happy” when Bellurdan and Tattersail killed each other (two more Old Guard down) and is wondering what is going on with Oponn, Rake, Shadowthrone, and some soul-shifted puppet. He also says Laseen is planning on dismantling Dujek’s army and setting him in command over in Seven Cities to deal with an impending rebellion. He informs Whiskeyjack that Lorn and Tool have reached the barrow and that if they release the Jaghut the squad is meant to be among the casualties. Finally, he says the Black Moranth are leaving Pale and Dujek is “ready to move” once Tayschrenn triggers events by disbanding the Bridgeburners.

Paran tells Dujek Toc was tossed into a warren and that Tayschrenn killed Tattersail. He wonders what Dujek and Whiskeyjack intend because he wants vengeance for Tattersail and for the adjunct betrayal of him. Dujek tells Paran the Empire loses Genabackis: the Crimson Guard will repel whatever army Laseen tries to send and the Moranth will no longer be her allies. He also says they’re going to take on a new player—the Pannion Seer—who is “damn nasty.”  Finally, he tells Paran to leave vengeance on Tayschrenn to someone else but feel free to deal with Lorn if he wants.

They break communication and Kalam expresses shock at all the secrets. Whiskeyjack tells him that plans changed when Lorn told Dujek of the reinforcements coming, which proved to Dujek that the Empire wanted the Bridgeburners dead. Whiskeyjack tells Paran Lorn must live to lure the Tyrant into the city, then afterward perhaps she can die.

SCENE 12
In the Jaghut Tyrant’s tomb, Tool tells Lorn they’re looking for a “finnest” as “within it is stored the Jaghut Tyrant’s powers.” When he awakens he will hunt it down. Lorn’s sword will deaden its aura for a while, enough to get it into the city for the Tyrant to get lured into Darujhistan. They leave as the Jaghut begins to awaken.

Amanda’s reaction to Chapter 18:
Oh, Blind Gallan—how you confuse me! He’s talking about Darujhistan, the beautiful blue city, and the spider reference is clearly about a person who is keeping control with a web over the city, knowing everything that is happening. Not sure who this Paralt is, though, or the reference to Power’s gentle balance. Help!

Gosh, the scene with Whiskeyjack and his squad made me want to tear up! There is some wonderful interplay there between the characters, and their faith in their captain really shines through. The fact that they—despite all they’ve been through and faced—want to believe the best in human beings is extremely touching. I love this line:

He saw the caring in their eyes, the open offer to the friendship he’d spent years suppressing. All that time pushing them away, pushing everyone away, and the stubborn bastards just kept on coming back.

It gives a sense a hope, and shows how highly Whiskeyjack is thought of—and also indicates how lonely his existence has been, trying to remain aloof and not make friends, so that he doesn’t have to order them to die.

Crokus treated Coll—does that mean Oponn was trying to take Coll out of the game?

Bill’s reaction to Chapter 18:
I do have some views as to what Blind Gallan (whom we will see later in the flesh, similar to most—all?—of our poets) is referring to, but why jump in front of people eager to respond to your plea for help? So I’ll see you all in the comments thread on this one!

The discussion between the squad and Whiskeyjack continues WJ’s earlier struggle in how to protect his men and himself while keeping his humanity; this battle to retain humanity will play out amongst a host of characters. This could have been cloyingly sentimental, but Erikson manages to avoid it being such while still making it painfully moving. Part of its success I think is in realizing just how long Whiskeyjack has fought this battle; he is clearly not a young man and so this realization, finally, that he is “among friends” evokes happiness for him but also comes with an attendant sense of sadness over its lateness. It also comes with an edge:

He’d seen too much in his life. There’d be no sudden faith in his view of human history, no burgeoning optimism to chase away all the demonic memories of the horrors he’d lived through.

Without those things, this would be a typical sappy Hollywood change of heart, but Erikson is too good to give us that.

Erikson employs one of his usual suspense techniques here, shifting between POVs and scenes quickly so the reader is constantly left wondering. Is Coll going to make it? Is Rallick? Will Paran break the sword? Will Rallick get Mallet in time? Will Mallet be able to heal Coll? Erikson shows some good decision-making as well in breaking up the whirlwind of tension with some humor as Mallet examines the wound and discovers “someone’s stuffed this with herbs!”

We’re also witness to Paran’s continued growth—note how sharply he takes control with Kalam (so much command in his voice that Kalam nearly salutes) and then his command to the innkeep and the warning to the crowd:

“Nobody touch that sword,” he ordered, swinging a glare across everyone in the room. Nobody seemed inclined to challenge him. With a sharp, satisfied nod, the captain ascended the stairs.

This is a far cry from the earlier Paran and a good precursor to what we’ll see from him in the future.

How cool is that K’Chain Che-Malle artifact? (By the way, hoo boy will the K’Chain play a huge role in this series, is this our first mention?) Am I remembering correctly that we never see this again? Anyone? I’m wondering if being able to be in instant contact just ruins too many plot points (much as horror movie folks now have to deal with why nobody just uses a cell phone to call for help).

We get another mention, this one much more substantive in terms of plot if not detail, of the Pannion Seer, as Dujek tells Paran that the army is “readying ourselves” to take the Seer on, which will drive a huge amount of the story coming up.

To the file cabinet, Amanda! This time with the word “finnest”—these will play a major role in the series.

We close on a good “da da duh!” line with “Even now the Jaghut Tyrant stirs,” but I prefer the tragedy of the lines above:

“Tool, they [The Jaghut] weren’t very warlike, were they?  I mean, before your kind sought to destroy them.”

The Imass was slow to reply. “Even then,” he said at last. “The key lay in making them angry . . . “

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SCENE 1
Crokus is getting restless and senses big things are happening. He and Apsalar sneak out from the Inn. Crokus plans on talking to Challice.

SCENE 2
Serrat, waiting on the roof above the Inn, attacks Crokus as he climbs up. A mysterious force drives her away and over the roof’s edge, though she retains her invisibility/flight spells.

SCENE 3
Crokus says he thought he felt/saw something, then shrugs and he and Apsalar continue.

SCENE 4
Rallick gets to Murillio, who’s been waiting for him so they can put their plan into action to kill Turban Orr. Rallick tells him he killed Ocelot but was badly wounded. When they take off his armor, the wound has closed and the Otataral powder has disappeared from his skin. Murillio tells him to still rest due to lost blood while he heads off to confront the Eel, whom he now suspects might be Kruppe

SCENE 5
Kruppe and Baruk are meeting. Baruk tells Kruppe he’s considering finding out who Circle Breaker is because he needs to find the Eel to see if they can work together to save Darujhistan. Kruppe tells Baruk he’ll get the message to him to forestall Circle Breaker being found out.

SCENE 6
Paran tells Whiskeyjack he thinks he’s figured out what Whiskeyjack and Dujek haven’t told him—that they plan on conquering Darujhistan themselves to use its wealth to fight whatever Laseen sends after them in reprisal. Whiskeyjack tells Paran they don’t care what Laseen does as they have bigger and worse fish to fry—the Pannion Seer.

SCENE 7
Lorn leaves Tool to head into the city. She tells him her wound from Murillio is already nearly healed, thanks to her Otataral sword. She plans on seeking Sorry and then the Coin Bearer once she places the finnest in the city. She bemoans the loss of Paran, thinking of her attraction to him. She no longer has second thoughts.

SCENE 8
Crokus and Apsalar entry K’rul’s belfry as a hiding place and discover Ocelot’s body. Crokus sees give winged shapes leaving Moon’s Spawn. Apsalar tells him about the oceans on the real moon and the underwater gardens on it and how one day the chosen will be taken there and there will be no wars or empires or swords.

Bill’s reaction to Chapter 19:
This poem will be pretty clear as to its subject as the “Maker of Paths” is named as such. (So look again if you missed it.)

Is it just me, or is everyone else seriously laughing along with Serrat’s continuing problems?

We had some hints that the Otataral powder would have some strange effects on Rallick and now we learn that it’s had the same quick-healing impact of Lorn’s sword. Even more interesting is that it seems to have “disappeared” from his skin: used up in healing or absorbed internally? Hmmmm...

I like Murillio’s insight into Kruppe being the Eel, but does anyone else get a sense that Baruk has figured it out as well by his conversation with Kruppe? I thought his gaze that “dropped calmly to Kruppe” after Kruppe said he could get a message to the Eel pointed in that direction.

I admit to being a little confused by Whiskeyjack’s conversation with Paran. Since Dujek just told Paran last chapter that the army was getting ready to take on the Pannion Seer, I don’t quite get why Paran doesn’t figure that into his otherwise keen insight into Dujek and Whiskeyjack’s plans and why he asks, “what’s to the south?” Can anyone explain that absence? Did I miss something here?

We also get yet another reference to the impending rebellion in Seven Cities. (Cue book two in three, two, one...)

And I’m just thinking out loud here, but does anyone else think a character saying out loud to him/herself, “Well, dying’s never in anybody’s plan,” is just asking for the irony police to show up down the road?

In the discussion of our last post, several of us mentioned the Malazan soldier’s gift of free thought (at least under Kal/Dassem). Here, with Lorn, we get perhaps a glimpse of why Laseen/Surly fails at Empress. (I’m in the camp of those who do think she fails.) Look at Lorn’s description of a good soldier: 

She realized that the doubts that had plagued her, borne on those dark wings of knowledge, now lay quiescent . . . she knew how to control all that was within her. Years of training, discipline, loyalty, and duty. The virtues of a soldier . . . the weight on her shoulders vanished.

She subsumes her own thought (expressed as doubt) into what appears to me to be mindless loyalty and discipline to a single person ("The Empress’s pleasure . . . would be immense”). And look how she characterizes knowledge, the precursor to thought as “dark wings.” I can’t feel much sympathy for a character who views knowledge as sinister and finds refuge in thoughtlessness. My sense of loss at this Lorn is compounded thanks to Erikson giving us her musing on how she might have had something with Paran, which humanizes her and makes the fall deeper and more poignant.

We’re seeing with Apsalar that despite Cotillion’s eviction, his former presence has left gifts behind: ability to see in darkness, ability to climb, grace, etc. She’ll clearly remain a formidable force, despite the god’s absence.

We close with a focus on the moon, which I liked for a few reasons:

One, we get a link to the title, obviously, though I’m pretty sure much later in the series we’ll get another Gardens of the Moon reference.

Two, I loved the poetic and hopeful bent of Apsalar, after all the poor girl has gone through.

Three, I liked the contrast between that poetic idealism looking at one moon and the imagery of Moon’s spawn: reddish glow, the five dragons coming out to do battle. (And how about that “worm” of fear coming just before we see the dragons?)

Four, an echo for the future when “look at the moon” will mean something wholly different.

Bill Capossere writes short stories and essays, plays ultimate frisbee, teaches as an adjunct English instructor at several local colleges, and writes SF/F reviews for fantasyliterature.com.

Amanda Rutter contributes reviews and a regular World Wide Wednesday post to fantasyliterature.com, as well as reviews for her own site floortoceilingbooks.com (covering more genres than just speculative), Vector Reviews and Hub magazine.

On September 8, 1966, Star Trek premiered with “The Man Trap,” that classic tale of lonely salt vampires and the crewmen who love them. In celebration, check out Eugene Myers and Torie Atkinson’s inaugural post in the Star Trek rewatch, where I learned that “The Man Trap” was actually the sixth episode filmed. Thank goodness Star Trek went better than that other awesome show set in space and denied its intended pilot by the network!

[whew]

The whole “Man Trap” thing made me poke around a bit into Star Trek airing history. Turns out, Star Trek suffered from low ratings during its first season and was nearly cancelled, but Lucille Ball, chief of Desilu Productions, pulled for the show, and it was given a second season.

And, well, Star Trek suffered from low ratings during its second season and was nearly cancelled, but a massive letter-writing campaign convinced the network to give it a third season. And even though it was cancelled after that, the third season gave Star Trek immortality: it was the magic number that would allow the show to be “stripped,” that is, rerun at the same time every weekday until the heat death of the universe.

I discovered Star Trek during the summer between sophomore and junior years of high school, when I was too old to go to my favorite summer camp and too young to get a job. Flipping through the cable one day, I discovered that Star Trek, the original one, with the guy—who talked—like this, was on from 4:00 to 6:00, Monday to Friday. Bingo. A summer project. My dad used to come upstairs when he heard the theme music and stick around for a few minutes to share memories of the ’70’s; it seems that he’d also discovered Star Trek in weekday syndication long after it was cancelled.

And thus an empire was born. Er, Federation. You know what I mean. So thank the deity or secular humanist principle of your choice for that third season, and live long and prosper (in reruns)!

Megan Messinger sometimes thinks she hears the old guy in 1N watching Star Trek. This would be awesome, except that it means the sound is carrying four floors.

Arthur C. Clarke’s great strength as a writer was the way his vision merged the poetic and the scientific. His great weakness was that he was too nice—he always had a terrible time envisaging conflict, which gave him a hard time with plot.

I know something about Imperial Earth (1975) that most of you don’t, except theoretically. It was once a new book. It’s obvious really, everything was new once. People bought shiny copies of The Fellowship of the Ring in the fifties and waited for the other volumes to come out. But I remember Imperial Earth being new, because I bought the paperback from one of those rotating wire racks of books they used to have in newsagents in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and everybody smoked and you could buy a new Arthur C. Clarke paperback and a quarter of Cadbury`s mini eggs and still have change from a pound. I vividly remember taking both the book and the eggs up into the park and sitting on a bench in watery sunlight reading the book and eating the eggs until book and eggs were finished. I still have the book, and I can still taste the eggs when I read it, which must make that one of the best value for money pounds I ever spent. It was the Easter holidays of 1977 and I was twelve. I thought Imperial Earth was one of the best books Clarke had ever written.

[Read more: It isn’t really a classic, but I like it anyway]

Reading it now, it gets astonishing points for all the things old books usually have to get a pass on. It has gay characters, bisexuality is considered normal, there are poly relationships, the main character is a person of color and so are large numbers of the other characters, it contains an older female character, it passes the Bechdel test, the president of the U.S. is female. I’m sure I didn`t notice any of this when I first read it except the nifty blackness of Duncan Makenzie. There’s not much in the way of ethnicity—this is pretty much a post-ethnic world, but as far as skin color goes, darker is considered more aesthetically pleasing. There is one minor character who is a Muslim and a haji. He’s a cloning specialist. There’s one fat bald character—these things are considered to be unusual aesthetic choices because they’re both fixable.

It’s an interesting vision of the universe. It’s utopian—this is a solar system in which all the problems have been solved and everything is nice. There`s no personal wealth, rulers (on Earth anyway) are chosen by lot from those qualified, capitalism has withered away, Earth has been reforested, the planets are being settled, everybody is happy except the odd psychopath. The quincentenniel of the U.S.A. is being celebrated to calm delight. This is really an unusually positive future even for Clarke—Earth has a population of half a billion, the excesses of the twentieth century have been cleaned up, there aren`t actually any problems as such.

Duncan Makenzie is the second clone of Malcolm Makenzie, the ruler of Titan. Malcolm definitely wasn’t chosen by lot, he was the intrepid engineer who figured out a way to make colonizing Titan pay. He nevertheless runs the place benevolently, and not even the opposition have a real problem with him, or his clone Colin, or Colin’s clone Duncan. Duncan goes to Earth to celebrate the quincentenniel and, while he’s there, to get a clone of himself made for the next generation of Makenzies. While he`s there he runs into his old girlfriend Calindy and his old best friend Karl. In a different book, Karl would be a mad scientist and an antagonist. Here he`s a slightly secretive and mildly deranged scientist.

The science is odd at this distance. There`s what appears to be an iPhone, described in detail. There are “comsoles” which are home computers—they contain no moving parts and haven`t changed at all in hundreds of years, but they have monitors and keyboards and they`re networked, so pretty good. The spaceships buzzing between the planets are using new mini-black hole propulsion drives, which might make Titan`s lucrative hydrogen business obsolete and cause economic problems. We have learned a lot more about Titan since this book was written—all the Titan stuff is obsolete, but still nifty. We`ve also discovered the Kuiper Belt since this was written, which again makes some of it obsolete. But, oh well, it was the state of knowledge when he wrote it.

When I was twelve I thought the (so incredibly mild as to be hardly there at all) sex and the relationship between Duncan, Calindy, and Karl was at the heart of the book. I also really liked the spaceship trip from Titan to Earth, and the stuff about SETI was all totally new to me. I was also very impressed by the stuff about cloning—again, totally new. I also credit the pentinimoes with my subsequent obsession with Tetris.

Now, I think the best bit of the book is the descriptions of exotic Titan, which seem perfectly normal  to Duncan, and of perfectly normal Earth, which he sees as exotic and weird. The reversals here are still lovely—Duncan thinks a jet of oxygen burning off in the methane atmosphere is pretty but normal but finds a horse alien and doesn`t know what a butterfly is. I also like the terse conversations between the clones who understand each other too well to need to say things in full—but I don`t for a minute believe that they would really be like that. I think cloned parents and children would have just as many problems as the normal kind. But the emotional feel of the cloning works.

It`s hard to say how much of my enjoyment of this book is nostalgia (like the remembered taste of chocolate) and how much I actually enjoyed reading it. If I read it for the first time now nothing in it would be new and the only thing that would be odd would be how nice everything is. No conflict! The plot really is “What I did on my summer holiday,” and that plot has been done better than this. I notice it isn’t in print, while Clarke’s real classics still are. But I enjoyed reading it again,  in the copy I bought it new when Pan could still say “His great new novel” on the cover. It’s not his best, but even minor Clarke has charm.

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.

I had a surreal moment at my bookstore day-job recently: a regular customer whom I am accustomed to recommending urban fantasy books and various and sundry SF came in to shop. She was looking for Carrie Vaughn things, and I suggested to her a few anthologies with Vaughn short stories, because the customer already had all of her books.

She said to me, “Oh, I don’t buy those. I don’t like short stuff.”

I was baffled. Visibly, I imagine, because she gave me an odd look. I couldn’t help but argue back that no, really, she was missing out on so much! She did not agree. I probably shouldn’t argue with customers about their reading preferences, but… really? I had finally met one of those people that writers and publishers bemoan—the ones who won’t buy short fiction. How many more of them are there, I wonder? I always hear that the short story is dying and the anthology is an unsalable format, but I can’t quite believe it.

Certainly, our store in the past year has seen a huge uptick in sales of anthologies in the SFF section. I know for a fact that we’ve been sent more of them from our suppliers: in the first year I worked at this bookstore, I had to special-order every single anthology I wanted. We didn’t receive more than one or two. (I work for a Waldenbooks, and so our stock is pre-decided by the Borders buyers.)

[This year, on the other hand…]

This year, on the other hand, we’ve received one or two new anthologies every couple of weeks. Of course, we’re only being sent one or two copies of these new anthologies—one of which generally goes to me, sorry customers—but we’re getting them. And we’re selling them out, generally. This must be true company-wide, or else they wouldn’t send us any more; after all, one tiny Kentucky store hardly affects the overall sales trends enough to skew what they decide to buy. Ergo, Borders must be selling more anthologies, and more anthologies seem to be coming out.

The overall quality seems to be higher, too. Out of the eleven or so anthologies I’ve read cover-to-cover so far this year, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of them. (I’m still working my way slowly and with pleasure through a few, like The Year’s Best Science Fiction—I prefer to read both a novel and an anthology at the same time, so the anthologies take longer.) The increase of attention to inclusiveness, diversity and exploration of more than just “my angst, let me show you it” has definitely pleased me; maybe my selections have skewed my opinion, but most of the things I’ve read have been fairly representative of the variety of people in SFF.

I think there are definitive, traceable reasons for that, one of them being the internet and interactive fandom. When an anthology does things like include no women or people of color, etc.—people notice, and people say something. The availability of easier online publishing with a huge readership and cheaper production costs has introduced so many new writers to audiences who wouldn’t have seen them otherwise. Our own Tor.com, for example, has been responsible for publishing some great stories in the past two years that have gone on to win awards, show up in best-of anthologies, you name it.

The rise of smaller publishers to prominence in chain bookstores contributes, too. Night Shade and Prime Books both publish a large amount of anthologies, themed and not. I’ve been impressed consistently with the quality of Night Shade’s work—John Joseph Adams is a talented editor and he has a way of grouping stories that really works for me. They’ve also picked up a Datlow-edited Year’s Best Horror to make up for her discontinued series, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Prime has picked up some of the slack in publishing Best-of anthologies: they offer both a Year’s Best Fantasy and Science Fiction and a Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror now. Not to mention, Prime is as of this year publishing a Hugo Award Showcase (of the 2009 Hugos, I have hopes that next year there’ll be a second edition), and that seriously gains my appreciation. While most of the stories are available every year online, being able to buy an actual showcase is fantastic. (They also published The Bone Key by Sarah Monette, an absolute all-time favorite of mine, reviewed here.)

While they’ve both had, shall we say, a bit of public misbehavior in recent years regarding their contributors, they’re also providing an outlet for short fiction that’s been extremely useful for many readers. As far as quality of production, Night Shade outstrips Prime, who are prone to typographical errors and formatting mistakes that lose them brownie points with me. (I do love the fact that they’re publishing these anthologies and I absolutely think they’re worth buying and supporting, but I’d also like a bit more attention to the simple polishing aspects of the job—page break errors and typos aren’t cool.)

Outside of Best-ofs, I’ve read some excellent themed anthologies this year. Far and above a favorite of mine is Ekaterina Sedia’s Running with the Pack, which is one of the most subject-diverse anthologies about werewolves I’ve ever seen. Queer werewolves, young and middle-aged and old werewolves, werewolves with varying economic situations, bad werewolves and good werewolves, werewolves of color—it was quite the experience. The Sedia anthology makes a point of the fact that an editor doesn’t have to “force” diversity as some people have badly, badly attempted to argue in the past. It’s not about forcing, and diversity only made the anthology better, more rich and awesome. (End soapbox.) Not to mention, it ended on one of the saddest stories I’ve ever read and left me dejected for hours. That’s actually a good thing, if you were wondering.

Not to stop there, either: it’s been a good few years for single-author collections, as this year’s World Fantasy nominees can attest. Peter S. Beagle and Gene Wolfe both recently had collections come out, and I’m so torn about which to vote for. They’re both great. The Best of Gene Wolfe is a gorgeous hardcover (also available in trade paperback now, but mine is hardcover) from Tor. So, don’t let me steal the attention from the big presses when it comes to anthologies. They’ve been doing the work, too.

(A side-note: I special-order stocked the trade of the Gene Wolfe collection at my store, expecting only the other employees to buy it, and a very excited man brought it up to the counter thanking us profusely for carrying it. Apparently, he’d been trying to find a copy in a store for months. I still get a pleased glow thinking about that, really. There are many perks to working in a bookstore, namely the shared joy of uniting someone with their perfect book, which you can’t get anywhere else.)

And that’s just a few of the anthologies I’ve read and loved this year.

The short story really is a careful, twisty, wonderful art-form entirely different from the novel. I hope the first customer I told you about in this post eventually changes her mind—she really is missing out on all this bounty. In the meantime, I just thought I’d share with you a little bit of my love-affair with anthologies.

So, here’s the call to arms that one obligatorily has to include in any post about great books: go buy an anthology sometime soon. Support the editors collecting them, the writers contributing to them, and the publishers who are taking the leap and putting them out. Support your local bookstores, even the chains, if you see them carrying anthologies.

If we buy them, more will come.

Brit Mandelo is a multi-fandom geek with a special love for comics and queer literature. She can be found on Twitter and Livejournal.

 

He’s old this time. A hospital gown sags over his gaunt frame. IV wires stream from his arms, plugging him into a thousand machines. I could tear them out one by one.

I ask, “Do you know who I am?”

He rolls his head back and forth, trying to see. His eyes are pale with cataracts, roosting in nests of wrinkles. He gestures me closer, skin thin to the point of translucence, veins tunneling below.

Recognition strikes. “You’re that boy I hurt. . . . All grown up. . . .”

[Read more...]

If all were lost and I found myself red-thonged and rifle-bound as the giant Zardozian head of Stanley Kubrick roiled over the ruined horizon, I would chase it forever till the end of the earth. Kubrick’s films offer a stunning portrait of isolation and spiritual angst few others manage to achieve with such edge and elegance. Grounded in both the pulverant physicality of the little moments while also speaking to our loftiest concepts is a rare achievement, but one Kubrick manages in each of his films beautifully. As a storyteller watching his films, I feel like a dusty, cod-eyed ape triumphantly railing my newfound bone weapon against a backdrop of something far bigger than I could ever conceive... and my heart is warmed greatly by it.

Illustration by Greg Ruth

From Greg Ruth’s 52 Weeks project—offering a drawing and a few words once a week, every week. Follow him on Twitter and check out his Etsy store.

In my post on Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir, Ursula asked:

Jo, how do you find these things?  

Browsing a bookstore only goes so far.  I’m curious as to what your book-choosing techniques are, as mine seem to be evolving into “what has Jo written about?”

My immediate answer was that I find things in exactly the same way Ursula does—my friends talk about them. In the case of this book that’s exactly what happened, a friend read it and discussed it, I checked if the library had it, they did, I read it. I love libraries. There’s literally no cost to trying things out. If somebody mentions an interesting book online, I immediately open a tab to the Grande Bibliotheque and check if they have it. But however I get hold of it, my number one way of finding out that books exist remains word of mouth — especially for weird books.

[Read more: There are other ways]

I’ve mentioned here before looking at awards lists for new writers. This is a good way of finding out who other people think are good—where somebody has weeded out the duds. I especially like doing this with awards from other cultures, like the Vogels, and with the Dicks, where you tend to see a lot of new writers. You can also do a lot worse than look at the Locus year results and use them as a reading list by year—you’ll read a lot of interesting stuff. I’m linking to last year’s because this year’s isn’t complete (and also because there’s a book of mine on it and that embarrasses me to recommend) but if you look at that and ignore categories you don’t like you’d have a great list that would hit a lot of what people were talking about.

However, you’d also miss a lot. There are great books that seem to pass under the radar, that don’t get talked about or nominated for awards. That’s actually the kind of book I’m most interested in talking about here—things like Black Wine and Lear’s Daughters. I found Black Wine by meeting Dorsay at a con and hearing her talk and wanting to read her books—that’s another method that really works for me. I borrowed the book from next door neighbour and fellow Tor.com blogger René Walling, as it’s impossible to find. (But it’s reassuring to know that even though I don’t own it, there’s a copy in our street.) Lear’s Daughters I found on a random library browse—and it wasn’t even my random library browse. I was stuck in bed and I sent my ex-husband out to find me something to read, and that’s what he found.

If I’m browsing in library or bookshop I’ll be trying to remember things people have recommended. I may have a list, or it may be in my head. I’ll pick up things I’ve never heard of that have interesting sounding titles. I’ll go for subgenres I know I like.

The only weird thing I do is when I am looking for older romance novels. I like gothics, as I think I’ve mentioned, and I don’t much like modern romance novels. (Except Jennifer Crusie. Love her. Starting reading her because friends recommended her, including men.) So there I am in the library romance section, and I don’t have any names and I want older romance novels—so I go for chunks of older books without coloured covers. The last time I tried this it got me one absolute hit of gothics and also the astonishingly, wonderfully weird Kathleen Norris.

I also read Dozois Year’s Best SF every year, and then read novels by all the people whose stories I like, if they’ve written novels. This was a better method when I’d read less, but I still do this. It fairly recently netted me David Marusek.

There’s also a thing I do when I’m doing research—I research a lot, all my books require a lot of research reading. If I find a good writer, someone who writes clear lucid prose about whatever I’m needing to read about, I’ll read everything else they’ve written. I may not know I’m interested in the other things, but that doesn’t really matter. If someone’s capable of being interesting about St. Germanus, they’ll be interesting with whatever they write about. I’ve never been proved wrong on this one.

There are always a pile of books I know are coming out and I am waiting for, so I check the bookshop for them, and while I’m there I often stumble across other things. And I check all the secondhand bookshops locally (in rotation, leaving them to lie fallow in between) and anywhere I visit and buy things I can’t resist.

Yet with all this I’m always aware there’s a lot I’m missing, that I’m not finding. But that’s okay. It’ll be there another day. There will come new things to read. Somebody will tell me about them. And if not, I can keep re-reading and telling you about things.

How about you?

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.

If you’re like me, you enjoy a good zombie story (forty-four of them if you can manage it). So I’m always on the lookout for the latest zombie bonanza.

Ladies and gentlemen, the mother lode.

The undisputed master of the zombie anthology is none other than John Joseph Adams. In 2008, The Living Dead swept the industry. Publisher’s Weekly named it one of the Best Books of the Year, and Barnes & Noble.com called it “The best collection of zombie fiction ever.”

[Click here to find out how you top that]

Next week, the hotly-anticipated sequel to The Living Dead hits the shelves. Now, B&N.com has changed its mind: “I described The Living Dead as the best collection of zombie fiction stories ever collected—this follow-up anthology is even better.”

But don’t take his word for it, or mine (my story ”Mouja" appears on page 61). Drive it before you buy it. The Living Dead 2 has a slick new website with eight, count ’em, eight free stories from the anthology! So check it out right now. And then go buy the book, or order it online, or download the e-book, or whatever it is you crazy kids are doing these days. The book costs just $15.99. That’s like, thirty-seven cents per story.

I’m telling you, this JJA is a mad genius, and not the kind from his forthcoming anthology The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination. You won’t just find eight free stories (including mine) and glowing reviews of the massive tome, but you’ll also get the header notes to every story in the book AND exclusive interviews with the contributors (including me) that you can’t find anywhere else! The constraints of grammar demand I use only one exclamation point per sentence to share this information with you, but honestly, you could fight off legions of undead with the number of exclamation points I would choose to use.

The fun doesn’t stop there, my little flesheaters. Next week, we are going to be having zombie week here at T dot C. Several of the authors featured in The Living Dead 2 will contribute to the zombie jamboree (including me). So be on the look out.

Why are you still here? Go buy the book! Read all those free goodies. Seriously, get going. The zombies might be right behind you!

(Special thanks to Sam Beattie for the title of this article.)

Matt London is an author and filmmaker who lives in New York City. He is a graduate of the Clarion Writer’s Workshop, as well as a columnist for Tor.com, Lightspeed, and Realms of Fantasy. His fiction can be found in the anthology The Living Dead 2. He holds a BFA in Film Production from New York University.

Note: This review originally appeared on Tor.com on April 18th of this year and concludes our Poul Anderson tribute. You can find all of the appreciations gathered here.

Poul Anderson was the first science fiction writer I read once I’d discovered science fiction was a genre. (This was because I was starting in alphabetical order.) I have been fond of his work for decades, and I sometimes think that it’s possible to define all of SF as variations on themes from Poul Anderson. The High Crusade (1960) is a short novel, and it’s funny and clever and it works. It’s a quick read, which is good because it’s the kind of book it’s hard to put down.

I always think of it as being in the same category as Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen or Lest Darkness Fall, though it’s not really like that at all. The premise of The High Crusade is that in 1345, just as Sir Roger de Coverley is getting ready to go to France to fight for the king, an alien spaceship lands in a little Lincolnshire village. The medieval army quickly overruns the spaceship and eventually the alien empire, by a mixture of bluff, combining medieval and futuristic tech, fast talk, and deceit, as you would, really. It may not be plausible, but it’s fun, and anyway it’s more plausible than you might imagine. There’s a scene for instance when they use alien bombs in a wooden trebuchet that naturally doesn’t show up on radar.

[Read more: mild spoilers]

One of the things that’s so great about this book is the voice of Brother Parvus, a monk with a gift for languages rather out of his depth. The book is his first person chronicle of the events, and the voice is just right. The way he slowly comes to understand the alien view of the universe and reconcile it with his own worldview is lovely. At one point he decides that the biblical “four corners of the world” actually imply a cubical universe, with lots of stars and planets in it. He teaches the alien Latin, which means it can only communicate with the clergy, but hey, it obviously makes sense. The best thing of all is that they lose Earth. Their first thought on capturing the spaceship is how much destruction they can do with it in France, but they are betrayed by their alien prisoner and end up on an alien planet—with no way of getting back. So it’s a secret history—humanity takes over the alien empire and imposes feudalism on the aliens, and they’re still out there. Indeed the frame story is about people in our future discovering them to their amazement.

The medieval tech is very well done, and I’m absolutely sure Anderson knew exactly how much weight an English cavalry charge could knock down, and how much airplane skin an arrow from a longbow could pierce. The alien tech is weird. It’s 1960s tech plus FTL and force shields. The navigation notes that tell where to find Earth that get destroyed were written on paper. The spaceship had an autopilot, but no computer. This makes it much easier for the knights to figure things out—I kept thinking they’re figuring it out more easily than they could if they had our tech, which shows what a long way we’ve come since 1960. This isn’t a problem with reading the book now, it’s just how it is.

This is a fun fast read, and just what you want as a palate cleanser if you’ve just finished Dhalgren. It’s hard to believe they were written on the same planet, never mind in the same genre. And the old British covers—practically identical. The Baen cover is great—it’s an illustration of the novel, and it tells you what you’re going to get, knights on horseback going after green aliens in spaceships. There’s also treachery, intrigue, courtly love, and all packed into a mere 181 pages. I’m an absolute sucker for this kind of thing, and it doesn’t get any better than this.

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.

NOTE: Re-posted here for curious eyes is Leigh Butler's spoiler-full review of The Gathering Storm. We're working on smoothing out the original post so everyone can read the 3000+ comments. The discussion continues here.

Happy drop date, WOT fans!

Today marks the official U.S. release of the long-awaited twelfth novel in the Wheel of Time series, The Gathering Storm—the finest merchandise this side of the river Jordan, on sale today! Come on down, heh heh.

But you probably knew that. About time, eh?

Consequently, as promised, I have here my second and infinitely more spoiler-laden review of the book. This will also, coincidentally, provide you with a place on Tor.com to discuss your own spoilery thoughts and reactions to The Gathering Storm, because we love you and we want you to be happy.

So have at, but remember: please confine all spoilers for the new book to this post. There are many readers out there who for whatever reason are not able to obtain and read the novel on the day of release, so out of courtesy to them, please keep the spoilers concentrated in one easily-avoidable spot, mmkay? Thanks, y’all are rockalicious.

Also, this is obvious, but just for the record: There are GIANT, MASSIVE, BOOK-DESTROYING SPOILERS for The Gathering Storm under the cut. And you can bet that whatever I don’t spoil in the post, will get spoiled in the comments. Read at your own risk.

For what it’s worth, I strongly advise WOT readers to avoid this post until they have read the book. I know some of y’all have low willpower on this score, but I’m seriously telling you that you will miss out if you ruin the ending (and the middle, and all the other parts) for yourself before reading the actual book. Also, since I’m not going to be explicating the details of every last event I bring up, if you haven’t read the book first, some of the things I’m going to say may not make sense to you anyway, which is yet another reason to wait.

As someone with a terminal allergy to spoilers before the fact, that’s just my opinion, of course, and I ain’t your mama, but presumably you’re here because you semi-care about my opinions, so there you have one.

So, there’s all that. For those of you looking for a totally spoiler-free and yet also somehow-massively-verbose review of The Gathering Storm, go here. Honor to serve and alla that.

And now, having gotten all warnings, caveats, and stern remonstrances out of the way, click though to get to the meat. IF YOU DARE.

[Also makes julienne fries!]

Just so you know, this is not going to be an exhaustive dissection of the book. For one thing, that would take too damn long, and second, I’m going to eventually be doing a very detailed recap of The Gathering Storm (henceforth abbreviated TGS) anyway, just like all the other books, so I have to save some gems of wisdom here.

*deep breath* Hokay. So, I guess the best way to go about this is to basically expand upon my little “list of scenes that made me react in some way” from the non-spoilered review, right? Right. It should be noted that several scenes fit several categories, so there will be some repetition in here.

It should also be noted that I’ve actually only done one complete read-through of TGS thus far, and that at Ludicrous Speed, so some of my memories have of necessity gone to plaid. I’m working on a second (much slower) read-through as I write this, but time constraints being what they are, I may not get to everything before this has to go up. We Shall See.

Anyway! The scenes. In the order I deem most coherent(ish):

Scene of partial *headdesk*ing: Was actually more of a “*headde*- wait. DAMMIT”, because it was when Cadsuane had her Moment of Awesome in besting Semirhage – and she did it with spanking.

*wibble*

That was ON PURPOSE, WASN’T IT, TEAM JORDAN. It’s a plot, I tell you. A PLOT AGAINST ME. I’m going to go curl up with a blankie now.

(Over-inflated sense of importance? Moi?)

Scenes that made me go “Aww”: When Siuan (finally!) bonded Bryne, and later on when he asked her to marry him. Aww. Their interaction in general in TGS was just sweet, which is something I don’t get to say too often about romantic relationships in WOT. Plus, one long-hanging prophecy down, whoo!

(As a side note, those Seanchan Black Ops kamikaze guys (I forget what they were called) really didn’t live up to their hype, did they?)

Scene that managed to profoundly irritate me at the exact same time I was going “HELLS, YES”: The (second) dinner scene in the Tower. Even as I was cheering Egwene’s verbal excoriation of Elaida, for it was unquestionably a Smackdown of Eloquent Awesomeness, I found it extremely difficult to believe Elaida wouldn’t have shut her up before she got more than two sentences into it. Plus, I have issues with Elaida’s character derailment, which sort of precedes TGS but really goes nuts here. I mean, she was always an incompetent martinet with delusions of grandeur, but in TGS (and especially in this scene) she’s practically twirling her moustaches and tying damsels to railroad tracks. Enh.

“Wait, what?” scenes: a number of them, really, including the manner in which Elaida was disposed of – not so much how she went (which was only appropriate, all things considered), but that we didn’t get to see her in the battle up to that point, at all. I don’t know, it was just kind of abrupt and “Oh, hey, we forgot all about her! Whoops, bye!” I just felt that as such a major antagonist, she sort of deserved a more detailed exit.

That being said, I devoutly hope that we will never ever see her again. If any part of Book 13 is concerned with mounting a rescue for her I may have to throw a tantrum.

Another “wait, what?” scene was the death of Sheriam. Though the scene in which she was exposed as Black Ajah was beyond awesome, I was like “That’s how Min’s viewing is fulfilled? Really?” I can’t decide if the viewing thing was clever or cheap, actually; it could really go either way. Of course, I may be a bit personally biased, as that whole thing torpedoed one of my favorite pet theories, that Sheriam was going to go down in a blaze of glory taking out Halima. Crap, I really liked that theory. Oh, well.

(Also, what, no thirteen on thirteen trick? Is that EVER going to come up? And Sheriam would have been so appropriate thematically for it! Man...)

And the big “wait, WHAT?” thing (but in a good way) was Rand channeling the True Power to escape Semirhage. Holy jumping Jehoshaphat, but I sure as hell never saw that coming. Not to mention, I believe the applicable category here is Very, Very Bad Things. Ai yi yi. Nothing Good Can Come Of This, y’all.

That scene is also the one that upset me so much I had to walk away for a while. This is my schizophrenic scene reaction, because while it was probably one of the most tension-filled and dramatic (i.e., well-done) scenes in the book, possibly in the series (certainly in the latter half of the series), I can’t say that I loved it. In fact I hated it, because it was so frickin’ terrible for Rand and Min. But you see the distinction: I didn’t hate it because it was awfully written, I hated it because it was as exactly as awful as it was supposed to be. So it was a great scene, but I hated it. Does that make any sense?

Speaking of which, Rand’s entire plot arc in TGS contains something of that schizoid reaction for me. I believe I am on record somewhere stating that I thought TPOD (Book 8, The Path of Daggers) marked Rand’s low point (both emotionally and in terms of my liking for the character); well, I was so, so very wrong, you guys. THIS was Rand’s low point, on both counts, and I was frankly shocked at what a terribly low low it was.

I’m not saying that it wasn’t necessary to have happened, storywise; if you view Rand as being the equivalent of an alcoholic (or anyone locked into a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior) who has to hit bottom before he can begin to climb back up again, it was totally necessary. And I’m not saying Rand didn’t have valid excuses either, like, oh, I dunno, the Head Evil Dude In Charge LEAKING INTO HIS BRAIN, but knowing all that did not make it any easier to read. I honestly kind of loathed Rand through 95% of his screen time, which, yeah, I’m really not happy to be made to dislike a protagonist so strongly. (In case you can’t tell, in general I am not a fan of antiheroes.)

Especially a character I had previously liked so much; Rand may not ever have been my absolute favorite character in WOT, but TPOD aside he was nearly always in the top five, and usually the top three. So while I’m sure his arc was probably very well done in a technical sense, I have a difficult time gaining enough objective space from my own extremely negative reaction in order to admit that.

This is what I was referring to as possible risks on Brandon’s part. Though obviously I know that Jordan outlined what was to happen in more than just a general sense, somehow the extremity of the depths to which Rand is sunk in TGS rings more to me of Sanderson’s demonstrated willingness to push the fantasy trope envelope (i.e. how horrible can we make the protagonist/hero/Messiah figure before he is riiight on the edge of irredeemable?) than Jordan’s more traditional adherence to, er, tradition.

Of course, I don’t know this is true for sure; I’m just guessing. Maybe this is exactly what Jordan planned all along and I have no idea what I’m talking about. But that’s the feeling I get, so there you have it.

(Aaand I now have a mental picture of Brandon chanting “How low! Can you go!” My brain, ladies and gentlemen.)

Whichever the case, Rand is the cause of both times I wanted to hurl the book across the room: once when he was reunited with Hurin, and when he finally reunited with (and then almost killed) his father Tam. (And a near third, when he offhandedly commented to Nynaeve that Lan’s death would “serve him well” or some such UTTER MORIDIN-LEAKING BULLSHIT. Gah.) Oh my God but I wanted to beat Rand senseless during these two scenes – actually more over the Hurin thing than Tam. Tam at least was sort of trying to provoke a reaction from Rand (if not remotely the one he got), and plus Rand was actually doing pretty okay with Tam – right up to where it all went to shit of course – but all poor adorable Hurin wanted was a kind word from “Lord Rand”. He was all so excited! And instead he got treated like dirt. Two, count ‘em TWO of the reunions I had been wishing and hoping for, and that’s how they go? GRRRRRR LEIGH SMASH.

Again, this is not me disparaging the scenes on their merits, so much as me expressing my feelings about what actually happened. Rand had better apologize to Hurin in the next book, is all I’m saying. Fortunately it looks like he might actually be in a headspace to do so, thanks to the ending.

And speaking of headspace: HAHAHAHAHA Lews Therin is gone. And in a way that STILL doesn’t definitively settle the “real or not real” question!!

Heh. Hah. HAH. HEE HOO HAH HAHAHA HAAAAAAH. I cannot figure out how I feel about that whole scene in general, but I tell you I chortled for like five minutes over the Lews Therin thing. I win again, Lews Therin! Except you don’t care, because you’re not here! HAH hee hee. You may all feel free to hate me now. Heh.

As to the end at large: I... really don’t know, you guys. I have to read it again. If I get to it before this goes up I may expand upon this, but otherwise I’ll let you guys argue about it, because I am well and truly divided. On the one hand I was like “THANK YOU JESUS, maybe Rand can stop being an asshole and I can like him again”, and on the other I was... feeling a bit anticlimactic about it all. I know it’s kind of insane to call a scene where basically Rand talks himself off the ledge of destroying the frickin’ world “anticlimactic”, but I think the operative word there is “talk”. I don’t know if this is unfair of me or not. Like I said, I’ll have to read it again.

Speaking of scenes that left me divided (not to mention stunned speechless): WHAT THE HELL, RAND, with the balefiring of an entire city. Or city-like compound, whatever. My reaction was seriously just, “Uh. So... wow, that... happened.” By all rights this should have infuriated me far more than the Hurin thing or the Tam thing, but I was just so shocked by it, I couldn’t even summon up any book-throwingness. Jeez.

Watch, I bet Graendal wasn’t even there, you guys. Yes, I know, the Compulsion on Whatshisname was gone, but you know the rules: we didn’t see a body! And on the one hand, if she wasn’t there, that makes what Rand did just that much worse; but on the other, if she was there, well, damn, because that means Graendal got an even lamer exit than Elaida did. We didn’t even get to see her! My reaction, she is torn!

Um, what else. Oh, right, the big one: my duly appointed Awesomely Awesome Scene of Awesomeness.

Which would be – Dah dah-dah DAH! – Verin’s Last Hour.

I’m sorry, I meant Verin’s Last Hour OF AWESOME.

I mean, come ON. That was frickin’ gorgeous, y’all. Seal, clapping like a. Oh, yeah.

I am so freaking vindicated in my love for Verin, you guys. For Indeed she did show herself to be the veritable Zen Master of Sneakiness to the very end, with the culmination of her Seventy-Year Project of Tying Up Like Fifty Plotlines In Twenty Pages. I ask you, what other WOT character has done so much for one fandom? NONE, that’s who, thank you, goodbye. Not to mention, she fooled EVERYONE – and that includes the readership at large!

Sure sure, there have always been those who believed she was Black, and I’m sure there were even a few out there who hit upon the exact Sidney Bristow Double Agent formula here (though now I’m picturing Verin in an electric blue rubber minidress, which is all kinds of wrong, and now you are too. You’re welcome), but I’m in a fair ex-WOTFAQ-editing position to say that the vast majority of the fandom never hit upon it. For we were most skillfully misled, you guys.

Most readers (including me) were of the opinion that she was not Black, but had removed the First Oath so that she could lie, with various iterations of Purple Ajah/Second Foundation Ajah/Very Old Verin Theory curlicues tacked on for effect. Read the FAQ article if you don’t believe me; the very fact that her article isn’t even in the “Black or not?” section speaks volumes.

We were so close to being right, but we weren’t, y’all. Not exactly. Because Verin (and Jordan) were just that sneaky. Too. Frickin. Brilliant. I sigh contentedly in their general direction!

So, yeah, I think it’s safe to say I hearted that scene. I will love it and hug it and squeeze it and call it George, oh yes. And I’ll fight any one of youse wiseguys what says different, see? Putemup, putemup!

(Okay, not really, because that means I would have to fight Jason Denzel, who I already know disagrees with me over which TGS Scene is Top Most Awesome. And, he’s a pretty nice guy, who also owns a fair amount of medieval weaponry, so I’ll let it go. JUST THIS ONCE.)

Incidentally, this is also one of the two scenes that made me choke up. Verin’s death was about as awesome a WOT character death as can well be imagined (certainly one of the most useful in, like, ever), but that made it even more upsetting that she had to go. I won’t lie, I had to get a tissue.

The other scene that made me tear up was, shockingly, the little vigil Faile and Co. held for their erstwhile protectors/propositioners while being held by the Shaido. Considering my virulent hatred for that entire plotline, getting mushy over Rolan et al was about the last damn thing I would have expected, and yet there I was. I don’t know, maybe it’s just that I’m more sensitized to expressions of grief than I used to be. Growing up sucks, sometimes.

Oh, yeah, which reminds me: Mat and Perrin were in this book.

And I can’t let a spoilerriffic review of TGS end without bringing up the Plot Arc of Total Awesomeness, only slightly eclipsed by Verin’s Hour of Awesome (which was really part of the arc anyway, so), which is of course the entire Battle for the White Tower.

Not just the actual battle part with the Seanchan, though that of course was beautifully done (excepting the lack of Elaida, natch), but the entire campaign Egwene wages from within to reunite the Tower, bring Elaida down, and finally at long-goddamn-last effect a Black Ajah Purge. Or, to put it another way, the awesomeness is encompassed by every single second Egwene is on screen. Basically, she rocked from start to finish, and as of this moment is in firm first place as my favorite (living) WOT character.

Our Ooh! Ooh! Girl is all grown up, y’all. I’m so proud! *sniffle*

And thank God she was there, y’all, because if the whole of TGS had been Mat and Perrin being irrelevant and Gawyn being an idiot and Rand being a giant city-balefiring jerk, I really would have thrown the book through the wall. On its merits, even.

But fortunately Team Jordan is savvy enough to figure out that we must leaven the sourness of bottom-hitting-avec-vague-promise-of-future triumph with the sweetness of actual triumph, and thus I am sated. At least until Book 13! In which Rand had better gain back his awesome, zallumsane.

Aaaand I’m spent. I know there’s tons I didn’t even get to, and I ended on kind of a weird note, but the madness must stop somewhere, and I’m sure you guys will be more than happy to lambaste my wrongness fill in the gaps in the comments.

(That’s how “lambaste” is spelled? Really? Huh.)

Anyway, we presume you have enjoyed your ride on TGS Spoiler Mountain, as we see you have managed to refrain from blowing up the planet theme park planet at the summit. Good on ya, Guvnor! Remain seated, please (Permanecer sentados, por favor) until the ride comes to a full stop. Then go forth, laugh, be fruitful, and multiply the comments! Peace out, G!

Leigh Butler is a writer and blogger for Tor.com, where she *headdesks* frequently for the amusement and edification of others, and also conducts a Re-read of the Wheel of Time series, which is currently completed through Book Six, Lord of Chaos. She currently lives in New York City, which is only appropriate.