Books in July

Still crunching away at the WIP, so this will be pretty brief.

First up: Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan. I liked her previous novels, Doppleganger and Warrior and Witch. This novel is very different, more alternate history less sword and sorcery. The writing is gorgeous, and the story is steeped in Elizabethan history. One gets the sense that when a chase is on through London, one could go to London and recreate it exactly, that every street and turning is exactly right. The idea that there were two queens, and that Queen Elizabeth's fate was tied to this other, darker queen is a cool one, and is handled well. If you like faerie stories, definitely check this out.

Catching up on some more of the Christmas books, I plunged into Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. I've read some of her short fiction before, and last year I checked Zahrah the Windseeker out of the library, read the first third and added it to my must buy list (you know, the list I keep going through the year so I know what to get with my gift cards in December). Cool concept, with the plant-based technology, although the writing was a touch too exclamation pointy for me. The Shadow Speaker goes deeper, darker, and is written with a defter hand. Zahrah was a fun read, but The Shadow Speaker was much cooler.

Having whetted my appetite for YA, I dove into Diana Wynne Jones next. I started with Eight Days of Luke, about a boy who accidently frees Loki from his prison. It was about the Norse gods, which are my favorite pantheon, so of course I loved it. (It also features a boy whose parents have died and he lives with his relatives who don't treat him particularly well, always trying to get him to stay at school over the holidays, and dressing him in much-too-big cast-offs. Sound familiar? Only this book was written in 1975...)

The other Jones I had on hand were all the books in the Chrestomanci series (individually: Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, Conrad’s Fate, Witch Week, The Magicians of Caprona, Mixed Magic and The Pinhoe Egg). All very cool. Jones writes magic really well: it has a framework and rules, but there are different styles and a lot of individuality between magic-users. And it's a series that gets more interesting as it goes, which is always a good thing.

At that point I needed something less engrossing, something I could read on the treadmill but wouldn't feel compelled to give up writing time to finish. So I finally caved to my husband's pestering and plunged into Edgar Rice Burroughs. I read the first three: A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars. Very cool settings and creatures, I can' believe no one has made a film of this yet (although nearly everyone cool in Hollywood has been just about to try it. I believe Pixar has the hot potato at the moment). It did make me appreciate that my first experience with pulps was Star Wars, though. I mean, John Carter is very much like Farnham with his lifeboat rules; Dejah Thoris may be a princess but she is going to do exactly what he tells her to do without asking any questions. And she meekly agrees. Can you imagine someone trying to pull that act on Princess Leia?

OK, off to eat my very cold lunch now...