The Dragon Keeper – Robin Hobb

It kept me reading, and it didn’t drag on.

Eh? Eh? No?

Well piss off then.

The Dragon Keeper is the first Robin Hobb novel I’ve read and, come to think of it, the first fantasy novel I’ve actually read this year. So far, I’ve only known Hobb through reputation, but after reading The Dragon Keeper it seems that this reputation is well deserved.

I enjoyed the novel’s main premise simply because of the way it plays with traditional fantasy tropes concerning dragons; having hatched after a period of cocoon-based gestation, a large clutch of what seem to be the last dragons in the world have emerged malformed and badly weakened, unable to hunt and completely dependent on human help. As the people tending the dragons grow tired of their burden, they recruit a group of dragon keepers from the dregs of society to take the dragons on a do-or-die mission to the mythical lost city of Kelsingra.

In a lot of ways, the dragons in The Dragon Keeper are similar to the dragons that have populated fantasy literature since Tolkien’s Smaug; they are proud, manipulative, cunning and ruthless, but thanks to their deformities are also completely dependent on humans to survive. It makes for an interesting new approach on creatures that have been a staple of the genre since its foundation, and on one hand while they veer close to being clichéd their disabilities add a fascinating element to them. Sintara, the main dragon character, is one of the book’s more interesting leads, with her pride playing against her frustration at the conditions she lives in and her inability to fly. The book also present the dragons with a unique life-cycle, one that alternates between them living as dragon and sea-serpents; at the very beginning of the book there is a riveting scene when Sintara, in her sea-serpent form, forges upriver with the rest of the serpents for cocooning, a scene strongly reminiscent of a salmon run but with colossal monsters instead of largely inoffensive, tasty fish.

The world, a setting called The Cursed Shores, also deserves praise for how well Hobb builds it. Opting for what I can only call ‘complete immersion’, readers are plunged into the setting head first without much in the way of exposition or detailed explanation. Instead, information about the setting comes from character actions and dialogue, and it’s packed with  interesting details that make the fantastical elements feel grounded and realistic. It’s a setting with a definite feeling of either being in decline, or possibly beginning a recovering after a little-detailed calamity; while I wouldn’t call it post-apocalyptic, it certainly has the sense of having suffered some mysterious disaster in its past. One of the more interesting ideas is of a river that flows with acidic water of varying pH levels, but while it was a cool concept Hobb’s attempts to try and make the ecosystem built around it look plausible instead felt somewhat forced.

While the worldbuilding is good, however, the book’s greatest strength lies in its characters. They’re complex, well-rounded and their interactions are realistic and fascinating. Arguments feel real and the antagonists are both plausible and intimidating. I do feel that it was a shame that the book’s best antagonist, the manipulative, charismatic and sadistic trader Hest Finbok, appears only in the first half of the book and then is relegated to the sidelines and flashbacks as the focus of the novel moves away from him; he had the presence to dominate every scene without being melodramatic, and while a later antagonistic character, Greft, seems to have some in common with him he doesn’t quite manage to have the same sense of menace and barely-controlled violence Hest imparted.

The pacing may be rather slow for some readers, with the novel not really getting going until it hits the halfway point, but this is spent getting to know the characters and so by the time things get going proper I was already well invested in the book. The ending did have a slightly weak ‘to be continued’ feel to it as well, and while I can appreciate that this is book one for an entire series it left almost all plot threads open with very little in the way of resolution. I suppose that this is to get readers to want to get the next novel, but honestly I was involved enough in the book at that point that I’m planning on getting its sequel anyway.

The Dragon Keeper is an excellent book, one that I was compelled to read through in just under a week despite its rather hefty pagecount. It’s moving, well-written and intelligent, and the best fantasy novel I’ve read since Aliette De Boddard’s Obsidian and Blood trilogy. In all likelihood, I’m going to be scouring the shelves of my local bookshop to find its sequel as soon as I can.

The Distant View of the Lonely Machine

A tribute to China’s Yutu/Jade Rabbit rover which, due to a mechanical failure, was irreversibly damaged and shut down today, an incident which made me feel much sadder than it really should.

The Distant View of the Lonely Machine

Blue green white arc
On the horizon is Earth’s sliver
Watching in lunar night
Cold Jade Rabbit shivers

Looks down as God sees
A divine eye rheumy with vacuum’s chill
Gazes upon creators’ home
Machine launched by human will

Bravely it went
No return was what they said
Roll till death on dust of stars
To explore in humanity’s stead

Accident crippled, made paralytic
Yutu sits upon empty plains
Gazing upon grey and empty black
Sensors warning a simulacrum of pain

Chill lunar night creeps
Without the shielding panel’s fold
Freezing fingers grip innards
Jade Rabbit dies in the cold

Distant horizons are gone forever
Over craters Yutu shall not roam
Power only for one transmission
A final message home:

To tell you all a secret, I don’t feel that sad
I was just in my own adventure story – and like every hero, I encountered a small problem
Goodnight, Earth
Goodnight, humanity.

Loadout – Third Person Slapstick

The term Free2Play has, in recent years, become a tarnished one, usually associated with sleazy business practices, unbalanced gameplay and young children naively flushing hundreds of pounds of their parents’ cash away on app games. With the advent of the Pay2Win model, riding on the consumer friendly stallion of F2P like a black knight, most gamers have been wary of the concept and with good reason; aside from a few standouts such as Team Fortress 2, Tribes: Ascend and Planetside 2, most of F2P games can’t be trusted. I am pleased to inform you, however, that Loadout, an arena-combat third person shooter from Edge of Reality Studios, is another addition to the stable of F2P games that is not only fair to consumers, but is also a generally excellent game.

Loadout is an arena game, focused entirely on an online experience against other players. It boasts three prominent features; cartoonish visuals, gory slapstick-based humour and extensive gun customisation, and as a result invites comparison to Team Fortress 2 and the Borderlands games.

With the characters able to soak a reasonable amount of damage, move quickly, jump high and dodge attacks by rolling, combat is frantic and acrobatic. At long range, well-placed shots that whittle down opponents before they can dart to cover are key, and up close the key to victory is speed and the ability to time dodges and shots correctly. It makes fights challenging and dynamic, and even killing one opponent feels satisfying. Combined with the games gory slapstick and dark humour and it makes Loadout an incredibly fun and lovably daft experience.

The gameplay is divided into four different modes: Death Snatch, Blitz, Jackhammer and Extraction. They’re all fairly standard variations on deathmatch, point capture, capture the flag and objective grab game types, but the Jackhammer mode had an interesting twist on capture flag with the flag being a massive hammer capable of dealing massive splash damage and becoming more valuable with every kill made. The choice between making a safer but less valuable run straight to the drop-off point or risking death for a greater payoff adds a tactical choice to the game mode which makes it much more interesting.

Gunfights are mixed up with special equipment that players can deploy. These range from grenades, doing the typical grenadey thing of high damage over a wide area, to shields which make your players more durable, to turrets that can be dropped across the battlefield to guard key points. Other upgrades include one that can mark you as a friendly on enemy screens, and the ability to lay booby-trapped health and equipment pickups on the map.

Satisfying and enjoyable as the gameplay is, my favourite part of Loadout is the weapon customisation. The game has four basic weapon classes; rifle, launcher, pulse and beam. Each one of them can be extensively modified by the player by adding on new components which alter their stats and the way they play. Want to snipe enemy players? Just add a sniper scope, sniper barrel and a bolt-action magazine onto the basic rifle. Sure, you’ll be firing slowly but you’ll hit like a ton of bricks from long distance. Alternatively, if you want to take out lots of enemies at once, just spec up a launcher to fire clusters of missiles across large areas. Weapons can also have more unusual features, such as healing allied players or doing damage over time with incendiary ammunition. Typically, most players seem to find a pair of weapons they like and stick with them; my two mainstays are ‘The Piecemaker’, a shotgun, backed up by a raygun going by the name ‘Nikola’s Revenge!’.

The system is surprisingly well-balanced, with each perk having a countering penalty, and as a result the game is reliant on player skill rather than who can build the most lethal gun. This gun customisation partly incorporates the F2P system, with upgrades unlocked via a resource called ‘Blutes’, which are unlocked in-game. While it’s definitely a case of the better you do, the more you earn, players can pay to earn Blutes twice as fast in a single match, and even though players can technically pay to unlock better gear the guns are so well-balanced that a player with a completely unornamented weapon could take on a paying player and still have a good chance of winning. As well implemented and extensive as it is, I find it slightly disappointing that, as far as I can tell, there’s no way to change how the gun looks, and instead all weapons come in the same shades of olive green and black.

The main F2P elements come from SpaceBux, an ingame currency that can be bought at a rough rate of 600SB for $1. These provide purely cosmetic upgrades for the game’s three, pleasantly inclusive, character avatars, and don’t actually have a tangible effect on gameplay. The prices on the avatar upgrades do seem rather steep, meaning that if you want to personalise them you might have to shell out a fair amount of money.

Aside from that, however, there isn’t really all that much to fault Loadout on. It’s got frantic, incredibly fun gameplay, a fair, consumer-friendly business model and awesome weapon customisation. With its very modest system requirements and the fact that it won’t cost you a penny, there’s not really any reason to avoid playing it; come on and join in, you’re in for a good time!

Resolutions 2014

It’s that time of year!

I won’t lie. For me, 2013 was a pretty damn good year. There were bad points here and there (the incident with the blood diamonds and the nuns was a particular low) but overall I was pleased with it. However, there are things I plan to do in order to make 2014 continue in a similar vein, or be even better; I aim for self-improvement, for even I (and I appreciate this may come as a shock to you, dear reader) can improve myself further. How to do this? With a list, as this is, of course, the internet and everyone loves lists.

Resolution 1 – Read more books by women writers

As highlighted by my Female Writers’ Month segment back over the summer, the balance between the number of male authors that I read and female authors wasn’t really, well, balanced. Female Writers’ Month was a resounding success, however, and if nothing else proved that there are some really great women writers out there. In the spirit of this, and in that of general egalitarianism, I am endeavouring to read more books written by female authors. Hell, as it stands the writers I’ve read have this year have been 100% female, so there we go! (Yes, it counts if I’ve only read one book so far this year. Of course it does. Stop being silly. Stop it! Stop it at once!)

Resolution 2 – Blog more

Yeah, keeping this thing up to date has been…patchy. I generally seem to have had bursts of activity followed by long periods of stillness, so I’m going to do my best to make sure that this gets sustained, regular updates.

Resolution 3 – Drink less coffee

Seriously, if I keep it up at the rate I’ve been going at I’m pretty sure my kidneys are going to implode sometime around June, collapsing in on themselves in a caffeine-based singularity that will consume the planet and drag it screaming into the unknown realms beyond the universe. And that would be bad.

Resolution 4 – Draw more

I may currently be only a halfway decent drawer, but with practice, and the wondrous powers of technology, I might just graduate to full decent.

Resolution 5 – Get my book accepted by a publisher

It’s in the redrafting phase right now, it should be feasible. Please god let it be feasible.

Resolution 6 – Write another book

Make it faster, stronger, better than ever before! And do so while cackling to the backdrop of a storm!

Resolution 7 – Cease to sup upon the tears of the antelope under the light of the full moon

It’s a bad habit I need to break, and ever since London Zoo hired more security guards it’s been harder than ever to sustain. Not to mention that while dual puncture wounds from antelope horns may look incredibly badass, they do hurt. Being stabbed by a hundred kilos of pissed of ungulate is never fun.

 

 

There they are. My suggested resolution for you, dear reader? Try being as great as I am; you won’t manage it (it’s scientifically impossible) but simply trying is a guarantee to improve your current greatness by at least 20%. That’s twenty whole percentiles! Isn’t that exciting?

Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea – A Review

As anyone who’s read my blog for any reasonable length of time will know, I absolutely loved Bioshock Infinite (if you’re a new reader, then you may read my original review over here) so it will probably come as no surprise that I got my hands on Burial At Sea, Infinite’s latest DLC expansion, as soon as possible. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot, but there is one big, big ‘but’ hanging over the thing.

Burial At Sea brings us back to the Bioshock series’ original, iconic underwater city of  Rapture. It is New Years Eve, 1958, just before civil war that ripped the city apart in the original Bioshock, and Booker DeWitt, P.I. gets a knock on his door from a young woman named Elizabeth, who promises to find his missing daughter, Sally.

The first part of the DLC is not particularly eventful, without a single gunshot fired or deranged Splicer in sight, but I found it quite enjoyable nonetheless; it’s the first time players get to explore Rapture before its collapse, and the opulent underwater city is a great environment. The second part takes place in a sunken (well, even more sunken) department store populated by Splicers, and feels very close to the original Bioshock experience; there are ruined shops to be looted, water drips from burst pipes and leaking walls, electricity dances off severed cables and, of course, crazed Splicers leap from the shadows to bash your head in with a length of lead pipe.

Mechanically, Burial At Sea does little to depart from Infinite’s gameplay; one hand fires weapons, the other uses plasmid powers, Booker has a recharging shield and a non-recharging healthbar, gear can be picked up and swapped in and out to give different perks and upgrades and Elizabeth helps you out by chucking you ammo, health kits and EVE and also by fucking reality’s shit up. The Skyhook and Skyrails from the main game are included with Airhook, but due to Rapture’s much more enclosed nature the lines you get to ride are much shorter and less exhilerating than Columbia’s open air rollercoasters. The most major change, and one that I quite liked, is that the weapon wheel from Bioshock 1 and 2 has made a return, meaning you’re no longer limited to carrying two weapons; the flip side is that each one has only one magazine’s worth of backup ammo, meaning that scavenging is a constant necessity and switching between weapons mid-firefight is essential for survival. You also start the game with the Hand Cannon, which made me very happy.

It should also be noted that Burial at Sea is hard. Like really, really difficult. I played it on Normal difficulty, the same difficulty setting I played the main game on, and found myself dying left right and centre. Not only is ammo much scarcer, but enemies seem to be tougher and more plentiful as well; even with Elizabeth’s aid, I found Burial at Sea to incredibly challenging, though it probably didn’t help that I couldn’t find more than one of the Infusions that boost Booker’s health, shield and EVE levels, even with a great deal of searching.

I goes without saying that the writing is good, and I’d say that the DLC is worth playing just for the very cleverly handled revelation at the end of it. I was rather disappointed by the lack of the Lutece Twins, my two favourite characters, who make only a very brief appearance,  but the crazed artist Sander Cohen, one of the bosses in the first Bioshock, has a welcome (if somewhat disturbing) cameo.

It is at this point that we must get to the ‘but’ of Burial at Sea. It’s good, very good, but it’s short. Even when I obsessively searched through every last corner and detour in a search for audio logs, gear and infusions (it struck me that Elizabeth must be incredibly patient with Booker as she waits for him to go everywhere but where they need to go on his endless quest for collectables) I completed it all in just about three hours. If the price of the DLC reflected that, then it wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but as it is with its price of £12/$15/€15 it seems to be overcharging for what you get. Did I enjoy Burial at Sea? Yes. Did I have £12 worth of enjoyment from it? Probably not.

Hefty pricetag aside, Burial at Sea is fun, but it may be a good idea to wait for a sale before you pick it up if you want to get your money’s worth.

The NaNoed Pilgrim

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Writing

HolycrapIamreallyexcitedandsomewhathyperactiverightnow!!!

Alright, let me take a breath here. And another one. And a third.

Whew.

So, as you might have guessed from the title, I’m taking part in this yer’s NaNoWriMo challenge. For those unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo is the National Novel Writing Month; every November thousands of authors, aspiring and published alike, all take part in an effort to write 1,667 words a day, totalling 50,000 words by the end of the month. Many do not make it, giving up and falling by the wayside, but others succeed. I am one of those who has just succeeded.

Well, technically. I hit the 50,000 word mark a few days ago and yesterday, I finished my novel, but only because I cheated and had about 44,000 words already tucked away before November.

The book I was writing and am now going to draft, redraft and edit the crap out of, began life in South Korea on the 16th of August of this year. It started with the working title of The Pilgrim, and it initially came from a bad place for a writer to be, that of the zone of creative deadlock.

At the time, I had just spent a year when my long-term writing was suffering. I had ideas in that period, good ideas. There was The Stolen God, a high fantasy novel in a Mesopotamian setting, Digivinity, a cyberpunk story set in a futuristic London, Aetherwynd, about a gigantic space-borne city modelled off Elizabethan London and Principles of Oratiomancy, Volume 3, a sort of steampunky fantasy thing with a lot in common with China Miéville’s Bas-Lag novels. Some of them I got a good amount of done; Digivinity nearly reached 10,000 words, and both Principles and The Stolen God had their entire plot planned and the world built in meticulous detail, but Principles didn’t get past the first chapter and The Stolen God hit about 5,000 words and just petered out. Aetherwynd didn’t even get started.

They were all planned and worked out. The Pilgrim, on the hand, kind of blindsided me.

I started writing it as my current writing projects were getting nowhere, and I felt that at the very least I had to write something. In essence, I just cribbed ideas and characters from my half-baked or unfinished works, started out with the broadest possible outline and went from there.

And it went really well. I had the first 15,000 words written in ten days. The plot was worked out and as the character of the story’s titular pilgrim was fleshed out, The Pilgrim became The Shadowed Pilgrim. It stalled across October as inspiration and energy ran dry, just before the final stretch, before I finally  used NaNoWriMo to give me the final push that leads to me being able to say that, on the 5th of November 2013, with a total of 55,638 words, the first draft of The Shadowed Pilgrim is complete.

It’s a mongrel book, in a lot of ways, and I can pinpoint the ideas that I’ve cribbed from my abortive works that were included in The Shadowed Pilgrim. One of the leads from Digivinity was plucked across, a vague plot outline was chosen, Principles‘ setting was basically launched into spaaaaaaace! and I added the sort of surrealist bent of Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples’ truly excellent Saga comics, and the story went ahead. It went ahead with no real plan aside from the vaguest of plot outlines and a few character ideas and by the end it turned into a story exploring the nature of morality, justice and revenge, with a weird, wacky and wonderful setting, alien species of multifarious stripes, a Leone-esque gunslinging mercenary who can bend time, Wuxia-style martial artist priests (because clearly what I need are even more genres), Lovecraftian horrors, an undead doctor, Zeppelins galore and two (hopefully) well-rounded female leads who are the main driving forces in the story. Oh, and because I watched a lot of Doctor Who when I was younger, it turns out everyone in space has a British accent.

Now that it’s complete, it leaves me slightly worried that I might be a really bad writer. Not in a sort of ‘writes books equal to Fifty Shades of Grey or Twilight in quality’ bad, but instead in a kind of ‘you didn’t really go about this in the right way’ bad.

You see, the thing is that whenever I read another author’s writing methods, what I notice is that one of the key things is that you have to plan. If you have no plan, no detailed plot outline, no character outlines then you can have no book. And yet that was basically what I did; I had the vaguest of plans, my characters, with the main exceptions of the two leads, were just written with broadest of personality archetypes in mind, and my worldbuilding had the vaguest categories of “space, steampunk, fantasy” and had the essential process of ‘if you like the idea, put it in the world’. And you read the lunacy that occurred above, and somehow that lunacy worked, even if it leaves me considering saying that its genre is either ‘New Weird’ or ‘I don’t know’.

In all honesty, I never saw myself in this position just a few months ago.  I had consigned myself to creative bankruptcy and viewed writing more as a fruitless exercise in futility more than anything, and without the drive to write that I gained from NaNoWriMo I doubt The Shadowed Pilgrim would have been completed. There’s a lot more work to do, but I’m one step closer to achieving the dream.

I should probably also write some nice letters to Brian K. Vaughn, Fiona Staples and China Miéville along the lines of ‘so long and thanks for all the inspiration’.

The Sandman: Overture Issue 1 – A Review

The Sandman series of is one that has always held a special place in my heart. Volume 2 of the original series, The Doll’s House, was the first graphic novel I read, a volume I discovered in my old school’s library because my old school had awesome librarians. I was hooked, captivated by a fantastical and surreal story of a godlike being, and I immediately read all of the other volumes at my library; Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes, Volume 3: Fables and Reflections and Volume 10: The Wake.

My reading of the rest of the series continued in an equally scrappy fashion, with the other volumes picked up from bookshops and comic shops whenever I saw them and whenever I felt like grabbing them; I only completed reading them all with The Kindly Ones about a fortnight ago.

For me, The Sandman: Overture was a bit of a curveball; I saw it sitting on a shelf in my local comic book/general nerdstravaganza shop just today when I went in to pick up Saga Issue 15, and before that I had no prior knowledge it was coming out. I had a bit of a double take; it definitely said Sandman on the cover, Neil Gaiman’s name was right there and it left me kind of confused. ‘Is this some new episodic re-release of the old Sandman comics?’ I wondered. ‘Has DC really sunk that low?’ I flicked it open to the first pace. ‘Wow, this is a whole new storyline! DC hasn’t quite sunk that low yet, but they’re still peppering the issue with adverts. Stay classy, DC.’

The full-page advertisements that litter the comic aside, I actually found The Sandman: Overtures to be a really good read. The comic is set before the main narrative(s) of the original Sandman, prior to Morpheus’ imprisonment which kickstarted the events of the first graphic novels. There are ominous premonitions of impending disaster on a distant, alien world, a few of the favourite Dreaming characters; Lucius, Merv Pumpkinhead and the ever-unnerving Corinthian; make an appearance and Destiny and Death, two of Dream’s siblings, also feature in a scene that is composed in a remarkably clever way.

It goes without saying that the writing was really good, and Gaiman once again excels at creating a world and story that is as dark and surreal as the original Sandman series (again, Corinthian. That thing terrifies me). However, what really stood out for me with this first issue was J.H. Williams III’s artwork; not only was it illustrated exceptionally well, including a fold-out page which rendered multiple incarnations of Morpheus as he appears to different peoples and species, but he also used some remarkably clever artistic devices. One scene is framed in the Book of Destiny whilst it is being held by Destiny, and another, concerning a character by the name of George Portcullis, is illustrated with the panels being arranged within the portcullis of a castle’s gate. At the moment I’m unsure whether Williams will be a permanent feature or the Overture series will be rotating artists like in the original Sandman, but I personally hope he will return for future issues.

So basically, it’s more Sandman. It’s got great writing, very nice art, it’s more Sandman, there are interesting plothooks, there are some old favourite characters back and it’s more Sandman. Seriously, what more do you want?

Gol – A Short Story

Just a short piece written for some university work.

Gol

Gol had lain there as long as anyone could remember. Huge and mighty and corroding and dead, His mountainous body had rested at the centre of the Tankland for what may have been forever. Even Lunkerl, the oldest and wisest of the tribe, had said that He been there since before he had been born; Gol had been ancient in the memory of their clan’s eldest member even when he was young.

“G.”

Lessik traced the tip of her spear over the first of the Letters that was written on Gol’s chest, the one that told the tribe His name, tattoos written into His metal flesh. She took care not to scratch them, for the Letters were sacred. More importantly, they were hers. Well, hers and Lunkerl’s, but he had passed the secret knowledge of the Letters onto her. When he died, she would be the Reader.

“O.”

Lessik was under the crook of one of Gol’s arms, the massive joint towering above her, where the Letters were tattooed. The massive limb that was scabbed with a verdigris patina of mould and plant growth, stained by water damage and scabbed with roots. She was, of course, alone; all other members of the tribe were afraid of Him, but she wasn’t. According to the legends, Gol had strode forth with His servants, the Tanks, to make the world and only lay down to rest and die here in the Tanklands after His work was done. There was nothing to fear from a creator.

The worry of the others was understandable; where Gol had bled His blood, shed in creation of the world, the ground was poisoned, and it was said His heart had beat on for many after His death, its divine energies overwhelming for mortals. No plants grew in those bloodstained places, and those who stood on the dead grounds would sicken and die, but Lessik found it was easy enough to avoid them. Being here was important. Otherwise they might forget the Letters. They might forget the name of the being which created the world.

“L.”

Here, the final Letter met the ground. There were old legends which said that Gol’s name was incomplete, that there were more Letters in the Word, but this was largely disbelieved. The Librer Tribe, which Lessik’s people sometimes traded with, also claimed that were more than three Letters, that G O and L were just a few of a multitude. Their heresy was ignored, tolerated only because the Librer were stronger and were willing to trade.

“Gol.”

The name of the god was a good one. The way it was pronounced, rolled off the tongue, was pleasant to the ear. She liked it, as any true believer in Gol would.

She lingered for a few minutes more, her first Ritual of Reading complete, looking at the god which she would soon serve as sole Reader of, and after that left, disappearing into the Tanklands and back home.

Jane Carver of Waar – 1500ccs of pure awesome

Oh god. Oh god, I have this blog, don’t I? Gah!

I’m still reading things! Look! Look at the things I am reading! Look at what I am reading and read my thoughts about them and let it be known that I haven’t completely abandoned this blog. Just temporarily neglected it.

I don’t think I could have possibly timed my reading of Jane Carver of Waar any better if I’d tried. The books I’d read just before it? The John Carter of Mars novels.

For those unfamiliar with John Carter of Mars, then I should probably explain that the book, one considered as one of the earliest works of sci-fi, is the epitome of what I like to call Macho Fic. It’s a broad categorisation, encompassing classical Epics, modern action heroes from movies, video games and novels and an awful lot of stuff from the 19th and early 20th century, where the protagonist has a jaw square enough to measure right angles and the closest they get to character arcs is being able to punch more dudes unconscious than they could at the beginning. It’s kind of been a guilty pleasure of mine, something slightly silly to enjoy, and Jane Carver of Waar takes that formula, gender-swaps the protagonist, adds a good dash of satire, actually bothers with all that character development nonsense and ends up being the most fun novel I’ve read since Ack-Ack Macaque.

The novel starts with Jane Carver, a six foot and hard-as-nails biker chick, accidentally killing a man. On the run from the police, she hides in a cave, is knocked unconscious by a burst of energy from a mysterious device and wakes up far from home on the planet of Waar. There, she must contend with aliens, purple locals, a sinister conspiracy and she must try to help the guy get the girl.

While reading Jane Carver of Waar, what stood out was the titular character; the novel is narrated entirely from the first person and Jane has a distinct narrative voice from the start, one that peppers the story with slang and is thick with an American accent throughout, a voice that feels appropriate for her character. As well as being an excellent and memorable narrator, she also serves as a great lead character; she’s complex, flawed, sympathetic and grounded, and is a perfect counterbalance to the ultra-macho super-strong ubermensch lead of the John Carter books.

It helps that the rest of the cast are generally a memorable bunch as well; there’s the alien tribeswoman of “Queenie”, the brattish and quasi-heroic prince Sai, his greatly put-upon second-in-command Lhan and the warlord Kedac. They don’t get as much limelight as Jane does, obviously, but they’re all interesting, memorable characters and Sai has a very well written character-arc-that-isn’t-quite-a-character-arc.

While the novel is very much a swashbuckling adventure novel, and a very fun one at that, it also has a rather interesting exploration of female and LGBT (or at least LGB) rights as pretty prominent aspect. Society on Waar is depicted as being highly patriarchal and homophobic, something that repeatedly grates against Jane’s much more free-thinking sensibilities, and the integration of this into the story, as well as how it affects Jane’s story and how she interacts with the world, adds a good measure of depth and nuance to the story.

In conclusion, as well as being excellently written and as fun as a barrel  of explosive confetti monkeys, Jane Carver of Waar is a novel that not only entertains the reader but challenges them to think as well. I found reading it to be an absolute blast from start to finish.

Female Writers’ Month – The Wrap-Up

Aaaand, it’s done. Female Writers’ Month is complete.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, a brief summary; I recently realised that I had read way, way more male authors in my reading career (vis; my entire life from when I was about 5 years old and literate) than I had female ones. In order to redress this balance, I decided I’d spend an entire month this summer, one where I was away and thus had lots of free reading time, reading novels written only by female writers. In the end, Female Writers’ Month went from the start of July to the end of August (become two months because logic) and in that time, I’ve read books, reviewed some and even got my blog noticed by Helen Lowe and Aliette De Bodard, who are two actual writing people!  Actual writing people who actually write!

In total, I read 11 books, which were:

• Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City by Gwendolyn Leick
• The Obsidian and Blood Tril0gy by Aliette De Bodard
• Spirit by Gwyneth Jones
• The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
• Theirs not to Reason Why:  A Soldier’s Duty by Jean Johnson
• Heir of Night and Gathering of the Lost by Helen Lowe
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• Frankenstein or: The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

And for the top 5 shortlist, my favourite books were:

5: Spirit

Despite some confusing and slightly obtuse worldbuilding techniques and a slow start, Gwyneth Jones’ science fiction novel was ultimately a highly compelling tale of redemption and pacifist retribution. There are some very interesting ideas in the novel, especially when it comes to travel and alien species, its subverting of the tropes based around a quest for revenge made it a very interesting read.

4: The Voyage Out

Normally, I don’t usually go in for ‘old’ novels, and at times the prose in Woolf’s first novel, written before she started her more experimental writing, got a little too dry for my tastes, but it had a cast of interesting characters who were involving enough for me to become invested in; even with the somewhat meandering story, I still found it a highly compelling read.

3: The Heir of Night/The Gathering of the Lost

For a full review of Heir of Night, you’ll want this post here. If you want a full review of The Gathering of the Lost, you’ll want this post over here. If you can’t be bothered to read them, my thoughts can be summed up as thus; all of it’s fantasy stuff that you’ve seen before, but excellently written and damn near perfect.

2: Frankenstein or: The Modern Prometheus

Mary Shelley’s world-famous story of a mad scientist and the iconic monster he creates, I found this gothic tale-within-a-tale-within-a-tale to be absolutely delightful to read, layered with atmosphere and richly detailed. The highlight for the novel for me was, without a doubt, the tragic and pitiful figure of Frankenstein’s eloquent monster, the second-most compelling anti-hero I’ve ever read, topped only by Saga’s The Will.

1: Obsidian and Blood

A full review of the Obsidian & Blood trilogy can be found here, but in brief: It’s fucking awesome. It has great characters, a brilliant and original world that is constructed excellently and fascinating storylines packed with mystery, intrigue and politics. Even with some of the tough competition, the Obsidian & Blood trilogy stands out as indisputably the best thing I read throughout Female Writers’ Month(s).