Sunday Soup - July 13

Sunday Soup is... a little of this, a little of that, not too much work, and hopefully a tasty result.

Soup Dish:  on my mind this week...
✽A lot of interesting links about the ongoing Hachette vs. Amazon battle and where the author and reader interests lie. There is a ton of rhetoric out there about who is the bigger monster, and I cannot claim to understand all the nuances.  But the most compelling article I've read lately on the topic is this one from Joe Konrath. In particular, the information he exposes around one reason that Hachette *may* be digging in on terms is the issue of retail discounting:

If you want to understand what a party is doing in a negotiation, a good place to start is with their public statements. In this case, we know exactly what Hachette was planning to do in this negotiation because they published their strategy. In a letter to the federal court in the ebook antitrust case, believe it or not. When the proposed final judgment for Apple was announced, it included a provision that prohibited Apple from entering into agreements that would limit its ability to offer retail discounts.

The Big 5 are saying that as soon as the two year "cooling off" period is over, they want to get rid of retail discounting. Literally their only objection to the Apple settlement is that it will leave one ebook retailer who must maintain the ability to discount. The Big 5 have been waiting for two years for a chance to get rid of retail discounting. And take special note of that word "unilaterally". That means that the Big 5 each have to negotiate independently with their retailers.

I don't know about you guys, but I really like being able to bargain shop occasionally for e-books.  I do pay full price on release day for some authors that I love, but I also am more likely to try an unknown author for 99 cents than I am for $7.99.

✽I am not lovin' Bloglovin. I've followed links to several blog posts lately that were somehow(?) syndicated with this app, and it pops up a large header that consumes about 20% of my available vertical reading space.  Presumably this would go away if only I would sign in to a service I know nothing about and cannot find out about unless I log in. I'm feeling cranky about the sheer number of services/apps I need to log into lately and I am not automatically creating accounts for everything.  So if you are using this service, be aware that it is an obstacle for cranky people like myself.

✽And while I'm at it, those of you who use jumps in your articles are putting up another barrier for me.  I read most of my blogs in a feedreader (Feedly), and I only click through maybe 5% of the articles that I get a teaser for.  I know you have your reasons for doing that -- ad revenue and clicks are one -- but that is a big reason I love the feedreader. I get all those annoying flashy-blinky-scrolling ads filtered. Just so you know.


What I'm reading

✽I have been loving the Kit Rocha series so much, I don't know why it didn't occur to me until recently to check out the books by the same team under their other nom de plume, Moira Rogers. I picked up Crux early last week and positively devoured it. I'm pacing myself on new purchases, considering the staggering size of my TBR pile, but that series just jumped high up on the list. Absolutely loved it.  

✽This review at Herding Cats and Burning Soup (great name!) caught my eye, and I've added The Bottom Line to my "to be acquired" list. I'm always on the lookout for a good contemp author to try. (disclosure: link goes to the original blogger's affiliate link, seems only fair.)

✽I bent my "no review copies" policy for Memory Zero by Keri Arthur. This is book one of a new series and I totally loved it. It does bear a strong resemblance to the Riley Jenson series in pacing and pattern, which in my mind is all to the good. The heroine is a tough police detective with latent paranormal abilities, and after attending a couple of sessions at RT14 with Diana Rowland, whose bio includes similar police work and also writes UF, and I couldn't help kind of picturing her as the heroine, Sam Ryan. It is available for pre-order, and if you liked Riley, you'll be a fan of this series as well.

✽I was on such a good roll with paranormals that I decided to pick up a physical book that had been gathering dust on my shelf: The Last Mermaid from Shana Abe. I love Abe's writing soooo much. It's been a bit slower read, partly I think I just read physical books more slowly than e-books, and partly because the language is worth lingering over.

Outlander Watch... Och. I canna wait for Jamie and Claire onscreen.

With the premiere of the TV show less than a month away, the buzz is really heating up. First up, the scoop about when and where from Entertainment Weekly. Next, a very nice photo gallery from Yahoo TV (although I was a little disappointed in the lack of really new images). Finally, an interview with Starz' CEO, who is hardly impartial, but it's nice to see that kind of excitement.

Dragons and Selkies

I Can't Believe It's Not Blogged...
I first discovered Kantra in an anthology during my Antholopalooza event two years ago, and I really liked the novella that she contributed, so I went out and got the first of her Children of the Sea series and I've really enjoyed them. I had every intention of doing some reviews but for some reason I never managed it (this happens to me a lot).

I kind of lost track of where she was with her series, but then I spotted her name recently and I snatched up Immortal Sea when I saw it on the new release shelf. I guess that officially makes Kantra an auto-buy for me.  Really enjoyed it.

I Can't Believe It Took Me So Long

When this series came out, I was buried deep in vampires and I wasn't so interested in the historical/paranormal combo, so I didn't pay much attention to the hype going around.  But holy moly, this is a good series!  I'm through the first three so I have a couple more to look forward to.

I am hugely impressed by the voicing in this series; by the lushness of the writing; by the way the author makes it feel like a fairy tale and a true story at the same time. I absolutely love the way Abé hints that the Drákon shifters are also the source of human tales of the Fae without ever coming out and saying so; at least, that's what I read between the lines in the description of their human (but more beautiful) forms, and the treatment of the parallel worlds.

Two Great Tastes?
OK that's interesting and all, you might be thinking, but why are they sharing a post?

The thing that really struck me about the Drákon characters is how very alien they are.  With a lot of paranormal fiction, the characters are "superhuman," that is, they are human-plus.  Their perspectives and small everyday habits are relateable. OK, so maybe they also like to drink blood or cast spells or turn into a wolf with the full moon-- but at bottom they're human characters with extra features.

I did not feel this way about Abé's characters.  She would lull me into familiarity, with a sort-of typical Regency ton sort of thing going on, and then the whole scene tilts sideways-- in one of the early scenes in the first book, the two characters spend several days in a completely empty house, subsisting on oatmeal. No servants, almost no furniture.  It's a bit eerie.

There are quite a few more examples where it would just hit me in the middle of a scene how surreal things were and how not-human --yet completely believeable-- the characters' point of view and motivations were (A more perfect blogger than I would have an illustrative excerpt to pull for this paragraph.)

As this occurred to me, I realized it was a familiar-- but not common-- feeling and I was racking my brain to remember what other author had inspired that reaction. Luckily, having picked up Immortal Sea around the same time, Kantra's selkies and fin-folk were fresh in my mind.  Of course!

Kantra and Abé both achieve something rather remarkable: they write characters that are aloof and emotionally chilly, and make them fall in love without changing their essential character.  Furthermore, they make the reader care about them and believe in the love store even with that edge of remoteness.

But What Does It All Mean?
 I'm not a particularly philosophical reader, but I do see some repeated themes in paranormal romance-- animal nature vs. social convention/civilization in shifter/were stories; the meaning of being alive for vampires; explorations of good and evil; intellect and instinct; belongingness and "otherness", mythology and religion and power and humanity.

I think part of what makes both of these authors really stand-out, fresh voices is that they are both allowing their characters to be something truly different, truly alien.  Their characters' struggle to find love gets some imaginative new twists, and brow-raising new challenges.  I wish I could think of 4 or 5 more ways to say "fresh."  These are stories that continue to linger in my mind -- they refuse to blend in with the large population of paranormals in my reading history.


Reading Order - Kantra
1. Sea Witch
2. Sea Fever
3. Sea Lord
4. Immortal Sea
5. Forgotten Sea (June 2011)
anthology adjuncts: Sea Crossing (antho- Shifter) and Shifting Sea (antho-Burning Up)

Reading Order - Abé
1. The Smoke Thief
2. The Dream Thief
3. Queen of Dragons
4. The Treasure Keeper
5. The Time Weaver