Interlude

Do people ever try to get a rise out of you for reading what you read?

scene: my office
cast: me, Literarily-Inclined Co-Worker (LICW)

LICW: *picks up book from my desk* Hey, whatcha reading?

Me: That's the new Jenna Black.

LICW: *teasingly, from the front blurb* "Who says demons don't like to party?" I don't know, who DOES say that? Certainly not me, ha ha!

Me: Mmmm. *typing email*

LICW: *reading from back blurb* mumble mumble "It seems that demons have started showing up at the hot spot in alarming numbers and in the unwilling bodies of rough-trade club-goers...." Rough trade? *spluttering* Rough trade?! I haven't heard that term since... I mean, you usually only hear that in reference to, like...

Me: *sighs, stops typing* LICW, some of the books I read have adult content. You know, for grownups? *shrug* If you can't handle it....

*end scene*

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Now, you could read any of that as snarky or mean, but it was mostly friendly teasing; just with that little edge of "Really? isn't this kind of thing just for idiots?" and the "no, actually; would you like to compare IQ scores?" undercurrent.

It reminded me of the Apologia Scale, which I love with so much love. I was pretty happy with the fact that I didn't get flustered or defensive but managed something that really kind of translates to a socially-acceptable, workplace-acceptable "fuck you."

Mind Games, by Carolyn Crane - Review

Not Your Average Heroine
OMG, how much do I love Justine? She could not be more different from the popular crop of UF heroines. She is not outwardly confident and poised while nursing deeply-hidden insecurities. No, she's outwardly a mess, with a neurosis bordering on mental illness, and the book starts her down the path of discovering her deeply-hidden strengths.

Bottom Line
Despite a couple minor nitpicks, I really enjoyed the book and would recommend that fans of UF and psychological thrillers give it a try.

The Deets
I suppose this is the point where I should give you the summary or a blurb or something, but since I'm the last person in RomLand to review this, I'll just link to it. Mind Games Blurb.

Justine's EveryWoman qualities make it easy to connect with her. I enjoyed her preoccupation with fashion, understood her longing for a "normal" life -- though I have to say that when the significant other is named "Cubby," I know instantly that there isn't a chance in hell he's going to work out long term. One thing that I enjoy about UF versus genre romance is that the relationships are more ambiguous and uncertain, just like real life, even if hardly anything else in the story is like real life.

Justine is not super-woman, she doesn't carry a katana* or a stiletto in a spring-loaded forearm holster; she's not a black belt in anything. She's not going to be literally kicking any asses any time soon. Rather, she plays on the bad guys' emotional and intellectual weaknesses, and when it comes to the battle of wits, she's definitely a superhero.

Here, she's in as much physical danger as it gets -- she's tied to the bed of a serial-killer whose turn-ons include 1950s card games, custom hypodermic cocktails and dress up games (it occurs to me that You Suck at Craigslist might be an excellent source of inspiration for non-sympathetic characters...). There's really no chance that she can manage any kind of getaway in a physical confrontation, but she keeps her cool and talks the guy into a fit of paranoia, playing him like a violin. She needs to touch his body, anywhere, preferably with her hand to hit him with a psychic "zing." Here's how she manages it:

"I would have you lie down and relax your muscles, and I'd need one hand free to poke specific reflex points on the balls of your feet."

"You just want me to untie you."

I look at him like he's crazy-- a look I perfected in high school.

Can't you just see that? I used that look a lot too. I love that she's talking to this psycho killer like he's that annoying pimply kid who hangs around you in that one class, never actually asking you out or anything, just hanging around with that slightly pathetic hopefulness...

"One hand. What do you think I'd do? Honestly, one hand? I can barely focus thanks to your drugs, and you have the knife. But fine. Why should I give a crap? I'm sure you'll get your diagnosis soon enough."

Minutes later he's lying in bed next to me, the opposite way, angled so his head is at the far corner and his feet are near my shoulders. Three of my limbs are still attached to the bed frme, but I have a hand, and that's all I need.

The other big thing to love about Mind Games is that the plotting is twisted and tight; no one is exactly who they seem to be; and there are no loose ends disguised as sequel-baiting -- there is a sequel, but the reason you want to read it is because this book ends with the "end of an era," and poised on the brink of a new one. (Can't wait to see how the new partnership works out!). It's a rare author that can combine kooky and funny with dark psychological thrills, but that's exactly what you get with Mind Games.

I will say that there were a couple things that didn't work perfectly for me. Justine is infatuated with the character of the police chief, and... I wasn't. I don't know if this is just a case of chemistry between me and a character (ie, none) or if the author just didn't adequately convince me of his allure. If this had been a romance, I think it would've been a disaster for my enjoyment, but fortunately I was able to roll with it, the way you do when your best friend or sister falls head over heels with a nitwit.

The other bit I struggled with a little is the world-building. The "high-caps" - folks with over-developed, relatively familiar psychic abilities like telekinesis - was believable enough. However, the really interesting premise of Crane's trilogy is the idea that the disillusionists can "zing" their negative mental energy/anxiety into other people. I struggled with that a little bit more. Although the narrative mentioned months of training, the way Packard taught her how to "zing" seemed a bit too easy to me. And Packard's claim that only he could tell the disillusionists (the hit squad that he has trained) who is safe to "zing," was too readily accepted.

Why, oh why, the present tense? I get it for a time travel book; but I didn't see a reason that this story needed to be in present tense. Normally I find this VERY distracting and aggravating. However, the chatty, intimate voicing made the whole book seem like something your best girlfriend might relate to you over a pitcher of margaritas and it ended up being OK. I tend to think it would've worked just as well in a traditional past tense, but I guess an author has to roll with how it sounds in her head.

I think my favorite bit is near the end, and I can't give you the full context without it being spoilery, but in essence, Justine starts apologizing for [stuff that led to the story's showdown] and [characterx] tells her, "It's so amusing ... [snip] ...How little you see of your own integrity..."

And that's really what makes Justine a heroine rather than a pawn between the other players in this game.

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Edited to add: OOPS, I knew that was a good line. I sort of accidentally stole it. Dirty Sexy Books review.

Change of Heart

You May Have Noticed...
My posting frequency is down. It's true, I've been struggling with this blog a little bit lately. Maybe it's the lingering gloomy weather. Maybe it's my impending forty-(cough cough) birthday, or my baby's kindergarten registration. I don't know.

I feel like I'm coming to one of life's crossroads. One of those times when you question whether you're doing it right, you know? Wasn't I supposed to be a CEO by now? Or at least a VP of something? Shouldn't I have an expense account? Maybe a jetpack?

And my kids. Am I doing a good job parenting them? I mean, I think I'm doing a pretty good job. But am I doing the best I can? Shouldn't I be doing more flash-card oriented games, and planning more culturally-enriched outings? Why is Spongebob such an integral part of our family?

I struggle. Most of the time, I think I'm doing OK, but you know what? I could probably do more. Do better.

Be better.

And when I think about all the things in my life that I could change, it occurs to me that one avenue of personal enrichment would be to reach for better in my personal reading. Perhaps all that potential that my teachers talked about when I was my kids' age has been siphoned off into frivolty. Into literature that doesn't matter. Literature that's fun. How can that be good for me?

There's no gain without pain, right? If I want to stretch my brainpower, I should be reading Proust and Tolstoi, right?

Perhaps the romance critics are right, though it pains me to say it. I can blame everything that's wrong with my life on the unreasonable expectations I've had -- Jayne Ann Krentz, where's my mogul? Christina Skye, I'm waiting for that Special Ops guy to fall through my roof, put me in grave danger, and then rescue me from it! (or, wait, do I really want that?) Nora Roberts, where's my quiet but damaged rock of a man, whose only redemption lies in my love? Dammit, JR Ward, WHERE'S MY HOTT ANGSTY VAMPIRE??

Clearly, the only solution is to give up romance and fantasy novels and read classic, somber literary works. Books that take weeks to finish. Books that end in death and despair. Books that cast a jaded and ironic eye on the notion of "happiness." Books that really hurt if you drop them on your foot. And smell musty.

These are the kind of books that will lower my expectations from life. After a steady diet of Thomas Hardy, Dostoyevsky and Gabriel García Márquez, spending a cold rainy weekend camping out with 120 Girl Scouts will look pretty good. Milton and Bronte will make my cubicle feel like paradise in comparison. A little Nietzche and Sartre will... well, they'd probably make me want to slit my wrists, so maybe I'll hold off on those.

It's time to put away childish things; time to be not a child in understanding. It's time to end my shallow, superficial relationship with genre fiction and reach to be a better, smarter, more serious and more fully realized human being, through better, smarter, and more serious reading.

I'm going to need a new blog name. Classic Heroes? Alpha Classics? I could use some ideas.

Technical Difficulties

Can you see my sidebars? I can't see my sidebars. I don't know why.

If they don't magically re-appear shortly, I'll contact Blogger. In the meantime, sorry and please join me in a hearty WTF??

Sunrise in a Garden of Love and Evil, by Barbara Monajem - Review

Publisher's Pledge
In Dorchester's press release about their new marketing program, the Publisher's Pledge, there's a quote kind of buried in the middle that makes me really happy:

“Our strength has been identifying emerging voices and trends in the industry rather than chasing bestsellers. Our intent is to reestablish ourselves in the market as the publisher authors and agents turn to first to introduce new talent. " (Brooke Borneman, Director of Sales and Marketing.)

I just really like that there are publishers out there that are specifically looking to give aspiring authors their big break. The bottom line on the Publisher's Pledge is YOUR bottom line: according to the note in the review copy,

Dorchester's Publisher's Pledge program is our way of identifying particularly special books by giving readers a risk-free guarantee. We feel so strongly about Sunrise in a Garden of Love & Evil, we're willing to pay a full refund to anyone who doesn't find it everything they want in a paranormal fantasy.

Well. That's promising, isn't it?

I don't know if I've been getting burned out on paranormals or what, but I've been finding myself reluctant to try out new authors lately. Ho hum, another vampire. Does this one sparkle, or poof? However, I put aside my reservations and cracked this one open.

Which is all it took. One page, and I'm hooked. It's pretty hard to resist a female vampire named Ophelia Beliveau, whose chief challenge in life is fending off hapless human men who fall under her pheremone spell. Monajem manages to make this aspect of vampirism feel truly inconvenient and occasionally tragic, yet leavened with laugh-out-loud slapstick.

There's plenty of chemistry and conflict between Ophelia and Gideon and they work through it while untangling a couple of related mysteries. Plotting is tight and fast paced. I tend to think of it as a good sign when the guy I'm pretty sure dunnit turns up dead just when I'm starting to be sure. (That might sound like I'm calling it predictable, but that's not what I mean.)

I think my favorite piece of this book is the way the cast of secondary characters come alive. No doubt there will be sequels, but it really didn't feel like sequel-baiting. It felt more like Season One of a new show with a great ensemble cast, and I'm already looking forward to next season.

There's a second "moral of the story" in this post -- I need to take a page from Dorchester's book (so to speak!) and bust out of this new-author-reluctance I've fallen into lately. I'm not always like this, and I should snap out of it already! Truthfully, I love more new authors than I hate, and I like lots more. And the last couple that I've taken a chance on have been really really excellent.

Who have you discovered lately?

Other Reviews:

Janicu
Patricia's Vampire Notes
The Deepening
Vampire News

Note: if you have reviewed this book, feel free to leave a link in comments!

Trendspotting: Not-So-Urban Fantasy

According to Wikipedia, Urban Fantasy is:

a subset of fantasy defined by place; the fantastic narrative has an urban setting. Many urban fantasies are set in contemporary times or contain supernatural elements. However, this is not the primary definition of urban fantasy. Urban fantasy can be set in historical times, modern times, or futuristic times. The prerequisite is that it must be primarily set in a city, rather than in a suburban or country setting, which have their own genre subsets.

Maybe it's because I run primarily in romance circles, but it seems to me that the category I think of as "Urban Fantasy" isn't really urban fantasy at all. The UF books I read blend fantasy, horror and suspense; sometimes a little romance; they're always contemporary or near-future; and there are always some characters with supernatural abilities. The "urban" part seems largely irrelevant to me. "Fantasy" somehow doesn't seem specific enough; I generally think of swords and sorcerers when I think of the general Fantasy genre. ( Also, I think wikipedia might be lying about the other "genre subsets." I've heard the term "pastoral" as relates to romance, but if you asked a book store clerk where they shelve the pastoral fantasy? Thinkin' you're gonna get a blank look there...)

I asked my husband, who's a huge fan of classical (not so much current) Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Horror, what's the difference between fantasy-style paranormal or magic stuff, and horror-style paranormal/magic? He thought that horror is a) usually more graphically violent and b) overlaps the "real world" more; while fantasy is usually some entirely other world with its own rules. I say that's a line that's getting blurrier every day.

It's really time to re-name this category of books that includes Kim Harrison, Patricia Briggs, Kat Richardson, Vicki Pettersson, Jenna Black, Christine Warren, Mark Henry, Jim Butcher, Keri Arthur, Kelley Armstrong, and a hundred others, if for no other reason than books that are the same category in every way except setting are starting to crop up everywhere.

For me it started with Ilona Andrews' On The Edge. No reasonable person could describe this story as Urban-Anything. But it's very much the same kind of story as the Kate Daniels books set in Atlanta.

Then I got the ARC for Barbara Monajem's Sunrise in the Garden of Love and Evil (review coming up 3/30), and shortly after that picked up Diana Rowland's Blood of the Demon, both set in rural Louisiana. In Elisabeth Naughton's upcoming Marked, the "our world" parts of the story are set in a small New England town and the countryside around it. And most of the action in Nalini Singh's Psy/Changeling series is fairly countrified (another way she polarizes the Psy and the Changeling races, but that's another post!).

These are heroines that are comfortable with shotguns, The Dixie Chicks, and good old boys. They're more likely to encounter tobacco chew than Jimmy Choo.

Although I don't have a cite, I recall one of the actresses from the 1980's show Designing Women talking about audiences being "ready" for the slower, slyer pacing of "southern" humor, as opposed to the typical city settings of most of the popular shows of the time-- it seemed like everything was set in LA or New York.

What about you? Are you ready for Non-Urban Fantasy? What the heck do we call it? And should it have its own name? Or do we need a new name for these books... and what would it be? I'm thinking something like... "contemporary paranormal". Descriptive, but not restrictive.

The Best Gift, by Wendy Markham - Review

Timeline of a Convert
8:00 am, Page 1. Setting: On the Bus. Dialog: Internal.

Man. Is this really written in present tense for the whole book? *flips pages* Auugh, I hate that.

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12:15 pm, page 38. Setting: Mostly empty office, remains of Lean Cuisine at elbow. Dialog: with Co-worker (Lit major, fluent in 4 or 5 languages, works as a tester in our lab).

Coworker: Whatcha reading?
Me: A romance.
Coworker: Is it any good?
Me: Not really. Someone sent it to me. I'm going to review it. It's all in present tense, augh, I hate that. But it's a time travel thing, so I guess it kind of makes sense for that. You know. It's the Douglas Adams problem.
Coworker: *Laugh* *wanders off*
Me: *still reading*

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6:00 pm, page 100. Setting: On the bus. Dialog: Internal.

Auuugggh, something horrible is going to happen, I just know it. I need to know what. And when. *turns page*

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7:30 pm, page 186. Setting: My house. Dialog: with my kid.
Kid: Mom?
Me: *still reading* Go away.
Kid: But, mom...!!
Me: *still reading* Seriously. Go ask your father.

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9:30 pm, page 236. Setting: On the couch. Dialog: Internal.

I'll just read for a half hour or so. *yawn* This time change is killing me, I need to get to bed early.

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11:15 PM, page 304. Setting: On the couch. Dialog: Internal.

Crap. I have to finish this. *yawn*

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11:50 pm, last page. Setting: On the couch. Dialog: Internal.

Wow. That was incredible. *reads prequel excerpt* I might need to read that. God, I hate that it's in present tense though. Augh. I hate that.

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This book is a really unusual reading experience. It takes place almost entirely within the span of 4 days - two in 2009, and two in 2012. I was tense, anxious, filled with foreboding, and mildly confused for almost the entire stretch, which normally doesn't make me like a book, but in this case, it was very effective at keeping me turning the pages.

I still can't figure out if I liked it or not.