2007 Favorites

On this, the last day of the year, I thought I'd reflect on the debuts that I read since I started Fantasy Debut. Rather than attempting to rank a list of favorites, I came up with some stand-outs in several areas. Several debuts appear more than once.

Best Laugh

Let's face it: it's hard to write humor. Many authors don't even try. Therefore, special kudos to for this memorable scene.

The Condom Scene in Karma Girl by Jennifer Estep

Best Cry

Movies and books that make me cry are always my favorites. I blubber like a baby in the goodbye scene in Pollyanna every time. This particular weepy scene was even more special since it was completely unexpected. It sent me for tissues and turned a good novel into a great one.

The Stepmother Goodbye Scene in You Had Me at Halo by Amanda Ashby

Best Kiss

A good fictional kiss, in my mind, is the kind that is not immediately followed by a sex scene. A kiss needs to stand alone, in my opinion. Sex should come much later, if at all. Yes. I'm a bit of a prude. Anyway, who could forget this kiss?

Tam's Kiss in Magic Lost, Trouble Found by Lisa Shearin

Best Sense of Wonder

A sense of wonder is important to me in fantasy, which is why I veer away from the dark and gritty stuff. However, even though I don't read a lot of gritty or dark stuff, the wonder still tends to be missing from most fantasy. Here is where I found it in this year's debuts.

The Cloak in Auralia's Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet
The creatures in Thief With no Shadow by Emily Gee

Most Original Setting

Two authors in particular deserve special kudos for coming up with truly original settings for their fantasy debuts.

Wind Follower by Carole McDonnell
The Princes of the Golden Cage by Nathalie Mallet

Best Villain Group

Two villain groups stood out this year for originality and ruthlessness.

The League in Acacia: The War With the Mein by David Anthony Durham

The Pilot-Masters in The Hidden Worlds by Kristin Landon

Best Villain

We all love a villain. I particularly love villains with whom I can sympathize a bit. I really only had one favorite for the year.

Hanish Mein in Acacia: The War With the Mein by David Anthony Durham

Overall Favorite Characters

Who did I just plain like the best? Well, that was easy. Here are my female and male favorites.

Favorite Female

Raine in Magic Lost, Trouble Found by Lisa Shearin
Favorite Male
Joby in The Book of Joby by Mark J. Ferrari

Most Difficult To Put Down

Although these are not necessarily my favorites, I found them the most impossible to put down.

The Hidden Worlds by Kristin Landon

Thief With No Shadow by Emily Gee

Overall Favorite

If I had to pick one to name as my favorite, I simply must go with the one that made me cry. The ironic thing about this one is, for the most part, the book is pure humor.

You Had Me at Halo by Amanda Ashby

Across the Face of the World by Russell Kirkpatrick

According to Amazon, ACROSS THE FACE OF THE WORLD (USA, Canada, UK) by Russell Kirkpatrick does not release until January 1, but since I saw it in Book-a-Million the other day, I thought I might as well announce it. I have a copy, courtesy of Orbit books, and I plan to start reading next week. Since it is a rather lengthy tome (736 pages), I have lined up several guest reviewers who will hopefully be able to put up some reviews in the meantime.

From a tiny snowbound village, five men and women are about to embark on a journey that will change their lives -and the destiny of their world.For two thousand years, since he was cast out from Dona Mihst, the fabled Undying Man has been plotting his revenge on the Most High. The Destroyer's plans of vengeance are nearing fruition-and he will allow nothing to stand in his way.But one man has escaped from the Destroyer's prison, and even though the Lords of Fear ride in pursuit, he will bring word to his people. It will be up to his sons, Hal and Leith, together with a small group of villagers, to warn their world of the coming war.

It sounds fairly exciting, but the reviews I've seen so far have been mixed. Robert at Fantasy Book Critic and John at Grasping for the Wind were both ambivalent, but they ultimately found it too geography-intensive. We'll have to see if I agree.

The author keeps a blog at his website. As a professional geographer, he has worked on several atlas projects. You can see his Australia cover at his website, and I like it much better than the UK/USA/Canada cover. The author has an older website here, and while it is dated, it has lots of maps!

I have to admit that the very title of this novel is somewhat intimidating. Sometimes I really like quest novels, but other times it seems like I am forced to watch while the main characters go about every second of their lives while on the road. I have no problem at all when an author says, "three weeks later, they arrive" rather than make me live through page after page describing those three weeks. From what I'm reading on Robert and John's blogs, I may be in for some agonizing scenes. However, I'll try to read with an open mind. This book is coming at a good time for me, because it has been a long time since I've read a quest novel.

Debut Coverage Elsewhere

I constantly accumulate links to other debut coverage in the sidebar to the left, but every couple of weeks I like to call attention to debut news and reviews on blogs elsewhere. Here's the latest round-up.

Thunderer by Felix Gilman releases today, but Robert is way ahead of me, as usual, with his review. He's already mentioning it as a possible favorite for 2008!

SMD has reviewed another small press novel over at The Fantasy and SciFi Lovin' Book Review. This one is The Longevity Thesis by Jennifer Rahn and he gives it mostly high marks.

Mark Rose over at Bookgasm is somewhat mixed in his review of Interred with Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell.

Over at Grasping for the Wind, John seems to have enjoyed Rosemary Jones's Crypt of the Moaning Diamond. Rosemary also offered me this novel, but at the time, I was booked. I'll probably go ahead and pick it up on my next bookstore trip; John makes it sound fun.

Lawrence over at the Gravel Pit is not wild about Brian Francis Slattery's Spaceman Blues: A Love Song. He calls it the weirdest book he read in 2007.

The prolific Robert has mixed feelings about Across the Face of the World by Russell Kirkpatrick. This is up next on my reading list so I'm feeling a bit of trepidation.

To end on a more positive note, Pat at the Fantasy Hotlist was quite happy with The Devil You Know by Mike Carey. He makes it sound like it might be more my cup of tea than I thought it would be.

I'm expecting two guest reviews in upcoming weeks, plus two interviews (one which I still have to actually write). I should be done with Auralia's Colors in the next day or so. Once I finish it, I'll post my favorites of 2007 list.

AURALIA'S COLORS - Plot Threads

I am just over halfway through Auralia's Colors by Jeff Overstreet. Now that I no longer have any other novels competing with it, I should be able to get along much quicker.

It's difficult to summarize this book. The people of House Abascar live under oppression. All things with color must be given as gifts to the king, and the people can only wear drab clothing. The exceptions are favored ones of the house, who can earn various colors. The Queen of House Abascar declared that this time of no colors would be the Winter of Abascar, and it would remain Winter until she declared that it was Abascar's Spring.

Except the Queen has since disappeared, and the Winter has dragged on for two decades.

Into this House comes Auralia, who has a gift with weaving colors from things found in nature. Another key character appears to be the ale boy, who has no name that he knows. Auralia says that she knows his name, but she cannot pronounce it. Anyway, the ale boy has a way with fire. An exiled mage has a gift with stone. And the Captain of the Guard, Arc-robin, who enforces all of the King's edicts, seems to key into the story in a significant way.

Despite its somewhat leisurely opening, this novel is shaping up to be very good.

To Catch a Mermaid by Suzanne Selfors

I've been meaning to post my thoughts on TO CATCH A MERMAID by Suzanne Selfors for some weeks now. I don't usually read children's novels and I probably will demur in the future, except for young adult. I did my homework on this novel and read a bunch of other reviews out there, and none of them are in the least bit negative.

The writing itself is great. It's about a boy named Boom Broom who brings home a wild baby mermaid (actually more like a toddler) from a reject seafood bucket. The merbaby brings a curse that Boom must break in order to save his sister. The merbaby can also grant wishes. His sister promptly falls in love with the cranky merbaby, and refuses to be parted from it. Adding angst to the story is that before the start of the novel, Boom's mother was carried away by a twister. Boom is an appealing character, despite his struggles with greed. There is almost no violence in the book.

The beginning of the novel is quite humorous, with crazy situations such as Boom's sister Mertyle wishing for some buttery corn, then Boom going outside and presto! The field next door is filled with buttery corn growing on the stalk, ready to eat. Mertyle cannot seem to wish for anything practical, but there doesn't seem to be any limit to her wishes, so why should she bother?

The high point of the story comes when Mertyle contracts ich from the merbaby. Anyone who has ever kept a fish knows about fish ich, which is spelled ick in this book. For a while it is quite funny, but after this part, the book took a turn for me. I realize that Boom was concerned for his sister, but from then on, the story was too much of a downer, in my opinion.

One problem that authors have in writing children's lit is how to separate the child from the parent. It must be done, because any responsible parent would prevent their child from having dangerous adventures. Harry Potter and Tom Sawyer were both orphans. Huck's father was a drunken drifter. Many children's novels simply take place in boarding schools. In this novel, Boom just can't count on the important people or institutions in his life, including:

• His father, who developed agoraphobia after the twister carried away Boom's mother, and keeps himself locked in the attic in case another twister comes. He does manage to bestir himself toward the end and help his children, but he's never exactly inspiring.

He announced that the twister would return, then he locked himself in his attic studio and asked for weather updates through the keyhole. Except for his dashes to the bathroom, or an occasional appearance in the kitchen to obtain something to eat, he had rarely been seen since. The world beyond the front porch had proven itself to be unpredictably dangerous, and Mr. Broom had decided to avoid it entirely.

• School, for the principal is a sadistic meanie who is so keen to catch kids getting in trouble that she keeps a telescope in her office so she can spy on the kids in the playground. However, I'm willing to give the author a pass on this one, because mocking schoolteachers has a long and glorious tradition in kid's lit, possibly beginning with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

• The Church, which was so awful that Boom cannot dredge up a single positive memory of his dead mother taking him church.

He knew that Winger would be at church, suffering through a long, boring service in a starched-up shirt and a tie. Then he'd sing off-key in the choir's back row. Boom used to go to church with Mrs. Broom. She always stuffed her purse with hard candies, to help Boom get through the blah, blah, blahs that never made much sense. Why was everyone so worried about the next life when there was so much to worry about in this one?

• God, who doesn't seem answer prayers. However, Thor might.

"All Mighty Thor, God of Direct Viking Descendents, show us your mercy and send us wind."

Mr. Jorgenson stood and raised his arms.

"Help us, Mighty Thor."

Boom didn't care who answered their plea -- be it a Viking god, the god of Winger's church, or a green menace from the sea. Was it too much to ask for the universe to look kindly upon him just one time? One stinking time?

The people who do help Boom include the oddball members of the Sons of the Vikings, a flaky fish store owner and the fisherman who let Boom rummage in his fish bucket. It's meant to be whimsical, I think. Most of the other adults are greedy, apathetic or just plain evil.

If I had read this when I was twelve years old, that quote about the afterlife would have really bothered me. Why would you want to bring angst to the child of a Christian family? (I'm assuming the author was writing about a Christian church, since the description fits Christian churches.) Do you write for children because you love them, or do you have other reasons? The prayers to Thor bothered me as well, but at least it fit into the whole "Sons of the Vikings" storyline. The anti-church/afterlife statement sort of came in out of nowhere. It seemed like editorializing to me. If I had been reading for pleasure, it would have been the point at which I would have put the book down.

It is possible, I suppose, that the author was merely careless and meant no harm. The second book (for there appears to be room for a sequel) will tell if this is so, if any more such statements appear.

That's not the only thing that bothered me about this novel. We all hear laments about the decline of reading in children. If this book represents today's children's literature, then I can only say, "Who can blame them?" This book was hard to get through. There's no rousing adventure, little that uplifts. The final struggle dragged on and on and was filled with despair. The ending, while happy enough, was more of a relief than anything else. Even Shrek was more uplifting than this novel. The theme in Shrek is the classic beauty lies within story. The theme for this novel? Maybe something like, "Life is tough, kid. Get used to it."

*

I spent a few weeks sitting on this review because the author was really quite lovely, and when she sent me a copy, she even autographed it. In the end, I decided to go with the adage that "a bad review is better than no review." Maybe she will find something helpful in the honest perspective of a reader who was really looking forward to this book, and who ultimately felt disappointed by it. Maybe some of you will want to purchase it in order to read it for yourself.

In any case, I have decided that in the future, I will only accept review copies from publishers or publicists. I love being in touch with authors, but I need a sense of detachment -- at least at first -- if I'm going to review their books. I have already adjusted my "about" post to reflect this policy.

How Much is Fantasy Debut Worth?

I found this at Pat's.

My blog is worth $44,598.66.
How much is your blog worth?

It's not worth as much as Pat's, but hey -- that it's worth anything to anyone (besides me) is just a thrill.

My Annual Winter Cold

Yes, I have my pre-Christmas cold. I'm just glad that I have it now and not next week. So, things will be blog-lite for a day or so. I do have one serious review almost ready to post, but I need to do a last-minute quote-check against the book and I just don't feel like doing it right now.

Next week, I'll have debuts to announce again! Lots of them! One from this Friday and three on the 26th!

My First Blurb!

My first Featured Debut here has also resulted in my first blurb! Lisa Shearin has recently posted the bookmarks for her second book, Armed and Magical on her blog. And with all her other blurbs is mine! Here are the bookmarks:

And on the reverse is my blurb!


It's attributed to SFFWorld because I did a reader review there. Cool, huh?

Next Featured Debut - Auralia's Colors

I decided to finish reading Auralia's Colors, and I'll make it my featured debut tomorrow in order to motivate myself to get going. Not that I am disliking the story. But I did have a lot of author-sent books to read, and I rank them higher in my reading stack than books that simply arrive in the mail. By the way, I no longer have any author-sent books in my stack, so I'll be reading those publisher-sent ones pronto.

My first post on Auralia's Colors is here. In it, I was having a tough time. I've actually read quite a bit since then and the action did pick up. The story intrigues the hell out of me, so this is not going to be one that I will give up on easily. Plus, I've been following Jeff's blog, and he seems like quite an interesting guy. And he is a very busy blogger!

I feel like I lost focus for a while and I let myself get sidetracked and overwhelmed. It is very easy to allow yourself to get buried in books as a blogger! However, I'm back on track in time for the new year. I have a couple of guest reviewers who are busy reading books, and I hope to be able to post their reviews in the coming weeks. It's a good thing, too. Next on my reading stack is Across the Face of the World by Russell Kirkpatrick, and I think it is going to keep me busy for weeks!

I have not heard of any major publisher debuts since the end of November, and none show up on my calendar until the last two weeks of December. I'm keeping an eye on Locus Magazine's Monitor for the ones that got away, but things appear to have really slowed down in the publishing world. From what I understand, this is typical.

I also have an interview coming up with Janet Lorimer, author of Master of Shadows. I was especially interested in interviewing her because I don't often get the chance to interview such practiced authors. I hope to post her interview next week. (First I need to actually write it and send it to her!)

Master of Shadows - Final Review

First, I must post a disclaimer. Janet and I have been exchanging friendly emails since before I started reading her book. She was also kind enough to send me an autographed copy.

MASTER OF SHADOWS by Janet Lorimer begins like this:

Once upon a time, toward the end of the 20th century . . .

With a single sentence, Lorimer establishes the mood of the entire novel. And there, she starts a familiar story--Beauty meets the Beast and goes to live with him in his enchanted castle. Or, he COULD be a beast. Since he is always shrouded in a cowl, she doesn't know for certain.

In the story, Louvel hires Ariel to categorize the books in his extensive library. Ariel has a master's degree in Liberal Arts--a proper degree for a the daughter of a wealthy man--and she is delighted to have a chance to actually use it. Also, since her father's mysterious death, she rather desperately needs the money. While she is doing the job, Louvel insists that she stay in his mansion. There is no good road to and from the mansion, and staying elsewhere just is not practical. Louvel has very specific, odd and mysterious rules that he insists she follow. However, when her curiosity gets the better of her, Louvel begins to fear that she will uncover his secrets.

In fact, the story is bursting with secrets. Everyone has them; Ariel's father, Ariel's former fiance and her future father-in-law. And some of them are left to the reader to figure out.

At times, I wished that the timeframe of the story was clearer. All I know is it is "late in the 20th century". I'm thinking early 90s. Computers were available, but their use was not yet widespread. Ariel must write letters; she cannot send emails. The setting is also unclear, with references to "the city" and "the village". I believe the author did all this on purpose, to promote a sort of fairy-tale vagueness.

Late in the book, Louvel says this:

. . . "my secrets are dark ones that would devastate you. I cannot bear the thought of your love spoiled by the hate, the disgust, the horror you would taste if . . ."

After reading this, I expected nothing short of Louvel having a demonic nature. The truth turns out to be rather less dark.

In an earlier post, I said that this story reminded me of an old Kathleen Woodiwiss story. That comparison did not hold true. However, the comparison I made to Victoria Holt proved to be close to the mark. This novel is romantic suspense written like a fairy tale, although the prince is unlike like any hero I've ever read before. (No rippling abs here!) This fairy tale has a dark and entirely modern underside. The villains in the story operate very much in the shadows. And it has two mysteries, neatly woven together.

Lorimer is a seasoned writer, with years of experience writing children's fiction under her belt. And it shows. I loved the way she adapted her metaphors to the current setting. For example, if the characters were eating, she might compare something with a golden color to melted butter. Her verbs are all active ("a stab of guilt") and her dialog effortless to follow. The novel shows solid research, some which I fact-checked and found to be true.

I can call it a fairy tale, but I hesitate to call it a fantasy. It has moments that seem like magic, like when in Silas Marner by George Eliot, Silas finds his stolen gold. In this novel, Beauty discovers just who is the true Beast. I've always loved stories like this, where the mundane seems magical. If you enjoy reading delicious little romantic suspense novels that keep you up late at night, this novel would work for you.

What is UP with Google?

First, Google arbitrarily turns off the ability for blog commenters to input their URL when they (1) don't feel like logging in, or (2) they don't particularly like Blogger's profile page, or (3) they maintain blogs elsewhere. I managed to find a way around that, and I plan to put up a post on how to set up that in the very near future (hopefully tonight).

Now, my Google reader is acting decidedly wonky. (Yes, that is a technical term. I've spent 11 years in IT, so I know.) The sidebar now superimposes itself over the rest of the page when you click on it. It's either a bug or a hideous new feature, and it's been that way since last night. If you actually try to use the thing, it makes your browser crash (which has happened every time, today).

What's up? Now I'm not only considering fleeing to WordPress, but I'm considering switching to another feed reader such as Bloglines. This blog is supposed to be about fantasy debuts, for crying out loud, not about problems with Google. One gets the impression that Google is spending so much time acquiring companies and slapping the Google name on them that they are not paying much attention to things that matter to customers.

Until I get set up elsewhere (or Reader gets fixed) I guess I'll catch up on everyone's blogs the old fashioned way.

Rant over. Thanks for listening.

Debut Coverage in My Favorite Blogs

I always have links in my sidebar gizmo to the latest stuff that I have noticed on other blogs. However, since the sidebar is easy to ignore, I like to occasionally do a round up of all the debut coverage that I've noticed elsewhere.

Pat has put up a review of Acacia on his Fantasy Hotlist, and it is not entirely favorable. He's garnered some comments that both agree and disagree with him.

There are two related posts up on John Lindqvist's Let Me In, one at the Fantasy and SciFi Lovin' Book Review, written by TexasBoyBlue, and the other at TexasBoyBlue's Of Science Fiction.

Chris the Book Swede has invited Jennifer Rardin, author of Once Bitten, Twice Shy, to do his Favorite Quote feature this week. She picked a Mark Twain quote about -- what else? -- laughter.

UPDATE! He also has an interview with Patrick Rothfuss! It's hilarious too!

SQT is giving away a copy of Darwin's Paradox by Nina Munteanu over at her Fantasy and SciFi Lovin' Book Review. Hurry! The deadline for the contest is tomorrow.

Jennifer Rardin becomes an early Debut Graduate with her recent release of Another One Bites the Dust, and Kimberly Swan over at Darque Reviews has a review.

Master of Shadows - Channeling Victoria Holt

Today, one doesn't hear much about Gothic fiction. If they do, they immediately think vampires. Well, back in the 80s, Gothic fiction meant Victoria Holt to me. Exciting suspense novels with nary a sex scene in any of its pages. Mysterious, dangerous heroes and plots that seem thick with magic, yet ending up having entirely rational explanations.

MASTER OF SHADOWS is shaping up to be a Gothic novel in the grand tradition of Victoria Holt. An intriguing man, shrouded (literally!) in mystery. A suspicious other man, who seems to have nefarious reasons for his interest in the heroine, Ariel. A missing father. A strange set of servants for the master of the house. And best of all, a secret passage. Oh, and a hidden graveyard!

And all of this takes place in modern-day USA.

Actually, the time and place was difficult for me to pin down at first. What really threw me was when Ariel had store credit at the general store in the "village" near which she lived. As a matter of serendipity, I happened to have been researching the concept of store credit the week before I started reading this book. (Strange, huh? I research all sorts of oddball things.) Therefore, when I ran into the scene where Ariel manages to pay off some of her store credit, my thought process went something like this.

Ok, so they have cars and telephones, so it's at least the 1900s. They also have store credit, so it cannot be much later than 1950. Since they were recently financially ruined, I'm tempted to guess this takes place in the 30s. However, Ariel has a master's degree in liberal arts; when were they first available?

As it turns out, the time frame is at least 1995 or later. Not sure why that guy in the general store doesn't have a credit card machine.

This is the ONLY critique I can think of. The story has grabbed me and I have no idea where it is going to take me. I'm almost exactly halfway through the novel. The mysterious man, Louvel, has his share of unexpected blemishes on his character, and he either has a monster in his house, or he IS the monster in his house. He has some 'splaining to do about more than a few things, and he's not exactly the talkative type. The whole thing has the feel of a fairy tale, especially of Beauty and the Beast, which is probably the very first Gothic story, ever (well, maybe not).

I'm loving it. It makes me nostalgic. Maybe I need to go to the library and check out some Victoria Holt books to reread. Then again, maybe I ought to just try to get through the reading stack I've accumulated so far.

Master of Shadows - First Chapter

I started a new book and I thought it would be fun to dust off my Featured Debut feature. I didn't want to do a Featured Debut of the last two books that I've read because I wasn't sure how they would turn out, and I only do this for books that I'm reasonably certain that I will like.

MASTER OF SHADOWS by Janet Lorimer has been described to me as a fairy tale for adults. This is the second Juno Books novel that I've featured here, and both covers were done by Timothy Lantz. Lantz has done many covers for Juno Books. However, even though I like this cover, it just was not as stunning as the cover he did for Wind Follower. That cover (you can see it here) really makes you stop and take notice. Such a feat must be difficult for an artist to duplicate.

The blurb on the back of the book is brief:

Belief is a powerful charm. . .

Never go into the woods at night, especially if the moon is full.

The old woman's warning, hissed years ago in Ariel's ear, came back that night to haunt her.

They say there's a beast that lives in those woods...a beast that walks and talks like a man.

An ominous shadow blocked the pale light and a powerful hand clamped down on her shoulder.

"Do not move. Do not turn around."

The voice was male, deep and harsh in the silence. At the sound of it, Ariel uttered a startled cry.

"Ariel McPherson . . ."

A guttural whisper in the dark, but he'd made her name sound like velvet being stroked.

This pretty much sums up the action in the first chapter. Ariel meets a stranger in the woods when she goes to fetch a bottle of water from a spring that is rumored to have healing powers. From this description you might think that this is a medieval fantasy, but it's not.

Ariel must trespass onto the stranger's property to fetch the bottle of water, and he catches her in the act. The stranger will not let him see his face as he questions her. He's a bit touchy-feely for my taste, but you get the definite impression that "he's just not from 'round here." This feeling is strengthened in the second chapter, when Ariel reflects on the archaic words he uses and his unusual accent.

There's a mystery established up front, having to do with her father's disappearance. Her mother is just not coping and the 25 year-old Ariel seems to be trying to help her mother keep it together.

There is a longer blurb at Juno's website; here's the rest:

Ariel's life had been a modern fairy tale, but her father's baffling disappearance brought it all to a crashing end. She meets the enigmatic Louvel one night, but never sees his face -- even after accepting employment at his magnificent estate. When it becomes imperative to solve the mystery of what happened to her father, Louvel appears to be helping her . . . but can Ariel trust a man who lives in the shadows?

This blurb and the romance set-up reminds me of a very old romance novel called A Rose in Winter by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Since none of the novels that I've read lately have had any good love stories, so this novel might be coming at just the right time for me.

Spotlight Review - The Red Wolf Conspiracy at The Wertzone

Adam Whitehead over at the Wertzone has an advanced review up of an upcoming UK debut. THE RED WOLF CONSPIRACY looks to be a nautical fantasy. Adam gave it four stars and expects that the author, Robert V. S. Redick will, "be 'the' big new fantasy author of 2008, and deservedly so."

THE RED WOLF CONSPIRACY comes out on February 1st. Gollancz is releasing it in both hardcover and trade paperback. Here is a small excerpt from Adam's review:

The Red Wolf Conspiracy is the opening volume of The Chathrand Voyage, a fantasy trilogy by debut author Robert V.S. Redick. Gollancz's pre-publicity draws comparisons with Scott Lynch and Philip Pullman, and I suspect over the coming months a similar word-of-mouth pre-release excitment will build that is comparable to Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora or Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind. Certainly The Red Wolf Conspiracy is an exceptionally fine novel and more than worthy of such comparisons.

Head on over to the Wertzone for Adam's review, plus Amazon links and more.

Crypt of the Moaning Diamond by Rosemary Jones

Rosemary Jones's debut, CRYPT OF THE MOANING DIAMOND (USA, UK, Canada) is part of The Dungeons series by Wizards of the Coast. Other titles in this series includes Depths of Madness by Erik Scott de Bie, The Howling Delve by Jaleigh Johnson and Stardeep by Bruce R. Cordell. I found this blurb at the author's website:

Once again Tsurlagol has been invaded and now a band of orcs controls the city and the city's stout defenses. Luckily for the citizens of Tsurlagol, the forces of Procampur have come marching to the rescue. Even more luckily (although the proper and extraordinarily stuffy Procampur officers don't know it yet), the Siegebreakers are available to help for a quite reasonable fee.

The merry band of mercenaries knows all the tricks for overcoming a city's defenses. Except the Siegebreakers just fell into a vast underground ruin, which is being flooded by the river that they unleashed. The waters are rising, the ceilings are collapsing, and every turn reveals a new creature that wants to attack them.

Ivy, the leader of the Siegebreakers, knows that making walls fall down is easy: not being underneath when the walls collapse is the hard part.

Wizards hosts a sample chapter in a zipfile. The author maintains a MySpace site, including a blog.

Comments Feature Fixed!

LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad and any other blog host using OpenID can now post a comment to this blog and include their URL.

When you make a comment, look for this dropdown box:


Select your blog host, enter your user ID and password and you should be good to go. I guess this was to prevent someone from impersonating someone else. This is all in an experimental version of Blogger called Blogger In Draft. I found something in Blogger's help, which you can find here, but I'll go ahead and paste:

Blogger has removed the URL field for unauthenticated comments. Instead, we're rolling out support for OpenID, a technology for "signing" your comments with your own URL. OpenID lets you comment with the URL you want, while preventing others from impersonating you. Blog admins can turn on OpenID now on Blogger in Draft. Learn more.

Why they turned off the unauthenticated URL before rolling out OpenID is anyone's guess. I BELIEVE that I've turned on this feature for this blog. I'm about to test it as soon as I put up this post.

In the meantime, I had a lot of fun playing with WordPress. It has a lot of great features that I truly envy in Blogger. However, for now I'm going to stay put.

Blogger Comment Feature Downgraded

Blogger has seen fit to downgrade its comments feature, leaving me seriously considering switching to WordPress. Have you noticed it yet? This graphic is what I get when I attempt to leave a comment on another blog. Notice the "Nickname" field.



This is all well-and-good for Blogger users. But now my Wordpress and users of other blogs -- which, except LiveJournal allow links to any site -- can no longer enter a link to their site.

The reason that I did not choose a LiveJournal blog is because of restrictions like this one. Few LiveJournal users leave comments on this blog, and I leave comments on very few LiveJournal blogs. LiveJournal makes its community very insular. Now Blogger is becoming just like LiveJournal.

I'd rather have a paid account somewhere than be subjected to random downgradings like this one. I would have taken a look at WordPress last night, except my Internet connection was down. My only problem with switching is that everyone who has linked to Fantasy Debut would now have dead links. I could leave a pointer post at this blog, of course, but in many ways it would be almost like starting over.

If you are as seriously peeved about this downgrading as I am, please put a post up about it on your blog and find some way to complain to Blogger.

Historical Debut - ERAGON by Christopher Paolini

I wrote this review way before I started Fantasy Debut, but once I wrote it I didn't have anywhere to post it. Since I seem to be having trouble getting through my reading stack in a timely manner, I thought I'd go back and put up some posts on some oldies.

ERAGON was one of the books that inspired Fantasy Debut. How did a seventeen year old kid's first novel manage to grab so much attention? Was it really that great? And then when the movie came out, I got curiouser. So I went out and purchased a used copy (Sorry Paolini, but the only other copies available were cheap-looking paperbacks with the movie cover. Ick. I hate movie covers.) As soon as I finished it, I wrote down my thoughts on it.

This review was first written on Thursday, February 22, 2007. I edited it for major spoilers before posting it.

I just finished Eragon last night. I read the entire book without any memorable lag points. I found Eragon a likable -- but not lovable -- character. Paolini wrote the book with a vivid imagination and memorable scene-setting, especially Tronjheim. There were a lot of unpronounceable words, but they didn't bother me.

The story is about a boy who discovers a dragon egg. It appears to be one of the only dragon eggs left in the world, and there are people willing to kill to get it. Once Eragon is in possession of the egg, it promptly hatches and bonds itself to Eragon, Anne McCaffrey style. Then, Eragon must run from the egg-hunters. Brom, a mysterious storyteller, travels with Eragon and along the way trains him in both dragon-riding and magic. All along, Saphira, the young female dragon, is growing up and gets Eragon into continual scrapes. Their adventures set them against the evil king, Galbatorix, who is a dragon rider, himself.

Much has been said about the derivation of this novel from Star Wars, The Dragonriders of Pern and The Lord of the Rings. Yes, I could see the connection, but they didn't really bother me. Novelists borrow from other novelists all the time. Yes, Paolini borrowed rather heavily, but the plot became his own. And this is a YA novel, where such derivations seem to occur more often. Children have not yet read all the other stuff.

I did have two major nits. The plot seemed too predictable and the character motivations were, on the whole, not convincing. Here are the major characters and why I found them convincing or not:

Brom: I found his motivations thoroughly convincing. Of course he was hiding something about himself, he made that clear, but I had no problem with his motivation being to see Eragon trained.

Eragon: Here is where I had trouble. Once his family had either died or scattered, his motivation was revenge. Eragon is not a dark enough character to be revenge-motivated. I have not read many revenge stories for a reason: revenge as a motivation does not appeal to me. Paolini might have lost me here if I had not been determined to read the whole thing.

Murtagh: Once Eragon is on his own, Murtagh joins him. I like this character. He's too dark to be the protagonist, but he is not weak enough to be a sidekick. I don't know what Paolini has planned for him, and I like that. However, the story that he finally comes out with implies a deeper connection to Eragon. It seems quite obvious, once I read it, just who Murtagh is. Of course, I might be completely wrong about this, and it would be kind of cool if I am.

Anyway, Murtagh's decision to travel with Eragon seemed spurious to me as well. He just sort of gloms onto Eragon. I don't see Eragon as being a particularly compelling character to glom onto.

Saphira: I don't really know what her motivation is. Love for Eragon, I guess. I think a good motivation might be to free the other eggs from the Evil King. Paolini does a good job -- for the most part -- of depicting her as a juvenile dragon. I do wish she could have used her fire to greater purpose when she finally is able to use it at the end of the story.

I mentioned that I found the plot predictable. A fortune teller basically told the reader the entire story and I think her predictions will give Paolini trouble further on in the series. Other than that, here are some dead givaways (I tried to disguise any spoilers).

• Of course, Brom was doomed.
• Of course, Murtaugh would be forced to do something that he kept saying he would never do.
• Of course, the slide from the dragon hold was designed for no other purpose than to have Eragon slide down it. It was not nearly as dangerous as had I hoped, however.
• Of course, Eragon was doomed to fight a certain powerful minion.

Despite the predictable nature of the plot, the book held a few surprises for me. I don't know why Brom's origin surprised me. It ought to have been obvious. I did a head-cracking number when I read it, and bravo to Paolini for making me do that.

I also did not expect Murtagh's origin. It was not quite the "duh" moment, but it came entirely out of left field, to use a cliché. It also brought a lot of interest to the plot for reasons detailed above.

I have mixed feelings about the final battle. First, the Powerful Minion has put Eragon on the mental and physical defensive with a breathtaking attack. When Eragon was injured and his mind open to the Minion at the same time, I found it a great "how can he possibly win" moment. However, in no time at all, Eragon has turned things around and is rooting through the Minion's mind. I think we needed at least a page of uncertainty. Then, while Eragon is reliving the Minion's memories, the Minion manages to turn things around again, and he has Eragon at another "how can he possibly win" moment. All of this took place in about two pages.

Some hopes for the next book:

• I am hoping against hope that Arya is not the "great romance" that Eragon will have. It would be an entirely uneven relationship. A much better choice would be the daughter of the rebel chieftain, who has an unpronounceable name. But I think I am doomed to reading about the growing love between Eragon and Arya. Ack.
• The Twins are shaping up to be traitors to the Varden. I hope they do not turn out to be. I think it would be better to continually keep us guessing about their motivations, like Rowling did with Snape.
• Eragon will apparently have a new mentor once he gets to the elf homeland. I am hoping he turns out to be a secret villain.

On the whole, I enjoyed ERAGON and I even lent my used copy to a friend, who enjoyed it as well. (I know, bad EVIL Tia!) I certainly would recommend it for younger readers, or for tolerant readers who don't mind derivative works. If you tend to be jaded about such things, you might want to skip it and you probably already have.

And Now, a Song!

Since so many of my readers are journeyman writers, my blog suffered a dip in traffic during NaNoWriMo, a dip that began to reverse itself in the middle of the month. In honor of all my NaNoWriMo readers, both successful and not, I have composed this little song.

The Blogger's NaNoWriMo Lament
By Tia Nevitt
(Sung to the tune of "Oh Where, Oh Where Did My Little Dog Go")

Oh where, oh where have my blog readers gone?
Oh where, oh where can they be?
With their visits so short but their comment threads long,
Oh where, oh where can they be?

To NaNoWriMo all my readers have gone,
That annual novelist spree!
With their time so short and their word counts so long
They no longer have time for poor me!

Welcome back!

My Reading Stack

I realize that my reading stack is not towering compared to some, but here are all the books that I've received in the past few weeks. About half of them are books that I agreed to read ahead-of-time. The folder on the bottom is a manuscript that I agreed to beta-read for a friend. I'm currently reading the one on top, To Catch a Mermaid, and when I finish that one, the manuscript is next.

If you plan to review any of these, let me know and I'll be sure to give your review a shout-out.

Debut Award News and Sundry Shout-Outs

The Border's 2007 Original Voices Awards includes several names that have come up on Fantasy Debut, and one that probably should have come up..

Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind made the Fiction list. Melissa Marr's Wicked, Lovely made the Young Adult list.

Things have been going well for both Rothfuss and Marr. I have already mentioned other awards for them in a previous post. Embarrassingly, I have not read either book. I keep meaning to pick up Wicked, Lovely and I'm really, really going to try to get it this weekend. I think I'll bring my camera to the bookstore and try to get some Bookshelf Action Shots of recent debuts.

Marr has a list of recent reviews and recognition for her novel here.

Elsewhere, I have recently shared the following posts on my Other Debut Coverage sidebar:

Over at Of Science Fiction, TexasBoyBlue has "finally" finished another award-winning novel, Acacia, by David Anthony Durham.

Adian has finished reading The Book of Joby by Mark J. Ferrari, and he loved it.

Over at Bookgasm, Mark Rose liked The Sword-Edged Blonde, but thought the title was ridiculous.

Darque Reviews has reviewed the second book in the Jaz Parks series, Another One Bites the Dust. Because of the rapidity in which Orbit is releasing these novels, Jennifer Rardin is already a debut graduate!

And I just saw this at the Swivet. UK debut Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips has been "optioned" to be developed as a TV series. I'm not a publishing person, so I can only guess at what the verb "to option" means, but I'm assuming that this is one day going to be on TV.

Guest Post - Janet Lorimer

Janet Lorimer is the author of MASTER OF SHADOWS. Although this is her first adult fantasy novel, she has been writing for children for years, and is also a freelance author. When I asked her if she wanted to do a guest post, she thought of this article, which ought to be useful to anyone who writes fiction.

WATCH OUT FOR THEM THERE EYES

By Janet Lorimer

The thriller grabbed my interest on the first page, and I settled back for a good chilling tale. Then, not two-dozen pages into the book, the author shattered the mood with a line that left me howling with laughter. Here’s the line. See how you respond.

“…her eyes shot over to him, then clung briefly like two dark hooks before they abruptly let go.”

I know my laughter is not the reaction the author wanted his readers to have. And to be honest, there was a time when I might not have noticed the humor in that sentence, when I might have been guilty of making a similar gaffe. Luckily I came across an article entitled “The Eyes Have It” by Francis L. Fugate (Writer’s Digest, May 1982) that changed my ‘eyesight’ forever.

The author, a copy editor, noted that writers have more trouble with characters’ eyes than with any other part of human anatomy. The tense mood is easily shattered when a line such as the following pops up: “Their eyes clashed and Martha uttered a shriek.”

Fugate included other examples, such as these Victorian gems: “Henrietta dropped her eyes into the fireplace and they evaporated into far-away nostalgia,” and “She picked up her eyes from the deck and cast them far out to sea.”

The trouble seems to stem from what writers want their characters’ eyes – mere organs of sight – to do. It’s tempting to assign mystical qualities to the eyes, and easy to make the mistake of attaching figurative action to these literal orbs. There’s only so much action we can ask of our eyes. They can open and close, narrow and widen, even roll and perhaps twinkle.

Fugate advised writers to double-check every reference to a character’s eyes with a jaundiced eye. I took his advice, wincing every time I found myself guilty of ‘literary detached retina,” and I started paying close attention to keeping my characters’ eyes in their sockets!

By the way, if you’re wondering what happened after the lady’s eyes ‘hooked’ our hero, his eyes “…followed her as she made her way to the car.” I hope his eyes don’t get in the car with her. She’s on her way to jail.

###

Thanks for letting me post this, Janet! It was a hoot!

By the way, Janet is sending me a copy of MASTER OF SHADOWS, so I expect I'll be writing more about it in the coming weeks.

Into This Mind by Lisa Nevin

I finished INTO THIS MIND by Lisa Nevin late last night. I went back and reviewed my first post on this story because I knew that I had quite a few critiques.

The story is about a youngish woman who can walk into memories left behind by others. The woman, whose name is Jena, has always had an intense desire to explore a certain expanse of parkland that was closed to the public. When it finally opens up, Jena is there on the first day. While following her wayward cat, she stumbles upon an abandoned ballroom. She goes into explore and walks into the memory of the young married woman named May. Over the course of repeated visits, Jena and her friend, Katri, discover an unsolved murder mystery.

In my last post, I mentioned stilted dialog and present tense. Well, the present tense did not change, of course, but I noticed that Nevin's writing improved the further I got along into the story. I noticed this a little over halfway through. It never reached the point where it could compare with the likes of Mark J. Ferrari or David Anthony Durham, but there was a definite improvement.

By the end of the book, my only complaint was that she tended to have conversations go off into what I will call "chocolate tangents". These sort of tangents could have been used more sparingly, in my opinion. When we talk, we tend to wander off topic quite a bit. However, in our reading we pretty much expect the characters to stay on-topic. There was one scene toward the end where Jena discovered something pretty profound concerning her ability to walk in someone's memory. Jena found it overwhelming and tries to avoid crying by counting blue sheep. Granted, Jena is kind of a wacky character, but as a reader I would have appreciated a moment or two to reflect on the revelation before being dragged back into wackiness.

This and the rather rocky opening were the two biggest problems I had with the book. Since Nevin showed such improvement with her writing, I wish she had gone back and shored up her opening with her newfound skills. Otherwise, her writing was grammar-perfect, with an easy-to-read style and a distinctive voice.

There's no question that the story kept my attention. There was only one brief point where the plot slowed down. Nevin stuck strictly to her plot. There was no needless backstory. The present tense became utterly unnoticeable after the first few pages. Nevin shows a lot of potential in her ability to dole out little facts in the mystery bit by bit. The story had a few surprises and it ended fairly satisfyingly, although I can't say that Jena was ever in any true danger. One can imagine Jena becoming a sort of psychic investigator in future books. However this book stands alone.

All in all, it was an enjoyable little fantasy mystery.

Links!
Author's Website and Blog
Publisher Purchase Page
My Original Announcement
Opening Chapters Review

Off Into Eight Hours of Blog Oblivion

My place of business has gotten very security conscious since a security breech a while back, and we have been told to cease using web-based email accounts, such as Gmail, which I use. Therefore, I will no longer be able to see or respond to your emails or blog comments until I get home. I used to check on my blog during lunch time, but I'm not going to do that anymore because they are also increasing surveillance of web-based activities. In fact, I think I'll be bringing a book to read during lunch. It will help me read debuts quicker, anyway.

Which proves that there is a silver lining in every cloud! You just have to look for a while before finding it!

When I return tonight, I'll put up my final review of Lisa Nevin's Into This Mind.

Guest Post - Jim Melvin

I first became aware of Jim before I started Fantasy Debut, at the Absolute Write Water Cooler (although he probably does not remember me from those days). He later initiated contact with me shortly after I started Fantasy Debut. We have been in sporadic contact ever since, and I recently asked him to write a guest post. Jim has always behaved with class and professionalism. I was interested in hearing Jim's story because I knew from various interviews that his writing this series was his lifelong dream and I was curious to hear how it came about.

Here is his bio and guest post.

* * *

Jim Melvin is author of The Death Wizard Chronicles, a six-book-epic fantasy. Book One (The Pit) was released in September 2007 by Rain Publishing, followed by Book Two (Moon Goddess) in October, Book Three (Eve of War) in November. Book Four (World on Fire) will be released in December, Book Five (Sun God) in January and Book Six (Death-Know) in February. The series is available for purchase at www.rainbooks.com or www.amazon.com. The first shipments to Amazon have sold out, but more are on the way. Jim, 50, is married with five daughters and currently lives in Clemson, S.C. He welcomes personal emails at jsmhimes@yahoo.com

Though I wrote The Death Wizard Chronicles in three years, the six-book series was almost thirty years in the making. I was born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., but I moved to St. Petersburg, Fla., when I was 5 years old and was raised on an island that jutted into Tampa Bay. I was lucky to grow up on a street on the waterfront that had about ten other boys my age, and we hung out morning, noon, and night. We played all the usual sports that young boys love: football, baseball, basketball, “kill the carrier,” etc. But we also, as a group, were obsessed with fantastical games that contained magic, monsters, and super heroes. We played games based off popular TV shows of that era (the late 1960s) such as Lost in Space and The Man from Uncle.

When I was a boy, I had white-blond hair, but I became a big fan of Robert Vaughn, who played Napoleon Solo in The Man from Uncle. Vaughn, of course, has brown hair, and one summer I convinced my mom to dye my hair brown. Being a smart mom, she chose to use cheap hair dye, and within a couple of days my hair changed colors and I spent the rest of the summer with green hair. That wouldn’t seem so unusual today, but back then I was the talk of the island. Anyway, my love and fascination for magic and monsters stayed with me into adulthood.

When I was a junior in high school, I boldly decided that I wanted to become a best-selling novelist, and I went around telling everyone I knew that I was going to make $75-million. Keep in mind this was the mid-1970s, so that’s probably around $300-million, if you figure in thirty years of inflation.

I wrote my first novel when I was 20 years old. It was a Stephen King-like horror novel entitled Sarah’s Curse. An agent who was a family friend shopped it around, and though it received some nice responses, it never found a publisher. But I wasn’t overly concerned because I believed my second novel would be the one to hit it big. In the meantime, I started my career as a journalist at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. For me, the rat race officially began. Soon I was working 50-hour weeks and raising a family – and there never was a second book. Twenty-five years later, I was fortunate enough to be able to semi-retire. In September 2004, I wrote the first word of Book One of The Death Wizard Chronicles. Seven-hundred-thousand words later, I’m in the final revision process of Book Six.

Life has an unusual sense of humor, and for a quarter-century my dreams were put on hold. That said, those 25 years ended up serving a valuable purpose. As a reporter and editor, I learned the craft of writing and met a lot of interesting people, significantly expanding my worldview and talents. When I finally began writing my epic fantasy series, I realized that work and family weren’t to blame for all those lost years. Instead, I wasn’t simply had not been ready as a writer. Finally, it all jelled. This is my time.

I describe my series as a cross between J.R.R. Tolkien and Stephen King – Tolkien because it contains many aspects of epic fantasy, King because it’s pretty darn scary and rough. The Death Wizard Chronicles is a classic tale of good versus evil, with lots of action, monsters, and magic. It also contains a very compelling love story. But what separates my series from most others is that I am an active student of Eastern philosophy, which fuels my world view. The concept of karma and the art of meditation play key roles in the symbolic aspects of my work. While deep in meditation, Buddhist monks have had recorded heart rates of less than 10 beats per minute. My main character takes this to the extreme. In an original twist never before seen in this genre, the Death Wizard is able to enter the realm of death during a “temporary suicide.” Through intense concentrative meditation, he stops his heartbeat briefly and feeds on death energy, which provides him with an array of magical powers.

My first wife and I divorced about 15 years ago, and I then remarried. My second wife is a Western-convert Buddhist in the Theravada tradition, and she introduced me to Buddhism. The philosophical aspects of Eastern philosophy really rang true for me and helped to further shape the person I have become. My series contains an ancient language that is directly translated from Pali, a dialect closely related to Sanskrit but not extinct as a spoken language. When translated to English, it is beautiful and erotic.

A wise man once said:
“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”

I live life this way. Or at least I try.

* * *

Thank you, Jim!

Policy Updates and Sleepless Rambles

I'm up way too late, but I can't sleep, so I may as well blog. My husband and I have been watching Lord of the Rings. No wonder I can't sleep.

I have over a hundred blog entries on Google Reader that I need to catch up on. The only thing I did blog-related over the weekend was answer comments.

I also came to a decision. I've been getting a lot of requests to check out POD books lately. I don't think I can cover them. This blog has a narrow focus on purpose: I have very limited free time. I have a disabled child and it takes me over a week to read a single book. If it is a very long book, it takes me even longer. When my life takes an unexpected turn, as it has in recent weeks, my reading time becomes embarrassingly long. In fact, this blog has come to be more about debut news than reviews. I hope to turn this around as I get caught up by the beginning of the year. However, in order to get caught up, I need to focus.

Therefore, I will no longer attempt to cover POD books. I will limit my coverage to major publisher debuts and certain well-vetted small presses. I have already adjusted my What I Do Here post to reflect this policy.

In order to be helpful to POD authors, I looked for other places online that specifically covers POD. The leader of the pack appears to be The Podler. The Podler reviews lots of types of books and has an annual award, the IPOD. I swiped these links off the Podler's sidebar. They are all members of The De Facto Pod Review Ring.

• Odyssey Reviews
• Leo Stableford
• iUniverse Book Reviews
• Darryl's Library
• None may say...
• POD People
• POD Critic

I will add all of these links in a POD section on my sidebar. If you decide to start a POD blog, let me know and I'll add your blog to the sidebar as well.

This in no way reflects on the POD book that I am currently reading. I intend to finish that book this week. It will be my first and last POD review.

In other news, I've expanded my attempts to find recently-announced authors who are willing to guest blog. I find that a lot of them are! I have two guest blogs upcoming this week, both small press authors. I will post one on Tuesday and the other on Thursday.

Now to try to get some sleep!

Happy Thanksgiving

I'll be somewhat scarce for most of the weekend, since it is Thanksgiving here in the United States. I'm going to try to catch up on my reading, but I admit to reading a novel just for pleasure right now. It's Messenger of Truth by Jacqueline Winspear. I love these books. I love a book that can take me back to time, and Winspear has succeeded with this with her very first volume, Maisie Dobbs.

It will probably be a reading weekend, and I hope to get some reviews ready by next week. Till then, happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Blogrolling

I have not done a blogrolling post in a while, so here it goes. The following blogs have added Fantasy Debut to their blogrolls. Here's a shout-out as a way of saying thanks! (This list does not include author blogs, which I have shouted-out separately.)

Mir runs a fabulous blog called Mirathon, and she always sends lots of traffic my way. Mir is funny and smart and I'm sure her readership will continue to grow.

Carole McDonnell also reviews books, and her review blog is called Dark Parables. I also get a lot of traffic from this blog, every single day. Thanks, Carole!

The Torque Control is the "critical of the British Science Fiction Association." I love the title of this blog.

Capricious Musings is a blog on "reading, writing and geekiness". Sounds right up my alley!

Books Under the Bridge is a SFF review blog run by Billy Goat and Mister Troll.

Over at Darque Reviews, Kimberly reviews lots of dark fantasy. She has a great graphic, too. I really need to work on getting a graphic for Fantasy Debut.

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist is probably known to most bloggers, but those of you who don't know of him should probably take note. His blog is on my "Special Thanks" blogroll for a reason. He's the man in the know!

The Bookie Monster has a new home, but since he has his own domain, it's a seamless transfer for the user.

I don't know if I've mentioned John at Grasping for the Wind, but he runs a very popular blog and has shouted Fantasy Debut more than once.

Of Science Fiction is currently at NaNo, according to his blog. He appears to do both movie and book reviews.

Thanks, everyone!

Amazon's Kindle

I noticed that Amazon's Kindle has gotten 2 1/2 stars on its own review system. Personally, I balk at the 399 price tag. I mean -- wow. That's quite an investment. The thing sounds rather cool -- no more waiting for books to ship -- but I have other things that I'd much rather spend 399 on. We need a new lawn mower, for instance. 399 would buy about half of a fairly nice used lawn mower. And way, way before I get something like Kindle, I'd buy a new computer. But way, way before I buy a new computer, I'd buy a new sofa. You get the idea.

Sunday Evening Ramble

I thought I'd have a debut to announce, but it didn't turn out to be a debut at all, so I guess I get the night off! Not really . . .

Got some new gizmos up on the sidebar. I added the "Other Debut Coverage" a few weeks ago and I've sent a steady stream of Google Reader links to it ever since. I love it. It is very cool. I suppose I should make it look more like the rest of the blog, but I kind of like the way it stands out as it is. I'll try to leave a comment on your blog when I add one of your posts, but I won't promise anything. It's so easy! I just click the mouse and bam! It's on my sidebar!

At the urging of Carole, I added a link to my profile, which points to my other blogs, which in turn includes (gasp!) a writing blog. I also blog on technology under my alter-ego "Technigirl" and to my knowledge, my only reader is my husband, who nags me whenever I neglect to put up a post.

And most exciting, I now have a form that you can use to notify me of a debut! (Yes I know, I need to get a life if I consider that exciting.) But really, this will help with my announcement research. I've actually had authors send me emails asking me "Will you review my book?" and neglect to give me the title, publisher, release date -- anything!

I am also going to work on a list of all debuts that I've announced so far, and I'll update it as I go along. It will be cool to see the list at the end of the year.

I suppose, while I'm here, I may as well catch up on some author goings-on. This time, I'm going to go way back in time . . .

Yay! Phaedra Weldon has a website! Back when I first blogged on her debut, Wraith, she had no web presence that I could find. Now she has a website (including an excerpt), a LiveJournal and a MySpace. Apparently, her next novel is called Spectre, and she's expecting the copy-edited manuscript in the mail any day now.

David Bilsborough (The Wanderer's Tale) still does not appear to have a web presence, so I guess we'll skip him. Maybe someone "in the know" can let me know what's going on with him.

Alexis Glynn Latner has a blog that I never noticed before. It is entirely possible that it was there all along. Another one for my feed reader . . .

That's it for today. I'll try to check up on some more of my early debut authors over the next few weeks. But for now, I just have one more about a more recent author . . .

Carole McDonnell had her very first book signing, and has posted a review. It appears to have been some sort of joint book signing and it sounds like it was a lot of fun.

Guest Post! Reading Reviews by Laura Benedict

I've always felt badly that I cannot give all debuts equal exposure, and I don't tend to read darker fantasies or horror. At the time Laura's novel, ISABELLA MOON, came out I was rather swamped in books, and was unable to read it. Maria and I did a Spotlight Review of her book, but when she thanked me so kindly, I knew I wanted to do something else for her. Then it occurred to me -- why not ask her to do a guest post? Why on earth would I want to limit guest posts and interviews to authors that I've featured? She was happy to do a guest post and asked me for a subject. Since I knew that her reviews were rather mixed -- indeed, our Spotlight was mixed as well -- I asked her what it was like to be on the other side of a review. Here is her response.

Reading Reviews
by Laura Benedict

I swore to myself that I wouldn’t read a single review of my debut novel ISABELLA MOON when they came out. I’ve reviewed books myself on a freelance basis for a Michigan newspaper for over ten years, I’m married to a writer, and I have many writer friends, so I’m deeply aware of how affecting reviews—both positive and negative—can be. But any writer who says he or she doesn’t read reviews of their books is probably fibbing. It’s a sore, sore temptation to listen in on what folks are saying about your baby, even when you suspect that someone out there is going to claim it’s ugly as sin.

The early word was not great. Two out of the Big Four—Kirkus, PW, Library Journal, and Booklist—were stinkers. They weren’t just bad. They were cruel. And I mean cruel, as in, “who did I piss off to get this kind of treatment?” cruel. As a writer, that was my first, defensive reaction. They couldn’t have possibly read the same book I wrote! The other two were better, but equivocal. I knew I should’ve been grateful: not everyone gets her first book reviewed by the Big Four. I found myself saying stiff-upper-lip things like: “Well, I wanted to run with the big dogs. Guess I’m off the porch, now!”

Fortunately, newspapers and the Blogosphere had nicer things to say, and ISABELLA MOON did not, in fact, sink beneath the weight of that pair of initial smack-downs.

ISABELLA MOON is a complicated book, I confess. Not everyone is interested in a crime/gothic/supernatural thriller/frankly sexual/romance of a book. (Actually, I say “romance” with tongue firmly in cheek. One of my favorite review quotes reports that ISABELLA MOON includes “…various neurotic young women with some pretty twisted views on romance.” I love that, because it’s true!) But my opinion of ISABELLA MOON isn’t relevant. Once it left my desk, copy-edited and complete, it was out of my control.

A reviewer is like any other reader. He (for the sake of simplicity—I get all bollixed up in the he/she thing) takes a look at the book’s jacket and develops an initial impression. Occasionally, that impression may change in the first forty pages and must be revised, but, often as not, the reviewer/reader has a vague expectation of how the book will unfold. Is it a literary book? Well, the language better be good—poetry, almost. Is it a thriller? So, thrill me, and be relatively predictable, but not too predictable! Is it—and this part annoys the heck out of me—destined for women? Then it can be violent, but it better not be too violent, and it damn well better have a resolute, if not happy, ending! And so on….My point is simply that reviewers, like readers, have expectations and will evaluate a book on how well, or poorly, the writer meets those expectations. Woe betide the writer whose book doesn’t resemble the straw man the reviewer/reader has already planted in his mind.

Expectations are not necessarily a bad thing. Categories make it easier for us to find things, to make sense of our world. Predictability is comforting. I like my Crest toothpaste to taste somewhat like Crest toothpaste even if I buy the Crest that Whitens, Brightens, and sings the Star Spangled Banner when I brush!

As writers, we must write what The Muse (or God, or The Universe, what-have-you) sends us to write. If we try to force our own paltry wills on it, the work will not ring true for any reader. But when a book reaches the hands of a reader, that reader’s expectations and experiences are suddenly all brought to bear on the book itself. When that happens, the book becomes a Whole Other Thing. It becomes the reader’s property, a part of the reader’s world, a projection of the reader’s imagination. The writer has zero control here.

Some writers will complain that a reviewer didn’t “get” their book. This only means that the reviewer didn’t “get” the same thing that the writer “got” from his own book. Writers are not particularly reliable about their own work. J.K. Rowling didn’t “get” that Dumbledore was gay until she saw a script for the sixth film. And I believe her.

For the writer, reading reviews is a futile exercise. For me, it has been downright destructive. A few negative reviews temporarily wrecked my confidence in my work—mostly because I’m a hypersensitive wimp. Conversely, I have been unreasonably cheered by good reviews. But they all have nothing to do with me as a writer, as a person. Reviews are simply opinions. If I try to fool myself into believing that reading reviews will make me a better writer (and, early on in my reviewing career, I imagined that’s what I was doing for the writer—silly me!) I’ll drive myself nuts. Seriously, if I want professional criticism, I know some damned good teachers who can help me improve—people I can trust whose job it is to make me a better writer because I’m paying them to do it.

A very smart editor told me that his house’s research has shown that, when a reader goes to Amazon.com to read reviews, he reads many of them, both positive and negative and makes what he thinks is a balanced decision. It’s information-gathering. This sounds right to me. I know that’s how I approach new things I might want to try. I sample others’ opinions, then make my decision.

When I review, I try to find something nice to say about a book, even if I didn’t much care for it. I was also writing fiction all those years that I was reviewing, and so frequently imagined myself on the other side of the newspaper. Even if I feel very let down by the writer—I’m not surprised enough, the language isn’t beautiful enough, the characters aren’t alive enough—I try to find something that the writer did do well. Writers are human beings, after all. And a writer has a heck of a lot of himself wound into a book. Even if he’s a jerk. There is such a thing as being damned by faint praise, and I think reviewers need to exercise that option more often. It’s more civilized than outright excoriation and does no disservice to the consumer of the review.

But that’s just my opinion, which, like a belly-button, everyone has.

It's me again! Laura now has a blog at http://laurabenedict.blogspot.com. Thanks so much, Laura! I'll leave this as the top post until Sunday night, when I'll have some more debuts to announce.

INTO THIS MIND -- Opening Chapters

I've never reviewed a POD book before, mostly because I don't hear about many of them, and because I have not yet been intrigued by the blurb. Until now.

I am still reading Auralia's Colors, but for reasons I'd rather not get into online, I'm going to try to read INTO THIS MIND by Lisa Nevin over the weekend. It's a short book and so far, it looks like it will be a quick read.

But first, I wanted to share some interesting things that I've noted about this book, the author's website and the publisher. I will place links to everything that I found. The author knows that I am doing this, and she says that she thinks I will be honest in my observations.

First of all, Preditors and Editors lists this publisher, Unlimited Publishing as "Not Recommended". I do not know if P&E had given it this designation at the time the author approached the publisher. The author's book page on the website states, "This is a limited advance release, not yet available from bookstores. It is available exclusively at this location, for a limited time only!" This makes it seem like the novel is only available in ARC form, yet there are links at the bottom of the page to Lulu, where one can order a copy for 14.99.

Traditionally, reviewers do not have to pay for ARCs. Therefore, I decided to try to get an ARC from the publisher. However, my efforts only elicited a PDF file. I regularly get unsolicited books from publishers like Tor and Bantam and because of my situation at home, it would take me months to read a book at the computer. In the end, the author rushed me a copy when I asked her for one. (She also sent scads of bookmarks!)

Curiosity drove me onward, so I looked at the author's website. After following a link deeper in the site, I found a list of fourteen independent bookstores that stock her book. She's also managed to schedule a number of book signings. Since I know it could not have been easy to get bookstores to stock a POD book, I became curiouser. I scrolled down and found an About the Cover Painting heading, so I read it. There, I discovered that the author had used a painting by her sister for her cover art.

Obviously, the author has done quite a lot of work in getting her novel out there.

After all this research, I emailed the author and asked her to have a copy sent to me. You already know that story.

And now, for the review.

The book itself is a narrow volume of 199 pages. The cover has the painting mentioned above, and on the front it doesn't look bad. However, on the back I wish the publisher had faded the image behind the text, as it is quite difficult to read. However, that's my only complaint with the book itself. The pages are crisp and thick, and the text highly readable. Unlike certain low-quality paperbacks I've read recently, the ink left no smudge marks on my fingers.

The story so far is about a young woman who explores an abandoned house and apparently slips back in time to the night of a ball. There, she watches as the newlywed May, her brother August and her sister April have a tense but unknown situation brewing, where May's husband Jeffrey is apparently at its center. Just when we are getting caught up in this story from the past, Jena, the point of view character, is yanked back to the present.

The book itself is not without its flaws, but despite them it is still highly readable. I'll go ahead and get what I perceive as flaws over with. One is that it is written in present tense. I don't believe I've ever read a novel in the present tense before, and I'm damned well-read. I went to my bookshelf and took out some of my more literary titles -- ones with unusual points of view -- to see if any of them were present tense. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce? Past Tense. Candide by Voltaire? Past tense. Moby Dick by Melville? Past tense. Allegory of the Cave by Plato (actually a dialog)? Past tense.

The closest my bookshelf comes to present tense are plays. Does anyone know of a present-tense novel, classic or otherwise?

Anyway, it actually didn't turn out to be too off-putting. And it turned out to be an advantage when she would have otherwise had to use the awkward past participle tense for relating dialog that had taken place previously. Still, I think that if she had used past tense, she would have had a much more solid book.

My other quibble is dialog. Her characters tend to speechify. It's not really bad -- I wouldn't have been able to read it if it were -- but simply somewhat stilted. I read once that a character should not say more than three sentences together unless he has a very good reason. A patient editor might have been able to help her here.

It is written in first person with a chatty, often humorous style. I had several laugh-out-loud moments. While the character walked through the abandoned house, I almost felt like I was in a role-playing game, listening to a game master describe the house, room by room. She even gave the dimensions of several rooms. This was unnecessary, in my opinion. However, it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the story.

Nevin's biggest strength is her ability to build up suspense. She's doling out the mystery bit by bit, and when I thought I reached a good stopping point to go ahead and write this review, I decided to read just a bit more. This is always a good thing. Her characters are likable and I got a kick out of the "Calendar family". I was especially concerned for May, who apparently invades Jena's consciousness whenever Jena enters the house. I'm afraid that something terrible is going to happen to May (or, I suppose, has already happened) or her family.

So far, INTO THIS MIND is turning out to be an entertaining fantasy mystery.

Spotlight Review - THE STEAM MAGNATE by Dana Copithorne

One of the guest reviewers over at The Fantasy and SciFi Lovin' Book Review posted a fabulous review that also let me know of what sounds like another excellent small press, Aio Publishing. The novel is THE STEAM MAGNATE by Dana Copithorne. I've not yet announced this book, so here is the blurb:

Departing from formulaic themes involving quests, magicians, and mythical animals, this fantasy novel follows a character with powers more ordinary than most uber-wizards. Having inherited the steam-power legacy and the mysterious ability to funnel the assets of others into his own coffers through the mere use of ink and paper, Eson is hated by some and feared by others. While recovering from a disastrous relationship with a woman of his own magical kind, he meets a young woman who isn’t who she claims to be, and Eson must now defend himself against challenges far too close to home. Set in a world that is a tempting concoction of fairy-tale charm and everyday existence, this work explores the inequities of social class and the realities living among the less fortunate.

Here's a little sample of S.M.D.'s raving review:

To put it simply, this work is stunning. Copithorne's prose is superb. It's fluid, powerful, and gripping. I found myself dragged right into the world and unable to escape. This is prose to look up to, in my opinion. This is also not your typical story. While it flirts with the lines of science fiction and fantasy, it isn't a story of adventure, but a story of characters. The focus is on Kyra, Eson, and Jado (a character I didn't mention in the summary), and how they are affected and influenced by everything that goes on. Taken into account that this is a highly literary work, The Steam Magnate never ceases to be beautiful in its creation.

Here is the rest of the review. I will research this book and put up an announcement in the next few days.