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.