The Explosionist, by Jenny Davidson

I don’t read a lot of YA, but the sample was quite intriguing.  There’s explosions!  (As you might expect from the title).  I thought originally that it was steampunk, but it isn’t that kind of alternate history at all.  There’s certainly a lot of of technological changes, but not of the sort that fits the steampunk sub-genre.

The alternate history is different from what I’ve seen elsewhere.  The turning point is the Battle of Waterloo (here, Napoleon wins), and this causes a rippling effect on the political structure of the world.  Now, in 1938, Europe is unified and has conquered England, and Scotland is part of the Hanseatic League made up of the Scandinavian countries and assorted others outside of Europe’s rule.

Much of that is revealed only through snippets here and there as it becomes important to the story.  Some is never explained in any detail — I know Napoleon won, but not why or how.  I don’t agree with all of the leaps of logic Davidson makes about how the world would turn out.  While I love the idea of a Scotland that stays free because of its explosives factories, I’m not sure how that came to be, and it nagged at me in places that I didn’t know.

There are two other big world changes.  One, spiritualism is real (though often faked)–people can and do actually talk to the dead, including the main character.  This is handled really nicely and realistically.  For example, at the beginning of the book there is a seance.  But before the medium can start, she’s strip-searched to verify she literally has no tricks up her sleeve.

The other big change I’d like to talk more about but it would spoil some revelations later in the plot involving a group called IRLYNS.  This was both an incredibly cool (in an evil way) and also really hard element to buy.  The problem was that it isn’t explained enough for me as a reader to understand how it worked.  Almost was, but not quite.

You’ll perhaps notice I haven’t mentioned the protagonist by name.  That’s because sadly she was the least interesting thing about the story.  I liked Sophie well enough.  She was smart, but in the end she wasn’t active.  YA can fall into a trap between having the adults too distant or too controlling, and I think this story erred on the side of too controlling.  While there was certainly plenty in the middle that Sophie was the main force behind, the book’s plot consisted of a murder investigation and hidden political agendas.  That made it quite difficult for Sophie to drive the events, especially toward the end.  She manages to be present at the climax, but more though chance than choice.  This took away a lot of the tension and made the throughline seem more random than driving to an inevitable conclusion.

In the end, I did enjoy reading it for the setting, but the character and plot left me unsatisfied.  If you read books primarily for the former, go for it.  If you are like me, however, and read mainly to engage with a character, pass this one by.

Yet even this one afternoon is usually under fire. I need to go to the store, there’s laundry to be done, etc. This week, there’s a museum exhibit that ends on Sunday that I’d like to see and another friend (also a writer) to attend. But this is the problem, you see. There’s all kinds of shiny things in addition to chores and whatnot that want to creep into your life and steal that time.

This other friend, this other writer, wasn’t pleased that we couldn’t go on Sunday to the exhibit. She didn’t say it, but I could see her wanting to pull out the list of justifications. It’s for research. It’s just this once. This is the only day to do it. Etc.

But even he “research” excuse has a fatal flaw. It isn’t writing. It isn’t putting words on paper. That is what this time is set aside for–to write. And it isn’t “just this once.” Every week is a new challenge to this time, to keeping it for the purpose I want to put it to.

There are always going to be other things to do besides write. It is up to us to defend that time even in the face of cool things to do–and when faced with the challenge, to not give in to the excuses. Pen to paper, hands to keyboard, will get you farther than research will, even at the museum.

Because all the research in the world won’t get your story written.

Closing down a website voluntarily is hardly an abuse of power.  Being able to close down a website because someone linked to someone who linked to a site that is black-listed because it violated vague rules?  That’s abuse.  As someone wise once said, “A vague disclaimer is no one’s friend.”

I actually kind of value the ideal hiding underneath SOPA/PIPA.  I want my intellectual property protected.  I want to be able to deal with people who steal from me, even if they live in other countries.  I want them held accountable.

But SOPA and PIPA aren’t about me, not directly.  They’re about people with millions of dollars, and legal teams, and the sorts of forces that I don’t have.  If I were self-published, I’m not sure SOPA and PIPA would even grant me the authority to do what a big corporation can do under the laws as written.

I admit it, I’m no legal scholar.  And I didn’t follow the brouhaha from the very start, thinking that it was mostly the normal sort of Internet over-reaction that happens on a regular basis.  Yet as I tried due diligence to track down the Other Side of the Story, which I always like to have, I have yet to find anything to convince me that the alarm is, if anything, understated.  SOPA and PIPA would be fine in a perfect world (one that ironically still has IP theft).  But our world isn’t perfect.  It has PEOPLE in it.  And people do dumb things, and malicious things, misguided things, and occasionally the right ones for them, that aren’t necessarily right for anyone else.

The big question of course would be:  will they stop piracy?  I laugh at that one.  Sure, if the Internet created intellectual property theft.  But fake VHS tapes existed long before the Internet existed.  Heck, you could probably buy pirated DVDs long before most people had really known what was up with that Web thing.  The Victorians had to deal with hacking on the telegraph.  Cervantes lamented back in his time about people pirating copies of Don Quixote and even writing bad sequels that make the fake Harry Potters produced in China look lucid.  (I’d look up facts and make links, but Wikipedia is blacked out.  Damn them and their abuse of knowledge power.  Or something).

Want to know more:  go to https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction

Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey

I’d heard of this series before, but hadn’t read it.  Since the first one is on sale for 99 cents, I thought I’d give it a shot despite descriptions of it that made me wonder if it was for me or not.  I like the more interesting takes on urban fantasy in its current definition, but I’m also a little worried this will be on the too-gruesome-for-Jen end of things.  (I’m squeamish.)

The sample was fascinating.  A good example of how to get us involved and interested with a character.  Just the right amount of exposition so we kept up with what’s going on, without taking a long-winded way of explaining everything.  The voice is strong and I believe in the character.

I vote this as a buy, especially at the price.  It may end up being too squishy-bits for me, but for now, I’ll read on.

The Hedgewitch Queen by Lilith Saintcrow

I’d tried a Saintcrow several years ago.  I was, I admit, a little put off by her name, which seemed a little over-the-top.  Still, she seemed popular enough.  I picked up what I thought was the first in one of her series, but turns out it was the third (I think).  It had the infodump-the-past-few-books’-plots problem which drives me nuts about series.  (Mostly it makes for a worse introduction for a new reader by slowing things down, and annoys readers who’ve read the earlier ones.) It didn’t capture me at all.

Still, this one is also on sale (2.99) so I thought I’d try it out.

The first line is the kind that draws you in “If not for a muddy skirt, I would have been dead like all the rest.  Dead–or worse, perhaps.” (Ok, that’s technically two lines).  While the French names and such (I can’t yet tell if this is a faux Europe or a “real” Europe–is it supposed to actually be our world or an alternate one) is annoying (because I didn’t take French and get lost in what I’m supposed to pronounce or not), I find myself entranced by Vianne and her predicament.

The thing I like best is how, when she comes upon a horrific scene which may or may not be a murderer, she acts.  She’s absolutely terrified and panics–she’s not the sort of woman who has any experience with these things.  But she takes her terror and channels it intelligently, and does the one thing that’s right and will protect her.

The exposition is a little heavy at times, but it is necessary to get us into the world and just when it would put the story into a grinding halt, it pulls back and we get on our way.  The promise of the first (2) lines isn’t yet fulfilled, but it has done its job wonderfully.  It set up a weighty and ominous portent that keeps the otherwise light beginning from becoming too fluffy.

Most of all, it got me reading, kept me reading, and there I am at the end of the sample, dying to read more.

A buy!

Why Can’t Elephants Jump? by New Scientist

This is a collection of questions and their answers, from the Last Word page from the New Scientist magazine.  I’m a both a sponge and fount of random information, so I thought this would be a lot of fun.  I haven’t read the other books in this series, but it isn’t as if there’s a story to follow, so jumping in at any point is fine.

The formatting is annoying, however, enough so that I won’t read it digitally.  The questions are in italics, with the asker’s name in bold, then where the person is from in normal text.  Without any white space to separate it, the answer follows directly under that–actually, there’s several answers, all running right after one another.  The answerer’s name is also bolded, but everything else is in normal text.

Except that everything after the section header is also indented from the left about an inch.  An inch of my limited Kindle’s screen.  Also, the first paragraph of any answer does NOT have a paragraph’s first line indent, making it run flush with the location of the previous answer.

All in all, ugly.  Sorry, New Scientist but what looks pretty in print may end up cluttered on screen.  I may check it out again in hardcopy, but I so rarely read hardcopy nowadays that isn’t likely. It may not bother anyone else, and it looks like fascinating information, but there you go.

I also make heavy use of Instapaper to collect longer articles for reading on the Kindle, outside of my normal RSS reading.

All of this means that when you have an RSS feed that uses only summaries, that I can’t easily read it.  I need to click on the link and go to your website.  Then I need to adjust any settings (like what size the font displays in) so I can actually read the text.  Then I need to go back to whatever app/page I was using in the first place.

This drives me nuts.

I understand the desire to want people to come to your web page.  This provides lots of ways of keeping attention, as well as ad hits and the like.  But then again, what do you want more?  People reading your blog entries, or people coming to the web page?

Some people think that it means you’ll get less comments if the readers aren’t forced to come to the website.  Probably true.  Then again, I’m less likely to read the posts I’d be commenting on if I can’t read them in my RSS reader.

Just a thought, folks.

He bought me Skyrim for Christmas, which means that while I have been doing a lot of reading, it has mostly been in game.  Dang, there are all these books in my game!  Silly books, serious books, and all kinds in between.  Oh yeah, and there’s killing dragons and stuff.  But the books!

As for the New Year itself, I hung out last night playing Cranium with some friends.  I’d never played Cranium before–it was much fun.  Spectacular failure: humming the William Tell Overture in a way that anyone else could understand.  Many spectacular successes though.  Lots of laughing, a little rules-lawyering (just to mess with people…I mean, it is Cranium), and got to show off my geek a bit (I knew what color the A button was on the original Nintendo controller, of all things).

Resolutions?  Not really doing that, per se.  I’m trying out turning my life into an RPG (via the Level Up iphone app), trying to plan for the things I want in more detail, and in general trying to make this be a better year than last.

Let me start off with this:  I absolutely hate prologues.  Hate. Them.

Reading on the Kindle makes it a little harder to skip prologues, and a sample means a prologue eats up space from the main story, which is what really gets me.  Here, I read it, because it was easier than skipping ahead.  (I’m a lazy reader).  And guess what?  The prologue is actually a frame story.  I hate frame stories even more than I hate prologues.

And yet…

So far, I have to say I’m interested.  The prologue manages to tease without actually telling me anything that ruins my journey through the story.   I’m grooving with the voice, even if it is trying a little too hard to be Good Omens.  (The omniscient point of view and footnotes are what give this impression, though I can’t actually seem to read the footnotes in the sample because of where in the file the data is stored).

What gets me is that I love a good silly apocalypse story (here’s where the Good Omens vibe is a good one), I love the quoted information about proposed ends of the world.  Handled the wrong way, they would slow things down, but for the length of the sample, I am grooving with them.

I’ll probably read the whole thing (and thus, buy the book) in the hopes it keeps living up to its premise.

In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom by Qanta Ahmed

This was interesting.  It is set in the pre-9/11 days in Saudi Arabia.  A British-Arab doctor who studied in the United States decides to take a job opportunity in Saudi Arabia, a land where she is theoretically connected to yet is still an outsider.  The story starts with her first patient, a very old Bedouin woman undergoing the procedure to put in a central line.  With that stark contrast of modern medicine and ancient traditions, we are dropped into a world as fascinating for us as the author.

As you can no doubt tell, I was intrigued by what was shown in the sample–and at 2.99, it is worth a read.  It is outside my normal reading selections because it is a memoir, but I’ll still probably buy it.

Side note:  This is an Amazon Encore book.

The Duke and the Pirate Queen by Victoria Janssen

I only occasionally read romance.  When I do, it is because it was recommended to me by someone I trust.  I really wish I knew where I’d stumbled into this one because it really wasn’t to my taste at all.  I like romance more along the line of Jennifer Crusie–smart, witty, with strong characters I like and quickly get a feel for.

This one left me cold.  It started way too in media res, so much so that I wasn’t sure of people or place or time.  It’s a historical, though I’m not sure of any of that–none of the love of the time period that you normally see.  The overly hysterical woman on page one did nothing to establish the male protagonist, since all he did was stand there and take it (and as far as I know, deserve it).  Instead of a fun romp with pirates, I got…well..something not suited to my taste.  Just couldn’t get into it, and indeed, didn’t finish the sample.

Pass.

OK:  The Improbable Story

I have always been intrigued by the little OK–it’s a tricksy word.  At times it is invisible.  At others, jarring, even when it should be perfectly acceptable to use in a story.  First used in 1839 in a newspaper article, it still comes across as feeling too modern for the 1800s.

This book purports to give me more details, and it does give the beginnings of it in the section of the sample.  However, the book didn’t convince me that it had a lot to say after the sample.  The voice just wasn’t compelling enough–at times it felt a little too dry, and yet tried a little too hard to be clever.

Still, I may read it in library form (either for Kindle if/when available, or in good old hardcopy).  Just not enticed to buy it.

I heard about this when Andrew Mayer guest-starred on the Writing Excuses podcast.

This book hits near and dear to some of my favorite stuff–it is, from what I have on the podcast a steampunk superhero story.  I love the description of the Automatan–he’s very quickly and smoothly described so that I know what the characters are seeing.  Sarah is strong without being shrewish in the sample, and I have hopes that she’ll continue to be a product of her times yet striving to be more than that.  (She spends a good deal of the sample reminding her date that she can and will think for herself.)

The sample felt short to me–I’m not sure how they are determined, but this one ends right at the hook where the first out of the ordinary (for the story’s world) event happens, and that can’t be an accident.

Conclusion:  will buy the book to see how the fascinating world unfolds.

A friend and I discussed this reaction, perplexed.  After all, the movie had undead pirates in it!  You can buy the undead pirates but not the firing gun?  Really?

John Scalzi over on Whatever talks about the Flying Snowmen–that one thing that kicks past your suspension of disbelief and throws you out of the story.  The Flying Snowman is exactly what the Undead Pirates and the Gun show us–that there are going to be elements that throw you out of the story because you no longer believe that.

There are some times where I think it is legitimately an issue.  If the rules of the world have been set up to include/preclude some possibility, then when you break those rules, you lose readers/viewers.  If you make a big point out of accuracy about certain things, then other things need to also be accurate.  You couldn’t have had PotC’s first major plot point be about how cannons fire and then not address the reasons the gun wouldn’t fire.  It’s like getting the apples wrong.

In that case, it’s getting the details right–or not, as the case may be.

In a movie like Pirates, though, I agree with Scalzi’s question:  Why is this the one thing that sets you off? It isn’t as if accurate physics, gun battles, or fight scenes are really part of the status quo. So why that?

There’s no right answer to that.    It’s a matter of one spec fic element going just a little too far.  It could be a simple matter of personal taste or it hits that thing you know just a bit too much about.  It could be that your Suspension of Disbelief isn’t getting fully used by you.

To quote Wash from Firefly when Simon tells him not to worry about him: “I always worry when Zoe is out on a job.  It’s not like it’s out of my way.”  If you are already suspending disbelief on undead pirates, it isn’t out of your way to keep on suspending about the gun being fired.  The detail may not technically be accurate, but it isn’t as if it clashes with the way the story has dealt with other details of that type.

So go out and suspend you some disbelief.  You’ll enjoy yourself (and the stuff you read and watch) just a tiny bit more.

Today’s selection was the first in my Sampler category on my Kindle and was one I’d downloaded a while ago, probably based on a review of a later book in the series.

The book: Gentlemen Prefer Succubi by Jill Myles.  Publisher is Pocket Books.  Full book is $7.99.

At first impression, I wasn’t too sure if  I liked it or not.  There’s a pretty good hook (character wakes up in Dumpster without knowing what’s going on, and hey, they properly capitalized Dumpster!). I was interested in finding out what happened and how our character got there.  Yet the more I read, the less I liked the character herself.

Jackie has been through a traumatic experience, yet very quickly she’s worrying about things like her weight and thinking she’s fat.  She climbs out of a Dumpster and runs into her one-night stand from the night before–the guy she thinks left her there–and accepts his coffee and lunch invitation.  Ok, sure, no problem, even if it stretches credibility.  Then she freaks out about the decision on whether or not to eat a hamburger in front of him.  She’s still got bits of trash stuck in her hair and she’s worried about her diet?

So I lost a lot of sympathy for her.  Still there’s something intriguing going on, and the decision I’m left with is whether my feelings for the main character outweigh my interest.  At the moment, they do.  I wonder if things get better later in the series but sadly I won’t be seeking them out on purpose.

Final result: I’m not buying the book, but I may look the author’s later stuff up some day.