Jenn's World

As a member of last year's worldcon, I got to nominate for this year's Hugos. I'm not going to go into all the entries, but if you're looking for a good set of stories to read, here are links to ones I nominated.

Since I put so much time into writing last month, I won't have time to review all the Hugo categories, unfortunately. I'm trying to stuff what I can into the last few days.

It's amazing how a little thing like an argument can completely throw off your mojo for an entire day. It destroys time you don't have, and leaves you frustrated because there's no way to resolve a conflict. Most of the time, you have to forgive, forget and move on, even though you crave the satisfaction of the other person admitting that you're right.

But enough of that. Anyway, here's the promised book reviews:

The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch

For writers, there are two types of books in the world--The books that make you think, "I wish I had had that idea because I could have done it so much better." And the books that make you think, "I'm so glad I didn't write that book, because otherwise I couldn't have gone along for the ride."

The Lies of Locke Lamora is definitely the latter. But what else would you expect from a Campbell award winner that the master George R.R. Martin himself graces with a blurb? (Speaking of which, a Game of Thrones preview is up on HBOs web site. If you're a fan, go check it out.)

Locke Lamora is a thief who steals too much. In a city of glass and canals, where gladiators battle sharks and thieves are ruled by hidden gods, Lamora is a conman who plays both sides against the middle. He's ostentatiously working for a man who is the fantasy version of the Godfather, yet at the same time he's stealing from the upper class nobles that the Godfather has declared off-limits. He's kind of a Robin Hood...except that he keeps the money.

Lamora is on track for pulling off his largest heist ever, until a mage in the service of a mysterious vigilante decides to blackmail Lamora into helping his revenge scheme against the Godfather figure and the nobles both.

Who doesn't love the fictional antics of a conman? This was a guilty pleasure for me. Yes, I got my credit card number stolen once and it sure as hell wasn't funny then, but that doesn't stop me from loving Lamora as he goes on his merry, rampaging way. It's always easier to sell me on righteous thieves than righteous assassins, even though the assassin character was very popular in fantasy for awhile. It's one thing to rob rich people of their money, it's quite another to kill them, and I thought that of lot of assasin books, much like the "pimp" phenemonon that inexplicably gripped pop culture, glorified a lifestyle that, in actual reality, was very sordid and exploitative. However, because I enjoyed Lies so much, and he only ruins people instead of murdering them, I guess I have to set my principles aside. It helps that the class conflict in the book is so demarked. It's also amusing that, though Locke Lamora steals, he doesn't really know what to do with the money afterward.

This book crackles with tension and suspense. Granted, not every twist and turn was unpredictable, but it's rare for a book to startle me so frequently and to such good effect. Lynch has mastered "the surprising-yet-inevitable" art of the twist. I found my jaw dropping in the middle of the novel, and I was cursing by the time I had to set it down and go to bed.

Like the Da Vinci Code, most chapters ended with a hook to drag the reader forward. Except in this book, for me, they always succeeded. What made this feat even more impressive is that the book utilizes an unusual structure, spacing chapters about Lamora and the other character's pasts in between chapters that propelled the main narrative forward. In other words, Scott Lynch could keep me wanting more even when I knew that the stakes were low--no character deaths, just a lot of info-dumping. Yet I loved every page.

Besides being a master of colorful characterization, Lynch also has a deft hand with description. Few of the details of his world struck me as stock fantasy set dressing leftover from the LOTR movies.

Lamora is also notable for not having much of a romantic subplot. This is strictly a buddy comedy. Well, in some parts, a buddy tragedy. There is a love plot in the sequel--a book which might even be superior to the first--but (SPOILER ALERT...Scroll over the text to see it) it's pretty obvious from the beginning that's it's going to be a case of women in refrigerator syndrome--a term propagated by comic book readers and applied to the love interests of superheroes who are fated to die for the sake of the plot.

Be warned, for those of you who aren't a fan of adult language, Lamora has it's fair share of it. It's not meant as a book for children. Also be warned that the second book ends on a cliff-hanger, and Lynch's blog suggests he's been having problems that may delay the third book for some time.

But if Hunger Games was the best book I read last year, I suspect The Lies of Locke Lamora will be my favorite of 2010. I read it back in February and haven't found another book that even comes close to toppling it. Lamora was fresh and exciting in a genre that so often embraces clones. I can't wait to read the sequel, and depending on how the rest of the series goes, "the Gentlemen Bastards Sequence" might even be up there with the works of George R.R. Martin and Robert Jordan.

***

Paper Mage, by Leah Cutter

I don't know if there's ever going to be another book where the magic system is centered entirely around origami.

Xiao Zen is a female paper mage struggling in a fantasy world reminiscent of Imperial China. She folds paper creatures to bring them to life. Her family is disgusted by her profession because they believe it will harm Zen's chances of marriage, but her manipulative aunt sees it as a way to guarentee herself immortality. Zen herself isn't sure what she wants and struggles throughout the book to come to terms with her talent, her feminity, and her duties to her family.

I'm putting this book next to the Lies of Locke Lamora because they both use a similar narrative system--one chapter on background, one chapter on the present, alternating throughout the book. While structurally similar, the purposes are quite different. Lamora, though populated with a large number of memorable characters, is a plot-driven book, and even the background pages give you a dallop of mystery. Paper Mage, on the other hand, is a character driven book, where the suspense comes more from the character's decisions than from anything about the plot. Because I'm not as much a fan of character-driven fiction as I am of plot-driven fiction, this didn't necessarily always work for me as well as Lynch's book did. For example, Xiao defeats the big bad evil warlord in the middle of her book, not the end, which honestly left me scratching my head a little.

Cutter is excellent at capturing a culture not her own. I'm not used to being in character's heads who are so alien from me. I think a lot of fantasy readers are so used to female characters who embrace the modern tennants of feminism, so it's surprising when we see a woman so firmly torn between career and family. And one who often believes that she is made less by the soft squishiness between her legs. Her attitude frustrated me to death sometimes, but also helped me see into a world that is admittedly very far from my own.

The setting itself is interesting. I loved the tidbits like part-rat/part-dragon monster, and how Zen has to find creative ways to defeat things with paper.

Paper Mage is an impressive study in characterization and cultural exploration. Writers can learn a lot about using foreign cultures and different ideas in this book. But if you're expecting a lot of suspense, swordfights and flashy fireballs, this is definitely not a book for you.

Tip o' the hat to Lee Ann for pointing out an interesting discussion over at Editorial Anonymous about the Coretta Scott King Awards, which are specially for black writers and illustrators. At the time they were established, Editorial argues that race-based awards were a good thing, but maybe the time has come to change it so that it's open to writers of all races who promote civil rights. She also feels that its excluding people who can write about the black community and black issues but don't happen to identify as black.

I don't know about this one. I think there's enough problems with literacy in the American black community to justify giving more attention to black authors, perhaps to draw in more black readers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average black American spends an average of $54 a year on reading materials compared to the average white person's $137 (which is ridiculously low. I spend that much just at Christmas buying books for other people...)

In 1996, the NAEP reported that 69% of black American 4th graders were reading below-level, in comparison with 40% from their white counterparts. I can't find any better statistics at the moment, and maybe the trend has completely reversed in recent years for all I know, but I'll make the possibly erroneous assumption that a smaller percentage of black kids are reading for fun than white kids. And as we all know, reading for fun must lead to a successful, awesome career, right?

(Ha ha ha, says the unemployed writer...well, there are exceptions to every rule...)

I admit that awards probably won't actually help young students get more interested in reading, but hey, anything that draws parents and kids to new black authors could be worth a try, right?

And Editorial Anonymous makes the point that you don't have to be black to write about the black viewpoint. True. Memoirs of the Geisha was written by a white male. On the other hand, when I tried to read Orson Scott Card's Magic Street, I couldn't get through it because I felt awkward. I have seen Orson Scott Card. I read his website. For me, I couldn't help but think every other sentence "A white man is writing this." It just got in the way of enjoying the book. Whether he portrayed the community accurately or not didn't matter, because I just couldn't get into it. Which was odd because I've read OSC's Chinese, Jewish, American Indian (which did seem fairly accurate from my experience as a white outsider on a reservation), Spanish and, heck, even Dutch characters without having a problem. I guess because I'm (perhaps overly?) sensitive to the unique position of blacks and black culture in America.

But the big point is, these aren't mutually exclusive awards. Someone could establish a general civil rights promotion award, as EA wanted, and the CSK awards could continue as they are now. Eliminating racism doesn't mean not admitting race exists and ending race-based awards. It means eliminating disparities, and one way of doing that is, one hopes, getting black kids better teachers, better schools, better jobs and better books.

But I'll admit that I'm not an expert on this topic by all means. That's just my two cents based on my gut reaction. And I may be biased because I think Octavia Butler deserved all the awards she could get. I always liked reading her and I wished she'd done better commercially.

Random factoid: The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that 17 more Ku Klux Klan chapters were added in the U.S. between 2004 and 2005, bringing the KKK a total of 179. That's almost a 10.5% increase in one year! Maybe they just split a bunch of cells or something. One can hope. Even if they're kind of like the Boy Scouts now in terms of civic projects (or so my Texan teacher told me) nothing good can come of building a foundation in the sands of descrimination (biblical pun...couldn't resist.)

Good thing I have about three readers or I'd probably have flames burning my eyes out about now.