Book Review: Year of the Knife

A few months ago, Meerkat Press had giveaway running: sign up for their newsletter and get a free ebook. I signed up and got a copy of The Year of the Knife  It sat on my kindle for a while, on my growing list of things to read. After a big stretch of reading YA, I finally wanted to read something “adult” again, so I picked up this. I started it just before dinner and finished a little after midnight. 

I loved the explosive magic, a hard boiled lesbian witch main character, and the fast paced plot with a mostly well set up twist. The magic system in the book was my favorite kind.It had well established rules, limits and costs, and an almost mathematical set up, but the way the author showed it on paged in a way that didn’t bore me with the technical details of actually showing all the calculations. There would be a sentence or two more focused on what was going through Sully's head while she did calculations, but the reader didn't actually see the numbers or symbols.  

  Speaking of the main character, Sully, is quite the badass. If you ever read the Dresden Files, picture if Harry Dresden and Karin Murphy were actually one character only more Irish and queer. Throughout the book, Sully is following a string of murders where victims don't stay dead. The middle of the book, when Sully is knee deep in zombies and demons, was my favorite part. Sully was strongest when her back was against the ropes and she was grasping for leads. 

  The opening wasn’t fantastic, but it did its job. It showed Sully's strength and battle madness with one serial killer hunt, set something up for the end, and then introduced the case shortly after.  I was a little disappointed that the one non-binary character, the only character with a they/them pronoun, was in the book for a few pages then died.

 There were frequent mentions of the sexism the Sully faced, but it never seemed to affect her much, and just seemed there for the sake of being there.

 Most pieces of the twist and the end were well set up for, but a couple things seemed a little too convenient, and one thing I was expecting never happened, even though a few things early on almost promised me it would. Still, there are two more books in the series, so perhaps some of the breadcrumbs left uneaten are just setting up for things yet to come. I'm willing to wait and see. I really am looking forward to the next installment in this series, which comes out later this year. 

 So if you read Year of the Knife now, you won't have too long to wait!

IWSG Day: Writerly Questions: The Good, The Bad, and The Awkward

 

  The first Wednesday of every month, the IWSG posts an optional question, encouraging members to read and comment on each other’s blogs. January 2: What are your favorite and least favorite questions people ask you about your writing?  

The Good:

I love answering questions about writing and publishing. How did you decide to write a book? What did you have to do to get published? What type of things do you do when you revise? What are your favorite editing strategies? What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

 The above questions are among my favorite conversation topics. I love talking about the hows and whys of writing and publishing. As a writing teacher, I've spent a lot of time thinking about and researching how to help people (including myself) improve their writing. I've found one way to do this is to develop a good writing process, and as a result, I spend a lot of time observing, analyzing and tweaking my writing process. I love hearing how other people write as much as I love sharing what I do, what works about it, and what bugs I am still trying to work out. Publishing is another topic I've spent countless hours researching. I still have a lot to learn, but I have a good base of industry knowledge that is growing every day and love answering questions about it. Whether I'm talking about process or publishing, I find that I learn though explaining.

Answering questions helps come to new  realizations and see things I didn't know I knew. It prompts me to fill in gaps in my knowledge, to look at things from different perspectives, and to synthesize in new ways.

The Bad:

How is your book doing? How many copies have you sold?

 If you have a writer friend or relative you care about, just do not ask them these questions. It might be okay if the book is on the NYT or USA Today Best Seller List. In any other situation, it probably sucks.

 First off all, the writer probably doesn't really know how their books are doing, especially if they are not self-published. Amazon tells the "publisher" how many copies were sold, so if a writer isn't self published, they have to wait for monthly, or in some cases, quarterly statements to see how many copies sold in a set period of time. It's frustrating enough not knowing how many copies I have sold. It's worse when I constantly have people asking me about it.

 Friends and family have been asking me about Power Surge's sales since a few days after it came out in the begining of October. I can make some guesses based off of the Amazon sales rank. For example, if I looked on Amazon and saw Power Surge ranked around 100,000, I could assume I sold one book today on Amazon. However, I have no clue if someone buys a book from iBooks, from Barnes and Noble, from my local indie book store, or directly from the publisher's website, until I get my royalty statements.

The Awkward:

In the face to face world, I get pretty awkward pretty fast when people ask my what my book is about. Online, if asked the same question, I can refer people to the blurb or take my time adapting a pre-made pitch for the question. But ask me face to face? You get mumbled fragments about teenagers, Maine, and Demon Hunters, and my most awkward of all: "paranormal things." I'm pretty sure I'd sell more books if I got better at talking it up to the people at the dog park.

 However, the most awkward questions of all are things like: Are any of the characters based off of yourself? What parts? Is anything in the book based off of something that really happened? The main character self-harms. Is that something you do? Now, a more general question, like "what inspired you to write this?" is perfectly fine. However, when people start trying to use the book as a way to learn private things about my personal life, it gets very very awkward.

 I know by calling the book "own voices" I am acknowledging that some the things that marginalize the narrator are also things I've experienced, but that doesn't mean I want people walking up to me at a party and grilling me about which parts, especially if they are family. The last thing I want is people to think is that they can some how psychoanalyze me through my fiction.

Wrap-Up

If you want to talk to me about writing, I'm always happy to answer questions about writing itself, about the process and different ways to publish. I'm working on getting better at pitching Power Surge face to face. However, I prefer not to have to answer questions about sales I can't really answer, and don't want people using my fiction as an excuse to pry into my personal life.

  The first Wednesday of every month, the IWSG posts an optional question, encouraging members to read and comment on each other’s blogs. December's Question is:

What are five objects we'd find in your writing space?

My writing space changes with the season. April through September, I wrote on my screened-in-porch, or, on really nice days, the picnic table by the lake.

Tavi thinks he is a cat

  

 When heat becomes necessary, I move to the kitchen table. No matter which space I'm using, my laptop is always there because it's what I write on. For the sake of this list, I'll focus on things unique to the space.

The Meowditor-In-Cheif is hard at work

Winter Space (aka a mess)

1. Teapot.
2. Blanket.
3. Salt Shaker
4. Dog Bowl
5. Cat's Brush

Summer Space (aka heaven)

1. Beach Towel
2. Pitcher
3. Notebook
4. Sunscreen
5. Chuck-it toys

No matter where I am writing, Goose the Cat aka The Meowditor-In-Cheif, is near-by. He likes to the delete words. Nothing is allowed to be fluffier than him.

Over a decade in the making, there are only a few days left before Power Surge is set lose into the wild. Right now, you can pre-order the E-book from my publisher, NineStar Press, or on Smsashwords. Both ebook and paperbooks will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, and other major book retailers soon!

Book Review of Given To the Earth by Mindy McGinnis

Given To the Earth by Mindy McGinnis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Given to the Earth is a continuation of the events in Given to the Earth. I’ll refrain from describing the plot in this review because I’m not sure I can do so without spoilers or copying too much for the blurb.

On the sentence level, the writing was lovely. I never had trouble picturing anything, and felt every time the writer stopped to describe something in detail, it was relevant and layered with meaning. However, that wasn’t enough for me to be drawn in the book like I expected to be.

As much as I loved the cast of the Given Duet, I had a hard time getting into Given to the Earth. I wanted to spend more time with the characters and to find out what happened to them, but the short chapters quickly jumping from one character to the next made it hard for to settle into a rhythm and engage with the story.

I also found I had a hard time keeping track of who was narrating when and found myself flipping back to the beginning of chapters (at least with the first half of the book) to remind myself who was narrating. I always knew when Khosa or Dara was narrating, but there were a few instances where I thought I was reading Vincent but after a couple paragraphs, realized it was Donil when he said Vincent’s name or thought about his sister, Dara.

However, when I was a little over half-way through the book, that problem stopped. I found the rhythm of each characters voice and the rapid fire switching from one narrator to the next became a good thing because I wanted to know how everyone’s narratives fit together and how a string of good and bad decisions were going to play out in the end. I was engaged with the narrative that couldn’t fall asleep and got up to finish the book.

As I got closer to the end, I realized that this book was doing something that I love and hate: showing how dozens of decisions each characters make turn into mistakes because of their timing and a lack of communication, bring the characters so close to what could’ve been a peaceful or happy ending (for most of them) only to have it completely turned over by one thing that they overlooked.

There were a few surprises along the way, mostly, the narrative ended exactly how I knew it would and hoped it wouldn’t. It became too familiar. There were a few moments where I was thinking things like “ok I guess ___ had to ___ in order for ___ and ___ to have a happy ending” but after a good night's sleep and reflection on how this compared to the book I read before it, I realized it didn’t have to end that way. The author could’ve broken the trope and come up with a more creative ending were more people live happily with each other. I know this is vague, but being any more specific would mean spoilers, which I don’t want to include.

Given to the Earth may not be the best sequel I’ve ever read, but if you read Given to the Sea and enjoyed it, this is still worth reading. It’s well written and well paced once you get into the rhythm of the narrators and their voices. And if you’re okay with teary traditional endings to fantasy novels with almost Arthurian love triangles, them maybe you won’t have the same problem with this that I did.


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Omen Operation by Taylor Brooke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is a lot to love about Omen Operation, and a few little things that bugged me.

The plot was exciting -- a group of young adults (main character is about 19) break out of a secret camp where they were training to fight back against a viral outbreak / apocalypse that never happened. On the run, the group learns who was really training them and why. While that is all going on, their feelings for eachother get messy and tangled.

I enjoyed the pacing -- burst of action interspersed between lulls of character development and making out. It kept me turning the page while leaving plenty of time to get to know the characters.

There was a good sized cast. The main character was strong and and angry and beautifully flawed -- just the kind of person I wanted to root for through the book. The other characters were similar with their own quirks, but I had a hard time keeping track of all of them at some points in the book, which surprised me because the pacing was steady, not rushed. Even though there were definitely a few moments where I mixed a couple of the side characters, it didn’t detract too much from the overall experience.

This may seem like a small thing, but what bothered me most about those book was the idea of vaccines being used to infect people with a “virus.” Getting into too much detail about what happened in the book will spoil it, so I’ll refrain from summarizing it. However, I get antsy about anything (fiction included) that might add fuel to the anti-vaxxer movement.

Brooke’s prose were gorgeous as always, and they manage to convey more emotion in one page than I could express in a year. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating about my lack of emotional whatever. But the point is they are a master at writing raw, angsty emotions onto the page.

Combine that emotion with some action, tangible tension, and a cliff hanger, and you get a reader who can’t wait to pick up the next book.

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Book Review: Ardulum: Third Don

Ardulum: Third Don by J.S. Fields
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Review coming soon4.5 Stars
Ardulum Third Don was the perfect ending to the trilogy. I can’t comment too much on why without spoiling it, so I’ll just that it came full circle and took Neek aka Atalant in a direction she never expected her life would go.

While the characters are entertaining with fulfilling arcs, my favorite part of this series is the science and how it intersects with a touch of the unknown -- of something greater and more spiritual that is just beyond the reach of hard science. I love the idea of spaceships made out of cellulose, of highly intelligent fungi capable of taking down a fleet of spaceships and the sheer biodiversity of the beings in this galaxy.

The vastness of it was very well developed, though I will admit that I had a hard time orienting myself when I returned to book three. I read the first two books back to back, and then I had to wait several months for the third installment. This series is one best binge read.

There is so much to keep track of in the galaxy, but readers are gradually introduced to it in the first two books. I didn’t get lost in those at all. However, having forgot some of those details, trying to remember them, or having to look them up in the back of the book, did pull me out of the story. This is my fault as a reader though, not necessarily a flaw of the story.

The real reason I gave this 4.5 instead of 5 stars was because Captain K’s relationship with the Mmnnuggl was confusing. I did have a hard time following his relationship to them and their thoughts of him. I kept thinking there was an inconsistency but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

Otherwise, once I got back into the flow of the world, I was quite pleased with the overall experience, and very happy to see non-binary characters having adventures in space. There was a great balance of seriousness and humor, a touch of romance that didn’t overpower the plot, plenty of ethical questions to stimulate my mind, suspense, space battles, a great plot and characters I want to spend more time with.

This is a fantastic series. If you are starting from book 1, give yourself time to read the whole trilogy straight through.


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