Blessed Solstice to You and Yours

I love Georges de La Tour's use of light; he's one of my favorite painters. And yet, I'd never seen this picture, which seems appropriate for today.



The Young Singer by Georges de La Tour



PS Hopefully I will post soon and explain how writing roughly 30,000 words of fiction in the last two weeks has kept me from posting reviews for the five books in my "already read" stack.

Book Twenty-three -- Empress (Godspeaker, Book One) by Karen Miller

Empress (Godspeaker, Book One)
by Karen Miller
fantasy
717 pages

Have you ever read a book only to find that you don't like the majority of the characters, you find the writing to be mediocre at best, you think the world-building only succeeds some of the time and yet...you find yourself wanting to read the next page (and the next book in the series) because you really have to know what happens next? Or maybe it's just me?

Empress is the story of Hekat, a girl born into horrible, back-breaking poverty in a part of the world that sees women as useful only for bearing sons. At 12, as soon as she has her first period, her father sells her to slavers. One of the slavers thinks she's something special and treats her better than the rest of his stock and certainly better than she was treated at home.

She learns a great deal from the slavers as they traveling from The Savage North (no really, that's what it's called, right there on the map) to their home city of Et-Raklion, way down in the south. We learn along with her and here's where the shaky world-building comes in. We do learn that it's only in the north that women are totally disenfranchised and that, further south, they can serve as warriors and priests (godspeakers) of the nameless, monolithic God, and yet we see them still being treated poorly elsewhere. While yes, that happens even in our own society, the way it's handled here feels like Miller didn't really think everything through.

We also learn that this is an almost insanely religious society; the godspeakers are everywhere, sacrificing live animals at the drop of a hat, doing magic, enforcing curfews, advising the warlords who are the head of the secular side of the government and generally interfering with people's lives. Although the whole setting has Middle Eastern overtones, the one good thing I can say is that this doesn't really read like a fantasy version of Islam.

Once Hekat and the slavers reach Et-Raklion and she learns that, while she's "beautiful and precious" (a phrase she and other people use about her all the goddamn time), she's still a slave and not as important to the slavers as she thought. She runs away and that's essentially where her story really begins.

There's nothing really new about her journey (it's a pretty typical "rise to the top while not caring about who you step on to get there" trope) and the fact is, she's a rather unpleasant character--manipulative, lacking in any real empathy, and incredibly selfish. It makes sense given her background, but it also makes it kind of hard to care about what happens to her. The people around her, with the exception of Vortka, a young man taken from the same slave train as Hekat and made a godspeaker, are mostly annoying as well. The high godspeaker of Et-Raklion, Nagarak, is scheming and ambitions; the warlord, Raklion, is a good soldier, but easily manipulated, and so on.

On top of it all, if it weren't for the adult nature of the sex scenes and the sacrificial scenes (seriously, avoid this book like the plague if you hate animal death or ifscorpions freak you out), I'd think it was a YA novel. Miller's writing is incredibly simplistic and repetitive; off the top of my head, I could easily name twenty fan fiction writers in my current fandom who are much much better writers.

And yet, as I said up there at the beginning of the review, I blew through this book and will undoubtedly be grabbing the next one. I don't know what it is, but sometimes a story will manage to break through all of the obstacles the author throws in its way and demand that you finish it. So I ask again: that ever happen to any of you?

Or is it just me?

Meme!

This one was going around LJ the other day (although you were writing a poem and not a song) and now I see that both Figgy and Marra have done it, and because I am about the stealing of good ideas, and also about procrastination, I'm going to do it again here.

First phrase from iTunes songs on shuffle 1-20; 21 - song title, 22 - band name.

Turn Your Ugly Face
by I Had a Dream

I was born by an old streetlight
She knows the voices in her mind
Have I got everything? Am I ready to go?

My lover's charms
I know you just want to kill me
You belong to the gang

Field of light
Something isn't right
Knew you were born under a waxing moon

Well turn up the bottle, pour down the wine
Oh, life is bigger
When I offer you survival

The leaves tell
Be ready to fly
Alcoholic kind of mood

Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
Must it take a life for hateful eyes
The canyon air is like a breath of fresh LA

Bye bye love
There's no time for us


Okay then, that's surreal. Although the last two lines dovetailed nicely.


1. Street Smart, Book Stupid by Sara Slean
2. After All (DJ Moon) by Delerium
3. Traveling Again (Traveling I) by Dar Williams
4. My Lover's Box by Garbage
5. I Need to Say Goodbye by VAST
6. O Valencia by The Decemberists
7. Happy by Mazzy Star
8. Something Isn't Right by Aimee Mann
9. Majesty by Claire Voyant
10. It Ain't the Wine by Kate Wolf
11. Losing My Religion by REM
12 Bling (Confessions of a King) by The Killers
13 From Heaven to Dust by Azam Ali
14. Journey by Hungry Lucy
15. Nancy Boy by Placebo
16. Kashmir by Led Zeppelin
17. Drunken Lullabies by Flogging Molly
18. Dogs of LA by Liz Phair
19. Bye Bye Love by Simon and Garfunkel
20. Who Wants to Live Forever by Queen
21. Getting Scared by Imogen Heap
22. Fallen by Beauty's Confusion

Done and done! or: Game Hens and Gratitude!

Dinner is over and the dishes are washed! Go me! *does victory dance*

We had game hens with pomegranate glaze, mashed potatoes, greens, and yams. I've done the hens before, but that didn't stop me from ruining the first batch of pomegranate molasses. Fortunately, I'd made a small batch and only used half of the bottle of Pom so I was able to do a second batch, to which I paid a great deal more attention.

Mashed potatoes are something I could do in my sleep; I used some really nice little red potatoes and the results were creamy and buttery and yum. This was the first time I'd been the one to make the greens, usually that's Nancy's thing. She walked me through it and they were tasty and good.

We cheated on the yams. While we were shopping at TJs the other day, they were giving out samples of their frozen yams with brown sugar, pecans and cranberries and they were fantastic so we picked up a package and they were every bit as good as they'd been in the store. I might have to grab a couple of packages of them and stash them in the freezer.

We both had water and Two Buck Chuck--Nancy had the white zin and I had a half glass of the Cab that I'm still working on. It's raw, but not bad, and it remains to see if it'll give me a headache.

Dessert will be a vanilla bean cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. After we picked up up yesterday, we went to Cocos for coffee and their oh so yummeh Harvest pie; it's standard pumpkin pie with pumpkin chiffon on top. I love it, but not a whole pie's worth so the cheesecake will be perfect.

This hasn't exactly been the greatest year for us. Never the less, I'm grateful for my wonderful friends, my great family and my lovely wife. I'm grateful that this country elected a President we can be proud of and I'm grateful that, even though it took a defeat to do it, my people and our allies are energized and ready to fight for our rights.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving or an enjoyable Thursday!

♥!!

Book Eighteen -- Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Anathem
by Neal Stephenson
science fiction
935 pages

I've been putting off this review for a while because I feel a little like Wayne and Garth--not worthy. However I need to move on and so here I am, taking my best stab at it. I'm going to try to avoid too many spoilers, but some are inevitable, as are excessive italics, due to many made-up words.

On a world known as Arbe, the study of science, mathematics and philosophy is limited to the avout, cloistered scholars who live in maths or concents (a concent is a large community often made up of more than one math) and who only interact with the Sæculum (secular world) on a limited basis during the Apert, a yearly period of ten days when the gates of the concent open and people from both the secular and mathic worlds can mingle. The concents are divided into groups: the Unarians (one-offs, whose members remain cloistered in the math for a year), the Decenarian (tenners, whose members are cloistered for ten years), Centenarians (hundreders, whose members are cloistered for one hundred years) and the Millenarians (thousanders, whose members are cloistered for one thousand years). Within the cloistered world are many different Orders who study different things and have many different philosophies, but all of them abide by the long-established rituals and rules of the Cartasian Discipline.

Sounds like the set up for a fantasy novel set in some medieval not-quite-Earth, right? Not so much, actually. The world outside the concents is modern and technological, with cars and cell-phone analogs (called jeejahs, which is a great word) and TV and so on, and the work done inside the concents is scientific and not religious. This is an old world with over 7,000 years of recorded history; there have been set backs and failures of the system more than once, including three great Sacks (when the outside world attacked the concents), and something called The Terrible Events, which sounds a lot like a nuclear war or some similar technological planetary disaster.

The story begins with our hero, Fraa Erasmus (known to his friends as Raz), facing his first Apert. He's a tenner who's been at the Concent of Saunt Edhar since he was a small child and is now at a point where he needs to decide what he's going to do with his life. During the Apert, he meets his sister and we get a look at the difference between the thinky, mostly low-tech world of the concents, where everything is discussed to death and beyond, and the secular world, full of commerce, industry, somewhat mindless entertainment and flash in the pan religions.

After the Apert, Raz and his circle of friends realize that something is going on within the concent; the starhenge (observatory) has been closed off and the older fraas and suurs (the concents are co-ed) seem to be a little worried. Things come to a head when Raz's mentor, Fraa Orolo, an astronomer who's made a dangerous discovery, is tossed out of the concent in a rite known as anathem (a lovely portmanteau word made up of "anthem" and "anathema"). As Raz and his friends figure out why, they are called to leave the concent and travel to a world-wide convocation, where they will help advise the secular authorities on the crisis. Normally, the secular authorities would provide transportation for the avout, but with so many being called, the scholars are forced to make their way on their own.

And so, Raz, his sister Cord, Sammann (an ita--one of the concent's technology experts), a thousander named Fraa Jad and several others set out on a journey across Arbe. Their quest includes adventures along the way, as well as several detours while Raz attempts to find his mentor, but finally, they reach the convocation, only to get caught up in plans to defend the whole planet from the threat from space discovered by Fraa Orolo.

If Anathem were nothing more than the story of Raz's journey and subsequent mission to save his planet, it would be a fantastic addition to the quest genre of SF. The world-building is excellent and nuanced, the characters are engaging, the story is fascinating and the climax is exciting and enjoyably convoluted. Even the background romance between Raz and one of the suurs from his order is handled well.

But this is Neal Stephenson and so the book is much much more than that; there are layers upon layers here. One of the layers is historical--for someone up on their history, it's easy to see that Arbe is what our world would be like if the ancient Greek philosophers and scientists had retreated behind walls and all their knowledge had not been lost, but rather added to throughout the subsequent centuries. It's a lot of fun to read about historical events on Arbe and say "oh hey, I know where he got that from!"

Then there's the philosophy of language and science layer, which is the stuff that probably loses Stephenson readers. The characters talk everything to freakin' death; there's a section that's almost 100 pages long in which, during a series of dinners, senior fraas, suurs and a secular politician discuss the crisis from any number of philosophical angles. I kind of got lost in there because philosophy is not exactly my forté, although I really do like the position of the Lorite school of thought, which is that everything that can be thought of has been thought of already; the Lorites pretty much exist to say "so-and-so had that idea back in 2015" every time someone comes up with something, which might be annoying for the characters but amused me.

If you're a long time Stephenson reader, you're probably either really really intelligent and educated and can follow his digressions, or you're the kind of person who takes what he's talking about on faith and reads his books for the sheer enjoyment factor and the possibility that you might learn something new. Either way, you're used to books with huge amounts of information about various subjects woven into the narrative-- language theory in Snow Crash, for example, or cryptography in Cyrptonomicron. In other writers this kind of thing is annoying and info-dumpy, but somehow, Stephenson makes it work.

One of the things you look for in computer/video games is the level of replayability--do you want to play GTA: San Andreas again when you finish, or are you just done with it? For me, that's a concern with books as well--can I reread them and get something new out of the book? Anathem is going to be one of those books I will return to again and again, and each time, I'll pick up something I missed the time before.

While Stephenson uses a number of made up words for this (including bullshytt, which only kind of means what you think it does), there are definitions scattered throughout the book and an glossary at the end of it. There's also a historical timeline as well as several appendices that help illustrate some of the concepts Stephenson uses in the novel.

So yes, at 900+ pages, this is a massive undertaking, but seriously, if you have the time, read it. It's easily Stephenson's best novel since Snow Crash and as his first attempt at setting a story in a world other than Earth, it is truly brilliant and detailed world-building. The characters are engaging, and, for all the discussion that goes on, the action sequences are gripping.

Of the twenty-two books I've read so far, this is the one I want everyone to take the time to read. Trust me, it's worth it.

Side note: someone actually made an amateur trailer for the book. It's a bit cheesy in places, but it's an interesting piece of transformative fan work.

The World of Anathem

The Freebies List

Both Marra and Figgy did this, so let's make it a Cannonball Meme, shall we? To quote Figgy, "a 'Freebies List' consists of the 5 celebrities you'd most like to do whoopie with. No consequences or regrets. Just pure enjoyment."

Because I love the laaaadies!



5. Allison Janney -- Fabulous, talented, hot and also? Tall.



4. Kate Hewlett -- Actress and playwright and generally gorgeous. (and yes, that's her brother down in the "honorable mention" section of the guys. It's a talented family.)



3. Rachel Luttrell -- Unless you're a Stargate: Atlantis fan, you undoubtedly don't know who she is. Poor you.



2. Gina Torres -- I've lusted after her since the Xena days.



1. Carrie-Anne Moss -- I'm sorry, were we talking about something?

Honorable mentions: Monica Bellucci, Gillian Anderson, Lucy Lawless, Tilda Swinton...okay the list could go on and on.


Guys I'd switch back for, a list that proves that I'm a big, geeky fan-girl.



5. Joe Flanigan -- Someone else from SGA. To be honest, he's hardly the best actor out there and he's a Republican (which is why he's fifth on the list), but I really do think he's hot in a dorky kind of way.



4. Jason Momoa -- Another obscure SGA alumni. Just look at him for a minute, okay? Now, any questions as to why he's on this list? Even I like a little beef in my cake now and then.



3. Liam Neeson -- Yeah, he's a little craggier these days, but still...



2. Sean Bean -- Because everyone needs a bit of rough from Yorkshire.



1. Viggo Mortenson -- Smart, funny, sensitive, talented and really really hot. The question is: why wouldn't you? (yes it's a huge picture but I've always loved that shot.)

Honorable mentions: Jason Isaacs (Brotherhood and Harry Potter) and David Hewlett (SGA again)--two guys I'd love to just hang out with.

Take to the streets and possibly scare and or offend people? Damn right!

So, over in this post and in reply to comments to it, Artaxastra thinks the GLBT people and their allies who have taken to the streets are like the KKK. She thinks we should concentrate on getting people to like us, that we should be conciliatory and we should step back and work carefully and not try to scare anyone.

I say...BULLSHIT.

On September 5, 2008, Nancy and I, along with two very dear and wonderful friends, went to the county clerks office and got married in a ceremony recognized in the city and county of Sacramento and in the state of California. Why we did it doesn't matter. What matters is that we had the right to do so. It was a right determined by the highest court in the state, doing their job interpreting the Constitution of the State of California.

Apparently, our marriage and the 17,999 other same-sex marriages that took place after May 16, 2008 offended a group of people. They didn't like it, didn't like that we had that right. And so...they decided to take it away from us. They got help from many places, but the chief source of funding and people to man phone banks and protest--did you know that they bused people in from Utah to protest on California streets?--was the Mormon Church.

And they did it. A combination of factors that are even now being debated enabled a church from Utah to scare the people of California into taking away a right granted to a minority under the law.

Should people be scared of gays and lesbians, bisexual and transsexuals, people who somehow don't fit into their narrow view of sexuality that we call straight?

No, of course not.

Should they be scared that an out of state church was able help to pass a proposition to amend a state's constitution to take away a minority's right ?

No.

They should be terrified. You should be terrified. We should all be terrified.

They took away our rights.

The tragedy here isn't that 18,000 couples now have to wonder if that piece of paper means something. The tragedy here isn't that many many more couples who dream of being married someday now have to wait even longer than they already have. The tragedy here isn't that the GLBT folk and their allies took to the streets in protest, thus upsetting some delicate balance that some people think might some day down the line get some people to LIKE some of us.

The tragedy here?

The tragedy here is that MORE PEOPLE aren't out there in the streets.

They took away our rights.

Are we angry? No, we are fucking outraged.

They took away our rights. Here in the United States of America.

They took away our rights.

Of course we took to the streets. I don't want to live in a country where a minority has its rights taken away and DOESN'T take to the streets.

They took away our rights.

What if women had been granted the right to vote and then had it taken away. Would you expect our suffragette fore-mothers, women who fought and marched and went to jail and were force-fed, to just sit down and wait for people to LIKE them?

What if everyone who ever marched or spoke up for their civil rights, MLK and Black people, Césear Chavéz and the Hispanic workers, the stone butches and drag queens and the fags and dykes of color...what if they'd been given the rights they deserve as citizens of America only to have them taken away? Would you expect these people who fought and talked and marched and argued and bled and, yes, sometimes died to just sit down and wait for people to LIKE them?

They took away our rights.

Everyone in this country who believes that all are created equal, that what we as Americans strive for is a more perfect union....

Everyone should be out in the streets, because they took away our rights.

They. Took. Away. Our. Rights.

Whose rights are next?

What She Said

My wife. I think I'll keep her.

Well, you know...if people LIKE me enough to let me stay married.

Books Nineteen through Twenty-two-- Anita Blake by Laurell K Hamilton

Guilty Pleasures
265 pages
The Laughing Corpse
293 pages
Circus of the Damned
329 pages
The Lunatic Cafe
369 pages
supernatural detective fiction
by Laurell K Hamilton


You know how I said I was going to review Anatham next? Yeah, I lied. For one thing, I'm totally intimidated; I doubt I can do it justice. For another thing, well I'm kind of depressed and so I holed up in bed yesterday and today and read four rather dreadful books, one right after the other. Somewhere in there I slept a fair amount as well.

Mind you, I didn't go out and buy these; it seems a certain person I'm married to went on a kick several years ago and so we have a whole stack of them on the shelf. I grabbed the first one because...well, because I didn't want to have to think or read anything complicated.

Anyway, I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail on these; they don't really deserve it and I just want to get them on the list and move on, hopefully to a much better, brighter day.

Guilty Pleasures is utter "how the hell did this woman ever get published" crap. In it Hamilton introduces Anita Blake, animator--means she can raise the dead--and vampire hunter and sets up her world, in which supernatural creatures are real and the public knows about them. To be honest, she does a crappy job of world-building; I just can't buy some of the changes she makes in the legal system, but whatever. In this one, Anita is hired by the chief vampire of the city--St. Louis, which apparently is vampire central--to find someone who's illegally killing vampires. In the middle of all this, Jean-Claude, owner of a vampire strip club called Guilty Pleasures , ends up putting two of the four "marks" that can turn a person into a "human servant" on Anita. Jean-Claude is an arrogant asshole who calls Anita "ma petite" and the fact that I think we're supposed to find him sexy is just another strike against the book. The mystery isn't all that complicated and the writing is stilted; Hamilton is better than Stephanie Meyers, but that's about all I can say for her.

The Laughing Corpse pits Anita against a Mexican voodoo queen while investigating a number of truly grisly murders. Oh yeah, there's also some rich guy who wants Anita to raise a zombie, only the zombie's been dead long enough that a human sacrifice will be required and Anita won't do it. On top of it all, there's the annoying Jean-Claude, now Master of the City, who's being threatened because he can't even keep his human servant in line. He keeps after Anita, trying to convince her to let him put the rest of his marks on her so, presumably, she can spend the rest of an unnaturally long life dealing with a condescending jerk. Anita's not exactly my favorite fictional character ever, but honestly, I can't blame her for trying to avoid this clown. Of the four books I read, this is actually the best one--the plot moves along nicely, the writing's smoothed out some and the mystery is actually fairly complicated. I'd say that if you had to read one of these books, this would be the one to read.

Circus of the Damned has Anita dealing with what looks like a rogue gang of vampires on a killin' spree. However, near as I can tell, the main purpose of this book is to introduce us to Richard, the junior high teacher who also happens to be a were-wolf. And here's where I say, with all due sincerity, Laurell, honey? Stick to the action/adventure genre and leave the romance writing to someone, anyone, else. Reading Anita and Richard flirting is enough to make you want to kill yourself. It's not the painful but realistic flirting of two people who aren't supposed to be good at it; on no, this is supposed to be cute and snappy. Also, there's more Jean-Claude, who manages to put his third mark on Anita, but then, after the final battle with more rogue vampires, removes all his marks. Whatever, he's still a tool. This one isn't nearly as good as Laughing Corpse; it's not a mystery so much as a little action/adventure and a lot of romantic set up.

The Lunatic Cafe is the werewolf novel. Well, there are other were-creatures as well, but in this one, there's a mysterious death by critter and also some icky were-creature snuff porn floating around. Mostly, though, it's about Anita trying to deal with her relationship with Richard, the sensitive New Age were-wolf. Also there's a ton of posturing; seriously, there's this one meeting with several were-creatures that's pages and pages of people talking about dominance and who's in charge. I kinda wanted to scream "I fucking get the point, okay?" but it wouldn't have done any good. Also, yes, there's more Jean-Claude, this time he demands equal dating rights or he's gonna take Richard out even if it means that Anita will come gunning for him. The mystery part of this one is only so-so, but I don't think you're really supposed to care because this is all about setting up the big love triangle.

Part of my problem with these books is that I rarely like anyone in them. There are a few side characters--a couple of cops and Anita's private detective BFF--who aren't bad, but that's just not enough. Some authors can make unlikeable characters work, but you have to be much better at the craft than Hamilton is. In the end, I just don't care about Anita, or which of her two annoying suitors she picks or what her next supernatural case may be.

I have no idea what I'm reading next, but I know it'll be better than these four books.

Also, OMG is that like the cheesiest cover in the history of...well, forever?

PS. Also? I can't count.

Oh holy crap, you guys

I spent the last day and a half reading the first four Anita Blake books.

Send help.

Dunno if this is happening to anyone else....

Knowing that I lived in Iran for a couple of years in the '70s, a friend of mine just recently gave me the very nice, all-in-one-volume version of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which I've been wanting to read for a while. And then today....

Well, today we got a new car. My mother-in-law, for reasons surpassing understanding, bought a brand new Jetta last year, in spite of the fact that she was hardly driving at all and had a perfectly good, late model Volvo. Now that she's living with a cousin and has sold her condo, she doesn't need the car and so she had it shipped from Chicago to us here in California. It's completely paid for, has only 900 miles on it and it even still smells like a new car.

Now ever since she decided to sell her condo, she's been asking Nancy if there was anything she wanted, since Nancy had left some stuff in the basement way back when she went to college. And Nancy kept saying, "no Mom, I really don't need any of that stuff, except that it might be cool to have all my old Nancy Drew books." So, there in the surprisingly roomy trunk of the car were two boxes of Nancy Drew books. I flipped through some of them, thinking I might read a few, only...they're all under 200 pages.

The point--other than OMG Yay New Car!!!--of this long-winded digression is that I seem to have changed my reading habits to the point where I won't let myself read anything that doesn't qualify for Cannonball. It's kind of stupid really; I'm doing pretty well--last I checked, I'm in third place--and Godtopus knows that I've got more free time than a lot of other people doing the Read. I could probably take some time to read something--other than fan fiction--that doesn't qualify, but I just feel like it would be wrong or something.

My brain, she is weird sometimes.

Come next September or 100 books, which ever comes first, I'm probably going to have a huge stack of graphic novels--I mean really, I've never read Watchman or Y, the Last Man and recently I've been wanting to reread the collected Sandman--and short books waiting for me.

Books Sixteen and Seventeen -- A Confederation of Valor by Tanya Huff

Valor's Choice
282 pages
The Better Part of Valor
315 pages
science fiction
by Tanya Huff

Okay now that I'm (mostly) recovered from Election Week and am writing again, it's time to get back to the books. Or book. Or books.... A Confederation of Valor is two books in one, which made my wallet kind of happy because I'm old enough to remember when paperbacks weren't eight or nine bucks a piece. *rattles walker and shouts at clouds*

Tanya Huff is one of those versatile authors who really should be more popular than she is. She writes pure fantasy (the Quarters series), modern/urban fantasy (the Keeper series), the vampire/magical detective genre (the Blood Ties series and the Smoke series) and military SF (the Valor series) and all of it's good. She's also a filker* and a lesbian who frequently puts gay characters in her books--Tony, the protagonist of the Smoke series is gay and, unfortunately, in spite of the fact that the books are really good and properly creepy, there probably won't be any more in the series because her publisher pulled the plug on it. Apparently gay doesn't sell enough books. Her Blood Ties series was made into a really cheesy, but fun TV series; it was filmed in Canada on the cheap and then played on Lifetime for two short seasons.

I happen to have a soft spot for military SF and, honestly, I don't really know why. Most of the people writing it are pretty right wing/Libertarian and their politics often show up in their work. Still, gimme a band of Marines battling the odds on an alien world, or a steely-eyed starship captain going up against the enemies of her empire and I'm a happy camper. So finding out about this series was great because I know that Tanya's politics are much closer to mine and I already like her writing.

The Valor series is about Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr of the Confederation Marines. The fact that she's female isn't such a big deal; David Weber's Honor Harrington series is about a female starship captain, for example. Still it's not all that usual in the space marine genre, which made it a nice change.

The other really nice change is that unlike most of the books you run across in this genre, which are about Humans only or Humans fighting aliens, Huff's Confederation is made up of many different species. The older and wiser species have sociologically evolved beyond aggression, which created a problem when they encountered the Others, who were not interested in peaceful negotiations. And so the Confederation recruited younger, more aggressive species, including Humans, who had barely made it into space when the Confederation came calling.

In addition to Humans, the Marine corp includes the di'Tayken--an elf like species who give off so many sexual pheromones that they have to wear mechanical maskers--and the Krai--a species that can and will eat literally anything, including the bodies of both their enemies and their own honored dead. So in addition to the usual personality tensions in any military unit and military politics in general, there's also some species tensions.

Valor's Choice is the first book of the series. Kerr and a platoon of Marines are sent on what is supposed to be easy duty: guarding diplomats and helping show the flag on a mission to the planet of the Silsviss, a reptilian race that is looking to join the Confederation. As the senior NCO, Kerr is also responsible for breaking in a new Second Lieutenant, something made complicated by the fact that he's a di'Tayken she had a one night stand with, not knowing he was an officer.

Of course things go awry; after an initial round of "getting to know you" encounters, the suborbital ship containing the diplomats and the Marines is shot down over a wilderness preserve used to test Silsviss males during their aggressive adolescence. It's up to Kerr to see that everyone survives and the ensuing struggle is exciting, to say the least.

Kerr's a good character--smart and dedicated but not without a dry sense of humor--and it's easy to like her and to give a damn about what happens to her. Huff also does a good job making what could be boring stock characters come to life; the baby officer from a military family who's afraid he's not up to the task; the trouble-maker with a heart of gold; the card-shark; the alien who knows more old Earth expressions than the Humans, and so on. There's even a nod to a common trope of these stories; one of the guys is reading letters from home and counting the days until he sees his family, and his friends all remind him that in movies, he's the guy who always buys it. The diplomats from the older species of the Confederation are interesting as well; not only is she good at inventing aliens with cool cultures, Huff does a good job envisioning how true pacifists would react to a sudden plunge into a combat situation.

The Better Part of Valor takes place shortly after Valor's Choice. Having insulted a general, Kerr gets pulled from her platoon and is given the dubious honor of leading a recon squad and a bunch of scientists into a mysterious derelict ship floating in space. In addition to a thrown-together squad, a politically appointed officer who's more concerned about his PR status than anything else, Kerr has to deal with a news crew and the wise-cracking salvage operator who discovered the ship.

One of the things Huff's good at is setting up a good creepy situation and then running with it. (The mummy in Blood Lines, for example, is really fucking freaky and I don't normally find mummy stories to be all that scary.) A big abandoned space ship with an interior that changes into rooms pulled from the minds of the explorers offers plenty of opportunity for creepiness, particularly when a group of the mysterious Others--the Confederation's bug-like enemies--show up to explore the ship as well.

Both these books move along a nice clip; they're fun and exciting and, unlike so many books in the genre, there aren't any right-wing politics buried under the surface. There are two more books in the series and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them. If you like the genre, run, don't walk, and if you're not sure about the genre but like a good, well-written SF adventure, give them try.

Next up...Neal Stephenson's latest masterpiece. That's not a word I use lightly; Anatham is utterly fantastic.


*For people who don't speak Geek, filk is folk music for SF/Fantasy geeks. The songs are usually SF/Fantasy based, but there's filk about computers as well. Sometimes both the music and the lyrics are original, but a lot of the time people rewrite popular songs with their own lyrics. It's a true nerd pastime that mostly goes on a SF cons. Thus endth the lesson.

I just realized something (still not a book post)

One of the reasons that the whole "Blame the Brown People for Prop 8 Passing" thing pisses me off so much is that it's yet another case of making assumptions about a group of people as if they were part of some sort of hive vagina mind.

How often have we seen the Far Right and the evangelicals claim that the GLBT community has a Gay Agenda? And on the Left? How often have our votes been taken totally for granted because they know that, for the most part, we're automatically going to vote Democrat?

Both attitudes are insulting and both drive me crazy. My own personal agenda is probably a little different than Nancy's, and both our agendas are undoubtedly miles away from the single gay guy next door who seems to love perpetuating several gay stereotypes. There is no monolithic Gay Agenda; there are, in fact, GLBT people who don't give a damn about the right to marry.

As for counting on my vote.... I'm used to that, both as a far left Liberal and as a dyke. It's conventional political wisdom that actively courting the gay vote is the kiss of death to a campaign. Which you know...step inside my Docs for a day and think about how that feels. "We want your vote, but we can't actually promise you anything at all or even acknowledge you except in the vaguest way. I'm sure you don't mind."

My point is that for white GLBT folk or allies to turn around and act as if there's a monolithic Black or Hispanic hive mind with a homophobic agenda is hypocritical. It's what people have been doing to us and it saddens me to see people turn around and do it to another minority, particularly when the numbers everyone's using to insist that Black voters were responsible for 8 passing are, to quote Rodney McKay, Wrong Wrong Wrong!!!!

If you're doing that, if you're assigning certain characteristics across the board to certain racial groups, well...that's racism, plain and simple.

*checks* Yup, still married!

Dear people out there in CA who voted yes on 8, including some of you in my freakin' hometown (and thanks a lot for that; I like to think of Sacramento as a nice blue spot in a Valley of red),

I'd just like to take this moment to tell you that me, Ruth, the big fat dyke? Still married. Screw you.

To the rest of you out there:

Okay, as you've seen around, or maybe you haven't (which is why I'm linking to this): "The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a writ petition before the California Supreme Court today urging the court to invalidate Proposition 8 if it passes." Basically the argument is that substantial changes to the State Constitution require the approval of the Legislature before they go to the people in the form of a ballot initiative. This one? Pretty substantial and it never went before the Legislature.

Bear in mind that this is the same Court that declared for equality back in June. I don't know these people and I'm sure they'll be all fair and impartial and stuff when they do their judge thing , but you know? It's got to be kind of annoying to have done your damn job, interpreted the Constitution, and then had a bunch of people spearheaded by a church in freakin' Utah (we don't even share a border with them!), try to get around something you said was legal. Also I bet they didn't take kindly to being called "activist judges."

May I just say that I'm personally glad we have State Attorney General Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown on our side? Say what you will about him, but the guy's a solid liberal and is the one who insisted that Prop 8's language be changed to reflect the fact that it was taking away rights. It probably would have passed with better numbers if he hadn't done that.

Also, Joe the Plumber? Screw you too. My union plumber voted for Obama.

So, three people in the room--two plumbers and me. Who knew where the nearest hardware store was? I should have asked them to drop in at Butch n Nellies to get me another coffee; the one I had at 6 has long since faded and I'm running on freakin' fumes here.

PS, I read two books, so I'm up to 17 now and I'm halfway through Neal Stephenson's utterly awesome Anathem. I love how he entertains, makes me feel smart and makes me feel kinda ignorant, all at the same time.

Oh hey, can we NOT do this?

Like racism, homophobia exists in all communities.

See what I did there?

Nancy said it best.

When the sun comes up in the morning

Nancy and I will still be married. We will still be two women who love each other and nothing anyone does can ever change that.

It's not over. There are still things that can be done, law suits to be filed and a fight to be fought.

Am I happy that my state cares more about chickens than my rights?* No, of course not. But I am happy that my friends did their best; many gave money to the No on 8 campaign as wedding presents and many more voted against it. It means a lot.

And for the haters out there, the ignorant and the stupid, the people who voted for discrimination? I'm sorry. It must be hard living your life in so much fear.


*Prop 2, which is all about humane standards for confining farm animals is passing with a very healthy margin.

YES!

Today, tonight, right now at this moment....

I'm proud to be an American.

And you know? My ancestor, the one who fought in the Revolution, would probably be appalled at what happened tonight. Women running for office? A Black man being voted into the highest office in the land? His female descendant, the lesbian married to a Black woman, voting?

Jehu would have been shocked and probably bewildered.

And that? That's part of why I'm proud.

Because we can change and we can become better and we can continue to perfect this union.

Yes.

Yes We Can!

Snerk!

Not particularly work safe, but pretty funny anti Prop 8 vid.

Book Fifteen -- Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

Tigana
by Guy Gavriel Kay
fantasy
673 pages

After reading Tigana, or any book by Kay, you aren't surprised to discover that he's an accomplished poet as well. In fact, when Christopher Tolkien took on the job of publishing The Silmarillion from his father's notes, Kay was one of the people who worked with him. Trust me, Kay's better when he's writing his own stories.

Fortunately for me, Tigana was the first book by Kay that I read. His earlier trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, suffers from such a bad case of "everything and the kitchen sink" fantasy that you end ip thinking that Kay never met a fantasy trope he didn't like. Thankfully, he got that out of his system and sat down to create Tigana.

Roughly half a generation before the events of the book, the lands of the Palm--a peninsula divided into nine tiny duchies and principalities with vaguely Italian names and language--was conquered by two different sorcerers. One, Alberico, is a pretty straightforward villain, but the other, Brandin is a much more complex character. Unfortunately for the Principlaity of Tigana, Brandin's beloved son died at the hand of Tigana's prince. In revenge, Brandin performed a mighty act of sorcery that prevents anyone not from Tigana from hearing or remembering the name of the principality. As a result, when the last person alive at the time Tigana was conquered dies, the name of the country will be lost forever.

And so the stage is set for a band of rebels, including Alessen, the youngest son of Tigana's last prince, to try to win back their freedom and the freedom of the rest of the Palm's provinces, because along the way, Alessan has realized that the only way the divided provinces can prevail is through unification.

All that sounds pretty normal; talk about your common fantasy tropes. But where Kay excels is in...well, honestly, pretty much everything. His heroes and heroines are flawed, complicated people and Brandin is an excellent example of how to do a villain right. In fact, while I do love the rebels, particularly Devin, a young singer who falls almost accidentally into the conspiracy, it is the story of Dianora, a native of Tigana who is taken captive and put into Brandin's harem only to struggle against her love for him versus her desire for revenge that makes me love this book.

Well, that and the sheer beauty of Kay's prose. He's a simply stunning writer who uses language and imagery perfectly, and who knows the power that words have. If you like truly sparse prose, then no, his books aren't for you. However, you never feel that he's throwing words at the page in order to bring up his page count; each word seems placed just so, much like the mosaics created by another one of his characters from another book. The result is a picture of love and loss and honor and responsibility that will stay with you for a long time.

If someone came up to me and said, "I don't normally read fantasy, but can you recommend a good starting place?" I'd hand them Tigana and tell them to sit down and savor it from cover to cover. While there is magic in the book, it never takes over the book the way it so often can in fantasy.

Book Fourteen -- Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn

Across the Nightingale Floor
by Lian Hearn
fantasy
287 pages

Taking place in the Three Countries, a place much like feudal Japan, Across the Nightingale Floor is the first book of the Tales of the Otori. It tells the story of Otori Takeo and Shirakawa Kaede, two young adults caught up in the intrigues of their time.

Takeo is a young man raised in an isolated village by his mother, a member of a forbidden religious sect. The local lord, Iida--an ambitious villain with no real redeeming features--with his men, destroys the village. Takeo is saved by a mysterious stranger by the name of Lord Otori, who takes Takeo to his lands and adopts him.

Meanwhile, the beautiful Kaede is a hostage, held by one of Iida's vassals to compel her father's loyalty. When a man attempting to rape her is killed and the man she is betrothed to dies, she becomes the object of superstition, although that doesn't stop her captor from setting up yet another betrothal--to Lord Otori--for her

Takeo learns that he is the son of a member of The Tribe, an ancient group of ninjas. He has an almost magic ability of super hearing, which serves him well when Lord Otori summons an old Tribe friend to train Takeo. Their ultimate goal is to assassinate Iida, who is so paranoid that he has a "nightingale floor"--a floor designed to make chirping noises when someone steps on it--surrounding his chambers.

The book rushes on with an almost breakneck speed and yet there are moments where Hearn pauses to describe a landscape or a room with an appreciation that adds a Japanese touch to the novel. It's not written in the style classical Japanese literature, which, as someone who gave up on The Tale of Genji, I appreciate, however, you never forget that you are in a world of samurai and ninjas.

There was a moment when I was sure she was leading up to a pretty common trope, but then, when I was wrong, I realized that I was thinking of Western tropes and Hearn was using a common Eastern trope. While she doesn't actually bring anything new to the table, she tells her tale well and gives us likable characters and deeds of ninja derring-do in enjoyable settings.

I call Across the Nightingale Floor fantasy because that's what it's categorized as, but, aside from Takeo's super-hearing and his family ability to hypnotise people, there's no magic; this could be read as a straight-forward action novel with a nice touch of romance in the background. I most certainly recommend it; I sat and read it in one go tonight and I'll be getting my hands on the other books in the series; there are three more that deal with Takeo and Kaede and then a prequel about Lord Otori.

Oh sure, Amazon is cheaper....

There's something about a bookstore, even one as soulless and corporate as Borders. I really do like shopping though Amazon because it's easy and cheaper than most bookstores, but I still love going into a bookstore and fondling the books. Of course, like an idiot, I almost always forget to take a pair of reading glasses with me, which leads to me holding the book at arm's length and squinting while I read the back.

I looked at a ton of stuff in the SF/Fantasy section and almost picked up Maguire's Son of a Witch, but I put it down, figuring I'd pick it up used somewhere. I did get Neal Stephenson's newest, Anathem which kind of sounds like it's his take on the classic A Canticle for Lebowitz. It's pretty massive and Stephenson is hardly someone you can read quickly, so it'll be a while before I have a review up.

I also picked up Tanya Huff's first two Valor novels, conveniently bound together in one book. I'm a big fan of her Vicky Nelson vampire books and the spin off Shadow series. Seriously, if you the whole "vampire and female PI together they fight crime" genre, read the Blood Ties books. Trust me, they're a lot better than the short-lived Lifetime series, although the TV show had some serious pretty--male and female--going on. Anyway, Huff's Valor books are military SF featuring a female space marine, so I'm good.

Hard military SF is actually one of my guilty pleasures, particularly if the protagonist or one of the main characters is female. I call it a guilty pleasure because, well to put it one way, most of these writers are probably voting for McCain or writing in Ron Paul. But still, give me a new David Weber Honor Harrington book (aka Female Horatio Hornblower In Space) and I'm a happy camper. I have no idea why I like this kind of thing so much, although I suppose my early love of Heinlein's* juveniles has something to do with it.

Darkrose picked up a couple of books that I'll end up reading--a fantasy novel set in a pseudo-Japan about an assassin and a fascinating sounding book about a people on a post-apocalyptic fantasy world going on crusade. It's nice to have someone around who reads the same kind of stuff I do; several of the books I've read for the Read have been her books.

Finally, although I said I wouldn't do too many re-reads, I found myself downstairs without a book in hand the other night when I went to get a late night snack. I ended up picking up Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay and ended up reading it cover to cover over the course of the last couple of days. While it's not my favorite Kay book (that would be Sailing to Sarentium), it's utterly fabulous. I'll have a review of tt up soon.

*I'll save the Heinlein rant for another day; suffice it to say, I think he jumped the shark right around Farnham's Freehold.

Happy Halloween and Blessed Samhain

To you and yours!



From Darkrose and Telesilla!

Girls for Obama!

Girls for Obama!

What got me about this was seeing the above post right after seeing something over at Wondermark where David Malki has started something called True Stuff from Old Books, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Today he ran three political cartoons from 1911, two of which had to do with women and voting.

Hey!! Listen up!!

Okay, many of you have seen the Donuts/Bacon '08 shirt, right?

Well it gets better because there's a song. Described by the artist as "a bouncy Pro-Obama agitprop song about voting liberally, drinking liberally, and celebratory hangover food" it's well worth listening to and downloading and generally savoring like....

...well, like Donuts and Bacon! (in the morning!)

DONUTS AND BACON LYRICS

We were reading and watching and ranting irate
When we saw a shirt advertised at the debate
Such sweet inspiration! A savory plate
Of donuts and bacon, Obama 08

And I saw in that vision before me online
A fine sentiment that we could all get behind
When the victory’s ours let’s go out and get blind
And eat donuts and bacon in the morning!

CHORUS
Donuts and bacon and
Donuts and bacon and
Donuts and bacon in the morning

Donuts and bacon and
Donuts and bacon and
Donuts and bacon in the morning

It’s been a long tunnel but we see the light
Cause we all know that Barry will carry the fight
So let’s get out the vote then drink whiskey all night
And eat donuts and bacon in the morning

CHORUS

All good liberals can fight when our back’s to the wall
Cause we know that we’re right, and the right’s not at all,
All us losers and boozers and heroes can’t fall
If there’s donuts and bacon in the morning

CHORUS

Though we’ve suffered eight years of republican blight
If the worst should occur by deceit tuesday night
We can drown all our sorrows then get up to fight
And eat donuts and bacon tomorrow

But religious folks tell me despair is a sin
And though I’m no believer and I’ve never been
I believe that Obama and Biden will win
Let’s have donuts and bacon every morning

CHORUS 2X and WE OUT.

Book Thirteen -- The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett
mystery
229 pages

First off, yeah the book's out of order; I have Lies My Teacher Told Me partly written up but it's proving to be a difficult write-up and this one shouldn't be.

I haven't wanted to do too many re-reads for this, but in this case, I haven't read it in something like 15 years so I figured it couldn't hurt, particularly since I knew the ending back when I read it the first time.

It's an easy read, even if you have somehow managed to avoid seeing the movie. A mysterious woman shows up in a detective's office with a story that's mostly bullshit. Detective's partner goes off on the job and gets killed. Detective slowly works his way to solving partner's death and the woman's case. There's sex, booze, guns and a lot of fast talk. Dude, it's Sam Spade, which really...'nuff said.

While there are bits and pieces in the book that didn't make their way into the movie--Gutman's daughter, for example--almost all of the dialog in the movie was lifted right from the pages of the book. If you're at all an aural reader like me, it adds a nice layer to the book. The first time Joel Cairo shows up--and while the movie coded him gay, the book flat out states it--all I could hear was Peter Lorre's voice as I read.

One of the most interesting things about the book, and something I'd have not noticed until I started writing, is that the point-of-view is so distant and omniscient that you're never allowed into anyone's head. I'm sitting here thinking about writing like that and it's just weird to me, although really, it's kind of the ultimate in "show, don't tell."

Anyway, it's a fun and fast read, so if you haven't ever read it, you might want to check it out.

Book Twelve -- Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

Lies My Teacher Told
by James W. Lowen
non-fiction
318 pages

By the time I was in high school, I could list the post-Norman Conquest rulers of England in order and probably tell you at least a little bit about each one of them. I knew that 1492 wasn't just important because that's when Columbus sailed, who Xenophon was, how Chaucer was related by marriage to the royal family, why Persepolis had been in ruins since Alexander's day and that Cleopatra was neither the first of her name nor actually Egyptian*.

American history bored the crap out of me.

Reading Lies My Teacher Told Me makes me wonder if my boredom had more to do with presentation than anything else.

Lowen looks at how high school history books present, or more accurately don't present, controversial subjects. You know, things like how Columbus was an asshole who was in it for the money (also people knew the world was round back then), how most of the Indians in the Northeast were killed off by a plague they picked up from European fishermen before the Pilgrims got there, how John Brown wasn't so crazy actually, how Reconstruction really didn't play out the way you think it did and, hey, what about class differences in the US?

What we get in our textbooks, or at least the 12 Lowen read through, is feel-good history. It's designed to make white kids feel good about being Americans. There is no controversy and things just happen without the cause being examined. And that, right there, boggles my mind. If we don't know why things happened, how can we recognize when they're happening again; how can we watch our own times and not think about cause and effect?

I wonder how different my level of interest would have been if I'd been given more than feel-good history. As it was, I got an A and then forgot all the boring dates I'd had to learn and happily went back to reading European and Ancient history. In my spare time. For fun.

Go figure.

Any way, it's a good book and a fantastic antidote to crappy high school history.


*1492 was the year of the Reconquista, when the last of the Moors were kicked out of Spain; whether this was a good thing or not depends on your point of view. Xenophon was a Greek historian who, in 400BCE, helped lead a group of mercenaries from Persia back to Greece. He wrote about it in a book called Anabasis, or The Persian Expedition. Geoffry Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, was married to Phillipa Roet, whose sister Katherine was the mistress and later third wife of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III and uncle to Richard II. Persepolis was burned by Alexander's troops and by all accounts, Alexander wasn't at all happy about it. The Cleopatra we've all heard of was actually Cleopatra VII, the name was, like the name Berenice, a very common name back in the day. She wasn't Egyptian; the royal family had been Greek since Egpyt was conquered by Alexander.

In Sickness and In Health, but Mostly In Sickness

I wanted to do something interesting or profound or maybe even angry for Write to Marry Day, but the fact is, both Darkrose and I are sick. I've been sick for about a week and a half; I got better over the weekend but now my voice is starting to go. Darkrose actually took the day off and slept for most of it.

My own sleep cycle is screwed up so I stayed up all night. I did a load of laundry around noon--we were getting to the "honey, I'm running out of underwear" stage--and made up a batch of lentil soup. At some point, I cleaned out the cat boxes and washed some dishes. About the time she crawled out bed, I fell into it and slept for a while.

It's just coming up on 9pm; normally at this time, she'd be getting ready to leave work, but tonight she's on the phone with a friend whose been having some spam problems on her website's forum. I put down my book--Lies My Teacher Told Me, which will probably be my 12th Cannonball Read book unless I pause to read the first Mercy Thompson book--to do this post, but I'm actually hoping to fall back asleep soon.

Ogdred, our younger cat, is curled up at the foot of the bed and Joxur, the older one, is trying to convince me that because I fed him gooshy food earlier than usual, he should get more at the appointed time. The house is kind of a wreck because I'm not the best housekeeper when I'm well, let alone when I'm sick.

This is our life slowed down a little thanks to the first flu of the fall. This is the "in sickness" part of our marriage. This is our dangerous "glamorous" lesbian lifestyle. This is our GLBT agenda; helping out a friend, making dinner, having clean underwear in the house, dealing with cats, doing our best to take care of one another when we're both coughing and sneezing and constantly blowing our noses.

This is what people are afraid of. Oh sure, the leather boys (and bois) posing half-naked on Pride Parade floats and the Dykes on Bikes are scary; they're the mysterious other. But we're pretty damn normal; we struggle through the petty daily challenges pretty much like I did when my spouse was male. We're not just like the couple next door, we ARE the couple next door.

Hatred is complicated and multi-layered and sometimes it's a lot of work to maintain. When the homophobes and the anti-same-sex marriage crowd are faced with the fact that the people they're hating on are just another couple trying to make it through the week, it's freaky for them. How are they different? How can they be better than us if they are us and we are them?

What if they're wrong? What if they've been wrong all this time? What if this means they've been wrong about other things?

We are the married couple next door and, aside from how we have sex, we are far more like a straight couple than not. When you vote, ask yourself how a pair of people who love each other and who make late night runs to the store in order to buy ice cream for the other could possibly threaten this state so much that our constitution needs to be amended to remove our rights. And then?

Vote No on Proposition 8.

And now? I'm gonna go have some soup.

I just don't know...

Gods, could these people be any more disgusting?

A Yes on 8 ad uses pictures of children without their parents permission.

Book Eleven -- Keeping It Real by Justina Robson

Keeping it Real
by Joanna Robson
SF/Fantasy
333 pages

Okay, to be honest, I was a little iffy about this one. It's a cross between urban fantasy and cyberpunk with a cyborg heroine whose job is to protect a hot elf rock star. Within the first five pages Lila, our heroine, actually looks at herself in the mirror in order for the author to have a chance to describe her--pretty much classic Mary Sue stuff, particularly as, in spite of all the metal attached to her body, she still comes across as pretty hot.

There were other tells that made me wonder if Robson started out as a fan fiction writer*; most glaringly, the little bit of Common Knowledge at the beginning of the book reads like the kind of thing you wouldn't have to explain if you were writing about a universe everyone already knew. It's almost like she didn't know how to present the information any other way, except for that part where she does a halfway decent job of exposition early on.

But you know? I'm kind of glad that I was reading it for Cannonball, because I stuck with it and it was actually a lot of fun.

The basic premise is that there was some sort of awful explosion, called the Quantum Bomb, involving a super collider. The resulting rip in the space time continuum leads to six different worlds existing in parallel to one another: there's our own world (called Otopia for some unknown reason); Zoomenon, the world of the Elementals, Alfheim, where the high/Tolkien style elves live; Demonia, where the Demons hang out; Thanotopia, the land of the dead from which necromancers gain their power; and Faery, and yeah that's pretty obvious.

The Elves are all about Culture and so the fact that Zal the High Elf is a rock star in Otopia is cause for death threats against him. So, enter Lila Black, half-machine, half-human agent. She's brought in as his bodyguard, but also ends up playing a "Game" with him. Games are complex interactions that end with the loser paying a forfeit; in this case, it's pretty easy to guess what the game is, and in fact, the book itself follows the whole "hot bodyguard/sexy rock star" formula, only the peril is a lot more interesting than usual.

I'd recommend this one if you're halfway decent at suspending your disbelief and are looking for a fun, only slightly trashy, romp. It sounds like I'm damning it with faint praise, but the fact is, I enjoyed it for what it was and have every intention of picking of the next in the series.


*Not that there's anything wrong with that; I can easily name a handful of SF/Fantasy writers who started out writing fan fiction. In fact....

Okay, this is where I suddenly lose a lot of cred and probably some respect from some of you people, but...I'm a fan fiction writer and have been for the last 14 years. I've also published one short story that's been reprinted a couple of times, most recently in Best Lesbian Bondage Erotica. But mostly? I write (mostly) gay porn about TV shows and movies and even actors.

"Keep crying and keep walking"

All she was doing was filming the Yes on 8 people, but apparently, according to them, that's enough to justify this kind of violent behavior.

There's a push on to get 10,000 people out there pounding the pavement to rally voters and it's actually making me feel guilty. But the problem is...I'm already on shaky emotional ground in general and I honestly don't think I could talk to anyone who is seriously in favor of Prop 8 without either getting into a yelling match or breaking into tears.

It's...see, you know these people are out there; you see them with their stupid slogans hanging out near Pride Festivals and so on, but you try not to think about it most of the time. And then something this polarizing comes along and suddenly you remember that there are people out there who completely and utterly HATE who you are. And what can you say in the face of that?

There was a discussion on one of the political blogs I read about how people are saying that they're voting yes on 8 but they're not bigots. No, I'm sorry, but you don't get to say that. Because if you aren't a bigot, then why are you voting to take away my civil rights? And anyway, the result is the same, a vote yes is a vote yes, no matter how many gay friends you have.

There simply is only one reason to vote for this measure: you hate fags.

Book Ten -- Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
by Gregory Maguire
fantasy
368 pages

Having enjoyed Maguire's look at Oz and since my spouse-person happened to have this book on hand as well, I figured I might as well see if it was any good. The Cinderella myth is not one of my favorites, but then I'm not that fond of fairy tales in general. This version, however, really did pull me in.

Maguire made the decision to set the story in Holland in the 1630s, setting the familiar characters firmly in the emerging middle class. The narrator, Iris--the younger of the two step-sisters--her older but simple sister Ruth and her mother Margarathe arrive in Haarlem from England after Margarathe's husband died. Margarathe finds employment as a housekeeper, first with a painter and secondly with a wealthy merchant who's made a lot money speculating on tulips.

When the merchant's wife dies, Margarathe slides into her place and the familiar story begins to take shape. But of course, this isn't the story of Cinderella (who starts off as Clara); it's the story of Iris, a plain girl who happens to have some artistic talent. It's fascinating to watch Iris struggle to deal with her mother's ambition, her own infatuation with the painter's apprentice, her desire to paint, and, of course, Clara's beauty.

There is no actual magic in the book, although there are a few things that strain the reader's willing suspension of disbelief. I really liked the psychological explanation for Clara allowing herself to be banished to the kitchen, and loved the little details about painting and the lifestyles of the Dutch Bourgeoisie. My main issue with the book is a silly personal one; the other step-sister, the one who is slow and big and clumsy? Couldn't Maguire picked a name other than Ruth?

Oh hey, I'm one tenth of the way there! I'd buy more books to celebrate, but it's the end of the month. Huh...I wonder if my fees are paid off at the library.

Oh hai!

Damn, the Canonnball List is getting long! I'm actually reading everyone's reviews, but if we pick up too many more people, I'm thinking I should count reading the blogs as at least half a book.

Anyway, just wanted to say "Hi" to any of you who are reading my blog. Feel free to introduce yourselves, or not; I'm easy.