GoodReads Review: Madman's Dance

Madman's Dance by Jana Oliver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This, the final (?) book in Jana Oliver's Time Rovers series, brings the events of the previous two books to an explosive conclusion - shapeshifters, time travelers, meddlers from a future beyond, anarchists, and all combinations thereof. As with the previous two books, the majority of the action takes place in Victorian London, with some events in "now-time" from the prospective of the time travelers ... well, the point of view characters who time travel ... there's a dizzying amount of crossover, but it all comes together with crystal coherence in the end.

For the first third of the book, however, I was disappointed by the flow. In Madman's Dance, Oliver does a good job summarizing while still moving the plot forward, but for most of this portion of the book, I felt the characters were almost exclusively reactive, responding to the situation without much agency of their own. I also felt just a bit disconnected from events - I think in good part because Jacynda, who is so vibrant in the first two, spends much of this one profoundly altered and just ... not herself. As a new reader, I would not have been drawn to her. As someone coming from the previous two books, I missed the old Jacynda terribly.

A potential word of caution: while, again, Oliver does a great job filling you in on previous plot points without bogging down in it (which is a skillful feat, given how much happens in those two books that is vital to this one), I think the book loses something for not being read with immediacy. If you're going to pick up this series, I'd recommend going straight through.

But it all turns with Jacynda, and when she gets her feet back underneath her, so does the book ... and the way she leaps back into action is a delight. Her audacity and the controlled (barely) chaos she creates are a pleasure to read. The plot device that damaged her at the end of Virtual Evil comes into play and has intriguing implications in the later portions of the book. The reader learns a lot more about the transitives (shapeshifters), their organization, the Lead Assassin who emerged from the shadows in Virtual Evil ... and their future.

The ending of this book is a pitch-perfect illustration of character and exactly the kind of denouement you would want for a time traveler. It made me want to stand up and cheer. I was never quite sure I bought the romantic storyline here, but I think that's personal rather than anything amiss with the way it was portrayed. Definitely recommended as an ultimately satisfying close to the series.



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Sunday Snippet

With where I am in both works I'm presently ... working on ... I had difficulty finding a section that didn't give away earlier action. This is from my winter holiday story:


The presents glinted under the tree, but Irena hardly thought about gifts this year - not even the look on her grandfather's face when he saw the antique watch. Instead, she was fixed on the party, the thought of spending time with Justin, and the hovering promise of mistletoe.

Christmas Eve arrived with no phone call from her mother, perhaps because she stood staring at the phone, willing it to ring. Irena expected to feel more resentment, but her heart seemed to be encased in ice. It was difficult to feel anything, even joy over the snow that had delighted her - still fresh and crisp on the ground, as if it had fallen that very morning.

"I am sure her duties are very important," her grandfather said.

"A midnight call, I expect." Her grandmother's pinched face encouraged her to believe this. "So as to reach us when it's properly Christmas."

Phone call or not, Irena didn't intend to be home at midnight. She endured a day of carols, cookies and traditional Christmas movies - a Christmas Story, Elf and, for reasons never properly explained, The Long Kiss Goodnight - with her attention elsewhere. She felt more distant from her family than she ever had before and wondered if it was more than the party on her mind.

"I don't feel well," she said after dinner, feeling the tingle of the lie dance on her tongue. "I think I ate too much. Do you mind if I lie down?"

"Go on, dear."

Irena trudged upstairs, resisting the urge to sprint instead. She plumped her pillow and blankets in what she hoped was a convincing fashion. Truth was, she had never broken out of her house before. What if she couldn't manage the climb down? Television made it seem so easy. Obligatory for any teenaged girl, in fact. At the very least, she knew she couldn't risk wearing tights and a dress. Well, she had planned on slacks anyhow. It was dorky, but her thighs were too big.

She tossed her cellphone on the dresser and eased the window open, wincing when it creaked. The cold slapped her in the face. She held her breath, sliding out shoulders-first. Her fingers clutched awkwardly at a frost-covered branch. It stung. She should have worn gloves, but they were downstairs in the closet. She wobbled out into the crook of the tree and pushed the window as far shut as it would go from the outside.

Then she was alone in the darkness.

(Belated) Thursday Thoughts

Oh, for the ability to time travel!

Yesterday was a long day, and I just lost track of it. Headed bedwards, I had the thought, "Ack, my post!"

So what's up this Thursday? Time travel. No, not really - I forget that I do, in fact, write about time travelers and have several of their stories pending submission. (The most recent story has a major plot hole which I still haven't plugged, so its submission date is indefinite.) Fantasy sometimes makes it difficult to joke around - something that seems to be meant in humor in a piece of fiction could be literal. So just to clarify ... the only time travel involved here is my effectively backdating this post.

This editing pass of Scylla and Charybdis is winding down - my cursor blinks at the beginning of Chapter Thirty-Two. There are a few throughlines I'm concerned about, but my intention is to do a separate pass where I exclusively focus on whole-book continuity issues and bounce around to fix those. This will be combined with my reading aloud pass, since bizarrely, I seem to notice large-scale continuity questions while reading out loud. My brain is a strange beast.

I'm beginning to weary of my character building for the mystery novel - which needs a title, stat! Or at least before I start writing, because if I start writing without one, it will never be titled - but I'm reluctant to pause and wing it. I'm over halfway through, but it's a lot of material. One choice I made I'm regretting a little is I've given each character songs to describe them and Tarot significators. These have been harder to choose than I had thought.

The victim's song (or one of two) is Celine Dion's "Immortality." I didn't actually choose it to be ironic, but now I'm looking back and facepalming.

Sunday Snippet

This is a piece from another Flow-verse Borderwatch story. (Not fully edited, so forgive a little roughness.) Brianna has just learned that her sister is pregnant ... while she and a group of agents are hunting an Alastyn (a waterhorse fairy) living as a mortal. They confront "Adam" on a beach, and the following ensues:


Carter slammed into Adam from behind and drove a fist into his lung. The skinny kid was a powerhouse and that blow would have incapacitated a human – but Alastyns have the lungs of a horse, and it only slowed him. I drew Adam’s attention with a feint of the knife. His head jerked around, teeth snapping, but he was too far from the water to transform. He kicked out at Carter, who mewled as the blow caught him below the kneecap.

We kept Adam from the water, circling. My thoughts whirled, already imagining sleepless nights spent nursing my niece/nephew – a hazy hermaphrodite – and miles driven as Greta forgot appointments or lingered to exchange coy words with a clerk.

“Brianna!” Marcus bellowed. Adam was upon me, far too fast. I drove the blade forward in a belly-thrust. It glanced off his ribcage, but the shallow cold-iron knick drew a shrill scream.

I locked my thoughts on the present. Unprofessional, sloppy … now to correct my mistake.

Marcus stayed back, blocking the retreat as Carter and I closed in. A technical specialist, Marcus knew enough fighting to stay out of trouble, but we were the enforcers.

Adam bared his teeth. “Who are you people?”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

Carter and I exchanged looks and moved in tandem. He kicked Adam’s legs out from under him as I lunged. The Alastyn hit the ground; I landed on his chest. I pushed the blade against the side of his throat.

“Ahhh …” The aspirated hiss of pain hung suspended, as if Adam were afraid to close his lips.

“Nice work,” Marcus said. “Finish it.”

Adam made a sound of disbelief. “If you know what I am, you know what kind of allies I have.”

“You want to give us names?” I said. “We’ll be happy to take care of them, too. Otherwise – shut up.”

He sank against the sand, but the smirk flitted back. “You should have her name it Dalia.”

I stiffened and – before I could catch myself up in questions – drove the blade home.

“What was that about?” Carter asked.

“Nothing,” I said, rolling off the body. I left the knife in place. We would bury him like that, with the remains of his victims.

Thursday Thoughts

I took about a two week break from my weekly feature(s) (assuming my recent Sunday addition counts) (oh, how I love parantheses (no, I'm not done yet)), unannounced and unplanned, but now I'm back.

The good news is I wrote more this week and am starting to retrench. The bad news is ... these words were in a short story for an anthology that has a 5k ceiling, and I am already about three hundred words over and not near done yet, though the end is in sight. I'll see how much I can cut, but I'm not willing to warp the story to shorten it. It's a winter-holiday theme charity anthology, so I'd love to get the story into the word count and done ... we'll see.

The entertaining thing that's been happening as I work on character profiles for the mystery novel is I've discovered personalities, motives, and new suspects whom I didn't anticipate. I've also uncovered new aspects of my world. I may never use some of what I've written down, but it has gotten the gears turning. At this point, I'm almost wondering if I should just backburner this when done, finish my novel(s) editing, and begin for Nanowrimo. I no longer participate on the forums, but the sense that so many people are in the same boat is still encouraging.

8/4 - 8/10

Word count: 1,536

Thursday Thoughts

Editing on Scylla and Charybdis has me a mite discouraged. I'm adding so much emotional content that I never realized was lacking - which not only is pumping an already unacceptable word count, it's making me worry about my original writing process.

I'm at about the midpoint of the novel, which features one of Anaea's lowest points. She's sacrificed herself for a friend - I won't get into any more detail than that - and when an opportunity to escape comes up, she can't (ethically) take it.

I do realize that, in part, my take on character emotion is influenced by Ann Hood's Creating Character Emotions, which (among other points) emphasizes two things: showing the emotional reaction / feeling rather than telling it (showing the way the fear makes the character feel rather than labeling it fear) and avoiding the obvious cliches on how emotion makes people react. So I also do worry, as I add bits, that the reactions are too subtle / oblique ... but for me, I would rather err on the side of obscurity rather than hammering a reader.

As a sidebar - only a few more days to buy Taming The Weald from Gypsy Shadow Publishing and get two free harp tracks!

7/21 - 7/27

Word count: 783

Sunday Snippet

Since Fatecraft is now available at Darwin's Evolutions, and Loyal Dice is due out soon, I thought I would put up an excerpt from the next story in this series. It hasn't had its final edit before submission yet (much less an editor's eye), so please forgive a little roughness, but here Pazia and Vanchen have come into the hospitality of a forest race known as the Kivesh. (Iphiri, for the record, is a goddess of chance.)

Pazia awoke before her companion and crept into the shrine chamber. Her arm was still sore, but she could move it without wincing. Hafsha knelt, turning lengths of bone over in her hands. The daserii hung back, recognizing the ritual casting of morning lots.

Hafsha’s nostrils flared; she looked up. “Pazia. Please sit with me?”

“I don’t want to interrupt …”

“You are known to Iphiri. You are welcome here.”

Pazia knelt opposite the Kivesh, hands on her knees. “Thank you.” She ventured a question, “The people who brought us here yesterday seemed nervous. Is there something out there?”

“The forest is angry with us,” the priestess replied. “It has been this way for some months. Best to tread lightly.”

“Are you seeking guidance for that?”

“It -” Hafsha faltered. “Among other things.“ She changed the subject. “Do you know the language of the bones?”

“Somewhat – but not well,” she admitted. “I know a bit about every game of chance, but I’m more familiar with seer dice.”

Hafsha seemed to relax at this admission. “Close your eyes, then, so they might fall as they will.”

Pazia did so, waiting. The tink against stone echoed in her head. She squinted open one eye to see Hafsha pass her hand over the bones.

“You may look,” the priestess allowed.

Pazia complied. “What do they mean?”

“They mean …” Her lips rippled, not exactly pursing. “That good fortune has come to us as a gift from the gods, without expectation of return.”

Pazia had seen, in the second before the bones were covered, two crossed bones that indicated a trial or test. Hafsha was not being totally honest about the results. Had she and Vanchen walked from one danger into another?

Thursday Thoughts

More editing done on Scylla and Charybdis - well, that's been the case pretty much every week, but this week I banged through a scene I keep dithering about removing. It's a word-game tournament, which Anaea enters on a whim, and which has unexpected consequences in the following chapter ... but a whole chapter of this, even though I keep trimming the events, still seems excessive.

As for mystery project, I've just encountered the reason why I had pondered waiting until later in my character-building to do my main characters: my entries get longer by bits and bobs as I go on. The entry for the prince - who is a semi-major character - is about as long as the entry for the apprentice, who is the main character's sidekick (more or less ...). I don't know whether it's momentum or shifting moods as I work.

I put this question up on my writerly Facebook, and I'll repeat it here. For those of you who read mysteries, a quick poll. Which do you prefer:

1. Books where the murder happens in the first pages (if not on the first page) and the murder is the immediate focus.

2. Books where the murder happens later on (but still early), giving the reader time to identify with the victim, while some connected plot thread provides the tension.

Or ... it doesn't matter as long as it's good. ;-)

I've already decided which way I'm taking my project - just curious.

7/14 - 7/20
Word count: 873 (oy ... ouch)

Sunday Snippet

Since I've been talking about Flow a fair bit lately, here's the opening of another short story in the same setting:

Crouched over his laptop in a dank SleepRite motel somewhere southwest of Cleveland, Mannix Tippet waited for the werewolf to call.

The beast was not expecting Mannix to answer. The room three doors down was temporary residence of the water-witch Tala Blight, who had offered him sanctuary and a cure - as if that could absolve him of the blood he had shed. It had been simplicity to tap the hotel phone system. When the beast called Tala's room to confirm where they would meet tonight, he would not reach her.

Mannix shifted on the bed, starting a minor fugue in the springs, and pulled up his file on Blight. There before him, all the electronic details of her life: her saving habits to her tastes in fiction to how many times she had purchased lavish presents for friends who never reciprocated. Something more precise and useful than magic. Witches relied on it too much; she didn't even own a cellphone.

He knew, without asking questions, that he would kill her. His malice was not for her personally, but it was also immutable. His superiors in the Borderwatch had told him there was informal peace and the supernatural threats both organizations had to face were more important than any difference in methods. The word 'peace' was hollow when a good man like his cousin died on a mission - and the unidentified witch who guided him emerged without a mark on her.

His cousin had drowned.

Mannix had read the official report, which claimed it had been an accident. That meant nothing when a few bytes could erase any truth.

"Take the beast," were his official orders from the Borderwatch. "Use her to find him if you have to, but make sure you can deny it."

Thursday Thoughts

So much work, so little time! I'm currently trying to finish a story for an anthology call at the end of the month, and I realize that at some point, I am probably going to have to put everything else down and cram it if I want to finish and do any editing. As I have previously stated (somewhat tongue in cheek), it would probably be technically cleaner if I didn't have time to edit - but that's the only part of the story that might be better for not being touched. But in part due to a crazy-busy schedule, in part due to four major house issues I've had to wrestle, and in part due to the gaming (I admit it!), my progress for the past few weeks has slowed to a crawl.

Also working on character profiles for my mystery story and ran into a very silly problem. I had initially drawn up the suspects list with the victim's sister as one of the suspects - an issue of greed, as she would become the guardian of the victim's son. Then, when I sat down to write this character, this intense, perfect background wove its way out of me ... and the character was both an orphan and single. Whoops.

I thought about this long and hard, and decided to ditch the sister line. I have enough different motives and characters not to need greed, and the "new" background better fits the victim's style.

7/7 - 7/13

Word Count: 727

GoodReads Review: The Leper of Saint Giles

Leper of Saint Giles by Ellis Peters

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In this fifth novel of worldly monk and self-appointed detective Cadfael, the tension of the book hinges first upon a bleak arranged marriage and the young man who is in love with the bride. Murder, when it occurs, adds a new dimension to an already intriguing storyline. There is a rhythm, a pattern and poetry to Ellis Peters' novels, and if that makes certain aspects of the story predictable, the tradeoff is the experience of the book.

Peters is as devoted - if not more - to showing the positive, luminous side of humanity, kind deeds both large and small, and her books brim with people who rise above the gravity of the crime. For me, personally, I sometimes find her take on pure young love to be repetitive, and I'd love to see darker romances ... but the characters in these books are always skillfully drawn and entertaining.

The writing style is poetic and leisurely, prone to details and a certain delicacy in description. It's not for those who prefer a swift, action-packed pace, but is ideal for slow immersion.

One of the best features of this series is that both the broader history - the tumult occurring in England between Empress Maud and King Stephen - and the personal history of Cadfael continue to evolve and change, not in earthshattering ways, but in subtle, organic steps. Shrewsbury can be relied upon both for its stability and for its forward momentum. However, a reader can pick up any of the books and generally feel neither lost nor as if something has been spoiled, should they go back and read an earlier volume.

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Fatecraft out! (Again ;-))

I always forget that Darwin's Evolutions seems to do releases right around midnight ... so here's Fatecraft! Meet Pazia and poor, put-upon Vanchen over at:

Fatecraft

Sunday Snippet

Here's a quick piece from a short story I'm working on in the Flow universe. Irena has gotten curious about her new neighbor and gone digging about in the boxes in her garage:


Her fingers scrabbled at a cardboard flap, pulled it free. The scent of mothballs and something else, a little cloying – familiar, but out of context. It was full of snow globes; even the little tap she had given the box caused endless blizzards within. She scooped one out of the box. Instead of the expected scene – a cute snowman or a foreign landmark – there was a little cornhusk doll …

“What are you doing?”

Irena yelped and dropped the globe. It pinged off the concrete. She whirled to face her accuser, feeling the flush burn her cheeks. Moira Alban was a tall woman somewhere in the infinite expanse of middle age with auburn hair and eyes the color of a storm.

“Well, if it isn’t the girl who stole the kiwi,” she continued.

“I did not,” Irena said by reflex, then bent for the snow-globe. “I was just curious …”

She hadn’t seen the globe roll, but somehow, it was at Moira’s feet and the woman cradled it like something infinitely precious. “Do you understand the hazards of curiosity?”

In the chill and the dark of the garage, the words seemed menacing. Irena drew back, her heart pounding with a rabbit’s fear – even though she could easily have dodged past Moira, even though hers was the next driveway over and kids shouted at each other in the yard across the street. The rescue of that scene seemed impossibly far away.

“Killed the cat,” Irena said bluntly, and wished she hadn’t. Her skin prickled, even as her mind shouted at her that it was ridiculous. Neighbors didn’t attack each other for picking through boxes, and the garage door had been open. Surely that was an invitation. And how would Moira hurt her, besides?

Just by looking at her, she somehow knew.

Then Moira laughed, a full, rich sound animating the air. The menace evaporated. “Not the most original answer, but it will do. Since you’ve meddled with my boxes, you can help me carry them inside. Come, child.”

Thursday Thoughts

Over the past few weeks, I've been sucked back into online gaming, which means less writing. It's a vice of mine to which I freely confess - but I also believe it to be valuable as writing practice, as it were, and is especially helpful in the area of clarity. If what you've typed out for your character to do / say doesn't make sense, you find out immediately. Cue conversations that involve characters yelping, "Ack, no - not what I meant!" or OOC (Out Of Character) conferences to straighten things out.

As someone who also GMs - that's GameMaster, for those unfamiliar, and yes, it can be a verb ;-) - it also helps on the plotting side. My experience has been that other players routinely come up with courses of investigation or action that I would never have even thought up if I had been writing a tale out on my own. So I have to rewind, sidestep and work out new responses.

So I'm indulging myself in these dangerous waters for now, with an eye on how much time it takes away from my projects. I'm also reading - Ellis Peters, which means that I tend to describe my life thusly: "Brother Cadfael and I are going to get my car's oil changed." "Brother Cadfael and I have a dentist's appointment."

6/30 - 7/6
Word count: 854 (yes, really ... sigh)

Sunday Snippet

More Scylla and Charybdis from a few chapters later. Aboard the cargo spaceship known as the Bleak, she makes the acquaintance of Tobias Risingsun Mortimer, or Flick:



They ate a second meal together and Flick talked about some of his experiences in Defiance, his inventions, his grandmother – who, by process of deduction, seemed to be the only family he had. Anaea pieced together what a Tweaker was: a salvage expert who could give anything that might otherwise have been thrown away a new form and purpose … and an inventor without government sanction or funding. A unique product of the Pinnacle Empire.

She found that by phrasing her questions in an open-ended manner, she could keep Flick talking while sharing little in return. His cheerful spates of information sputtered out occasionally into jokes or questions – but he seemed more interested in what she thought of the crew or hypermentals or philosophical oddities than personal details.

“I mean, supposing they give every child an aptitude test,” he said. “Whatever they turn out to be good at, that’s what they do in life. It’d be efficient, right?”

“How could you possibly design a test that would cover all variables?” Anaea asked.

He crinkled his nose. “Neural mapping on a particular field of tests could account for that – but you’re avoiding the point. Would it be good for people?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m not an expert -”

“You don’t have to be an expert!” he burst out, gesturing wildly with his fork. “You just have to be human. You just have to have a heart in things.”

She wondered what he would think of the way she had left her home. “I suppose just as a thought exercise -”

The ship shuddered. Anaea’s plate slid out of her grasp and clattered on the floor. An animal bellowed.

An unfamiliar voice came through the overhead. “Captain of the Bleak, you have twenty seconds to surrender. Passengers of the Bleak, the warning shot you have experienced represents only a fraction of our firepower, and your only chance is to prevail upon its commander not to test it.”

The voice faded out, and was replaced by the tail end of creative cursing from the Bleak’s captain. “… frighten the passengers into mutiny, of all the low things -”

“You’re on broadcast,” someone else said.

Anaea rose in a flurry, then stopped, the blood humming in her ears. Pragmatism pulled her panic into stillness. Where would she go? She looked to Flick for some reaction, hoping to see him calm, even bored, but he sat shaking his head like a furry dog.

“Oh, no, no,” he said, “I put most of my take into hard barter -” He seemed to realize only then he was speaking out loud and pressed his lips together into a frustrated line.

“Everyone remain calm,” the captain’s voice continued. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with. The Bleak has outgun and outrun every decent pirate in the sector.”

“What about the indecent ones?” Flick said in a sotto voce. The other two passengers in the mess glared.

The deck pitched. The furniture was secure; nothing else was. Anaea tumbled, landing elbow-first in a corner with the remnants of two or three lunches. Voices yowled – animal or human, it was impossible to tell. Her arm throbbed.

Flick grabbed her wrist before she could stand. “Should’ve known a berth like this wouldn’t have the high-grade inertial dampeners,” he said. “Stay down. Crawl along the fixtures. Though really, where are you going? It’s raining food, what more could you ask for?”

She recognized his manic cheer for worry and swallowed.

"Wet and Wild" Giveaway for July!

To celebrate the acceptance of my contemporary fantasy novel, "Flow," for publication by Double Dragon, I've decided to have "Wet and Wild" Giveaway for the whole month of July. Here are the details:


1. Purchase my novelette (that's a long short, for the uninitiated) "Taming The Weald" from Gypsy Shadow Publishing sometime during the month of July. Make sure you purchase it directly from GSP - the editors have graciously offered to send me the email addresses of those who do, but I won't have a record if you purchase it elsewhere! It can be found under their Moonbeams line, or here: Taming The Weald. That's the Wild portion ...


2. Sit back, relax, and you will receive two tracks from my studio-produced Celtic harp CD, "Rolling of the Stone." The tracks in question are: "Fingal's Cave / The North Brig of Edinburgh" - that's bridge to you non-Scots - and "Banks of the Spey / Tommy's Tarbukas." That's the Wet portion: two water-themed tunes and their medleyed companions.


Please feel free to pass this along to anyone who might be interested!

Thursday Thoughts

Finished my time mage story a few days ago, which I wasn't entirely sure I was going to have completed before the end of the month ... maybe a bit of time magic leached out of the story into my fingers.

I just did an edit with Darwin Garrison for the reprint of "Fatecraft" (forthcoming soon) and was very surprised by several things when rereading the story. First of all, just how hyper Pazia is - she has a lot of energy and determination. Second of all, there's this reference to clockwork ruins throughout the world that just begs exploration - and I had totally forgotten about this.

Third of all, two moons. Two, Lindsey. Gosh, I hope I haven't contradicted that in "Natural Selection" or "The City of Lanterns."

I find this issue with short stories: since I don't do worldbuilding or take notes, all these aspects are found only in the stories themselves, which means rereading or skimming to recover key details. It may be part of the reason why I don't do many series stories.

In this instance, what I found throws a wrinkle into the idea of a novel in this setting. I had been thinking of a mystery, closely involving Kalliniar (the light-mage from "The City of Lanterns") - but those ruins, they beckon. The two concepts seem contradictory, so which way I'd jump is now a mystery. No pun intended.

6/23 - 6/29

Word count: 2,621

GoodReads Review: Familiars

Familiars by Denise Little

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This anthology offers stories about the mage's faithful companion, the familiar, and promises to depart from the usual cliches with new and different interpretations. Unfortunately, it fails on this account. Most of the stories do involve cats or dogs - which seems to be to be the obvious anti-cliche of the familiar world - and the familiars generally play an expected role in the story. (There is one tale where the familiar is particularly clever, which I won't identify because it spoils the ending ... but it's the only story where I felt the familiar was an intriguing, different sort of beast.)

I initially was going to give this anthology three stars, because most of the stories are passable and entertaining enough, and a couple shine: the riotous (if somewhat loosely plotted) "First Familiars," by Laura Resnick, which manages to take on the Clinton's pets and still marvelously avoids partisan commentary; and "This Dog Watched," by Von Jocks, where magic, love and the power of words blend together into a poetry of their own. However, many of the stories seemed uneven, bland or incomplete, and the final story is a bewildering eighty-nine page epic where I still couldn't tell you exactly what happened and why.

I also found the description of this anthology somewhat misleading, because a large majority of the stories are contemporary, with only a few set in secondary worlds. With so many options for familiars in different societies, I was a bit disappointed by this. Not that I mind modern stories, but I feel the description of an anthology should be more upfront about the contents.

In the end, most of the stories were a decent read, but predictable or forgettable.

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Big to Little or Vice Versa?

I've reached the point in fantasy / mystery novel work where I'm starting on character profiles, and I wondered ... for those of you who do work in advance, whether writing descriptions, doing mock-interviews, or whatever it is you do to get a handle on your characters - do you usually start with the main character and work your way down to minor members of the cast, or do you start with fringe characters to get a feel for things and work your way up?

Sunday Snippets

Here's a bit from my science fiction novel-in-editing, Scylla and Charybdis, where I ponder a possible future of books:

The library was an austere rose-marble building with a dome ceiling and two abstract figure sculptures for front pillars. Pulses of light passed through their glass limbs, mimicking features. Inside, two doors led into massive chambers on either side, but Anaea’s attention was drawn to the central dome and the encased pillar there.

“Central terminal,” Gwydion explained. “More comprehensive and faster than using the link.” The other rooms were for group holographs, school programs and tours. Past the terminal was a series of isolation doors.

Anaea pressed herself up against the isolation doors with a little cry of astonishment. In that sealed, regulated environment stood shelves upon shelves of real books: massive hardbounds, some with plastic, others velvet or vineskin, paperbacks staggering in untidy lines, and everything in between.

Labels on the shelves divided them by subject and origin. She could see two sections that dated to before landfall on Elysium.

“Oh,” she said, warmed by some ancestral feeling of ownership. Her hand uncurled against the glass.

“I feel the same way,” he said. “It’s silly, I know, old-fashioned – but something about the fact they don’t change, that every word is permanent, speaks to me.”

“I like that they’re not dependent on anything else,” Anaea said. “A world to themselves.” Like home, she thought, and felt a twinge of regret.

To assuage that sickness, she pondered the idea of working here, the meticulous attention to detail and the constant guard against decay. New books must be printed occasionally for collectors or historians, but the originals were priceless. There was charm in the idea, but that might be the novelty.

Gwydion had moved away, speaking in soft tones to his link. He smiled ruefully when she turned to face him. “The officer I report to wants to speak with me,” he said. “I think it would be better if he didn’t meet you just yet. Will you -”

“I don’t need to be chaperoned,” she assured him. “I can find my way back.”

He slipped out. Apart from a few voices in one viewing room, she seemed to be alone. She studied the labels on the bookshelves, noticing the preponderance of fiction. The soft light blurred too much detail to read more than a few of the covers.

The directions next to the door sternly admonished that visitors must be accompanied, clean, free of food, beverage and disease, and that the decontamination protocols took two minutes during which it was crucial the visitor remain still. The implied castigation turned her elsewhere.