Author Jo Walton has a good review of C.J. Cherryh's AU martial arts novel The Paladin (on TOR.com).

Thanks to the associates at Shejidan for pointing this out.

Martha Wells has just posted a new short story to her site:

"Holy Places ... [I]t's a prequel story to the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy. In chronological order, it's the first Giliead and Ilias story, and is about how they met as children, and the first time Ilias sees the god of Cineth."

Hamza Senesert was once a contender, a creative grad student with a talent for writing. Now he washes dishes in a trendy "fun" restaurant. His best friend Yehat Gerbles is in a similar state of career petrification: he works as a clerk in a video store, even though he's a (mostly) self-taught engineering wizard. Together, they share a house in a vibrant multi-ethinic neighborhood of Edmonton (Canada) called Kush, where they are the Coyote Kings, well-liked operators of a camp/afterschool activity center for the neighborhood kids and connoisseurs of science fiction, comics, and role-playing games.

Their weirdly pleasant world (weirdly, considering their job situations and Hamza's writer's block and broken heart) becomes a lot more weird and much, much less pleasant when Hamza meets and falls for a truly impressive woman of mystery named Sherem. All at once, these endearingly geeky lifelong buddies are mixed up with comic book-type villains who are all too real and deadly, strangely seductive drugs, and bizarrely horrific cults.

I really enjoyed this book, which plays right into my love of buddy stories and generalized geekdom. I will note that Faust is in love with language, and writes like it: this is in no way a straightforward narrative (indeed, it begins with an epilogue). It also includes several very gruesome, violent scenes, and Sherem is the only female character with more than a walk-on part.

I'm honored but puzzled to discover that I am Ursula LeGuin.

You too can discover which fantasy author you are ... .

(I could have given more romantic, less cynical answers on some of those questions if the romantic choices hadn't been so completely extreme!)

Other people may know all this already ... but I discovered PCH's newish web site today, and on it she says (emphasis mine):

"... Baen has picked up the series in e-edition and now in print. I’ve just received contracts for the sequel to Rathorn, the manuscript being due early in 2009, and for the reissue of the earlier novels."

Also, she has her own LJ!

On a holy mountain in the center of the Twelve Kingdoms, a fantastical creature - a chimera by definition, but called a lamia in the story - is born for the express purpose of nurturing the next-born kirin, one of the sacred beings who are the only ones who can make a king. She is given the name Sansi and settles down to wait for the lodestar of her life - whom she already calls by his formal name, Taiki - to finish gestation and be born. But a magical storm of great force blows across the mountain, and the embryonic kirin ends up in our world, in the womb of a normal human woman. Sansi is left bereft for 10 years.

Taiki is born a human child, into a troubled family that doesn't understand him. As we meet him, he's undergoing a punishment of being forced to stand outside without a coat, in the falling snow. It's not too surprising that when he suddenly sees something strange in the narrow space between the house and the shed - a human arm and hand, protruding from a space too small for such a limb to fit - he goes to investigate. And finds himself pulled into another world.

This story is a journey mainly of the mind and the heart - although we also learn a great deal of the mythology and ways of the Twelve Kingdoms. Taiki, raised to think of himself as human being who seemed to lack most of the attributes his family desired, is suddenly pampered and cherished - and charged with the destiny of entire kingdom. Will he ever be able to tap into the powers that a kirin rightfully born into its animal form knows how to use instinctively? And how can he possibly make a wise choice among the supplicants who seek the throne of the Kingdom of Tai? Sansi, born to essentially serve as his mother, is similarly left adrift by the arrival of her 10-year-old charge, whom she never got to nurse as a infant kirin (are they called fawns? - or kids, maybe?) and whom she cannot teach what he needs to know.

Despite the weirdness of the Twelve Kingdoms cosmology and biology - the way that both children and young animals are born still flips me out - I was touched by both Sansi's and Taiki's situations. When Taiki makes his choice - and nearly drives himself mad with doubts over it - it was all too easy to identify with his pain and bewilderment. The resolution of the situation is emotionally satisfying and involves some of my favorite characters from volume 1.

(Yay! I has Intarwebs again!)

Teenaged Yoko Nakajima seems to have a pretty normal life. She does well but not outstandingly at her all-girls' school, allows her friends to copy her homework when they need it, and lives a comfortable life with her parents. However, "seems" is the operative word. She's smart enough that she should be attending a better school - but her father forbids it. Her "friends" only like her because she's biddable and helps them. Her father only wants to make sure that she never shames him or draws attention to herself. Her mother loves her but won't buck her father's wishes. And her teachers are convinced that she's a troublemaker - despite her immaculate behavior and good grades - because of her flaming red hair, which they're convinced she dyes.

Recently Yoko's sleep has been haunted by terrifying nightmares in which she's being stalked by horrible monsters. Every night, they get closer. She's losing sleep, her grades are suffering, and her teachers decide she's been staying out late clubbing. After she's humiliated for falling asleep in class and has to stay after school to talk with her teachers, Yoko's convinced that life can't get much worse.

Then a golden-haired man interrupts her student-teacher conference, warning of impending doom and demanding a pledge from her. Almost immediately thereafter, all the windows in the room blow out, and the monsters from Yoko's nightmares show up on the roof of the school. In short order, Yoko finds herself in another world - the Twelve Kingdoms - where her home is only a myth, and she is pursued across days and nights by more monsters and demons. Her only salvation is the sword the golden-haired man has given her and the creature that he causes to possess her body so that she can use the weapon. She faces betrayal after betrayal, escape after narrow escape, all sorts of physical and emotional privation, and finally comes face to face with the destiny for which she was born.

I found this a hard book to like, but it's grown on me after a second reading. The lands of the Twelve Kingdoms are governed by a set of fascinating rules, some of which make mythological sense and some of which are utter crack (wait until you find out where babies come from!), but it's all handled with a passionate sincerity that carries you along - if you let it.

In the darkest depths of the Middle Ages - ca. 950 C.E. - two extremely unlike adversaries clash violently in a caravansery. One is a skeletally gangly Western European, young, blond, and glum; the other is a sturdily built African, middle-aged, very dark, and worldly wise. In the aftermath of this confrontation, the two companions - for that is what they are - gain a potentially lucrative commission: deliver the heir of a disputed kingdom to his sorrowing family. But the youth in question has no intention of cooperating, and assassins paid by the winning side of this monarchial dispute are on his trail. Soon gloomy Zelikman and sardonic Amram are neck-deep in the politics of Khazaria, the mysterious Black Sea kingdom whose ruler converted all his people to Judaism with the aim of avoiding political entanglements with the Christians of Europe on one side and the emerging Islamic empire on the other.

Your mileage may vary on this book. A good deal of it is not terribly original, and the prose can wax extremely purple. Almost all the characters are male. Grisly things happen. And the ending is not very satisfying.

I loved it anyway. Reading it reminded me of my teen enjoyment of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. I seemed to slip into the overwrought prose and manly camaraderie as though it were a well-broken-in pair of shoes: it was comfy, and it took me where I wanted to go. I mentioned this to my friend Kat, and she shrugged and said "Sometimes, familiarity breeds contentment."

One last factor in its favor (for me, anyway): in the afterword, which I also enjoyed, Chabon revealed that his own working title for this was "Jews with Swords" - for reasons that will become obvious by the end of the first chapter. Dude! I mean - Jews! With swords!

•  sovay mentions this book briefly

These are mostly for smillaraaq. Somewhere deep in the guts of the Meta Thread from Heck (f-locked, I am afraid), which started out innocently as a notice of a fic posting on my other account and now exceeds 300 posts, she mentioned that she had not read much (or did not recall much) Cherryh, and as CJC is about my favorite SF writer, I felt this needed to be remedied. And when I said so, she said she'd also appreciate recs for DWJ - who is one of my favorite fantasy authors. So, without further ado ... .

Wow, yesterday was a good day for people on the f-list talking about things I like to read. There was that whole discussion of Samurai Deeper Kyo, and then vierran45 was talking about P.C. Hodgell's vastly under-read and under-rated Kencyr series, a/k/a the Chronicles of the Kencyrath (roll on past the first couple of paragraphs of her reading report). When I think of all the crap derivative fantasy fiction that's out there, and then about how few people have even heard of Hodgell, I want to tear my hair out!

Anyway, check out what vierran45 has to say - she's summed up the series pretty well. They are hard to obtain (out of print), but well worth the trouble.

Our own bren-cameron has an intriguing story published in the online journal Helix! Go read it - I think it has a vibe that will appeal to a number of us. Let's just say that when you bargain with the gods, you'd better bargain well ... .

This story takes place in the sprawling, dirty, steam-powered city of New Corbuzon, only some of whose inhabitants are human. Isaac Den der Grimnebulin is one, a freelance scholar and scientist. His lover, Lin. is a talented sculptor and a kephri, a beetle-headed alien humanoid. One fateful day, they both undertake new commissions. During the course of his, Isaac will inadvertently release a terrible, inconceivable danger into the city, putting potentially all of its population at risk, and directly threatening Lin, whose ruthless employer misinterprets Isaac's actions as a direct threat to his own empire. Isaac assembles a ragtag band who engage in a number of remarkable escapades to stop the growing catastrophe that he started.

Mieville can definitely write. Not all of the society that he has invented makes sense, however, and the whole thing hangs together mainly because of the dramatic momentum of the story. He tosses elements together the way that I have done myself when creating roleplaying scenarios, evidently thinking "Wow, what a cool idea!" and chucking it into the mix. When things were clicking, I found myself thinking of Cordwainer Smith's "Instrumentality of Mankind" stories - "The Ballad of Lost C'mell," "A Planet called Shayol," the novel Norstrilia, and others. But Smith had a deep love of both animal and humankind, and a basically optimistic outlook. Mieville seems to me to be much more negative, and pretty disgusted with much of humanity.

Finally, Mieville's basically a horror writer. He dwells lovingly on every scene of pain, terror, and torment that occurs during the course of this story - and there are plenty of them. I don't read horror fiction. Real life is bad enough. I don't know that I will ever re-read this book, and I don't know that I will ever read any more of Mieville's adult fiction. His children's book Un-Lun-Dun has received some stellar reviews, and I may give it a shot, simply because I seriously doubt he'd subject younger readers to the kind of thing that upset me about this book.

I usually don't like to give an opinion until I've read something through twice, but I want to get at least first impressions up before I start talking about this with anyone. And I mean anyone: I finished 10 minutes ago, the Young Lady is at tech camp, and the Mr. is working late.

Well, when she concentrates on action, Ms. Rowling can write a ripping good yarn. And as a Mom, I really have to approve, most strongly, of one particular action scene. The emotional bits are far less successful. And the ending, although satisfying on one level, definitely proves that she's no J.R.R. Tolkien.

There are some fascinating magical ideas in this volume, though. I look forward to savoring these, and some of the action scenes, when I go back through this more slowly.

I was reading these between manga series, and I have to say I was underwhelmed. This isn't the Garth Nix of Sabriel, Lyriel, and Abhorsen ... we're back to the Garth Nix of   >sigh<   The Ragwitch.

Asthmatic Arthur Penhaligon is a young teenager in what seems to be a near-future Britain, which is a more totalitiarian place than it is today. He's destined to die because of complications from his illness, but instead becomes involved with a mysterious artifact that turns out to be a Key. He has, in fact, become part of a Collect-the-Coupons quest, to use the terminology of Nick Lowe's essay in Ansible.

Apologies if this is old news already for some. I first read this on the Diana Wynne Jones mailing list yesterday, but I only just found a mainstream news link:

from the San Jose Mercury News

Vale, bard of Prydain ... .

(ETFix typo in headline ... how embarrassing!)

Waiting for P.C. Hodgell's next book in the Chronicles of the Kencyrath has been a constant feature of my adult life. Hodgell has had singularly bad luck with publishers: they die out from under her regularly. Add to that the demands of an academic career, and you've got the recipe for a very slow rate of book production. I'm hoping now that she's retired and can spend more time writing, there may actually be some chance of seeing the proper ending of the adventures of Jamethiel before I die.

For me, it's always been worth the wait. I love Hodgell's writing voice: wry, mordant, dark, a bit twisted, and yet guardedly optimistic about humanity. Jame spends a good deal of her time thinking that she's damned, and the mistakes she makes and the devastation she causes tempt us to believe her. Yet at heart she's a fiercely loyal friend, partial to small children (and their ghosts) and cuddly animals (and non-cuddly ones too: in this book she befriends a poisonous snake and a carnivorous armor-plated unicorn), and with an extremely strict sense of honor.

If you haven't read any of these books, this is a terrible place to start: published last summer, it's volume 4 of the series (the first book is Godstalk - also available in a single volume with book 2, as Dark of the Gods). If you have read the earlier books but had given up, rejoice: Jame is starting a term in the Kencyrath's military academy, and you can bet that this august institution will never be quite the same ...

Tanith Lee is an old, old favorite of mine. Sometimes I'm just in the mood for her particular blend of purple prose, fantasy, horror, dark humor, and touches of kink. And I'm not generally a fan of short stories, but this small collection is one to which I return again every year or two. Are these stories fair and worthwhile in their portrayals of the people of India? I don't know: all I can say is that there are both good people and bad in here, and they're well distributed among the nationalities mentioned.

The stories range from the horrific mystery "Bright Burning Tiger" through the sweetly whimsical short fantasy "Chand Veda" to the futuristic title story, in which science and religion intersect. Here's a quick rundown of all seven, with comments.

I know, I know - I promised a write-up of Saiyuki Reload 7. The book has gone missing in one of several Sargassos of reading material around the house, and I want to have it in hand while I blog ...   :-(

With a new book, I tend to read and then re-read, immediately. Wintersmith improved with the second reading. I had wanted to dismiss it as another pale imitation of the first Tiffany Aching book, the wonderful Wee Free Men ("Ach, crivens!"), but on the re-read, it revealed its own rewards. It's better than A Hat Full of Sky (the first sequel), IMO.

Tiffany is now 13, and has started yet another apprenticeship with yet another eccentric witch. At the end of one extremely hectic day with her new mistress, she makes the mistake of actively participating in a ritual that she was meant only to observe. The result is another of Pratchett's explorations of the nature of the divine, and what happens when it comes into contact with the mudane and the mortal. And Tiffany remains Tiffany throughout and at the end, which is not a trivial consideration.

Dear Wintersmith: The snowfall Saturday was very pretty, but don't you think enough is enough? Yrs respectfully, Cho.

I promised myself that this time, I would go through Rats and Gargoyles at a leisurely pace and figure out exactly what happened. I failed once again: the book is too giddily chockful of enjoyable little vignettes and nuggets of description for me to take at a walk.

A world somewhat like our own is ruled over by living, corporeal, capricious gods, known as the Decans, who are served by ferocious winged demons known as Acolytes. Below them in the hierarchy, but above the humans (and humanoids - at least one other race is mentioned), are human-sized intelligent Rats. There are impressive magical powers based on Masonic principles, a University of Crime, an Invisible College, Human revolutionaries, Rat clerics, builders' apprentices in silk coveralls, ancient snake gods deep underground, tarot cards, five cardinal directions instead of four, a death cycle (like a life cycle, only the other way around), and more politics than you can shake a stick at - and somewhere in there, I think there may actually be a plot.

(Only your friends steal your books. This one was missing from our collection for almost a decade, so I finally broke down and bought another copy.)

The Game began promisingly, introducing a young orphan named Hayley Foss who has recently left her grandparents' quiet home to join a boisterous gathering of cousins she has never met. As the story explored Hayley's strange home life and her interactions with the cousins, hints of otherwordliness gave way to full-blown fantasy, comfortingly reminscent of Diana Wynne Jones's earlier books. I quickly became engrossed and was thoroughly enjoying myself - until the story slammed shut abruptly, leaving me surprised and annoyed.

This is only half of a DWJ book. No, it doesn't end in the middle. Instead the first three-eighths are grafted directly onto the final eighth. I can't say it's not worth reading, but I was disappointed.