253. Kristi Charish (a.k.a. Indiana Jane) — Owl and the Japanese Circus (An Interview)
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode253KristiCharish/Sandf–Episode253–KristiCharish.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSKickass archaeologists, vampire cats, and dragons, oh my! What do vampire-sniffing cats, Las Vegas dragons, and ancient artifacts have to do with one another? Kristi Charish, author of Owl and the Japanese Circus, joins us to discuss just that. We cover her academic past, archaeology weirdness, cats, writing urban fantasy, science, and much more! We hope you enjoy the episode! Note: If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 253 — Download (MP3) Show Notes:. Kristi’s Website Kristi’s Twitter Owl and the Japanese Circus (Simon and Schuster; Gallery Books) Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks! Thanks for listening. See you next week.
Book Review: The Very Best of Kate Elliott
Fans of Kate Elliott will have a good idea what to expect from Tachyon Press’ The Very Best of Kate Elliott, a 2015 collection of twelve short stories, some set in the numerous worlds she has invented over the last two decades, as well as four essays. In these richly imagined worlds, intimate scenes take place among friends, lovers, mentors, and families — and the prominent characters are always women. In these stories, a young woman rides to escape an arranged marriage, a widow travels to save her village, and a woman fights to defend her honor. In her introduction, Kate Elliott discusses the landscape of the fantasy and science fiction worlds she fell in love with, grand stories focused almost exclusively on men. Comparing the river of stories to the river of her home, Elliott writes that “Narrative gets engineered until we start to believe it has always run this way.” Again and again in The Very Best of Kate Elliott, stories full of women show other ways for the narrative to flow. The plot of “Riding the Shore of The River of Death” is almost immediately recognizable as a straightforward fantasy story: a group of young warriors on a hunt to prove their manhood encounter an obstacle and then a powerful sorcerer. Their companions follow and there is a confrontation among a circle of standing stones. At the end, the protagonist must make a choice. Almost a straightforward story, except that one of the hunters, and the sorcerer, are both women. The companions who follow include the hunter’s betrothed, a mighty hero who will nevertheless trap her in a life she does not want. With this story, Elliott adds to and reclaims the simple heroic fantasy so many of us grew up with.
Short and Sublime: Dream Houses by Genevieve Valentine
Genevieve Valentine’s Dream Houses, a suspenseful but thoughtful 2014 novella from WSFA Press & Wyrm Press, opens with protagonist Amadis awakening early from hibernation on the junky spaceship she’s a low-ranking crew member for — and the rest of the crew are dead in their hibernation pods. This makes her the de facto captain with no one for company except the ship’s creepy A.I. on a six year trip with no real communication options and not enough food. The narrative dips back and forth in time over the course of Amadis’ journey, and the reader gets to know and mourn the small crew as well as Amadis’ fraught relationship with her brother. The particular run is a simple cargo transport to a far-off, barely habitable planetary outpost and thus attracts crew that are a little dodgy, or just can’t stop running — except for the captain Lai, who’s something of an enigma. Amadis and her brother love each other in a way that’s tainted with the traumatic horrors of their past and the resultant divergent goals of their present.
