Book Review: City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty is as elusive and complicated as its main character, Nahiri. When we meet Nahiri, it is 18th century Cairo under tenuous French control. She lives in a poor section of the city, not far from the Necropolis. She’s a healer, a con artist, and a thief who is willing to rob places while the owners are away. And yet she has power and ability she herself does not quite understand, a nature that is fragile as is her position. This sets up the novel starting off, anyway, as a historical fantasy, a historical urban fantasy at that. The novel switches gears, however, when Nahiri accidentally summons a djinn. Soon on the run, Nahiri and the djinn, Dara, are traveling across the Middle East to a hidden city of the djinn, Daevabad. There, they encounter Prince Ali, already chafing under the reign of his father and the future reign of his brother, and a city on the edge of change, or destruction. We get intrigue, political agitation, ancient secrets and much more within the bounds of the city.
Guest Post: Things I Wish I Knew When I Started – Thoughts on Finishing a Trilogy by Jacey Bedford
I committed trilogy accidentally—twice! It all started back in 2013 when I sold my first book to DAW and on the back of that sale was offered a three book deal for EMPIRE OF DUST (science fiction), WINTERWOOD (fantasy), and a sequel to Empire, CROSSWAYS (sold on the basis of a one page synopsis). Wow, it was the offer of my dreams; a fabulous speculative fiction publisher was paying me to do what I loved doing best—making up stories. In the bad-old (but fun) unpublished days, I’d made the classic mistake of starting to write a trilogy without having sold Book One, only to realise that the two years of work put into Book Two was a waste of time. I was never going to sell Book Two before I’d sold Book One. That should have been obvious, of course, but I was having such fun writing it that I never really stood back and asked myself what I was doing.
Book Review: Doctor Potter's Medicine Show by Eric Scott Fischl
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, a real-life organization that lends a bit of background color to Doctor Potter’s Medicine Show, might have found this novel an effective bit of ammo in their arsenal against the evils of Demon Rum, Wicked Whiskey, Sinful Ginful, etc. They would probably have found it an appalling actual read, but it might have served better than their marching around with signs and their uplifting sermons and their heartfelt testimonials ever did. The descriptions of the unpleasantness of actually being drunk, of addiction, of the consequences of a drinking binge (both social and biological), and of just how nasty a bottle of rotgut can taste and smell, will surely make many a reader look askance at the next cocktail proffered him or her.* I doubt, though, that Eric Scott Fischl wrote with this aim in mind as he brought these desperate characters together in this diabolical plot. After all, alcohol is not anyone’s biggest problem in his version of Oregon and Idaho in the late 1870s.
Guest Post: Switching Between Lanes, by Stephanie Burgis
I think that every writer who’s ever read publishing advice online has probably come across at least one article on the importance of “branding.” Apparently, to be really smart, writers ought to be figuring out the one thing that they’re best at — or the one thing that connects the most with potential readers — and then sticking to it no matter what, so that fans will know exactly what they’ll get from every new novel by that author. I know I sound a little snarky in that description, but I’m actually not arguing with it as a strategy. I’m sure that it is a smart, practical way to build a successful career. Unfortunately, I’ve never been much good at sticking to my own lane. There are too many wonderful genres that I love as a reader, and I get frustrated whenever I try to shut out all but one of them in my writing life. Before I sold my first books, I published dozens of adult f/sf short stories, and I drafted full-length novels for both adults and kids. Then my first agent, back in 2005, took me on with an adult historical fantasy manuscript, and it felt like my first big step onto the publishing ladder. Aha! I’m almost there!
Book Review: CONGRESS OF SECRETS by Stephanie Burgis
Known for her Regency-era fantasy series for middle-grade readers that began with A Most Improper Magick (published as Kat, Incorrigible in the US), Stephanie Burgis’ debut novel for adults, Masks and Shadows, similarly combined romanticism with the fantastic. Her sophomore novel, released at the end of 2016 by Pyr, continues this formula. Well paced and passionately infused with historical details and characters, Congress of Secrets will appeal to readers who enjoy a touch of magical darkness balancing Austenesque romance and historical intrigue. The story is set in 1814 at the start of the Congress of Vienna, a conference held by European powers to settle pressing geopolitical issues after the initial defeat of Napoleon. Clandestinely among the throngs arriving into the city are two former citizens who have spent years in exile, separated from Vienna and from one another after a traumatic night that ended in flames and escape from the secret police. Karolina Vogl, daughter of a printer who published pamphlets critical of the Holy Roman Emperor, is now a wealthy English widow named Lady Caroline Wyndham. With the passage of time and her new identity, Caroline plans to take advantage of the Congress to locate and rescue her imprisoned father. But Michael Steinhüller, an opportunistic con man who had been her father’s former apprentice, also uses the Congress as an opportunity to re-enter Vienna, posing as one “Prince Kalishnikoff” and looking for a score of a lifetime. Amid the diplomatic aristocracy Caroline and Michael each maneuver towards their goals, trying to avoid discovery. However, the greatest threat to their plans may be a chance, volatile reunion with one another, and reignited emotions of friendship and betrayal in their shared past.
Angels, Demons and 1930s Spain: The Los Nefilim Trilogy by T. Frohock
The 1930s of Spain was a time and place marked by terrible oppression, a vicious civil war immortalized in works of the time such as Picasso’s Guernica and Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. It’s a setting relatively near at hand in time and space, but one which has only modestly been depicted and inspirational to the world of genre fiction. The film Pan’s Labyrinth, notably, captured the brutality of the period in the story of Ofelia and her connection to faerie, even as the unredeemable wickedness of her stepfather shines through the narrative of the film like a witchlight. Ian Tregillis’ novel Bitter Seeds takes the popular tack that the Spanish Civil War was a rehearsal for the Second World War in having his German supermen field test their developing powers during the conflict. T. Frohock’s trio of novellas, set in her dark fantastic Los Nefilim universe takes place in the years just before the full breakout of hostilities.
