review: the charlatan's boy by jonathan rogers

This is one of those rare little books that is entirely charming. It's straightforward without being simple, and incredibly rich. I really loved reading it, and while doing my research for the turn in, I found out that there are more stories set in the same world-- a Trilogy called the Wilderking that also deals with feechies (which is now what I call my fish, and also what I think I'll call my children when I have them and they're being clever and wild).

It's worth the read. My full review is here.

And it has a lovely cover.

national geographic: july 2010

ancient human skull on the cover
table of contents here


Let me just say that I absolutely love NatGeo and I always have for as long as I can remember. Before I could read, I'd lay on my stomach on the floor at my Aunt Betty's house, looking at all the amazing pictures and being just stunned that the things in them were real, that one day I might get to see them for myself. Then, almost as soon as I could read, it seemed, I'd spend hours reading through the back issues that were always there, filling my head with information and big words and page after page of text. Maybe that's why I'm not afraid of text.

When I was maybe 17, I got my first subscription to them under my own name, and since then, I've had several. Not really consistent, since my income is not really consistent, but at least a year, at least every few years, and when I don't have a sub, I usually track down the new issues and get them individually at cover price. I've tracked down the issues from the years of birth for my entire immediate family (except my own, which seems to all be mythical). I've kept all the ones I've bought.

And my favorite ones are the ones that feature human history and archaeology. This issue doesn't disappoint, and it's beautiful. Well-written, told like the best story around, clear, informative, not too much slant that I can see (which either means it's pretty unslanted, or that my degree in anthropology slants in the same way and I don't notice it). Evocative. Exactly what I want from NatGeo. Even the little articles are amazing-- one about space junk, how it matters and how to deal with it-- a little one-pager about the worst places in America to be a pedestrian (with the top four all being in Florida!).

If I wind up working for a magazine, I want it to be NatGeo. I want to be able to say, 'I edited that to make it so pretty', or 'I wrote that article and it blends seamlessly with the 150 year history of the mag'.

I've got two more fresh issues to read, and another old one that I misplaced and never finished, and that right there is more than worth the time it takes to read a whole issue. It actually almost makes me wish I still had a two-hour each way bus ride to get to work!

currently reading: week 33, first half of august

Any minute now, my reading load doubles, at least. By the end of this month, I'll be caught up with reviewing, and next week I need to start reading the books for school, so, yeah. As of this moment, I'm reading Charlatan's Boy, which I'm thoroughly enjoying, still reading How to Write SF and F, starting on Murder In Vein, and I've got Wintergirls lurking, waiting to start Monday. And I just picked up City of Glass, which finally hit QP and matches the rest, and Heatwave, which is thin and beautifully cliched... though who knows when I'll get to read those two!

Linkies!
The Charlatan's Boy isn't available yet, so here's it's preemptive link

    

migration by james p hogan

This book started out like a medieval fantasy and ended like a space opera, and in between, it skipped eleven years and often read like a treatise on the way people could build a better society. Even so, though, it was an interesting read, and I come out with only two complaints, and they aren't even that bad: one, I wish that it's transformation from classic scifi mode to modern scifi mode had been more complete and it had kept going, and two, I wish the situation of robot religiosity had been handled in a less definitively anthropocentric way, but even that, with all it's big words, isn't really a problem in the context of the book-- it's really the only way things could have gone.

JP Hogan died recently, and it's sad that it means there probably won't be more of these stories of these people and their trip to another world for the first time in human history, but it's a pretty optimistic way to leave the fans, I think. We really can make things better.

Currently reading, secong half of July, 2010

Just started Migration by James P Hogan, and read about half of How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card, and I'm liking both so far. Probably starting on Wicked Lovely or Wintergirls or Leviathan tomorrow, because they're ones I've managed to get my hands on, and they're going to be required soon.

Dragongirl by Todd mccaffrey

I didn't want to hate this one, but I came very close. It was so hard to read. So very very hard. It took me longer to get through than almost any other book I've read-- I think the only thing I can remember suffering through with such a grim stubbornness was, like, Sphere, which I did wind up hating by the end. That one took me nine months to read. This one only took about three, and I read about four other books in the meantime, trying to escape it.

See, I gre up on the Pern books. They were the first adult books I read, after a ha dful of Victoria Holt novels that I quickly lost interest in, and I've followed the series since. When I turned sixteen, my dad gifted me with the whole series up to that point, and it's one of my favorite memories of that timeframe. All Anne McCaffrey's books affected me the same way-- they aren't the most literary scifi, or the most rigorously scientific, and they're often just thinly veiled romances, but they were interesting and complex and open minded and adult, and they always got me emotionally involved in the characters.

This one though, one of Todd's solo ones... It was like beating myself In the face with bad fanfic a lot of the time, and it was like a bad idea of making it into kid lit, but still letting polyamory be okay. It happens at a time in Pern history when we know things are going to end up pretty desolate, too. And worse of all, it sort of steals Lessa's thunder by making her less rare, and preempting some of the daring things she has done / will do. It makes her seem woefully undereducated. Which makes me very sad.

And then it suddenly gets pointed, the characters suddenly differentiate, the writing clarifies and makes morse sense, and it feels like a Pern book, not a poorly-made imitation of one. That's how it should have been all along. It was so refreshing and life affirming to get through that whole mess and find a good and stirring ending, but it was too little, too late... But it piqued my curiosity about the next book, which has no excuse not to be good after 300- odd pages of set up from this book.

Digital domains edited by Ellen datlowl

This is exactly what an anthology is for: a taste of what's out there, and a good sampling of different styles and takes on a variety of topics. There's fifteen stories in here, and all of them are amazing. I sobbed lIke a baby during The Monkey King's Daughter, I felt like I was dreaming during Pansolapia, I was sucked in to each and every story. And there's one from Kelly Link and one from Andy Duncan, and both are excellent writers. Best of all, there's a feeling that the stories, thought all very different, all lean toward the same ending feeling, that they all want to change around the furniture inside your head. It's exactly why I love anthologies, and it's exactly why I love Datlow anthologies.

Amaranth enchantment by Julie berry

This is exactly the sort of book I should have loved. Plucky girl overcoming hardship, clever rogue, handsome prince, evil government official, stranded alien, interesting alternate London and England sort of setting... But it comes out feeling flat and dumbed down, and I just didn't like reading it. It felt like a problem: she wanted the characters to do this and this and this, but they wanted to do their own thing, and so she forced them, and sections of the dialog and narrative are so forced I just hated reading them. And throughout the whole thing, I kept wanting to edit it hard- core, until the end, when I wanted to just rewrite the whole thing. It feels like it got lost in it's own setting sometimes, and like it was extremely dumbed down other times, like the whole book didn't trust preteen girls to understand things, while the plot demanded that the lead go to jail and face the gallows.

I can't abide being ken down to, even when I'm not the target audience, and if I was nine or ten, I'd still want more from this book. ::sigh:: it really does ace a great set up, too.

Shadow hills by anastasia hopcus

I read this one a bit ago, and it's sort of lingering with me, which is great. I could't find any definitive answer about whether it was the start of a series, but it defy itely could be, and I wouldn't even have to relegate it to the category of "guilty pleasure" to justify buying it. It's not perfect, but some of the most noticeable problems I had with it would be fixed if it were the start of a series-- like the fact that the most interesting ideas it brought up in my mind were not even touched upon, like whether there was a connection between Phe's parents and the exiles. And it's better than Twilight, while fitting firmly in the same genre: Phe manages to be in love without losing her identity, she has one to begin with, adults aren't two-dimensional idiots, she stays in school, the love affair isn't abusive, the metaphysical elements are rooted in so ethnic closer to actual lore, the quality of the writing is solid and realistic... I could go on.

The review should be up on NYJB soon. I'm looking forward to her next book!

Second thought: ain't she sweet

You k ow, I enjoyed reading this book, but after the fact, it kind of annoyed me-- to many romance conventions, too many broad strokes, too many southern cliches... And when we studied it in class, that kind of made me not ever want to read it again. J couldn't get over the horrible Geography, but what bothered me most was the end-- how after she reached that required point, what got her to the happy ending was manipulation. And we won't even get into the magical baby.

But I did like the metafictional feel of that end, even if it did feel a little like little women.