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This is the fourth in a series of six reviews of the Best Novel nominees for the Nebula Awards. Obviously, I’ve failed to meet my goal of finishing before the awards. I still intend to finish my reviews, after all, I promised.

Flesh and Fire by Laura Ann Gilman

Flesh and Fire continues a long tradition of epic fantasies with skill. Gilman manages to weave enough variety into the traditional formulas to make it feel fresh without alienating fans of the genre. In particular, the system of Magic crafted by Gilman is particularly intriguing, rightfully so given at it rests at the heart of the entire novel.

In short, magic in Flesh and Fire is crafted by the Vinearts who grow the grapes needed to create spellwine. This spell wine contains the spell which can then be cast by anyone with the relatively minimal knowledge necessary. Naturally, the Vinearts are able to cast magic with greater skill and can get the spellwines to do things most can’t conceive of. In exchange for this monopoly on magic creation, the Vinearts are forbidden to have any sort of (political) power and are closely watched by the various powers of the world. However, change is in the air and some force is using magic to nefarious ends.

Into this environment comes Jerzy a young slave boy serving the Vineart Malech. Malech is becoming increasingly aware of this growing evil and it is fortunate that discovers in Jerzy a talent for sensing the magic in the grapes. Malech makes Jerzy as his apprentice and begins his intensive training. For Malech must turn Jerzy into a weapon, a weapon than he and send into battle against the growing forces of evil which threaten the Lands Vin.

Talented writing, strong plotting, interesting characters, and an interesting premise make Flesh and Fire an easy book to recommend. This is a great book for fans of world-building and an exciting adventure.

This is the third in a series of six reviews of the Best Novel nominees for the Nebula Awards.

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest – Highly Recommended

Airships, Sky Pirates, family secrets, toxic cities, and zombies. What’s not to love?! Seriously!!

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest is a blast and a half. I loved this book. It rides the wave of popular Steampunk novels that have cropped up lately and mixes in a little of the undead fad. Naturally, in my mean and skeptical mind, I thought this combination would be a disaster. I was quite pleasantly wrong. Cherie Priest blends these elements with its late-19th century Pacific Northwest setting to create a wildly fun experience.

The plot is simple, but well executed. When the Gold Rush comes to the Yukon, Seattle becomes a boom town. The Russian government starts a contest to design and build a digging machine that can read the gold buried beneath the ice and snow. Leviticus Blue wins the contest and the begins construction. When he first tests it he looses control and ”Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine” proceeds to run amok under Seattle undermining foundations and destroying much of downtown Seattle, collapsing building and killing many. To make matters worse, the machine also unleashes toxic gas which begins to turn Seattle’s citizens into the walking dead. The city is evacuated and an enormous wall is erected around the city to keep in “the blight”. Sixteen years later, Blue’s son Zeke, frustrated by his inability to get any information out his mother Briar about his father or the incident, heads under the wall to find his own answers and try to clear up his father’s name. When Briar returns home from her job and discovers that he’s gone, she immediately sets off to bring him home. Briar knows her son is a smart kid but also knows that nothing he could do would prepare him for the world he was going into. Adventures ensue, culminating in a great, cinematic climax.

All parts of Priest’s world are well executed and interact convincingly. Nothing seems like a sell out or a cheat. She plays fast and loose with the historical facts but never claims to be writing a historical fiction novel. Her version of 1880s Seattle is distinctly her own with a detailed presentation that makes logical sense given the tweaks she’s made to American history (the Yukon Gold rush is early, the Civil War is over a decade old and is fought with airships and who knows what else as well as troops).

Boneshaker‘s cast is are well-drawn with thoughtfully crafted personalities and motivations. Everyone feels familiar without feeling like a cardboard cut-out. This is an important consideration for a book that is going to kick off a series.

This is a great steampunk novel that will be appreciated by fans of the genre. (Librarians who have older teens going crazy for Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld will find a great suggestion here.) This is also great for anyone who likes a fun page-turning adventure. Priest exposition is just as entertaining as her action oriented scenes and helps the story to move along at a good pace.

In short, very highly recommended.

This is the second in a series of six reviews of the Best Novel nominees for the Nebula Awards.

The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak – Highly Reccomended

I’m going to come right out and say this is not the sort of book I would typically read. After all, it has feelings in it (this of course meant as a joke…kinda). With that diclaimer out of the way, I can tell you that I rather liked it, in fact. Despite it’s relatively short length, this is not a fast read. This is because Barzak writes so well, and with such subtlety, that one really needs to give it the time it deserves.

A quibble I can see many genre snobs having with this book is “its not really Fantasy”. I know this because I was of this opinion at first as well. One has to remember that Fantasy comes many shades. Not all of it is in the vein of the Tolkienesque sword and sorcery epic. Some novels take a more subtle line. Christoper Barzak certainly took this route in The Love We Share Without Knowing. There are no big battles at the bases of erupting volcanos, no Dark Lords, no magic spells, nor wonderous creatures. There’s “just” a bunch of intensely unhappy people in Japan…oh and the ghosts.

The unhappiness is universally tied in with the novel’s central theme, Love (you could have never guessed right). Almost every major slant on love is discussed: lost love, parent-child love, romantic love, unrequited love, and so on. Each is given a very subtle and sensitive treatment. Barzak seems to have a gift for writing about strong feelings that just feels right. In many cases his manner of expressing things is downright beautiful.

For some, the structure of the novel could be puzzleing. One would be forgiven for thinking that this is in actuality a book of short stories, as it is composed of several largely self-contained narritives. There are several things that separate distinguish this book as a novel, the first being unity of theme. Sure you can have a group of stories on the same topic and not have it be a novel, but here the stories support one another and are structured in such a way thay they would be less than they could be in isolation. Each builds on the others and, in the end, they come full circle.

Another thing that distinguishes The Love We Share Without Knowing as a novel is the interconnections between stories. A character briefly mentioned in one story is the the focus of another. So the girl Elijah meets on the subway in the first story will be with us again later in the book. This gives the novel an arc (though not a plot) which ties it together in an interesting way.

The cast is varied and everyone seems “fully realized”, with no one feeling like a cardboard cut-out. They all have real problems and react to them in a realistic way. These characters are variously self-absorbed, lonesome, guilt-ridden, resentful and at times downright delusional. Nevertheless, I found myself caught up in these problems, because the foibles are handled in a very sensitive way. In my mind this is the ultimate halmark of good writing.

Of course, no character recieves a more fleshed out portrayal than the main character, which in this case is Japan itself. This is one of those novels where place is everything. In this case Japan and Japanese culture are what make many of the situations in this novel possible. Barzak’s portrayal makes it clear that he has been a long-term visitor. He writes of Japan with a level of comfort and and detail that only one with a deep, personal familiarity can achieve, yet he writes with a clarity that is typically found from outsiders who typically notice things that natives take for granted. The result is a deeply engrossing experience that will leave you with a better understanding of a people and a culture.

Ultimately, The Love We Share Without Knowing is a sad but beautiful book. It is an example of excellent writing that actually trancends genre specification. This isn’t a great Fantasy book, it’s a great book in general and would be appreciated by anyone open to a quieter, more introspecitve reading experince.

This is the first in a series of six book reviews I intend to do for the 2009 Nebula Award Nominees for Best Novel. I will be publishing them as I finish them, with the goal of having all done before the awards are announced in May. I’ve tried this sort of thing in the past and have always failed, I think because I waited to put anything online until I had all the books read and reviewed. This lead to being a good excuse to not finish (After all, would anyone know if I hadn’t finished?). Luckily, the first book up was a throughly enjoyable experience, giving me the motivation I need to keep going.

The City and the City by China Miéville – Highly Reccomended

In The City and the City by China Miéville the City-States of Besźel and Ul Qoma are fictional cities located roughly in southeastern Europe. They aren’t specifically placed, but Turkey and the Balkans loom large. They each have their own culture and identity: architectural styles, languages, and troubles. They also have much in common, and are inextricably joined to one another.

At the same time, these neighbors are divided. Not divided in the sense of East and West Berlin were, nor are they neighbors in the same way as Minneapolis and St. Paul. Besźel and Ul Qoma are two cities occupying the same physical space. In one city a street may be lined with single family homes while it is a buisness district in the other. In some places you’re just in Besźel, in some just Ul Qoma, and in some you might be in one or the other. It is possible to see the other city, but it’s not adviseable, for that is forbidden.

Ul Qomans and Besz have mastered “unseeing”, the art of not being consciously aware of the other city when in these areas of “crosshatching” where the cities exist together. You drive your car around those in the other city, walk down the streets side by side with its citizens all without acknowledging the presence of those who are elsewhere. To fail to unsee the other city, even accidently, is to commit an act of breach and could bring down on you the wrath of Breach, a secretive police organization charged with maintaining the separation between the two cities. Breach has brutal, absolute power in its area of responsibility. It doesn’t investigate other crimes, just breach. If you breach, you disappear.

This strange and fascinating world is the backdrop for a detective story. Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Besźel Extreme Crime Squad is an archetypal detective: dogged, determined, and savvy. He’s investigating the rather grisly murder of a “Faluna Detail” (Besz cop for “‘Jane Doe”). The plot develops with many of the typical tropes of the murder mystery, the murder scene, the autopsy, bureaucratic pushback, sidekicks, etc. This is all actually a plus as is forms a familiar core to an altogether atypical series of situations. The cities are the real stars here and continue to fascinate from beginning to end as Miéville explores the implications of the world he created. In the end you have a typical, page-turning detective story that is anything but typical.

This is a great novel for fans of Science Fiction and Fantasy and open-minded mystery readers. Fans of Phillip K Dick will find a lot to like here. Readers with an appreciation of place and world-building will find this one fascinating provided they can accept the world in spite of the inevitable (but mostly inresolved) curiosity about why this world is as it is. Fast-paced, fun, thoughtful, and highly recommended.