I'm gonna be fast because I read most of those books ages ago

Rusalka by CJ Cherryh
Russian flavoured fantasy: a cynical party boy / dilettante must flee the city when he's accused of sorcery when the husband of the wife he was seeing dies suddenly; and enrols the help of a young hotel stable boy who has a reputation of ill luck and fears being a sorcerer himself. Out in the forest, they encounter quite a bit of sorcery.
There's some great ideas and flavours to the story, and I liked the characters' dynamics. I thought the pacing and plotting overall was much weaker though. Anyway, if you like Cherryh's other fantasy story - especially Forterss series, you'll probably like this one.

The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold
Fawn, Dag and Fawn's brother go on a boat trip.
This volume has more plot than the previous ones, and as a result I rather liked it more. I also liked the setting, the use of the river, and the new characters of this book (especially the female boat captain who had a name which I forgot). On the other hand, I still don't like Fawn and Dag all that much and consider this series one of Bujold's weakest, so you know...

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
When his family gets murdered, and toddler escapes to a cemetery and gets adopted by the ghosts who live there, as well as the resident Undead. Each chapter cover a different stage of his childhood as he grows up.
Very nice story about growing up, transformations and the relationship to death. Great writing, pacing and characterisation.

The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia McKillip
Many years ago, on a battlefield at the gate of Pelucir, something horrible rode in and spread death because of the magic of the great wizard Atrix Wolfe, although nobody knows it and he has been hiding since, and the ghosts of the event still haunt the area. Nowadays, the young prince of Pelucir is studying magic when he finds a strange book written by Atrix Wolfe.
This is a gorgeous, wonderful, subtle and awesome book and you should read it.

The Two Pearls of Wisdom by Alison Goodman
In a chinese flavoured fantasy world, Eon is, despite a lame leg, a candidate for the position of Dragoneye, one of the 12 people channelling the powers of the Dragons of the Chinese Zodiac in order to ensure prosperity and good weather to the empire. Eon is also a girl in disguise, a secret which would cost her direly if it was discovered. But when the ceremony when the dragon of the year, the Rat one, chooses which candidate will connect with him, nothing happens as Eon and her master had foreseen.
A pretty good story, with nice plotting and solid characterisation. I really liked Eon as well as one of the main secondary character, Dela, a transwoman and Emperor's favourite, and who is pretty kickass. The book ends on a cliffhanger for a second volume which is not yet out.

Night Shift by Lilith Saintcrow
Boring by-the-number paranormal romance. I think that was the last chance I was giving to this genre.

The Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Third volume after Night Watch and Day Watch, this is probably the best of the series so far, with all three stories of the volume being very solid and well tied with one another. Excellent plotting full of twist, tying threads in unexpected ways, and many interesting ideas as well as many interesting characters, both old and new. One of the things I love about this series is how the writer sets up a very manicheist world in theories, then keeps on playing with the concept of Light and Dark thus defined in ways that bring a whole lot of greys and ambiguities until they are near undistinguishable.

Jhegaala by Steven Brust
Vlad Taltos walks into an Easterner village, trying to find out about the background of hi mother's family. The villagers eye him warily. Then the bodies and mysteries start piling up. Poor Vlad Taltos.
A very good Taltos story in the style of Taltos stories. I was missing the sarcasm, it had been too long.

House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
Tied to the Howl & Sophie stories, but not really a sequel. Young book-loving overprotected girl is charged with looking after the house of her distantly related Great Wizard of an uncle. Hijinks ensue.
Not my favourite Diana Wynne Jones story by a lot. Not really bad either, but the beginning was fairly slow and I kinda got annoyed at all the awkwardness, but not a bad story overall.

I've been reading a little bit more. Woot!

Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells
( Read more... )

The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
( Read more... )

Powers by Ursula K Leguin
( Read more... )

Old Tin Sorrow by Glen Cook
( Read more... )

Deliverer by CJ Cherryh
( Read more... )

Three Days to Never by Tim Powers
( Read more... )

Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh
( Read more... )

Brazyl by Ian McDonald
( Read more... )

From oyceter RaceFail '09 : this hurts us all:

SF book fandom, where are you?

Although a few authors and editors have come out against what WS and KC have done, where is the rest of the fandom? Like Jane says earlier, "Where are the con-comms, going apeshit to distance themselves from these serial fails of race and culture? Where are the guests-of-honor, specifically inviting underserved communities to visit at an upcoming con? (Where are the "discount if this is your first con evar" programs?) Why aren't the SF organizations like SFWA (okay, bad example) having a cow and putting out official position statements on outreach? Where are press-releases from the publishing houses, explaining their diversity efforts (in their lists and in their workplaces)?"

Why the resounding silence? Editors, authors, fans—all the people who were not talking about RaceFail and what people in their field were doing: where are they?

If the prior months of RaceFail were "both sides behaving badly" (which I disagree with), what is this, and why has no one said anything?

Mely previously wrote, "Is group protest always right or good? No, it's not. It's a way to establish and enforce community norms, and it's only as right and good as the community norms are. It can be profoundly oppressive and profoundly abusive. But silence in the face of injury is also a way to establish and enforce community norms. You don't opt out of a community by remaining in it and never commenting on its big controversies; you just opt to abide by whatever party wins."

What SF book fandom is telling me—a woman, a person of color, and a long-time fan of SF books and a con-goer—what you are telling me is that you don't care. That these are, in fact, your community norms, that you are all right with people who have more power in your community (by virtue of profession, race, and gender) using that power to harm other, less powerful, members of your community. That you are fine with the erasure of women, of people of color, of those without the same professional privileges you enjoy, and that you are willing to stand by silently and let people be hurt. This is how it affects us. This. And this.

Your silence speaks volumes.

So.... what am I, as a fan and reader of SFF books, doing?

Am I linking you to the People of Colour in SF&F Carnival's 12th issue, which was released this week and which much like the awesome Feminist SF Carnival links to various discussions and essays on PoC characters and themes and how they're treated in various SFF media?

Am I linking you to the Asian Woman Blog Carnival which is doing a call for submissions and themes suggestions for its first edition?

Have I mentioned the Remyth Project, which is about PoC writing and creating about their mythologies and legends, so often erased, colonised, appropriated by others?

Being aware of the bias in the publishing industry and book store chains that will make it so that books by PoC and books about PoC are less likely to just come my way when I'm looking for books to read, or to be as widely marketed, recommended and reviewed, have I made a special effort to find those books and review them? Have I joined the 50books_poc and taken the challenge to read and review 50 books by PoC?

Have I mentioned that a PoC genre press, verb_noire, is getting started?

Have I ever blogged for the International Blog Against Racism? Have I linked to those posts?

Why haven't I? And what else could I do?

And back to the RaceFail '09, did I mention that rydra_wong has archived all the links you may want to read know exactly what happened and why it is outrageous, and how people who are writers and editors have been using both their power in the SF industry and their white privilege to silence and sidetrack criticisms of racism and cultural appropriation and have attacked, insulted, demeaned, outed people who were making those criticism? What does it mean when people who are influential and active in the SFF community do so without other people who are active and influential in the SFF community calling them on their shit? Is it something that only concerns the people who suffer from it, or is racism in this community, in my community, something that concerns all of us?

And you, those of you that are also SFF fans, con-goers, forums participants, bloggers and reviewers of the SFF community, those of you that are white and have the privilege of ignoring racism and the people suffering from racist until they start yelling in your ears, what have you been doing?

"Going Native" sf, anthropology and colonialism by coffeeandink

There's a recent survey done by the Anti Defamation League about antisemitism in Europe http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3669706,00.html
A lesson in modern antisemitism and this other post by chopchica talks about it and about her own experience with antisemitism while travelling in Europe. As a French Jew, it's a little bit odd for me to see a post talking about this from the experience of an American on a trip, but actually it's a bit of an eye opener because there are many things I taught myself not to pay attention to just because I'm used to them. I'm also used to see my concerns dismissed and being treated like a pain in the ass when I insist on complaining about the lack sandwich with chicken rather than three different choices of pork or cheese at local RPG conventions.

Over at the westeros board (yes, I still read it, just lurking, shut up), Scott Bakker insists on showing his ass to the public in a thread (and its sequel) about the treatment of women in his books and people who think it's sexist (and people who think any reading about sexism and misogynism in a book is a grave insult that should never be done because it's so awful!! yeahhhhhhh right). On the same thread, several people, especially Kalbear, Maia and needle are being awesome.

There's a Celia Friedman interview at Pat's Fantasy Hotlist with some interesting discussions about sexism in fantasy as well, especially in the comments.

Cartomancy by Mary Gentle
A collection of short stories with very varied themes and settings but which have one thing in common : they almost all feature a female warrior or soldier character. ♥
"The Logistics of Carthage" is a novella set in the same world as my favourite novel by this writer, the Book of Ash. Set in a slightly altered version of our middle age where Carthage is still a big power, and set some time before the series, it talks about the day to day life of a band of mercenaries, amongst which is a women, with some consideration about the way women fighters get erased from (the official) History, through the refusal of the local people to bury one female soldier, and another of the female soldiers insisting for them to do that. It's a very interesting story, though oddly paced and not quite conclusive; and a pretty interesting addendum to the Book of Ash.
"Kitsune" is relatively short and straight forward paranormal/horror romance story between a woman who practice kendo and a female kitsune. Some time ago I had a discussion with apapazukamori about the complete absence of lesbian relationship as the main romance of the story in Fantasy, so I had this in mind when I read this short story as a cool example of just that. On the other hand, I was a little ill at ease with the treatment of Japanese culture which seemed to be to very shallow.
"The Road to Jerusalem" is another story with a uchronic treatment of History, giving us a modern day warfare where the knights Templar are involved; and revolving around the trial of a woman templar soldier for possible war crimes. It's an interesting look at the nastiness of war; confusions and petty power plays between factions involved at all scales and soldier's life. A solid story.
"Orc's Drift" is a short and silly story in the same style as Grunts!, that's to say high fantasy parody; and it's not a very funny one at that.
"The Tarot Dice" is a atmosphere story about revolutionaries, conspiracies and forbidden oracular tools. It's very prettily written and evocative, but left me quite confused as far as what the fuck is going on in terms of plot. So I have mixed feelings about it.
"The Harvest of Wolves" is set in a distopic future of the UK and is a huit clot conversation between an old woman who still dreams of forbidden freedoms and cynically comments on the present and the young man charged with monitoring her. While not the strongest story of this kind I've ever seen, it had an appealing brand of cynical twist at the end that made it work.
"Anukazi's Daughter" is a fantasy story about a female warrior and the betrayals she makes in order to be recognised as one. Thematically, I'd compare it to Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, it's an interesting look at what the usage of violence makes of us. One of the best story of the collection.
"What God Abandoned" is set in the Renaissance during a siege of Prague and features (among other things) a young Descartes and considerations about Rosicrucians. It also shows that relationships aren't always easy for genderbending metapmorphs. This made me feel like there was a setting worth exploring more; but I didn't care that much about the story as such.
"The Pits Beneath the World" is a pretty classic Social/Anthropological Science Fiction. Well done but of the been-there-read-that many times already.
"Cast A Long Shadow" is a nice horror story about a divorced mother having to deal with the creepy things her son is doing, with a help of a female friend. Gentle describes it as a comic book story, and I agree it sort of felt like a Sandman short stories in places. It's not a great story, but it does some nice stylistic things.
"A Sun in the Attic" is set in a steampunk-ish world, slightly uchronic, revolving around intrigues and the question of forbidding sciences that can have dangerous results. I didn't think it did a very good job at exploring those themes, but my favourite thing about this story is that the main characters are a polygamous family of one female head of the family and her two husbands who are brothers.
"A Shadow Under The Sea" is set in the same world as Anukazi's Daughter, and deals with similar themes of betrayal, but putting the character at a higher social position. It's almost as good as Anukazi's Daughter.
"Human Waste" is a short story of horror SF, and it does what it was meant to do very well, that is to say slap you in the face. It's kind of darkly funny, but it will make you feel bad for thinking so.

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
This is a take on the Mahabharata through the women's eyes, and in particular Draupadi who married five husbands and was the cause of the war that put an end to the third age of man.
Knowing next to nothing about Hindu mythology, I can't really provide much of a commentary on what kind of spin it gives to the original material; but a a story I can say I really, really loved it. From the beautiful and woven writing to the characters and the stories within stories storytelling and the drama of the war and the texture of the world. I was swept in and mesmerised and loved every minutes of it.

The Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Urban fantasy were the forces of the Light and the forces of the Dark have made a peace agreement, and the Light magicians of the Night Watch try to fight against the Dark ones of the Day Watch while keeping the peace.
There are three tied in stories in this book, and all three are pretty good, solid read, although I found the third one slightly less good than the other (nothing much really happened). If you accept the manicheist setting, this is a pretty fun exploration of it, with solid world building and good plotting. Nothing very deep or mind breaking, but nicely entertaining with a few interesting characters. I'll probably try to read the sequels soon.

So, I've been wondering for a few weeks now, how much I hate Bakker's answer to this interview (led by Pat of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, Larry of Blog of the Fallen and Adam of the Wertzone; three SFF review blogs I follow). And each time I go back to it, I see, that, yes, it is that bad, and even worse.

- Are you baffled by the fact that, though you have pleaded your case several times, some readers continue to interpret your writing style as misogynic?

‘Disappointed’ would probably be a better word than ‘baffled.’ It’s human nature to mistake depiction for endorsement, I think. And I actually think the criticisms of more sophisticated readers, that negative depictions reinforce negative stereotypes, have a valid point to make–one that I would take quite seriously were I writing after-school specials. You know, stories about an Elfen child having difficulty growing up in a Dwarven home.

On the one hand I understand that many readers require overt ideological fidelity to enjoy books–why else would there be religious bookstores? People find agreement agreeable–full stop. On the other hand censoriousness is simply a fact of human nature, no matter where a person falls on the political spectrum. Since we all implicitly understand the power of representations, we often fear them as well. And of course, we all naturalize our values. So you have well-meaning fools like those behind the hate-speech legislation here in Canada, who have no real sense of just how prosperity-dependent democracy is, and so design legal tools to illegalize the public expression of bigotry, all under the daft assumption that those tools will always be used the ways they want them to be used.

I mean the question isn't asked in the most intelligent way in the first place, of course, but there's just no excuse for Bakker's patronizing superiority in his answer. It's simply disgusting to see him dismiss any critical reading of his text along sexism as well-meaning idiocy, that even what he calls the "most sophisticated" readers get called daft and dismissed as wanting afterschool special. It's insulting to all his readers.

And, you know, I love those books. I read them twice, now, and I find them fascinating and intriguing, very well plotted and with some deep explorations of power dynamics in relationships, the impact of philosophies on societies, and some great characterisation.

I love those books, but when I read this answer I wonder if I want to buy the next one. Sometimes writers should really learn to STFU if they don't know how to stay classy. :(

See previous entries on the sexism in Prince of Nothing here; and my overall review of the series here.

Thought inducing post linked from my flist by a few people, if you've missed it: I didn't dream of dragons by deepad

It is causing me quite a bit of discomfort because it is hitting some right spot.

Also I've been wondering if my username was perhaps horribly presumptuous and if I should change it >_>;

ETA: actually I should just rec this list of links collected by rydra_wong

I got tagged by hamsterwoman to do this insanely long book meme.

+++INTRODUCTIONS+++

1. What's your name?
Hello, my name is Anne-Elisa, and I'm addicted to reading.

2. Do you read a lot?
That would be a yes.

3. What's your favorite genre?
SFF, that is to say the wide definition of speculative fiction.

( 50 questions about BOOKs )

50. Tag five people to fill out this meme:
If they feel like it, schemingreader, xraytheenforcer, meganbmoore, c_mantix, haremstress and anyone else who wants to do it, of course!

Went and got some books signed by Ellen Kushner (and by Delia Sherman in Fall of the Kings' case). They're both very adorable person. There was this hilarious moments when Kushner's was reading the first chapter of Swordspoint (alternating between English and French) and Delia's phone rang, and they said it's Cassie Claire calling, that she was a 'very famous' person who had a book released soon XDDD

Then there was a kind of radio show taking place in the same bookstore where Ellen Kushner was interviewed, and she sang a Thomas the Rhymer ballad and it was AWESOME. I'll need to ge the mp3 of the show.

I got to talk a little bit with Delia while the show was taking place and she recced me books by Karen Joy Fowler, which do seem very nice, and her own books - well not that brazenly, she was just talking about them and they sounded nice ^^.

Three days to the Utopiales, woot!

meme stolen from meganbmoore

1. Favourite Book? Impossible to say just one! Maybe Greg Egan's Distress.

2. Favourite Author? Again with the just one. Leguin, Bujold, Egan, Friedman, Zelazny, Gaiman, Kushner...
3. Favourite Genre? SFF.
4. Favourite series of books? A Song of Ice and Fire by GRRMartin. Also the Amber series by Zelazny and the Vorkosigan series by Bujold.
5. Favourite Illustrator? Luis Royo, Yoshikata Amano.
6. Favourite book from when you were little? Le Livre de la Licorne by Joles Sennel (original is in Catalan)
7. Favourite Hero? John Aversin from Barbara Hambly's Dragonbane series.
8. Favourite Villain? Littlefinger from A Song of Ice and Fire.
9. Favourite couple? Richard and Alec in Kushner's Swordspoint.
10. Favourite Character? What's with all those evil questions? Let's say Tremaine in Martha Wells' Fall of Ile Rien series.

5 Lasts

1. Last book you bought? KJ Parker's the Company.
2. Last book you were given? A book by Fred Vargas I believe.
3. Last book you pre-ordered? Probably Kushiel's Mercy by Jacqueline Carey.
4. Last book you loved? Destroyer by CJ Cherryh
5. Last book you hated? Gosh. Can't remember.

3 dos

1.Do you read part of your current book every day? No.
2. Do you stick to one genre of books or do you jump around? Big majority of SFF novels with the occasionnal crime and historical ones.
3. Do you review all the books you read on LJ? I try but I always miss a few.

1 If
1. If you were stuck on a desert island and could only take one book with you, which book would you choose?
Ursula Leguin's Left Hand of Darkness.

Okay, first I'm feeling much better since yesterday. Hoping it'll hold. Thank you so much to everyone on my flist for being such darlings and comforting me. You guys are the best! ♥ Especially since I know I'm not half as good as you at comforting you when you're feeling down >_>; I'm sorry for that.

Second, I finally got my hands on Pet Shop of Horror (yes, took my sweet time, but it is difficult to find scans of, and it's never been released in France and I don't usually order manga from the US cuz that's kinda expensive) which was indeed as awesome as I was led to believe. Love (as I always do) the whole morality fables / creepy fairy tales / contemporary occult atmosphere and how it mixes domestic comedy. The characters are very much darlings, and the stories are very tight. Of the manga I've read set in the US, I thought it was the most self aware of cultural subtleties and I found the way it lampshades as well as uses (and abuses!) Asia as mysterious/female/magical/suspicious was hilarious. And I really loved the ending, what a perfect fanfic fodder!

Of course as soon as I was finished I was hitting rexluscus's tags to find fics and recs (haven't left comments anywhere yet : you know it's funny I never mind leaving comments on old fics but I hate doing it in fandoms which I'm not familiar with yet) and it was midway to reading a (very nice, very much fluffier than what I usually like but still wonderful) fic that it was kinda hit by how much those characters are similar to Damien and Tarrant. At which point I felt stupid because they're very very similar. Like okay Damien's slightly smarter, and Gerald's slightly less gender-ambiguous. Very slightly. Their relationship's different, not domestic at all, and much more bonding over religion and Biblic jokes which, yeah, not so much with Leon/D. Oh, and all the slashy subtext in Coldfire is unintentional *snorts* And now I feel guilty about not having passed the prologue+first chapter of the big Coldfire reread over at hunters_forest (althought the discussion appears to be quite lively without me so at least there's that).

And now it's 4am and I should get up early tomorrow to go touring the Marais and then watch anime; and the day after that I have to go to my parents to celebrate the Rosh Hashanah, and at some point between all this I need to find the time to download and watch the last Code Geass episode - AND I DON'T FEEL LIKE SLEEPING, like not at all.

I could talk about the movies I've watched lately. Would you want me to do that?

Oh and I'm vaguely considering trying to do NaNoWriMo this year, hoping it would help curing myself of that dryspell of inspiration.

And I need to get train tickets for the Utopiales which got a very drool inducing list of invited writers. There's Richard Morgan too, I've got half of a mind of taking one of those books he recced to me to have him sign to see if he gets mad or laugh because I'm an ass ; and there's Ellen Kushner (although I already have an autograph of her via the lovely generalblossom but now I can get one of her books signed, yay!); and Robin Hobb and Hal Duncan (guess that means I must get off my lazy ass and read Ink).

Actually with that list of writers I hope they're going to at least do one panel about gay and gender queer characters in SFF novels. Would be interesting to see Richard Morgan faced to people like Hal Duncan and Ellen Kushner, especially given how much talks I've seen about The Steel Remains as bold and daring for being a fantasy novel with OMG gay characters and a long and hard graphic gay sex scene, and people asking if it was difficult for him as a straight male to write that. (If so I will totally have to ask Kushner and Duncan if it's difficult for them write heterosexual characters and straight sex!!)

Gahh, I'm so hyper and it's 4am30. When am I gonna be able to sleep? ;_;

I have too many firefox windows opened right now.

I'm lazy and didn't really summarize any of them...

( Black Man aka Th1rt3n by Richard Morgan )

( Dust by Elisabeth Bear )

( The Dreaming Tree by CJ Cherryh )

( The Beginning Place by Ursula K Leguin )

( Black Ships by Jo Graham )

( Claudius the God by Robert Graves )

( Kushiel's Mercy by Jacqueline Carey )

Next time, I'll have to do the reviews right after I finish the books, not wait a month and a half in some cases, it makes for sucky reviews... >_>;;

I should make my packs but I'm on the internet instead.

Have some links.

cryptoxin on Fandom and Lorde's use of the Erotic, on the difference between porn and erotica in a 70's feminist essay and it's relevence to today's dynamics of sex in fanfictions and other fandom works.

haremstress on the expression "strong women", asking what it means and doesn't mean

Is there Gender imbalance in Genre Fiction Publishing an article with that question posed to a number of professionnals of the SFF field, with some interesting answers and some infuriating ones. curtana is discussing some of the infuriating ones. ETA: Or you could read coffeeandink latest roundup of links on that subject. (and then search through her tags, she's one of my favourite blogger for a reason and one of it is an awesome tagging system ^^).

Yeap! I've been reading books again! yay! Sadly my fanfics reading suffered from it *looks sadly at the fanfic pile TBR* *cough* so

( Moon Called, Blood Bound, Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs )

( I, Claudius by Robert Graves )

( Acacia by David Anthony Durham )

I finished reading Abercrombie's Last Argument of Kings last week, and been mulling over it a bit since then.

Overall a good book, and a great conclusion to the series, definitly on par with the quality of Before They Are Hanged. There were a few details on which the book was less strong, or which disapointed me, but he reading itself was delightful, and the series is definitly thought inducing.

First flaw is that compared to the shiny-prettiness of the previous covers (seriously, the things are gorgeous) LAoK was kinda ugly, and I really disliked the font, very overdone. Also, can't look at the title without chuckling remembering the lame pun from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, "they will hear Reason" ;p

( some spoilers )

My computer's down. Again. Fuck that, anytime yo fix any one thing, another thing breaks down. Entropy's a bitch. Expect me to be scarce online.


Been reading Last Argument of King. 'Tis pretty good so far.

Finished reading Shadowplay right before which was painfully slow and sometimes unintentionnaly funny; but yeah, Tad Williams still can write Fairies - if it's the only thing he can write. Got quite a disturbing trend of female victimization to this book though, I think it's intentionnal but it still comes out as disturbing. Then again, maybe I've just become more sensitive to this things.

Still from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, interview of R. Scott Bakker, about the Prince of Nothing epic fantasy series which I reviewed here.

- The genre exhibits a strong (albeit recent) tradition for subverting gender stereotypes by presenting worlds in which strong, independent female characters are plausible or even expected. Yet your world is as patriarchal as the reality that inspired it. I expect that this theme makes up for a good part of the discussions you have about your creation, possibly detracting from what you actually want to talk about. Is it difficult to resist the temptation to put something like a bad-ass tomboy warrior-princess with snappy dialogue and a heart of gold into the books?

First, let me say that I think I should be called out on the carpet on this issue, simply because I cover some pretty troubling ground. I certainly don’t believe in "quota characterization," either to be politically correct or to broaden the "gender appeal" of my books. Leave this for the after-school specials. I also don’t think that depiction automatically equals endorsement. The question that people should be asking, it seems to me, is one of whether I reinforce negative gender stereotypes or problematize them. If the books provide enough grist to argue this question, then the answer, it seems to me, automatically becomes the latter.

But the fact remains that a lot of people get hung up on my female characters: On the one hand, I self-consciously chose the harlot, the waif, and the harridan for my female characters, yet some seem to think a kind of unconscious moral defect chose them for me. If so, it would be a truly colossal coincidence that I would happen to pick the three misogynic types - I mean, isn’t it obvious that I’m up to something critical? On the other hand, I wanted my fantasy world to be realistic, to temper our yearning for premodern times with a good look at how ugly things got, particularly in times of war. When bad things happen to my female characters, it’s the circumstances that are being criticized, not the characters themselves!

But people get hunches while they read, and once they do, confirmation bias goes to work (and this is simply one among many reasons why we always buy our own bullshit), and the text, I think, possesses more than enough ambiguities for people spin any number of self-validating interpretations. It’s when they insist their interpretation is the only interpretation, or even worse, that it captures what’s really going on in my bean, that I become baffled.

Now, I'd argue with the form of the question (it's arguable whether it's a genre convention "to subvert gender stereotypes by presenting worlds in which strong, independent female characters are plausible"...), but the subject of females characters in that series is certainly interesting.

For those who haven't read it, the world presented is indeed inescapably gritty and brutally violent, especially against women and there's a strong sense of realism to it.

Of the three characters that Bakker mentions, though, I'd say that only Esmenet, the "harlot", is a real success, she's the only one that can be seen as sympathetic and strong, and her story is compelling. The two others serve more as plot device than anything IMHO. The "harridan" doesn't even have a PoV and is intensely creepy (not that creepiness is exceptionnal in those books ^^), and the "waif", Serwë, is victimised, shallow and stupid enough that despite the sympathy I felt for what she lived through, I would never say I found her interesting as a character.
I do agree about Bakker's point about "problematizing", which is worthy enough, although in this case one should also take into consideration the context of the genre, because if every story is one of gritty realism, then the problematization may be more of a reinforcement than he would think.
Then there's the issue which he fails to mention, which is the treatment of sex and sexuality, and of the bad guys of the setting utilisation of sex in extremely creepy way, and how it relates to his treatment of gender.

Thoughts?

Pat from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist (yes, the same who called Priviledge of the Sword chick lit ^^), re-posted a bit of an interview he did of Hal Duncan (who wrote Vellum and Ink - I reviewed Vellum over there - ETA: Hal Duncan also has a blog which you can check out) which really cracked me up :

Previous depictions of homosexual characters in fantasy/scifi books have always been somewhat clumsy and didn't ring true. And yet, instead of trying to get readers to "accept" it, you just went ahead and put Jack and Puck's relationship as a central storyline throughout both volumes. Was that intentional from the beginning? INK contains graphic sex scenes between the two, and I was wondering what sort of responses those sequences generated among readers and critics?

One of my pet hates is the fetishisation you get in certain types of fantasy, particularly vampire fiction, I have to say, where gay equals frilly shirts, sensitive pouts and lingering looks with doe-eyes. Man, at least slash is subversive in applying that aesthetic to straight characters, and at least slash has the guts to get down and dirty. That stuff is just softcore boy-on-boy goth porn. Even when it's not so deeply fetishised, there still seems to be a tendency to stereotype gays as refined rather than rough, fey rather than fiery, cats rather than dogs.

The second problem with gay characters in genre fiction is that they're generally marginalised as subsidiary characters, which smacks of PC tokenism. Yeah, so your heroine has a Gay Best Friend; big deal. So your team of heroes has a tagalong queer; I'm not impressed.

The last problem is that even when you get a fully-fledged protagonist they're generally just not genre enough. By which I mean, the writer feels the need to show that it's "normal" to be gay, so the characters are rendered in a Realist mode rather than as Romantic heroes. They're intelligent, sensitive portraits of gays as "just like everyone else". Bollocks to that. The fetishised gays are annoying. The marginalised gays are frustrating. But the normalised gays are just plain dull. I want a gay character who blows shit up. I want a gay James Bond, a gay Jerry Cornelius, a gay Superman, a gay Indiana Jones, a gay Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare. Achilles wasn't normal. He was an uberfag, dragging Hector's body ten times round the gates of Troy for killing his boyfriend. Now that's what I call a hissy fit!

I see what he means about the first criticism (which one also finds in slash when people speak about "feminization" (sic) of characters), and I think the second exists in a few novels but not that many. I'm not sure I remember any instances of the third in genre fiction, but that may be because of the inherent blandness of such a character type. I actually think that there's a lot of interesting stories dealing with queer themes generally speaking in SFF but that's just IMHO.

It really amuses me when he says slash at least had the guts to get down and dirty ^_^ (I compared his work to specific kind of slash when I did my own review).

Thoughts?

So many books I must review before the new year ^_^;;

( The Book of the Jhereg and the Book of Taltos )

( Fortress of Ice )

( Voices )

( Avaryan cycle )

Okay, it's been, like, months since I last did reviews of books read, and I actually read a fucking lot of books recently, so I'll try to do them all by bits and pieces before the end of year. Crossover conversations will wait, I'm afraid. (so will drabbles). Sorry.

Soooooo some of those books :
( The Limbreth Gate and Luck of the Wheels by Megan Lindholm )

( The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson )

( Vellum by Hal Duncan )

( Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan )

That's all for today!

I've wanted for a long time to create a community about discussing of books, I'm finally doing it now :

booklog_sff

The concept :
- people nominate books they want to discuss
- we vote in order to chose two of them
- we get time to read or re-read them
- then we discuss them, and make fun/silly polls about them
- and we start over

So if that sounds fun to you join, and pimp it to your friends ;)

If it sounds very fun to you, I'm looking for people to help me moderate it ^_^;.

There's a whole discussion that happened last week on Ran's Board which my friends from there most probably know all about, but about which I'd be curious to have some other opinions. (BTW, I use the nickname "Stranger" in those forums).

It all started with a post about Kushner's novel Priviledge of the Sword started by Pat, who beyond his activity on that forum also manages a Fantasy blog, which I think has a pretty good reputation.

Anyway, one of the thing that caught my eye was that Pat, among other things, called Priviledge of the Sword "chick lit through and through". Other people gave good or bad opinions about that novel or Kushner's novels generally speaking. Ran, notably, denied that it was Chick Lit, whereas Calibandar called it "the girliest books I've laid my hands on in recent years".

Discussions about the "male-ness" or the "girly-ness" of specific books is something I have seen often, and which I may have sometimes made use of myself, even though I don't like it, to refer to some hard-to-define aesthetics. So I started a thread about that subject, using Pat's thread as an example, in which I asked a lot of questions to people : Chick Lit, What is it? Why isn't there any Boy's Lit?

I had two agendas with this thread : pointing out the sexism in calling some books Chick Lit in order to dismiss their quality, and questionning which specific images and idiosyncracies were associated with which gender and why. The thread saw much more discussions about the first point, both in agreement and disagreement, although some people did good effort to answer my second point as well. The discussion grew in some points somewhat heated and even wanky, but wasn't uninteresting.

A certain amount of people did agree that "Chick Lit" described a specific genre of book about female protagonists in urban, modern setting with an irreverant tone and some sexual situations, that such a genre had nothing to do with Kushner's writing. Some people also agreed that Chick Lit wasn't a good name for such a genre because it described what kind of market the genre is aimed at instead of the content of the books; and because it can cause confusion about other books, like Kushner's. Although lots of people still disagreed about that, so I'd hardly call it a consensus.

Last part of this little debate, Pat's eventually posted his final review of Priviledge of the Sword at his blog yesterday. Unsurprizingly, he was still mostly negative about it, but also persisted in calling it "Fantasy chick lit" and "one of the 'girliest' novels [he's] ever read", moreover he extrapolated this description by saying :

"There's a very "girly" approach to the narrative. It focuses on undying/forbidden love, corny romance, flowers, jewelry, gowns, fabrics, and an inordinate amount of emo moments. For crying out loud, the characters shed more tears in this book than bridesmaids at a wedding! There is only so much crying one can take, after all. In addition, the emo male characters are not authentic."

You'd think he was talking about about badfanfics ^^ I'm not entirely surprised by this reading because earlier at Ran's Board, I'd seen ErrantBard, who appeared quite sane otherwise, say about Swordspoint :

what I would say classify it as "chick-lit" in my mind is, from memory:

Flowers and effeminate looking men with open shirts on the cover, first

Prominence of homosexuality in the relationships

Pure love

Invincible yet sensible, fragile, honourable hero.

Insufferable whiny useless support characters you're supposed to pity rather than wish dead, for some reason

A plot revolving around the feelings some people have for each other.

A number of which terms had me raise my eyebrow in regard of Swordspoint. But hey! People read books are see different things in it. It happens.

It makes sense that a certain lack of sensitivity about specific genres that one doesn't like mean that one blurs the distinction between those genres. Thus romance, mannerpunk, and Chich Lit elements are all confused and equally dismissed as if they were equivalent although to anyone looking into those seriously it's obvious they're very far from being the same. The fact that all these different elements are, for some reason, associated with female taste and female writing is of course what makes such confusion problematic and sexist.

The thing that really makes me angry there is that several people as well as Pat have defended their use of the term by saying "what is so bad about works written by women that cater to what women want to read?" even though they're very obviously using the word "Chick Lit" or "girly" to dismiss and criticize a specific type of writing : "corny romance", "inordinate amount of emo moments", "the emo male characters are not authentic."
That's not the description of a genre of writing that one doesn't like but that's still considered as legit. That's a description of bad writing, through and through. A bad writing that is typified as female.

Now, while I'm still infuriated about the structural sexism of such use of terms, I'm also still curious about which elements are associated with specific genders and why.