Juno Books

From FANTASY BOOK CRITIC

The Last Page by Anthony Huso

“The city of Isca is set like a dark jewel in the crown of the Duchy of Stonehold. In this sprawling landscape, the monsters one sees are nothing compared to what’s living in the city’s sewers.Twenty-three-year-old Caliph Howl is Stonehold’s reluctant High King. Thrust onto the throne, Caliph has inherited Stonehold’s dirtiest court secrets. He also faces a brewing civil war that he is unprepared to fight. After months alone amid a swirl of gossip and political machinations, the sudden reappearance of his old lover, Sena, is a welcome bit of relief. But Sena has her own legacy to claim: she has been trained from birth by the Shradnae witchocracy — adept in espionage and the art of magical equations writ in blood — and she has been sent to spy on the High King.”

The blurb above does not do justice to this awesome novel that is the “pure” genre debut of the year so far for me and one of three 2010 “debuts” in a more extended sense that astounded me so far.

I have not encountered the inventiveness, sense of wonder and the “many goodies” of The Last Page in a debut, all packed in a reasonable 400 odd pages, since John C Wright’s Golden Age and Gary Gibson’s Angel Stations, though this one is fantasy with blood magic, necromancy, mysterious and ultra-powerful beings, but also airships, guns, newspapers and a “steampunk” like setting with an early industrial flavor.

The main characters Caliph and Sena are just superb with a great supporting cast of witches, spies, former college friends, devoted servants and mysterious personages, while the meaning of the title remains somewhat ambiguous to the end (”page” as in book, or as in a young servant?); while the main thread of the novel is solved, the stunning ending promises a sequel for the ages too. A++ and full review in late July/early August.

Full Disclosure: Before I was your beloved (ahem) editor of Pocket Juno, I became Anthony Huso’s agent. Paul Stevens at Tor is his editor and I’ve stayed out of Paul’s way (and will continue to do so). Still, I consider Ant one of “my baby authors” making his debut and hope everyone else in the world is as thrilled with his first novel (17 August release date) as this reviewer. (And, oh yes, his second book, The Black Bottle is even better…)

And to be clear: I am not seeking other clients. Don’t ask. I’m not really an agent. I don’t want to be an agent. I do NOT like the work and I’m TERRIBLE at it. Ask my clients. (That’s why I appreciate all you real agents out there.) I’ve repped John Shirley for years (it started out as a dare) and took Anthony because Marc Laidlaw prevailed upon me to read it and, when I did, I felt the novel was undeniable: it would sell easily to the right publisher. (It did and to the only editor I sent it to.)

Along with doing several other publishing-related jobs in addition to being a more than full time book editor, I review books. In fact, I’m even a member of the National Book Critics Circle (unless my dues have expired). For the last year I haven’t done a lot of reviewing, but I am starting to do so again and editing reviews as well.

More about that another day. I’m just supplying this info as background. The point of this post concerns e-galleys.

First, let me set out my prejudices:

1. I sit here in front of a screen all day. Reading onscreen is “work”.
2. When reading a book for review, I like to relax — as a regular reader would. For me, “relax” isn’t “sitting here where I work all the time”.
3. When reading for review, I often mark up a galley/ARC/book.
4. I also read review books when I go places and have to wait for any reason.
5. No, sillykins, I own no portable e-reading machine of any sort, nor do I imagine I will unless they start handing them out for free. I don’t even have a laptop anymore because the youngest went to college and he needed it.

In general, reviewers are not fond of e-galleys

All this being said there are also very good reasons to welcome an e-version of a book:

• A book that might be published in England and/or is otherwise a high-priced (usually limited edition) hardcover.
• Advance copies of books, especially mass market paperbacks, are quickly becoming a thing of the past — and for good reason. Other than the cost and waste involved, most mmp reviewers seem to want the “real book” and disregard an ARC anyway. But there are still times you need an advance, pre-publication reading (deadlines, advance quotes, interviews, just deciding if you are even interested in consdering a particular book for review, etc.)
• You get it right away.

So, I am not unacquainted with various versions on e-galleys. I’ve always been notified of availability of such by email.

But HarperCollins/Avon did introduce me to something new this week. I got a card– a Symtio card — in the mail along with promotional material for two books: Embrace the Night Eternal and Abandon the Night by Joss Ware. (Okay, there’s at least a name drop for your efforts, folks!) On the back of the card was a scratch strip that revealed a PIN. You go to the proper URL, supply the pin and get your free ebooks. I am warned they are DRM protected and will expire a week before on sale dates. That’s somewhat bothersome, but I also am fairly sure the nice publicity person would, if I requested, be happy to send me a pulp version when it is published.

Today, it is still a novelty. Enough to gain my attention because it is new. The colorful, informative (although, please, could you make the typeface on the the back a teensy bit bigger?) cards might be used promotinally in other ways, too. But they are probably a mite on the pricey side to be handed out like, say, bookmarks.

I was supposed to beta-test NetGalleyfrom both the publisher’s and reviewer’s points of view early on in its development — so early it was time-consuming, bothersome, and I dropped out pretty quickly. (Although I hope I gave their tech people some decent feedback while I was involved.) They are up and running now and I’ve had a couple of e-mail invitations to download e-galleys there. Haven’t yet.

I understand, from news items, that Simon & Schuster–Pocket is an imprint thereof, Juno is an imprint of Pocket–is in beta a similar system. It appears it will be quite awhile before it is the usual way of doing things though.

The card, front and back:

(And, uh, yeah, that one blurb really does say “Zombies May Rule, But Love Always Triumphs.” I bet you were wondering how zombies were getting worked into this )

I should be doing many other things than writing about vampires…

However, I have these two articles (one on Anne Rice, the other on Interview With the Vampire) due for an encyclopedia) which should have been done long ago (sorry, Mr Joshi) and have had a small portion of my brain considering fangsters for weeks. And, of course, I had to go back and re-read Rice’s work, which also makes one contemplate vampire literary history.

Oh, yeah, and this does have relevance to Juno. We have a lot of vampires right now. Maria Lima’s Blood Lines series [Matters of the Blood, Blood Bargain (release date: Sept 29), and Blood Kin (release: Oct 27)] features a “vampire lover”. Linda Robertson’s Circle series [Vicious Circle, Hallowed Circle (Dec 29), Fatal Circle (July 2010)] has a vampire who would certainly like to be a lover (whether he succeeds or not would be spoiling…) and one who was a lover. Delilah Street has been dealing with some nasty vampires in Carole Nelson Douglas’s series—Dancing With Werewwolves and Brimstone Kiss— and on November 24, the third book—Vampire Sunrise—introduces, well, yet another new take on the ancient trope.

Then there’s all the current cultural brouhaha on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series…so maybe my current vampiric thoughts aren’t so strange after all.

First off, fellow feminists, calm down about the Twilight brouhaha. I’ll get to that, but how about looking at the first truly romantic vampire — who was created by a feminist and is a feminist “himself”.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro sums up the appeal of the vampire in a recent interview:

The same as it’s always been: a semi-immortal figure whose survival is wholly dependent upon the living is filled with power and ambiguity that has a lot to say about how we, as a species, deal with our own mortality. And since mortality is so closely connected to sexuality/reproduction, the two are greatly entangled, which adds to the strength of the archetype, especially when the writer is willing to face the issues straight on and without flinching.

Some writers flinch. Yarbro doesn’t

In the early 1970s when Yarbro began imaging her fictional vampire, Saint-Germain, her intent with the novel Hotel Transylvania “was to push the Dracular model of a vampire as far to the positive as possible and still maintain recognizable vampirism, and,” she notes, “I’m still doing it.” Burning Shadows: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain (Saint-Germain Chronicles #23, novel #21) will be published in December by Tor. “Probably the psychological glue for the series is that from the first I determined that for Saint-Germain… blood was a metaphor for intimacy and all that goes with taking another person into your own psyche. Depending upon the person with whom Saint-Germain, …is involved, that relationship is more or less fulfilling depending on the expectations of the living partner.”

Yarbro’s Saint-Germain is particularly important in vampire literature — especially considering today’s urban fantasy and paranormal romances — because he is the first truly romantic vampire — he not only cares about his partners (not victims), his survival depends upon their satisfaction. Passionate, sensual, even feminist. (You can read more of the vampire’s genesis in her essay, “From Dracula to Saint-Germain” on her Web site )

Yarbro has always termed the Saint-Germain novels as “historical horror”–the history is horrifying, not the vampire. Yarbro has placed Saint-Germain’s adventures in many eras and locales. The first, Hôtel Transylvania is set in and around Paris in 1743. Other books have been set as early as Imperial Rome and some stories even bring Saint-Germain into the 1980s. The first book was set in mid-eighteenth century for good reason. “It was chosen,” Yarbro explains, “because that was when the real man [ Comte Saint-Germain] lived. Then I looked for historical periods that were interesting to me, when a foreigner could fit into society, when access to women was possible.”

The character and books have evolved over the decades. “I started working on Hôtel Transylvania back in the winter of 1970/71; I wasn’t yet thirty years old. Twenty-two novels and thirteen short works later,” Yarbro says, “I would hope that my perspectives have changed and the tales have shifted in their focus through time and culture enough to keep novelty in the series.”

The Saint-Germain series still survives, but does not thrive on the level of many current vampire series; it certainly is not the cultural phenomenon that Stephenie Meyers Twilight series and the movies based on it has become. Few books — or anything else — are.

Although Hôtel Transylvania might appeal to teen-aged girls, the more recent Saint-Germain novels probably would appeal to only a few. They are simply too complex, mature, and irrelevant to what they know of life. The accurate historicity, even the vocabulary level, is probably beyond most kids. They would have been for me when I was that age.

I read Twilight when it first came out. Wasn’t really my type of novel; the book wasn’t meant for the likes of me. I am not a teenage girl. But I saw exactly why Megan Tingley bought it and invested in its marketing, and I recommended it even as a book adults should not ignore.

The Saint-Germain series survives, but it is not a cultural phenomenon like the Twilight series, created by Stephenie Meyer, and the Twilight became overwhelming popular because it reflects what adolescent girls feel. Sex is alluring, but scary. Boys are fascinating, but repulsive. Girls want to be loved deeply and passionately and madly by someone just as obsessive as they are. They are entranced by the beautiful and sexy…and scared to death of it. That’s why they scream over androgynously pretty boy bands with great dance moves. Bum shaking, bulging crotches and pelvic thrusts in your face aside-they are, essentially, safe non-men.

So is the vampire Edward Cullin. He’s all about self-control and not hurting Bella Swan. He is a fantasy male.

This is supernatural fantasy, not a road map for life. (If you want to feel creeped out: Why the heck would anyone, let alone a 100 year-old vampire, want to hang out at a high school? Ick.)

As for abstinence, Meyer’s authorial choice works in the context of her book, for her characters, and our times. Edward is dangerous — so are real boys and sex — but he is more the ultimate good guy, not the typical bad-boy vamp. Vampires are all about the dangers of the flesh and always have been — sexuality with no guilt, violence, sublime orgasmic experience at the risk of annihilation. In today’s culture the traditional equation of sex with death is not only metaphorical, but it can be reality. Is a vampire with self-control such a bad image for a little girl to swoon over?

Yes, in real-life aspects of Bella and Edward’s love might be seen as self-destructive. So were Romeo and Juliet.

And, even though I haven’t read the other books in the series, my bet is that in the end Bella’s is going to turn out to be special and heroic.

I confess: I was a pre-teen girl. I was a teen-aged girl. I may even have, for some brief moment, dotted my lower case letter I’s with circles. I know I used purple ink. I also read a lot. Nancy Drew was rich, bland, respectful of male authority figures, sexless, and hung up on a dumb jock named Ned Nickerson. Reading those books didn’t warp me a whit as a woman; neither did reading misogynistic science fiction or James Bond books.

Girls who read have brains. Girls with brains interpret books for what they are. I’ve picked up vibes online from girls discussing what they like and dislike about the way the books have progressed. Want to worry? Worry about girls who do not read books let alone get so involved they discuss the merits and demerits of them.

And they keep reading. In Eclipse, the third book in Meyer’s series, Edward references Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights — . Is this a bad thing?

BLEAK HISTORY by John Shirley came out this week. Full disclosure: I’m Mr Shirley’s agent. But the reason I wanted him to write this book was because I knew he’d be great at writing urban fantasy — his own distinctively individual interpretation of it anyway. I was right.

Although women will enjoy the book (there are strong female characters in it and a touch of romance) this is a, well, manly sort of urban fantasy: Urban fantasy with balls. Don’t get me wrong, Gabriel Bleak is not a macho Neanderthal Rambo, no way. He’s very, very human…even if he does have supernatural powers. And the other members of the Shadow Community — other paranormal people — are indelible unique characters.

It’s an action-packed, gritty story–dark, but with wit and depth — with an original take on a world where the supernatural is natural.

Here’s the cover copy:

CLASSIFIED: APPARENT SUPERNATURAL

Subject: Gabriel Bleak. Status: Civilian. Paranormal skills: Powerful. Able to manipulate AS energies and communicate with UBEs (e.g. “ghosts” and other entities). Psychological profile: Extremely independent, potentially dangerous. Caution is urged….

As far as Gabriel Bleak is concerned, talking to the dead is just another way of making a living. It gives him the competitive edge to survive as a bounty hunter, or “skip tracer,” in the psychic minefield known as New York City. Unfortunately, his gift also makes him a prime target. A top-secret division of Homeland Security has been monitoring the recent emergence of human supernaturals, with Gabriel Bleak being the strongest on record. If they control Gabriel, they’ll gain access to the Hidden — the entity-based energy field that connects all life on Earth. But Gabriel’s got other ideas. With a growing underground movement called the Shadow Community — and an uneasy alliance of spirits, elementals, and other beings — Gabriel’s about to face the greatest demonic uprising since the Dark Ages. But this time, history is not going to repeat itself. This time, the future is Bleak. Gabriel Bleak.

Read reviews and an excerpt here.

I’m not sure whether this idea is either “proper” or good. I thought I’d try it awhile and see what you thought.

I’ve been a reviewer for a looooong time. I recently intentionally took a short hiatus from it. This was due to a lot of factors. Primarily time management, burn-out, and the loss of the last *paying* review gig. When I began to feel as if I wanted to come off vacation, I pondered (barring the offer of getting paid for it) how/why to start reviewing again. I originally started reviewing because I’d become interested (some might say “passionate”) about a type of fiction and I wanted to proselytize. As time went on I felt I had something to say about that type of fiction or, at least, had questions to be raised and ideas to consider. I was also fairly unconstrained about how I wanted to write. I could write at length and somewhat “seriously” or I could do short, quick reviews…or anything in between.

Right now I am very interested in urban fantasy/paranormal romance — the genre without a decent name — that blends fantasy, romance, erotica, science fiction, horror, and/or mystery in varying degrees. As someone once said, more or less, genres are born due to audience demand. I’m seeing a lot of response to that demand these days, but not a lot of being written about what is evolving and very little serious review. To quote myself from the following review: “Science fiction and fantasy are almost too obsessed with genre navel-gazing, but are currently turning a blind eye to the emerging — oh, let’s just leave it nameless — genre that blends fantasy, romance, erotica, science fiction, horror, and/or mystery. Horror and mystery literary analyses look primarily to the past. Romance gazes very little at itself, but its avid readers develop a consensus. Erotica is seldom even considered literature, let alone deserving valid critique.”

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not going to try to fill that gap! I’m just saying that’s what got me thinking about reviewing again. And, as mentioned, I want the freedom to do different types of reviews. Not all will be lengthy like this one nor will I confine myself to any genre or nongenre.

Why post it here? (1) The obvious: I want more people to become aware of Juno Books and buy them, so if this attracts some traffic — cool beans. (2) The readership here is probably already into a lot of the fiction I want to review. (3) Hell, if I am writing for free (something I swore off doing some time ago) then why give it to somebody else? It is mine, I tell you, mine, mine, mine!

So, we’ll see what happens. (One guess: I won’t have time to follow through. Sigh.)

The Queen’s Bastard (Book One of the Inheritors’ Cycle)
C.E. Murphy
Trade Paperback, 448 pages, $14
April 2008
ISBN: 978-0-345-49464-1

THE QUEEN’S BASTARD is itself something of a bastard offspring: a cross-genre book that takes some chances and, consequently, stumbles a bit. I prefer imaginative courage to safe formula, so that’s not really a negative. There are also signs this may be the rare series where subsequent books outshine the first. But my opinion is, I’m sure, not important. The real question is: Will Murphy’s current fans — who, of course, Del Rey hopes to attract — try number two?
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