“Be warned, then: the collected volumes of this series will contain frozen mountains, foetid swamps, hostile foreigners, hostile fellow countrymen, the occasional hostile family member, bad decisions, misadventures in orienteering, diseases of an unromantic sort, and a plentitude of mud. You continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart – no more so than the study of dragons itself.”
So states the preface of Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent, the first volume in a projected series recording the life and times of the eponymous heroine, a self-taught dragon naturalist living in Scirland, which is more or less an analogue for Victorian England. This first book constitutes an accounting of Isabella’s childhood and adolescence, her marriage to Jacob Camherst, an academic, and their expedition to the mountains of Vystrana (which is more or less an analogue for Romania) to learn about dragons, which ends up being complicated by both the local religion and political intrigues.
A Natural History of Dragons is thematically much less concerned with dragons than the sexist social attitudes which attempt to curtail Isabella’s interest in them.
In hindsight, the dissonance between my expectations for this book and what it actually turned out to be is a contributing factor in my ambivalence towards it. Having been seduced by the undeniably beautiful cover art, I envisaged a story with a strong, primary focus on dragons – their physiognomy, habits, breeds and other peculiarities – set against a backdrop of detailed magic-scientific worldbuilding; something like an adult, novelised version of Graeme Base’s classic The Discovery of Dragons, perhaps. In my defence, I suspect this is an impression that the cover, title and preface all strive to convey to some extent, and it may well be that this constitutes an accurate assessment of the series as a whole. This first book, however, is thematically much less concerned with dragons than the sexist social attitudes which attempt to curtail Isabella’s interest in them, and as such functions more as a protracted justification as to how and why a Scirling lady ended up as a scholar and explorer than as a natural history. Obviously, dragons still make an appearance, but having anticipated a story that was primarily an adventure, it came as something of a let-down to find myself reading one that was much more internal and domestic. Read More »
Lazy cut & paste job here, since I clearly have nothing else to prove to the online SFF writing/fandom circle.
Speculative Fiction 2012: The Best Online Reviews, Essays and Commentary announced its lineup of contributors, Wednesday. Edited by bloggers Justin Landon (Staffer’s Book Review- US) and Jared Shurin (Pornokitsch – UK), SpecFic ’12 collects over fifty pieces from science fiction and fantasy’s top authors, bloggers and critics.
Author and podcasting sensation Mur Lafferty, whose newest novel The Shambling Guide to New York City is due out from Orbit Books this Spring, has agreed to write the foreword. “Lafferty’s writing career germinated online. She’s been a pioneer in the space and understands why the work in this book is so important. She’s the perfect person to put it into context,” said Landon.
Landon and Shurin also announced that they will pass the torch in 2013, establishing a precedent of rotating editors every year. The 2013 volume will be edited by Thea James and Ana Grilo of The Book Smugglers. Shurin commented, “We’re excited to see this move forward with Thea and Ana. They have a great perspective on the genre community that’s also very different from our own. 2013 couldn’t be in better hands. I’m really looking forward to working with them as Jurassic London continues to publish the series.”
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Publisher: Tor Books -
Pages: 720 -
Buy: Book/eBook
I’ve reached the halfway point at least in this series to date. Death is like a feather, duty like a mountain, and around 5000 pages of WoT is like carrying a 400 lb. woman wearing spandex and a tube top on your shoulders as you run up that mountain. Not the most pleasant of images, true, but this book was much more of a slog than the previous book, The Fires of Heaven, had proven to be.
When I first read Lord of Chaos back in November 1997, I even then found it to be the most difficult of the seven books to date to enjoy. Back then, used as I was to reading cultural and religious histories in English and German, it wasn’t the size of the novel that daunted me but rather how disjointed it felt. Nearly 13 years later, that sense of disjointedness was even more pronounced. It was a struggle at times to pay attention to what was transpiring, which might explain in a perverse fit of reasoning why I am reviewing it so soon after completing it (I finished it about an hour before I began writing this post), when I typically wait 1-2 days. Between the often-interchangeable character types (Aes Sedai, Cairhein, Aiel, Forsaken, Tairens, etc.) and the over-explanations of things that I first read about several books ago, I fear my own complaints may become just as repetitive if I don’t spice them up with some actual observations. Read More »
The conversation in the genre blogosphere lately has been leaning heavily to grittiness, grimdark, and whether they serve a purpose—and whether there’s any difference between the two. A lot of bloggers and commenters seem to be settling on the idea that “grimdark” is the pejorative, so perhaps that is how I will use it here.
Now, I love a good tragedy as much as the next guy. If the next guy is William Shakespeare.
I believe in fiction where actions have consequences, and sometimes terrible prices are paid, and sometimes good people meet fates you wouldn’t wish on Count Rugen. I would argue that darkness and uncertainty are a needful thing; that without them, there are no stakes, no emotional engagement. Read More »
I’ve made something of a career out of ripping into the many covers for Mark Charan Newton’s novels. Sometimes it’s in good fun, sometimes I’m legitimately offended. He’s got so many covers at this point that I’ve lost track of them all. This time around, however, Pan Macmillan has crafted together a cover that, I, well… like. It’s impactful, maybe a little plain, but steps away from the more traditional ‘Epic Fantasy Hooded Figure/Badass/Brooding’ cover trao that a few of Newton’s other covers fell into. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this angled at a Historical Fiction audience.
Newton discusses the cover, and why he feels like it fits so well:
Of all my many covers, this is by far the best and most appropriate. It really sums up the book, because nations (or rather nationalism) are core to the series, and the idea with the covers is that each novel features a coloured banner representing the country in which the novel takes place. The one above is the banner of Detrata, with a double-headed falcon, various glaives and swords and a lovely icon. It also evokes the classical world, which was – as regular followers of the blog might have guessed – a major inspiration for the novel. I like to think that the main continent of Vispasia could sit just off the classical maps, as some forgotten corner of the world yet to be discovered by archeologists.
I’ve read a portion of an early draft of Drakenfeld and enjoyed it quite a bit. I think Newton is spot on in his description of the cover. The multi-coloured flag approach is interesting, and, should the publisher follow through with it, should provide a nice looking set of books when the series is done.
