Tiger of Talmare

Tiger of Talmare by Nina Scott is a novella that I stumbled across while I was browsing Amazon for contemporary science fiction written by women.

Mel is a space pirate who has been hired to hijack a spaceship carrying the cryogenically frozen Zach to be tried for a massacre on Talmare. Zach is a tiger-human hybrid soldier, who happens to have been chasing Mel across the galaxy for the last ten years, ever since she stole his ship.

The cryochamber is damaged so Mel has to revive Zach. He convinces her he's innocent. The man who hired her is the real culprit and is trying to silence Zach. As the story is uncovered it turns out there is connection to a troubled member of Mel's crew so Mel decides to do the right thing. And as this is a romance as much as an adventure, Mel and Zach get it on.

This is a fun romp heavy on action and dialogue. These elements are well done and the book is pretty entertaining. It's a novella, coming in at a mere 100 pages, so there's not much room for anything else. I think these characters have a lot of potential and if the story was fleshed out with description and context it would make a great novel.

I liked it. It's currently free as an ebook, so give it a go.

On a side note, I'm keen to read science fiction written by women. Any suggestions? I'm looking for people publishing now, rather than classics of the genre.

100 Books in 2011: No Place for a Lady

Somewhat disturbingly, I rather enjoyed No Place for a Lady by Louise Allen. I've grown so used to not enjoying Mills & Boon that at first I wondered if my critical faculties were on the fritz.

Bree Mallory runs a stagecoach company. She has aristocratic relations but has to make her own living which she does quite well. One night a driver lets her down and rather than cancel the coach, Bree drives it herself. On the way she is caught up in a race between members of a gentlemen's club. One of the racers is Max Dysart, a handsome, rich and eligible aristocrat.

Rather nicely, the conflict in their relationship is not driven by internal insecurities, but by the differences in their social status and by Max's uncertainty over whether his first wife is dead. Unfortunately, the plot twist at the end where someone pretends to be his dead wife is rushed and never really becomes a threat to the inevitable wedding.

Well, I sort of enjoyed most of it, because Louise Allen gets right something that really bugs me about Mills & Boon. She provides her romantic leads with context. There are lots of other characters, several of whom are well drawn and rounded, and the Regency set in London is brought to life quite effectively. Bree is genuinely an independent woman and that's quite refreshing.

Obviously, I'm not really recommending this as it's still a romance and not really my thing, but it was ok.

100 Books in 2011: New Moon

The second book of the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer is New Moon. In this part Edward leaves Bella, for her own good natch, and she goes into a big funk for months. Then she discovers that if she engages in activities that could kill her, her subconscious provides an hallucination of Edward being all domineering. She hangs out with Jacob who falls in love with her and turns out to be a werewolf. Bella wonders if she can settle for being adored by someone she can't love but then discovers Edward has gone off to get himself killed because he can't live without her.

Bella goes off to find Edward in the company of Alice (Edward's sort of vampire sister), meets lots of scary vampires who like to eat people, and brings Edward back. She bangs on a lot about wanting to be a vampire.

There's even less plot in New Moon than there was in Twilight and even more disturbing relationships. The quality of the writing has slipped a bit from the first book and doesn't seem quite as polished. It wasn't as engaging and afterwards I felt a bit dirty.

Now I really understand what the issue is with these books. Twilight was ok, really it wasn't any worse than your average romance novel. But New Moon takes it to another level. Bella only regains any happiness when imaginary Edward is abusively yelling at her in her hallucinations.

Then there is a really telling moment at the end. Edward has been his usual terse, controlling self who appears to only speak to Bella in order to correct her, admonish her or berate her over something. He acts as though he hates her. But for a moment, at the end, after he has left her and tried to kill herself, he makes a speech about how he loves her to distraction really, and all his arsehattery is because he loves her so much. It was a little out of place and read like the sort of thing the author wishes someone would say to her.

It is tragic that this resonates with so many women and girls.

100 Books in 2011 challenge: Bride of the Solway

More short books! Bride of the Solway by Joanna Maitland is a Mills & Boon (and yes, I still have more of them on book mountain).

Our heroine, Cassie, is the prisoner of her step-brother, the Laird of Langrigg. He has gambling debts and plans to marry his sister to a wealthy but weak husband, just as soon as he can find a suitable mark. Cassie tries to escape and runs into Captain Ross Graham, a man searching for a family. The step-brother captures Cassie, beats up Ross and throws him in gaol.

On getting out of gaol, Ross renews his acquaintance with Colonel Anstruther, whose wife is very sick and is expected to die soon. Cassie's brother decides that Anstruther will need a new wife soon and that should be Cassie. During visits engineered to endear Cassie to Anstruther, she confides in Ross and they plan an escape to her godfather in England. Once there, Ross discovers that his family are distantly related to Cassie's godfather. Her brother chased them in their escape and they believe that he died. But he didn't and snatches Cassie from her godfather's garden and takes her back to Scotland, where he forces her to marry an old man who paid £5,000 for her.

But Ross comes for her and rescues her at the altar. They are then married and live happily ever after.

This one annoyed me a lot less than the other Mills & Boon have, largely because there was a lot more plot and a not very much mooning about by either protagonist. Having said that, the plot was still pretty thin and really lacked tension. Without the artifical tension created by the mooning about, i.e. the protagonists' internal monologue about how they love the other but mustn't, love the other but also hate the other, love the other but don't want to admit it, love the other but think the other hates them, etc - the tension must derive from the plot. Will Cassie end up in Bedlam or married off for money? Well, no, the possibility is never believable. I suppose if it was, it couldn't be a Mills & Boon story. I wonder whether my expectations of this genre are so unshakeably set that there is nothing the author could do to make me doubt what the ending will be. The only way would be to tell a different story. And then Mills and Boon wouldn't have published it.

The other elements were quite thin as well. Characterisation relied on tropes and the dialogue was actually quite bad, especially when it was in dialect. The one exception was the character of Colonel Anstruther, an old man clearly in love with his dying wife - it was sweetly and poignantly drawn.

100 Books in 2011 Review: A Noble Captive

I try to read as widely as possible and sometimes that means reading things I don't think I'm going to like. Things I don't think I'm going to like include romance novels, especially Mills & Boon. However, there is something to be learnt from reading these books, namely 'how to create emotional intensity through internal monologue'.

A Noble Captive by Michelle Sykes is a historical romance set on the edges of the Roman Empire in 75 BC. The captive in question is a Roman tribune, a contemporary of Julius Caesar, who is captured by pirates in the Mediterranean and taken to the island temple of Kybele. The story is inspired by the capture of the young Caesar by pirates although the ending is significantly less bloody.

The heroine is the assistant priestess, struggling to keep the temple going financially and spiritually while the sibyl is unwell. She is trying to walk a tightrope between political factions she doesn't really understand.

Actually, there's a good deal more plot in this than in the other Mills & Boon I've read. Although that doesn't mean there's a lot of plot. There's a sprinkling of solid historical detail but this is undermined by a lack of rigour in other areas. For example, tribune was a very high office but in this book it comes across as not much more than a centurion.

So, yeah, there's not much to say about this. It was fairly fluffy and not as annoying as previous Mills & Boon have been (does that mean I'm getting indoctrinated??), but there's little to recommend it.  

100 Books in 2011 review: Forbidden Magic

I love the idea of paranormal romances. Erotic romance combined with fantasy sounds like something I could really enjoy. What could go wrong?

Forbidden Magic by Cheyenne McGray is the first of a series. A witch who works with law enforcement to solve mystical crimes discovers that a coven of black warlocks is planning to summon people-eating demons to earth. Failing to convince her coven to summon the Tuatha D'anann, she does it on her own, but only one of them comes. Her coven is attacked by the demons and then she and her warrior ally convince the rest of the Tuatha D'anann to come to fight the demons.

You know, it sounds promising and I'm always up for a bit of silliness in plot terms, so long as it's well-written silliness. And that's what could go wrong. The characters are pretty stereotypical. Aside from the witch Silver, and her Tuatha D'anann lover Hawk, the characters are flat and boring. The members of the Tuatha D'anann party, the law enforcement team, and the coven, are just names with the odd bit of description attached. There is no personalisation and no individualisation.

Romance writing is different in that the focus is on the development of the central relationship and on the sex scenes. But for me, the relationship in this case didn't feel convincing. The sex scenes did the job they're supposed to do. They were ok but not great. And I was rather disappointed by the kinky sex only being allocated to the evil characters - the kind of sex you have doesn't say anything about character and it's not good writing to rely on such obvious tropes.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot to recommend about this one. Anyone got any recommendations for really good paranormal romances?  

Thoughts on reading: Virgin Slave, Barbarian King

Oh goddess, it's so embarrassing. I hate reading these things. But, following a workshop on the challenges of writing for Mills & Boon, there are several of them on book mountain. I'm perfectly prepared to believe that writing formulaic romance requires considerable skill and discipline. The second Mills & Boon I've read since the workshop has provided little evidence.

It's ok. It's way better than the first. There is description as well as inner monologue and there is a pleasing symmetry in the protagonists journey which makes the patriarchy marginally easier to swallow. It has Goths; not quite Vikings but close enough. Other than that, it has little to commend it.

It did make me think about the dynamic of love stories, though. Protagonist 1 meets Protagonist 2 and finds them horrible/infuriating yet attractive. Protag 2 feels the same. Yet, they can't just enjoy each other. No, instead they must be convinced that it would be wrong to love each other and very angry about what they are feeling. Why? What sort of relationships are like that? Not healthy ones, for sure. Mixing love up with shame and anger is not a cocktail I want to drink. But there'd be no story if there were no conflict, would there? If the conflict were external, it would become a different type of story like a quest or an adventure. To keep it a romance the conflict must be internal, fueled by misunderstanding and insecurity. And that's why they follow this pattern. If they don't, it's not a story. So, I learned something from reading Virgin Slave, Barbarian King by Louise Allen.

My non-fiction was more edifying. I read the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus and it was life-changing. The main essay is Camus' thoughts on how one can respond to the absurdity of a godless world. Surprisingly uplifting.

Thoughts on reading: Twilight

People have had lots to say about Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I probably wouldn't have picked this up if I hadn't read so much criticism of it and it got to the point where I really wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

While I do subscribe to the view that all published fiction has something good about it, I recognise there are levels and types of goodness within that. So, in comparison to other published fiction that I have read, is Twilight any good? Surprisingly, it is. I wasn't expecting that.

Plot-wise, there's not much to it. Aside from Edward and Bella the characters are pretty lifeless. Bella's friends and family are ciphers and she doesn't seem to like them much. Edward's family are more vivid, in the sense that I know what they're supposed to look like, but by the end only Alice has a distinct personality. Edward and Bella are more fleshed out, especially Bella as the book is in first person from her POV. I can't say I found either Edward or Bella particularly likeable. It's an easy read; it's 434 pages and I got through it in less than four hours.

The description of setting is variable; natural settings are brought out well with good writing but the town and buildings are vague and somewhat sketchy. Weather is also done well. The dialogue is ok, although Meyer is overly found of expressive dialogue tags, of which I think I found 'snickered' the most irritating. In fact, both Bella and Edward do quite a lot of snickering and chuckling and it is part of what contributes to making them unlikeable.

Yet, Twilight has something. By page forty, I was so engrossed I nearly missed my stop on the train and that doesn't happen often. The relationship between Bella and Edward starts off in a standard Mills & Boon format. Edward starts off as angry boner man directing a violent and unpredictable temper at Bella. Then, about half way through, he 'fesses up. Edward opens up and reveals that his anger stems from his insecurities. He still is a bit of a dick, but not so much as he was shaping up to be.

The romance between them is the intensely emotional yet virginal kind that you only experience as a teenage. This isn't a young girl seduced by an older man, it is two teenagers experiencing first love. Edward may be a 100-year old vampire but in this respect he is a seventeen year old boy. There is a bit of touching, face, neck and arms only, four kisses with no tongue, and that's it. Yet, it is so sexy. The passion between them is overwhelming and in the end that's what pulls you in.

The writing is ok (it generally gets better towards the end), neither plot or character are compelling, but the relationship is absorbing. Twilight is good; it's not great, but it's not awful either.

Thoughts on reading: One Day

Book club time! This month we read One Day by David Nicholls. It's mainstream fiction of the Nick Hornby type.

I don't really know what to say about this. The writing was amazing. It was so deft, assured and done with such a light touch that I was left feeling very disappointed that this talent was wasted on such a dull story. Nicholls is a great writer. One Day is not a great book.

I quite like the concept of it. One Day tells the story of a twenty year relationship via one day (the same day) per year. Again, Nicholls ability to sketch the characters in a couple of scenes that show a year's worth of growth and change, without info dump or exposition, is exceptional. But the story is a fairly pedestrian romance between two characters that aren't very interesting or likeable. I spent the book wishing Nicholls was writing sci-fi or fantasy.

The end of the book was also disappointing. One of the characters dies. It's really abrupt and there's no foreshadowing, which could be interpreted as an admirable commitment to realism or as the only way to avoid the dreary slide into domesticity that seemed so inevitable. I'm going for the latter. Give it a miss, unless you want to admire the technical skill.

Adventures in reading

It's been a while, but mainly because I've been writing a short story, so no apologies. Since I've been away I've cracked through lots of books and thus here comes a huge post.

Following on from the epic Martin Chuzzlewit I finished off Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, one of the many half-read books lying around my house. It had some interesting material but there are better examples of this type of book out there.

Moving on from there I felt that I wanted something light, so I chose A Wicked Liaison by Christine Merrill. It's a Mills & Boon Historical Romance and quite far from my usual choice. I have it (and a few others) because my writing group did a workshop on writing for Mills & Boon and getting some examples was for follow up research. Anyway, I feel violated. On a content level, this offended me. On a writing level it does offer some interesting observations of what is missing from the book. What is there is well written, it's just that there is so much that is left out. There is very little world building (as it is set in Regency London). We are offered little in the way of description, hardly any smells, sounds or kinesthetic input. The book takes place completely in the mind and we are entirely caught up in the thoughts of the two protagonists. This does make it very intense but the inner monologues are quite repetitious. Ugh. Did not like.

My non-fiction interlude was Earth Path by Starhawk, which I loved.

Then, due to an unscheduled trip to Doncaster, I read February's book club book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. It was an interesting style. The author chose a monologue for the whole book and the writing was wonderfully tight. What was there was very well done but, for me, the style made it distancing. It felt like an intellectual novel not an emotional one. Disappointing, because it could have been much more powerful.

After my unpleasant toe-dip in to romance, I felt a strong need to return to speculative fiction, in the form of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick. I find that Dick's novels are very much the fiction of ideas. I did notice lots of new words for not-so-new concepts and at one point it did feel a bit overwhelming. I loved the idea of stress being measured in units of Freuds. Having said that, the world-building was great. The book plays with the idea of reality, the nature of god and altered states of consciousness. I really liked it.

Following that I read The Introverted Leader: Building on your Quiet Strength by Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, which I found really inspiring and helpful.

Then I picked Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder (I'm noticing a lot of people using middle initials today). I think I'm going right off the use of the first person in the long form. The story had potential but the writing was unsophisticated. I couldn't make up my mind up whether it was YA fiction or not; in the end I decided that even if it was, it could still be held to the same standards as anything else. There was too much tell and too much 'Yelena had worried about/planned for/thought' where we hadn't been given that previously. The world-building and characterisation lacked depth. It also committed the cardinal sin (in my eyes, at any rate) of not being internally consistent with levels of technology, clothing, dialogue, etc. I couldn't fix an historical period in my mind. Characters fought with swords, lived in castles and used magic but then had factories and used incredibly modern dialogue. For me, it was distracting and annoying. The dialogue as a whole was not well done; often I felt that the dialogue didn't reflect the characters as they were described. The relationship between the protagonist and her love interest was pure Mills & Boon and was so creepy. Not good. And there are two more in the series.

Most recently, I've read Belching out the Devil by Mark Thomas, which is an exploration of Coca Cola's activities in the world. I may not be able to drink pop again.