Women in SF&F Month: Carol Berg
Apr
04
2012

Women in SF&F Month Banner

Today I’m pleased to have a guest post from one of my very favorite fantasy authors, Carol Berg! Her Rai-kirah trilogy is among my favorite fantasy series, and I am a huge fan of her other books I’ve read as well (Song of the Beast and the Lighthouse Duet). The Daemon Prism, her most recent book and the final Novel of the Collegia Magia, was just released earlier this year.

While I love her stories and worlds, I think she is particularly wonderful at writing realistic characters – flawed people who come alive because they are not flat or one dimensional. So I am very excited that Carol is discussing her approach to characterization and how the characters in the Books of the Rai-kirah evolved. Reading her thoughts on characters made me realize just why her characters resonate with me so much. I just love the way she thinks about writing them, and I hope you enjoy reading her post as much as I did!

Carol Berg

Kristen asked me to talk a bit about how my epic fantasy series, The Books of the Rai-kirah (Transformation, Revelation, and Restoration) evolved, and in particular, how I approach creating characters.  How could I resist that invitation?  Character development, and how it intertwines with an unfolding story, is one of my favorite writing topics.

Transformation by Carol Berg Revelation by Carol Berg Restoration by Carol Berg

Epic fantasies are big stories, not just in the number of books it takes to tell the whole thing, but in the complexity, scope, and scale of events.  They are grand adventures that dabble about those fascinating borderlines between nature, magic, myth, and the divine.  But if the adventure gets too grand, the events too large scale, readers can get left back on the ground.  The reading experience can become more like reading mythology than reading a human story.  Experiencing epic events through the personal lens of vivid, compelling characters enables me, as a reader, to connect to a grand adventure – to feel that I’m right there.

My projects usually stem from an idea of an interesting person in an odd – usually uncomfortable! – situation: maybe broken visionary musician who has suffered a brutal imprisonment for 17 years and doesn’t know why (Aidan in Song of the Beast) or a tall renegade sorcerer lying prostrate on the floor of an abbey church as if he’s taking holy orders, while mumbling, “What the hell am I doing here?” (Valen in Flesh and Spirit.)

Transformation originated with the fleeting image of a young, arrogant, highborn man, riding his horse across the steppes of central Asia – an image of beauty and nobility and the energies of life.  He was the epitome of a confidant, arrogant young warrior whose future was laid out in front of him like the landscape.  I decided that he would make a great fantasy hero – different – but he would require some fundamental reorientation first.  And his destiny was certainly not going to be the one he expected.  I had no idea what that destiny might be, at that point, but I did know his name.  Aleksander.

So this was the shape of the story – the downfall and transformation of a cruel prince into someone worthy of confronting epic events.  But arrogant princes are not introspective.  I needed someone else to narrate the tale.  I wanted someone who had to be around Aleksander all the time so he could witness the change, and the journey would certainly be more fun if the two had every reason to dislike each other.  Ah, a slave, and someone who had been a slave long enough to have lost hope of escape and rebellion.  I wanted him to be able to focus on my hero!

The logical place for the story to begin was at the slave market.  I wanted it cold and miserable for my poor slave, so I decided that my opening locale was the summer capital of a desert empire – perhaps an empire that had grown beyond its boundaries.  Of course I had to come up with a reason for the prince to be buying a new slave at that time.

Literally from this point, knowing little more than I’ve written here, I started writing.  The opening paragraph goes like this:

 

Ezzarian prophets say that the gods fight their battles within the souls of men, and that if the deities mislike the battleground, they reshape it according to their will.  I believe it.  I have seen such a battle and such a reshaping as could only come about with the gods devising.  It was not my own soul involved – thank Verdonne and Valdis and any other god who might eavesdrop on this telling – but I did not remain unchanged.

Characters that grow and change in response to great events are more likely to feel real and compelling.  So as I worked on the story, I began to think carefully about my two principals.  Aleksander had to be a product of his upbringing.  As the heir to an empire founded on war and dominion, he had rarely been told no.  And he had never been forced to view the consequences of his actions through anyone else’s eyes.  I could not make him some kind of sensitive new-age guy!  So I had to walk the line between make him true and making him unredeemable.  That was a challenge.

Plus, I didn’t want to burden the story with too much of Seyonne’s past.  I wanted the focus on Aleksander.  And so I decided that Seyonne could not bear to remember a past he believed irrevocably lost. (I didn’t know what his past was at that point.)  And so I decided that the greatest lesson of his captivity had been to live in the moment.  No past.  No future.  Not an easy life.

But that first paragraph already on the page nagged at me.  When speaking of the battles fought within the souls of men, of course I meant the metaphorical battle that would have to occur within Aleksander’s soul before he could be worthy of true heroism.  But I got to thinking…what if such a battle was a physical battle, and could actually occur within the landscape of a human soul?  And thereby evolved Ezzarian magic, the clues to Seyonne’s past, and the central events of a standalone book that grew into three.  By the end of the first chapter, I realized that Seyonne the slave narrator was perhaps a more important character than the man who had inspired the story.  Such is the truest delight of storytelling.

But back to character: The simple impressions I had of these two men at the beginning were certainly not enough to carry the story.  There’s nothing more boring than a one-note character, someone who is defined by anger and can’t express anything else, or someone who is forever rebellious or forever snarky.  Epic fantasy heroes and heroines get involved in larger than life difficulties, and it usually takes some combination of larger than life strength, endurance, and power, whether magical, spiritual, or intellectual to get them through.  But that doesn’t mean every hero has to be godlike.  Flawed, human people, with likes and dislikes, prejudices, vulnerabilities, doubts, fears, vices, and every other trait that we see in real life, make great protagonists.  Sometimes they’re not even very nice people all the time.  Heroes who question, who vacillate, who change, are much more interesting than all-powerful, one-dimensional players.  Flaws, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities that have to be overcome add tension and conflict to the story, and help avoid the deus ex machina (instant magical solutions) that make readers throw a book across the room yelling “cheat!”  They also leave room for character growth and ultimately satisfying resolutions.

Of course, the cast of an epic adventure is not just two people.  In this case, Seyonne and Aleksander came first.  The people around them developed as they were needed and as I discovered what role they were to play in the story.  Secondary characters, those who carry speaking parts, but aren’t the main actors, and minor characters, those who have walk-on roles to fill out the untidy jobs in the world, are just as important to making the story seem real.

I like to think of every secondary and minor character as an individual who had a life before walking into the frame of the story and who will have a life when he or she (or it!) walks out again.  Which does not mean that every innkeeper must be fully fitted out with dysfunctional family, political secrets, and interesting hobbies, but only that he or she shouldn’t devolve into the “fat innkeeper in a white apron” so familiar in lists of fantasy cliches.

Good character development always comes down to treating any character, major or minor, male or female, as a real person, an individual who wants things, who has a particular view of the world, who makes choices based on personal history, instinct, and intellect. What drives them?  What do they value?  How does their environment affect their beliefs, their customs, their clothing, their religion?  I can’t make any of them do something just because I want them to.  So I throw events in their faces and think hard about how each particular person at that particular time would react.

I hope this gives a bit of insight into my development process.  Every one of my thirteen books has evolved in somewhat the same way.  Get enough to start with.  Get going, and let the ideas, the characters, and the events develop along the way.  Hard thinking.  Hard choices.  That’s what it’s all about.

About Carol Berg:
Former software engineer Carol Berg never expected to become an award-winning author.  But her thirteen epic fantasy novels have won national and international awards, including multiple Colorado Book Awards and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. She’s taught writing in the US, Canada, Scotland, and Israel, and received reader mail from the slopes of Denali to beneath the Mediterranean.  All amazing for one who majored in math and computer science to avoid writing papers.  Her novels of the Collegia Magica have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, using words like compelling and superbly realized.

Website | Blog

The Daemon Prism by Carol Berg Song of the Beast by Carol Berg Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg
Women in SF&F Month: Nancy Kress
Apr
03
2012

Women in SF&F Month Banner

After yesterday’s great post by Jessica to launch Women in SF&F Month, today we get to hear from the first SF&F author up, Nancy Kress!  And, following a great deal of begging and groveling, I also have a guest to introduce her: my husband John, who will now take it away…

I cannot explain how wonderful Nancy Kress’s writing is to someone who hasn’t read it; suffice it to say that I have been an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy since I was in grade school, and I think of her as one of a very few authors who stand atop an impossibly tall (if rather narrow) pedestal.  As her bio below details, her stories have won numerous awards and for me are representative of the brilliant blending of hard science, sociological insight, and subtle humanity that are on display in the best modern science fiction.  Her Sleepless (aka Beggars) Trilogy is my favorite example–a set of books that I have now bought three times because paper and bindings will only hold up to so many re-readings–but her many other science fiction and fantasy works all maintain a stellar quality throughout.  I was thrilled when she accepted Kristen’s invitation to post this month and am happy to introduce her take on the issue of women in science fiction and fantasy!

Nancy Kress

Women in science fiction and fantasy – now there’s a loaded topic for you.  At various places on-line you can read that women are (1) under-represented, (2) over-represented, (3) more prominent in fantasy than SF, (4) discriminated against by publishers, (5) preferred by publishers, and (6) almost anything else you care to name.

Historically, of course, SF was a male preserve.  Look at the Tables of Contents of the early pulps, and there are vanishingly few female contributors.  But the influx of women into SF in the late 1960’s and throughout the ‘70’s changed that.  Not only were there more women writers, but there also came to be more female characters in SF besides the hero’s girlfriend or the scientist’s beautiful daughter.

But how many more?

A few years ago I decided to see if I could accumulate some actual data on this volatile topic.  So I went through every single name in the SFWA Directory, counting “male,” “female,” and “other.”  (The “other” presumably know which gender they belong to but I didn’t know because they are using initials or unisex names like “Pat” or “Terry” and I have not met them personally.)  The results were: About 40% of SFWA is female.

Next I went through the Nebula- and Hugo-award winners for the last thirty years.  I found that women have won about 40% of the awards, which argues against discrimination in the award-voting bases.  However, women are over-represented among the winners of Nebulas (voted on by other writers) and under-represented among Hugos (voted on by Worldcon attendees and supporters).  I’m not sure what that means.

As for discrimination by publishers: I have no hard data, but I don’t think it likely because so many editors are female.  These people look for books that will sell, and my impression is that they don’t care if the books were written by a man, a woman, or an aardvark.  On the other hand, it may be that more SF readers are male (as indicated by the Hugo voting?) and publishers naturally take that into account.

What about the oft-repeated idea that women write fantasy and men write SF?  Again, no hard data, because (among other difficulties), you would have to come up with neatly conclusive definitions of both sub-genres.  Whole panels at cons are regularly devoted to trying to create these definitions, and no two ever come to the same conclusions.  (Most come to no conclusions at all, but just carry the topic around in circles for an entertaining hour.)  But a quick look at two of the most successful series of the past few years certainly calls the idea into question.  Suzanne Collins’s HUNGER GAMES is SF, and George R.R. Martin’s GAME OF THRONES is fantasy.

One area where women are under-represented is hard SF, extrapolating in a real way from real science: astronomy, genetics, physics.  There are some of us who write hard SF at least some of the time (Joan Slonczewski, Catherine Asaro, Vonda McIntyre, me), but we are much out-numbered by our male colleagues (Brin, Benford, Bear, Landis, Flynn, Nordley, et. al.)  This may change as the new generation of female writers pursues science interests and degrees.  But I have to say I don’t see much sign of change yet.

But science fiction and fantasy are both still-evolving genres.  Once, someone famously remarked, “the golden age of science fiction is twelve.”  That’s no longer true.  As SF brings us more morally complex, emotionally deep, and intellectually stimulating stories, both writers and audience change.  It will be interesting to see where all that goes in the next decade, in terms of gender and otherwise.

Nancy Kress is the author of thirty books, including fantasy and SF novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. For sixteen years she was also the “Fiction” columnist for WRITERS DIGEST magazine.  She is perhaps best known for the “Sleepless” trilogy that began with BEGGARS IN SPAIN.  Her work has won four Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Award.  Most recent books are a collection, FOUNTAIN OF AGE AND OTHER STORIES (Small Beer Press, 2012),  a YA fantasy written under the name Anna Kendall, CROSSING OVER (Viking, 2010); and a short novel of eco-terror, BEFORE THE FALL, DURING THE FALL, AFTER THE FALL (Tachyon, 2012).  Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, SF writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle.

Probability Moon by Nancy Kress Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress
Women In SF&F Month: Jessica from Read React Review
Apr
02
2012

Women in SF&F Month Banner

Today I’m pleased to have a guest post from Jessica of Read React Review!  Although she doesn’t talk much about science fiction and fantasy on her blog, I have known her for many years and very much respect what she has to say on any number of issues, including ideas involving women and gender in fiction.  As such, she was one of the first people I thought to invite this month and now she is kicking things off with the first post!  She is a philosopher who specializes in gender theory, among other things, and I am very interested to hear what she thinks about the idea of women as a distinct group in fiction.

So, without further delay, here’s Jessica!

Read React Review header

When Kristen asked me to write a guest post for her Women in SF&F event, I panicked. I don’t read much SF&F, and when it comes to understanding the culture of SF&F reviewing, I’m pretty clueless. Luckily, or perhaps depressingly, the question of women and fiction can be raised in relation to any kind of fiction, and any review site. Just the other day, in the New York Times, literary fiction writer Meg Wolitzer discussed it:

“This is a tricky subject. Bringing up the women’s question — I mean the women’s fiction question — is not unlike mentioning the national debt at a dinner party. Some people will get annoyed and insist it’s been talked about too much and inaccurately, and some will think it really matters. When I refer to so-called women’s fiction … I’m referring to literature that happens to be written by women. But some people, especially some men, see most fiction by women as one soft, undifferentiated mass that has little to do with them.”

Wolitzer’s comments followed the 2010 dustup when “commercial fiction” authors Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult complained about white male novelists getting all the mainstream reviewers’ attention and praise.  And you don’t have to use much Google-fu to find essays like Why Crime Novelists Don’t Get Women or The Spectre of Sexism Haunting Horror Fiction.

I’m especially glad that members of the SF&F blogging community are asking about gender bias in reviewing. The implicit assumption is that independent blog reviews matter, and that it is just as important that they be looked at for different kinds of problematic bias as mainstream media reviews.

As the month here at Fantasy Cafe gears up, I thought I’d just be a typical philosopher and suggest that it might be worth taking a step back and asking what we mean when we use the term “woman.”  On a common sense level, ‘woman’ refers to human females, and being a human female means having certain biological features (chromosomes, genitalia, etc.). But a second’s reflection suggests we use ‘woman’ in a lot of ways that don’t correspond to this sex-based definition (like when a female is admonished that she’s not “a real woman”, or when a young man is called a “woman” as an insult). And anyway, when we start asking about the representation of women in fiction, or in reviews of fiction, we’re undertaking a feminist project of some kind, and most feminists understand ‘woman’ as something other than a biological category.

One feminist tactic has been to separate the biological and social aspects of womanhood into “sex” and “gender.”  You’re probably familiar with Simone de Beauvoir’s claim in The Second Sex (1954) that “one is not born a woman, but becomes one.” The idea is to counter the notion that biology is destiny. I wish I could say that the threat of biological determinism is long past, but even today we have claims that women’s and men’s brains are “hardwired” to produce empathetic women and system-building men.

There are loads of different gender theories. Some say that gender is the result of socialization, both overt forms like not letting girls play football or telling boys not to cry, and more subtle cues like parents of hours-old babies unconsciously  describing them in gendered ways (the boy babies as “strong” and “alert”, the girls as “beautiful” and “sweet”).  Highlighting strong female protagonists or images of powerful women in book covers are examples of attempts to counter socialization.

A more radical approach says we can’t look at gender as two neutral sets of temperament, interests, status, gestures and expressions. Rather, we must always at the same time be looking at them in reference to the power one has over the other. That is, gender is by definition a matter of domination and subordination. To become a woman, to be gendered feminine, is to become subordinate, period. In particular, it is to become sexually objectified. So seeking “gender equality” is a folly. Because sexual dominance comes before gender difference, as long as there is gender, women will be sex objects, and they will be oppressed.

These two views are pretty different, but they actually share something in common: gender realism. Gender realism is the idea that women as a group are assumed to share something, a characteristic feature, an experience (mothering?), common condition (being oppressed by men?) or criterion that the possession of which makes some individuals women (as opposed to, say, men).  However gender is defined, a gender realist says all women differ from all men in some way.

The problem with gender realism is that it seems to assume that there’s a “gendered” part of woman that is separable from other parts, like her race, sexual orientation, class, etc.  The person who put this point best is Elizabeth Spelman, so I’ll quote her here:

“What makes it true that Angela and I are women is not some women’s substance that is the same in each of us and interchangeable between us. Selves are not made up of separable units of identity strung together to constitute a whole person. It is not as if there is a goddess somewhere who made lots of little identical ‘woman’ units and then, in order to spruce up the world a bit for herself, decided to put some of those units in black bodies, some in white bodies, some in the bodies of kitchen maids in seventeenth century France, some in the bodies of English, Israeli, and Indian prime ministers (1990, 158).”

Spelman goes on to say that this “golden nugget of womanness” all woman are supposed to share is actually a very specific version of womanness, the one most familiar to the majority of the women doing feminist theory: white, middle class, heterosexual woman. Feminist writer and poet Adrienne Rich, who died just last week, called this “white solipsism”, the tendency to act and speak as if whiteness described the world.

As a result of Spelman’s kind of arguments, it’s become much more common to understand gender as intersecting with other aspects of identity. To be a ‘woman’ means something different depending on how one is situated with respect to their race, class, etc.  To really do this, you have to forgo privileging one version of femininity. So, for example, if on my women’s studies syllabus I had all white women writing about white women, and then at the end threw in some women of color, or women with disabilities, or lesbians, for a “twist”, I’d still be basically asserting that the white, middle class, heterosexual experience of womanhood is the default, “regular” sense of ‘woman’, and these other things are, for lack of a better word, “flava.”

Maybe this point should be put in an even stronger way. For some feminists, like Judith Butler, trying to define ‘woman’ at all means setting up a kind of norm, such that anyone who doesn’t meet it, is somehow lacking.  If we say that being a ‘woman’ means being gendered feminine, and that femininity requires sexually desiring men, then lesbians, for example, aren’t doing their gender “right.”  Not to mention transgendered persons. But that’s not what feminism should be about. So, on this view, feminists should forget about the category of ‘woman’ and instead help us understand how power functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in the society at large but also within the feminist movement.

Butler goes even further to say that we should forget completely about the distinction with which this all began: the sex/gender distinction. Sure, it’s easy to think of sex as natural, given.  And then gender as the social construction that gets layered over it. But feminists like Butler (as well as feminist philosophers of science) point out that biological sex has always been socially constructed: the minute a doctor says “it’s a girl”, a whole host of constructs are in place that make that a constituting speech act. A doctor could just as easily use size or hair/color to categorize newborns. We picked genitalia – we decided it mattered.

Asking “what is a woman?” is, as I’ve tried to suggest here, important from a feminist point of view, and interesting from a philosophical one. SF&F can be a vital source of imaginatively interrogating seemingly common sense concepts. Sometimes SF&F authors ask them in their writing. Sometimes readers, reviewers, and bloggers utilize SF&F to ask them. And I think it’s worth doing so even in the context of this event Kristen’s hosting. When you think about “Women in SF&F” who exactly are you thinking about? And why?

Women In SF&F Month
Apr
01
2012

Women in SF&F Month Banner

It’s officially April, which means Women in SF&F Month is here with guest posts beginning tomorrow. There probably won’t be one every single day this month, but it should be close to every day and I’m hoping to fill in some of the gaps with reviews of some fantasy and science fiction books written by women.

In case you missed my previous post about it linked to above, this month is dedicated to highlighting the women who are writing and reading SF&F.  Throughout the month I’ll have authors, book bloggers, and other commentators making guest posts.  While some of my guests will be discussing the subject itself, it’s not required to participate; the goal is just to get some interesting people, thoughts, and books all in one place. With all the recent discussion about women writing fantasy and science fiction, I think it’s really important to show that there are women writing all kinds of different books in these genres.

Although I have my own thoughts and will jump in at different times this month, I’m going to hold off until the end to say much myself.  I expect that the guest posts are going to cover a wide range of territory and have some fascinating and insightful points, and I’d much rather let each one speak for themselves than try to frame the conversation ahead of time (more than I have already, at least).  Most of all, I’m really excited about everybody who has chosen to take part this month, and I hope that everyone enjoys it and finds some new books and blogs to read!

Starting out this week, we have:

Elizabeth Bear (The Edda of Burdens Cycle; Jacob’s Ladder Trilogy; Range of Ghosts)
Carol Berg (Rai-kirah; The Lighthouse Duet; Collegia Magica)
Jessica from Read React Review
Kristin from My Bookish Ways
Nancy Kress (Beggars Trilogy; After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall; Steal Across the Sky)

Review of This Is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams
Apr
01
2012
This Is Not a Game
by Walter Jon Williams
496pp (Paperback)
My Rating: 7/10
Amazon Rating: 3.8/5
LibraryThing Rating: 3.75/5
Goodreads Rating: 3.77/5
 

This Is Not a Game is by Walter Jon Williams, a New York Times bestselling author whose work has won the Nebula Award and been nominated for Hugo, World Fantasy, and Philip K. Dick Awards. This particular novel by Williams is the first book about Dagmar Shaw. It has two sequels, Deep State and The Fourth Wall, which was just released toward the end of last month.

In This Is Not a Game, readers are introduced to Dagmar Shaw, a woman in her thirties who has a job producing ARGs (alternate reality games) for one of her best friends from college, a multi-millionaire. It’s Dagmar’s job to write the story that goes with the game, which intersects with the real world despite being played by people in locations all over the globe. Players have to solve puzzles and at times they may have to make phone calls and ask questions to solve mysteries and move forward with the game. Sometimes they even have to go to specific locations just to carry out a task necessary for the game to proceed.

After a successful end to one of the ARGs she worked on, Dagmar decides to go to Bali for a mini vacation. When she stops in Indonesia, she finds her flight is canceled. The Indonesian economy has collapsed, and Dagmar is stranded there with only $180 US dollars while chaos and panic erupt around her. Charlie, her wealthy boss, hires some mercenaries to try to get her out of there. However, the mercenaries run into trouble getting Dagmar out, prompting her to put her gaming community on the task of combining their efforts and individual resources to get her home.

While more economies continue to have difficulties, one of Dagmar’s friends is murdered outside her office. Dagmar suspects that he was mistaken for Charlie and is starting to wonder if Charlie has some big secrets he’s hiding. Should Dagmar incorporate even more of the real world into her latest game by having the gamers use their combined knowledge to reveal some answers about Charlie?

This Is Not a Game is great geeky fun.  It’s usually described as a near future science fiction thriller, and it is largely a mystery/thriller with an emphasis on alternate reality gaming. This emphasis was largely why this novel appealed to me in the first place – I love books using gaming as an extension of the real world, such as The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks and The Last Hawk by Catherine Asaro (two of my favorites). This isn’t in quite the same category as those both because it is set on Earth and there is more of a huge gaming community than whole societies that have integrated gaming into their culture. However, it still fits the same basic mold with a game that ties in with the real world, and I really enjoyed that aspect of this novel.

While I found the first act of the book involving Dagmar’s time in Jakarta difficult to get into, I was pretty absorbed once the second act started. By the time I reached the third act, I couldn’t put the book down and stayed up later than I should have one night just to find out what happened. The early part of the book does have an important purpose and does tie in with the rest of the story. Because of that, I can definitely see why it was included, but I didn’t find it that compelling of an introduction to the story. Once Dagmar returned home and resumed her life working on games, I found it much more engaging, especially after she started meeting up with the other characters who were important and the mystery began.

Other than Dagmar, there were three characters who got at least some focus – three men she went to college with and played role playing games with throughout her time there. While they did game with other people, these four formed a central group who always ended up playing various games together. Three of them continued to work together at times, but one of them remained outside the group due to a working relationship gone bad with the two men and a romantic one that didn’t end well with Dagmar. There was an infodump section that explained their past, and while it initially bothered me to have a big section for “what happened previously,” I was glad I knew the details later. There were a few sections like this that felt a bit tacked on and unrelated, but I liked them better once the rest of the characters actually spent some time with Dagmar and it was apparent how they related. I liked their dynamic, and I thought Dagmar was a good female character. She was a very human character who seemed like a woman you’d know in real life. She wasn’t special or unusual; she was very realistic.

This Is Not a Game references everything from Pinky and the Brain to Dune to Discworld, and I especially liked the portrayal of the online gaming community. They were people who banded together around their common interest of gaming, yet they were more than just a bunch of people who played a game: they had very real connections that manifested in real life. When Dagmar was in trouble in Indonesia, they all worked together to help her because she was part of their group and they cared about what happened to her. Online communities connect people from all over the world who form very real friendships, and I was glad to see the power of these online communities working together.

This Is Not a Game took a little while to hook me, but it did completely succeed in entertaining me once it got to the meat of the story. I enjoyed how everything tied together in the end, the exciting plot, and Dagmar’s character. It got me to stay up late to finish it, and it definitely made me want to read the rest of the books about Dagmar Shaw.

My Rating: 7/10

Where I got my reading copy: Review copy from the publisher.

Other Reviews:

The Leaning Pile of Books
Apr
01
2012

Hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday and looking forward to Game of Thrones season 2 starting tonight! I recently finished watching season 1 to prepare.

Browsing bargain books strikes again with 2 cheap finds and one unsolicited review copy this week.

Implied Spaces by Walter Jon WilliamsImplied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams

This was one of the bargain books I found and it still seems to be available for about $6 in hardcover if you’re interested. I’ve read two books by Walter Jon Williams now, and I liked them both so I couldn’t resist this bargain – especially since this particular book is one I’ve been hearing is really good. And how could I resist a book about a “semi-retired computer scientist turned swordsman”?

There are some sample chapters from Implied Spaces available online.

Aristide, a semi-retired computer scientist turned swordsman, is a scholar of the implied spaces, seeking meaning amid the accidents of architecture in a universe where reality itself has been sculpted and designed by superhuman machine intelligence. While exploring the pre-technological world Midgarth, one of four dozen pocket universes created within a series of vast, orbital matrioshka computer arrays, Aristide uncovers a fiendish plot threatening to set off a nightmare scenario, perhaps even bringing about the ultimate Existential Crisis: the end of civilization itself. Traveling the pocket universes with his wormhole-edged sword Tecmesssa in hand and talking cat Bitsy, avatar of the planet-sized computer Endora, at his side, Aristide must find a way to save the multiverse from subversion, sabotage, and certain destruction.

Dragon's Heart by Jane YolenDragon’s Heart by Jane Yolen

This is why I love browsing bargain books – I didn’t even know there was a fourth book in the Pit Dragon series until I came across a cheap copy of it! I thought the first book was the best one, but I’m still interested in reading the fourth book.

This was actually one of the first young adult series I read as an adult. My husband had always told me he thought there were some great young adult books out there, including this series, but I always thought of them as books for kids, not adults. Then I read the first one of these and was surprised by just how dark it was and the fact that it didn’t seem like what I would think of as a “kid’s book” at all.

The first three books in this series are Dragon’s Blood, Heart’s Blood, and A Sending of Dragons. According to Jane Yolen, Dragon’s Heart is the final book in the Pit Dragon Chronicles.

Austar IV isn’t the planet it once was, and when Jakkin and Akki finally return to the dragon nursery, their homecoming arouses mixed emotions. Together they’ve survived the insurmountable, and now they can weather the brutal conditions of Dark After and communicate with the dragons they love. But with this knowledge comes responsibility. What they’ve learned about survival could transform the planet–or, if entrusted to the wrong hands, bring about its destruction. Akki’s insistence that she return to the Rokk to finish her training and begin new experiments drives a chasm between her and Jakkin. Suddenly she finds herself in the midst of a political battle that could claim her life. Only Jakkin can save her. If only he could reach her. . . .

Immobility by Brian EvensonImmobility by Brian Evenson

Immobility, a “far future thriller about a post-human world struggling to stay human,” will be released in hardcover and ebook on April 10th. Brian Evenson has won the ALA Award for Best Horror Novel and the IHG Award for Best Story Collection, and he has been a finalist for the Edgar Award. I’m not familiar with his work, but this looks like it could be interesting.

When you open your eyes things already seem to be happening without you. You don’t know who you are and you don’t remember where you’ve been. You know the world has changed, that a catastrophe has destroyed what used to exist before, but you can’t remember exactly what did exist before. And you’re paralyzed from the waist down apparently, but you don’t remember that either.

A man claiming to be your friend tells you your services are required. Something crucial has been stolen, but what he tells you about it doesn’t quite add up. You’ve got to get it back or something bad is going to happen. And you’ve got to get it back fast, so they can freeze you again before your own time runs out.

Before you know it, you’re being carried through a ruined landscape on the backs of two men in hazard suits who don’t seem anything like you at all, heading toward something you don’t understand that may well end up being the death of you.

Welcome to the life of Josef Horkai….