Tag Archives: Genres

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Bibliophile Confessions: It’s Not You, It’s Me…

So, having waxed lyrical about the television show Lucifer and the graphic novels that inspired the show, I decided it was high time that I put my proverbial money where my proverbial mouth is…and read a graphic novel.

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I chose, not surprisingly, Lucifer: Book One.*  Though the character of Lucifer was created by Neil Gaiman in his Sandman comics, the Lucifer comics were written by Mike Carey, who turned Lucifer from a supporting character to the hero of his very own series.  This book is a 400-odd page collection of Lucifer’s adventures, beginning with his comfy retirement in Los Angeles, running the trendy piano bar Lux, with his companion Mazikeen by his side.

Lucifer_Vol_1_1When a vicious new power arises, wantonly fulfilling wishes and granting human desires, however, Heaven begins to fear that the balance of power may be disrupted.  Unwilling to get directly involved, Heaven instead dispatches a high-ranking angel named Amenadiel to request Lucifer’s assistance.  If he complies, and defeats this new foe, he will be granted anything he might desire.  When Lucifer inevitably makes quick work out of this new foe, he is granted his wish–a letter of passage, allowing him to travel to any world he might chose.  And thus, the stage is set for a whole series of mayhem and adventure.

The Lucifer series was–and remains–enormously successful, regardless of the television show.  These are startling imaginative, beautifully illustrated adventures that pull you into the story within a few short panels…that is, once I got used to reading them.

I don’t know if this is the case for all new graphic novel readers, but I found my eyes moving more in reading this book than in most traditional novels I had read.  In part, this is because graphic novels are read left to right and top to bottom.  This panel might make it a little easier to understand:

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Courtesy of Anina Bennett: www.bigredhair.com

Inside those panels, dialog is read from top to bottom.

It can actually get pretty tiring on the eyes, especially for those of us not quite used to the format.  Moreover, there are so many pictures to look at, so many colors on the page, and so much detail, that reading a page can take a pretty long time–especially for those of us prone to going “ooooh” and “aaahhh” at colors easily.

Even this page, perhaps one of the most straightforward within Lucifer, has so much more detail than a traditional novel that I was mesmerized:

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From http://comicsalliance.com/lucifer-book-one-review-mike-carey-vertigo/

Seriously–this graphic novel dashes around like Lucifer himself–delighting in breaking the rules and defying all your expectations with each new tale.

But, for all that, as much as I appreciated the creativity and the artistry that went into each panel, as much as I found the story lines compelling…I am not a graphic novel reader.

I think part of it is that I have grown so used to imagining my own characters and settings that I found the graphics to be more of a roadblock than a part of the action.  The panels made the reading experience a hectic one for me.  However, for visual-based learners, I can see where these elements would be a huge draw, and an enormously entertaining reason to keep reading.

I also realized, in the course of reading, that I really like narratives.  I love the descriptive passages in traditional novels, and the discussions of what a character is thinking and feeling, outside of what is being said between characters.  And graphic novels don’t provide those kind of details as explicitly as traditional novels.  They require you to read facial expressions, analyze the lettering in the panels, and deduce the  subtext in ways that most novels don’t.  And, to be honest, I am not terribly good at subtext in real life, so I’m fairly hopeless at it when reading.

So all in all, it’s not you, Lucifer.  It’s me.  I truly enjoyed my foray into graphic novels, and I can utterly see the appeal.  For readers who respond to imagery over words, for more intuitive thinkers, graphic novels are wonders, and I couldn’t recommend them more highly.  But, while I’d be happy to try more graphic novels in the future, for my verbal, logical(ish) brain, I think I might be sticking to more traditional novels…for now, anyways.

*The link to this book will bring you to the website for the Boston Public Library.  All Massachusetts residents are eligible to get a library card and order books from the BPL’s amazing selection.  Ask at our Reference Desk for details!

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Some Words About Women Authors…


This is me, getting on my soapbox….

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This story begins with a recommendation from the great Lady Pole, who has an uncanny talent for finding the Good Books You Haven’t Read Yet.  The book is question is a horror novel, dealing with a haunted photo album, a scarred woman, and a discussion about flawed beauty standards…and, because it is brand new, it has yet to appear in the NOBLE Catalog.  Thus, I used Google to search for the title of the book.  This was what I saw as a result:

Ladies

Take a look, not at the title (though you can feel free to look at the title), but at the information directly beneath it.  This line tells you in what category Amazon has placed the book in question.  Not in horror, not in thriller, not in paranormal or ghost story, but under Women Authors.

I’m sorry, what?

Thinking, perhaps, that Amazon classified all books by the gender of their authors, I randomly searched for a book that is currently on the New York Times Bestseller List.  This is what I saw:

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Not “male authors”, no.  Mystery and Thriller.  Because, apparently, in this case, the genre of the book matters more than the fact that the author is a man?

And then it hit me.  Amazon assumes that authors are, by definition, male.  And therefore, when the author is not a male, it has to add a new level of classification, to designate a non-typical human author.

And this was pretty much my reaction.
And this was pretty much my reaction.

This isn’t a new problem, and it isn’t one that belongs to Amazon, alone.  We’ve certainly dealt with the “women authors” question before here.  But, it’s International Women’s Day, and so we’re going to confront again.

By and large, books are organized by their genre or subject matter.  Examples of this can be found by walking into the Library and looking at the shelves.  But, sadly, we are somewhat unique in these matters.  Institutions that try to make money off the books on their shelves (heathens, wink, wink) generally abide by this rule, as well.  Nevertheless, there is an inevitable and unique distinction made in regards to books (primarily, fiction books), written by “women authors”.  They get special displays, they get separate shelf space, and they get advertised differently, inherently isolating “women authors”–and those who read books by them–from the rest of fiction.

WHY IS IT PINK!?!
WHY IS IT PINK!?!

This is based, at least partly, on the belief that only women can talk about relationships, about families, about interpersonal relationships, or about women, and that they are somehow of lesser importance, or value, or smaller in scope for it.  This is not a new trend.  Mary Ann Evans insisted on using the male pen name George Eliot when writing her classics like Middlemarch (released in 1871) in order to ensure that her work would be taken seriously.  It was only after her Frankenstein became a commercial success that Mary Shelley’s name appeared on her great work.  Nora Roberts began publishing under the name J.D. Robb partly in order to prove that women could write books that men would want to read.

3594938It’s just plain ridiculous to isolate “women authors” from all other authors, as if there is something irreconcilable about their identity, but, significantly, it also utterly obscures the point that men can write about  families, about love, about relationships, and about women, too.  And it forces some male authors to change their names, as well.  S.K. Tremayne’s celebrated book, The Ice Twins, about a woman who gives birth to twins, and has to cope with the death of one, and the identity of the other, is written by Sean Thomas, a British journalist.  Additionally, S.J. Watson, author of the best-selling Before I Go To Sleep is really Steve Watson.  In an quote to The Guardian, he explained,  “If at least some people weren’t sure whether I was a man or a woman then it was working, and I was immensely gratified when certain publishers were convinced the book had been written by a woman.”

I understand that Watson was expressing pleasure that he had accurately captured his characters’ voice, and was primarily interested in selling books, the truth of the matter is that if we accepted authors as empathetic, insightful humans, we wouldn’t have to worry about that author’s name sounding too much like a male or female name at all.

To say that only one group of humans are capable about writing books about issues that are fundamental to all humans seems wholly counter-intuitive, but it keeps happening.  This is as true for family dramas as it is for the type of horror novel I was searching for in the example I provided above.  By consistently isolating men’s and women’s books and experiences, we are ruining our chance of developing empathy, and are surely missing out on some phenomenal books.

Human beings are storytellers–we have cave paintings that date some 35,000 years ago to prove it.  We owe it to ourselves, and to the books we read, to ensure that we treat all humans’ stories equally, regardless of their content, or their creator, and thus ensure that we get the very best stories we can get.

Courtesy of the Clark County Public Library.
Courtesy of the Clark County Public Library.

…Ultimately, while we are waiting for the rest of the world to catch on, consider this another point in favor of The Library, I suppose.

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The Romance Garden

 

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For the record, please don’t use Library Books as planters….

 

It is that time, again, dear patrons, when we genre-reading, happy-ending loving, romance readers offer you some of our thoughts on the books we’ve been reading, and the fun we’ve been having while giving our minds a little dirt in which to grow…

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Bridget:

3717333The Hunter by Kerrigan Byrne

My favorite romance novel of all time ever is Lord of Fire by Gaelen Foley…we’ve a number of her books, but not that one, sadly…but anyways, I loved that book because it presented two utterly stereotypical characters–and then preceded to peel away their stereotypes and pretenses, and façades, one by one, forcing them to confront each other as they really were, and come out the better for it.  I haven’t found a book to quite rival that reading experience…until now.

Christopher Argent is an assassin, one of the most lethal and the most feared in Europe.  But when he’s hired to kill renowned actress Millie LeCour–he can’t.  There is something about her that is so vital, so alive, that Argent simply can’t bear to hurt her.  Instead, he promises her security, and help in discovering who wants her dead (and why) in return for one night in her bed.  And while Millie’s world is turned upside down by the request, it’s Argent who suddenly finds himself totally out of his depth.  Because he realizes that he cares about Millie–and her young son–far more than he imagined himself capable of doing.  And that in itself is dangerous for a man who has trained himself not to care for anything, especially as he promised to leave Millie alone forever, once the danger against her has passed.

Though she’s excellent at weaving complex, surprising story lines, Byrne is a marvel at crafting characters.  There is never a moment where Millie feels like a traditional Damsel in Distress, which endeared me to this book immediately.  And, for that matter, even though I tried hard not to like Argent (because he’s an assassin that that isn’t very nice), she did such a good job showing how and why he became the man he did that it’s impossible not to feel for him–especially after meeting his arch-nemesis, who is skin-crawlingly awful.  There is so much insight, and so much care put into developing these characters–and in deconstructing all their former assumptions about themselves and each other–that I couldn’t put this book down.  Byrne also injects a fair bit of humor into the story, which might seem impossible given the lives that Millie and Argent have led, and the tangle of thwarted desires and evil deeds that have got them to this point, but their coming together is a beautifully awkward, blisteringly hot, and genuinely moving story.
For those looking for more of Byrne’s terrific work, be sure to check out the first book in the Victorian Rebels series, The Highwayman, which is on our shelves, as well!

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Kelley:

3709962One-Eyed Dukes are Wild by Megan Frampton

The third book in Frampton’s Dukes Behaving Badly series pairs unlikely couple the proper Duke of Lasham and the scandalous Lady Margaret Sawford. Having inherited the title along with its awesome responsibility at a very young age, the Duke of Lasham takes his position in society very seriously. As a consequence, his reserved behavior is proper verging on stiff and that coupled with his forbidding appearance has led to an existence that involves few friends and far too little happiness. When the Duke of Lasham meets Lady Margaret, he finds himself ready for those things to change.

Having refused a suit encouraged by her parents two years ago, Lady Margaret is estranged from her mother and father, and considered to be firmly on the shelf. Instead of lamenting her situation, Lady Margaret takes advantage of the freedoms that being a scandal with a sister who is a duchess allows. She speaks her mind, plays cards like a shark and writes magazine serials to support her own needs, and spends her time defending the rights of women who don’t have the benefit of her station in society. Initially intrigued by the Duke of Lasham’s dangerous appearance, she ultimately makes it her mission to learn more about the man who hides behind his eye patch and irreproachable reputation. What ensues is a series of adventures and romantic interludes that lead two people to happiness when they never expected to find it.

Overall, I’d have to give this romance a mediocre review. The Duke and Lady Margaret are intriguing characters and their relationship is sweet, but this book left me wanting more especially in the way of conflict and information about both the hero and heroine’s families. Also, the interspersed stories by the Lady of Mystery didn’t work for me. Although I started this series with the third book, I had no trouble following the story. It’s possible that the first two books offer some information that I felt was missing here, but I guess that’s a post for another blog entry.

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Moving Past Lovecraft

For more delightful drawings, visit: http://johnkenn.blogspot.com/
For more delightful drawings, visit: http://johnkenn.blogspot.com/

As we discussed last time, H.P. Lovecraft was a pretty reprehensible human being, but his writing forms the roots of modern weird fiction, a genre that is near and dear to many hearts, including my own.

Thankfully, we read in an  enlightened age, and there are a number of authors at work today whose work builds off, rescues, and redeems Lovecraft’s ideas, giving us tales of imagination, speculation, unsettling truths and wild fictions that are mercifully divorced from the unsavory shadow of their creator.  These authors–and many, many others–have explored the worlds that Lovecraft only hinted at in his books, stared into the eyes of the beasts he described, and did it in a way that allowed all of us the chance to feel a part of these stories.  So come in soon and check out these super, weird, and wonderful authors today!

2760524Octavia Butler: When Daniel José Older submitted his petition to have Lovecraft’s visage removed from the World Fantasy Awards, he requested that Octavia Butler‘s face be used instead, saying her “novels, essays and short stories changed the entire genre of speculative fiction by complicating our notions of power, race and gender.”  While we still have yet to see what the WFA chooses for their new award, there is no denying the incredible impact and importance of Butler’s work.  Though she stated in a speech that one of her first rules for writing was that “I couldn’t write about anything that couldn’t actually happen”, she still used science fiction and speculative fiction to talk about the very real issues of racism, intolerance, and the horror of human’s behavior towards other humans.  While all of Bulter’s works stretched and re-defined the genres of science and speculative fiction–not only for their wildly imaginative premises, but because they featured women as heroines–there are some that are more immediately accessible than others.   For those looking for a good place to begin, I’d suggest Kindred, which features a heroine who journeys through time from her home in 1976 to the pre-Civil War South.  For those looking for a somewhat wilder voyage, go for Dawn, the first book in her Xenogenesis series, which tells the story of Lilith, one of the few survivors of a nuclear holocaust, kidnapped by truly frightful aliens.  For all its strangeness, this book is beautifully human, and simply unforgettable.

2934990China Miéville: Anytime a patron comes in and asks for Miéville book, I break into a little happy dance on my way to the shelves.  His work is so weird, and yet so beautiful that I kind of want to live in the worlds he creates (as long as an escape hatch is provided…just in case).  My first introduction to Miéville’s work was Kraken, which places Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos in the present-day, as scientist Billy Harlow realizes that he holds the key to finding–and awakening–a giant squid who holds the power to destroy not only this world, but all worlds that may ever be.  The story begins with a school trip to an aquarium, and, faster than you can blink, launches into something wonderfully outlandish, and genuinely unsettling, particularly as the humans involve realize just how powerless they are to control the events they have set in motion.  Miéville has always been open about how much Lovecraft inspired his own work, but has also never shied away from the real horrors of his personal outlook–and this is a man who knows of what his speaks.  This essay, examining the roots and the power of “The Weird” in literature is a sensational view into the mind of truly conscious and conscientious writer (my personal favorite part is his discussion of Victor Hugo and the Octopus)–and be sure to read his Introduction to Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness.  It offers a fascinating (and chilling) insight into how Lovecraft reflected his own world view into his fiction.  Mieville’s love of the genre shines through in each of his works, playing with various branches of science, and various elements of the psychology of fear, to make stories that are as exciting as they are unsettling.

2709181 Jonathan L. Howard: It wasn’t long after Johannes Cabal, the infamous necromancer and notorious curmudgeon, first strolled through the gates of Hell that he strolled straight into my heart.  We’ve sung the praises of Howard’s work here before, but for the Lovecraft fan, there are delights aplenty to be had here.  Johannes Cabal himself exists in a world where belief in Lovecraft’s elder gods is real–though generally only amongst inmates at the local asylum.  Nevertheless, the Cthulu song that appears in the first book, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, is one of my favorite behind-the-circulation-desk songs to hum…which probably says volumes about me.  Additionally, Howard is also the author of Carter and Lovecraft, the first book to feature P.I. Dan Carter, who inherits an old bookstore run by one Emily Lovecraft, the niece of H.P. himself.  Emily is a sensational character in her own right, her strength and her wisdom offering hope for the Lovecraft name.  Meanwhile, Dan’s investigation of a seemingly impossible murder case captures all the element of HP’s work that is worth remembering–that sense of skin-crawling dread in the face of the inexplicable, and the sense that you are nothing more than a dust-speck in some infinitely larger, and more nefarious plan–while still confronting the nasty bits with frank, appreciable honesty.  I have a pretty strong constitution for such things, and I’ll admit, I couldn’t finish this book at night.

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The Ugly Truth

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A week or so ago, I referenced Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country, and how it deals with some of the more unsavory aspects of H.P. Lovecraft’s personality and writings, and I promised we’d be dealing with this more in the future.

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So here goes.  H.P. Lovecraft was a virulent racist.  And was also exceptionally prejudiced against Jewish people, women, and homosexuals.  He wrote in letters to friends that he supported the beliefs of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the Nazi Party, even if he wasn’t exactly in support of their actions.  He supported the eugenics movement, which advocated exterminating “undesirable” people from the human population.  He wrote poetry comparing non-white people to animals, which you can find very easily.  I’m not posting the them here, because they make my skin crawl.

Nnedi_OkoraforLast November, the World Fantasy Awards (finally) agreed to change their awards from a caricature of Lovecraft’s face (the award is colloquially known as a ‘Howard’) as a result of a petition begun by Daniel José Older.*  The petition came after several years of protest from fantasy and horror writers around the world–especially recipients of ‘Howards’.  Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor (photo at left), who won for her stunning novel Who Fears Death, wrote a blog post about having Lovecraft’s face in her home:

Anyway, a statuette of this racist man’s head is in my home. A statuette of this racist man’s head  is one of my greatest honors as a writer…Do I want “The Howard” …replaced with the head of some other great writer? Maybe…What I know I want is to face the history of this leg of literature rather than put it aside or bury it.

china-mieville-at-his-letter-boxFree-For-All favorite author China Miéville (also left) has also weighed in on this debate.  There is no doubt at all that Miéville’s work is deeply inspired by Lovecraft, as well as plenty other greats of the ‘weird fiction’ genre.  But he also has acknowledged that “Yes, indeed, the depth and viciousness of Lovecraft’s racism is known to me…Lovecraft’s oeuvre, his work itself, is inspired by and deeply structured with race hatred.”  He goes on to say:

…I was very honoured to receive the award as representative of a particular field of literature. And the award itself, the statuette of the man himself? I put it out of sight, in my study, where only I can see it, and I have turned it to face the wall. So I am punishing [Lovecraft] like the malevolent clown he was, I can look at it and remember the honour, and above all I am writing behind Lovecraft’s back.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of people who agree with Lovecraft’s biographer, S.T. Joshi, who bashed the decision as “a craven yielding to the worst sort of political correctness.”  There are plenty of people who say that Lovecraft was a product of his times, and that his opinions were the result of an insulated upbringing, or poor education.

But to cling to this argument utterly overlooks people’s inherent ability to grow, to change, and to empathize.  Lovecraft showed a remarkable inability to do either of these, which makes him a man worthy of scorn and pity at the same time, not a figure to be revered.

Lovecraft_tombstoneBut then, what do we do about his books?  Lovecraft was not well-known or well-liked during his own time–he died penniless in Providence, Rhode Island in 1937 at the age of 46 as much a victim of the Depression as the intestinal cancer that claimed his life.  He wrote to a friend about eating expired canned food to survive, and acknowledged that “I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales, and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors.”  His afterlife, however, has been nothing short of miraculous.  There are region of Pluto named after Lovecraft’s elder god, “Cthulu“.  His face, and his creations, appear on everything from craft beers to clothing to jewelry.  A number of credible and venerated institutions hail him as a father of science fiction, and the “King of Weird“.   Lovecraft’s influence in literature is unquestionable.

In large part, this is because he was exceptionally good at harnessing the very human reaction of fear.  At the heart of all his wildly camp, ridiculously over-the-top stories is Lovecraft’s belief that  “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”  And in emphasizing human’s incredible smallness within the vast scope of a terrifying world (and a terrifying universe), Lovecraft opened up a world (and a universe of wild creatures, gods, and magical powers that have kept our imaginations spinning for generations.

But the other truth is that, when we stop getting all excited about those elder gods and the potential of all those worlds he describes, the fear that Lovecraft is describing is the fear of other human people.  His fear was that of a very ordinary, very nervous white man who blamed his lack of financial and social success on other people, for no other reason than that they didn’t look like him.  As Alan Moore (author of the League of Extraordinary Gentleman) wrote, “it is possible to perceive Howard Lovecraft as an almost unbearably sensitive barometer of American dread….in his frights and panics he reveals himself as…the absolutely average man, an entrenched social insider unnerved by new and alien influences from without.”

220px-Cthulhu_sketch_by_LovecraftSo yes, if Lovecraft’s descriptions of ancient civilizations inhabiting Antarctica makes your imagination sizzle, then by all means, read it.  And enjoy it.  I know I did.  But we can’t afford to pretend that he wasn’t a really reprehensible human being, and we can’t afford to overlook his irredeemable qualities because we like his books. What we can do it realize that literature isn’t like a wall.  It doesn’t have to follow straight lines and right angles.  It’s more like a tree.  Branches can bend and twist, and, eventually, the weak and dead spots can be replaced by new, healthy growth.  There are any number of authors who have used Lovecraft’s ideas and used them to make the science fiction genre into a stronger, brave, and more inclusive place.  Some of them are listed above.  There are a load of others at the Library, and we’ll be talking about them this week.  Feel free to read them, too.  Fearlessly.  That is the best thing we can do to make sure that Lovecraft’s legacy is better than his life.  And better, ultimately, than him.

* A note: The World Fantasy Award is accepting suggestions for its new award until April 2, 2016.

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Always bring an extra axle….

I remember when I was in third grade, our computer teacher brought out an 8-inch floppy disk (yes, you read that correctly), and told us that we were in for a treat.  We were about to learn all about American history with this computer, by experiencing the trip that so many settlers made into the western frontiers.

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It was the first time any of us had played The Oregon Trail, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.  I am fully aware of how much I am dating myself, but honestly, there were few things we anticipated more than getting to go to computer class (which we had once every two weeks, kids…back in the dark ages) and watch those little pixelated oxen trudge across the utterly unremarkable pixelated green landscape for an hour.  Every once in a while, one of us would commandeer the mouse and go hunting–I’m pretty sure we were solely responsible for wiping out the bison population of the continent several times over in our zeal.

dysenteryTechnology, needless to say, has come a long way since we watched that dopey little oxen shuffle to Oregon, but I don’t know if I’ve ever had quite as much fun as I did then with a game.  It was a form of magic to us–a learning tool that forced us to use our imagination and patience, rather than skill, in order to win (or, at least, survive). In fact several media outlets refer to my cohort as The Oregon Trail generation…which may explain an interesting trend literary trend….

Recently, a number of us Library Folk have begun reading “Fantastical American West” novels–that is, books that are set within the 19th century, and deal with all the themes of a traditional western–everything from brushing horses to encountering Natives–but also involve magical elements as a central point of the plot.  Some books invoke demons and ghosts, while other bestow otherworldly talents on their characters that develop over the course of their journey.  The possibilities are as vast as the Old West itself.

But that magical element serves another purpose, especially for readers, and especially for those readers of the Oregon Trail Generation.  It helps us reclaim that sense of not knowing what might happen next; to explore imaginatively; to wonder, purely and simply.

What is also remarkable about this emerging genre, is how prominently it features strong, unique, and powerful heroines at the forefront.  There are not your typical westerns by any stretch–but that might just be their strongest point.  The original Oregon Trail game was democratic–anyone could lead a wagon train, and anyone could be struck down with a broken leg, or typhus.  The Fantastical American West returns that sense of democracy and equality, giving male and female characters alike the power to change their destinies and make the journey that will change them forever.

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Hooray!

If you grew up playing the Oregon Trail, I can’t recommend checking out the Fantastical American West genre, starting with the selections below.  Oh, and for those of you who would like to revisit the Good Old Days, click here to access the Internet Archive…..where you can play the 1990 version of Oregon Trail for yourself.

3680958Silver on the Road: I’ve mentioned this book before in a different context, but, having just finished it myself, I can say that this book is absolutely worth your time, whether you were (are) a fan of the Oregon Trail, or a fan of magic in literature, or both.  Isabelle has spent all her life in a saloon run by the Devil himself, on the edge of the great, unknown west.  When she turns sixteen, she agrees to become his left hand–without knowing quite what that entails.  So, in order to learn her task, she is sent with Gabriel,a  seasoned rider, out to explore the territory, and see what powers are at work there.  Laura Anne Gilman has a remarkable talent for crafting a setting–I genuinely felt the dust of the trail on my skin while reading.  Best of all, because none of the characters are fully aware of what is going on, the reader is kept somewhat in the dark, as well.  Thus, though the pace of this book isn’t rapid-fire, the compulsion to keep reading, to explore, and to understand just what Isabelle is meant to do on her journey, is almost irresistible.  I loved that, even in her darkest moments, Isabelle remained the strong, capable, and incredibly determined heroine that she was, and I cannot wait to see what happens in the next installment of this series, due out in October.

3699334The Curse of Jacob Tracy: The cover of this book may look like that of a traditional western novel (expect for those bats, of course…), but don’t let that fool you.  This is a book as steeped in history as it is in magic, and presents a wholly unique perspective on the idea of a ‘frontier’.  Ever since he nearly died at Antietam, Jacob Tracy has been able to see the dead.  At first, it nearly drove him mad (especially as he was studying to be a priest before enlisting), but lately, he’s simply been trying to ignore the spirits who cross his path, traveling west with his business partner, Boz, in order to escape the spirits lingering around his home in St. Louis.  That is, until his path crosses with the enigmatic Miss Fairweather, a woman as talented as she is infuriating.  Miss Fairweather knows about Jacob, and all that he can do, and promises to cure him…for a price.  Holly Messenger’s debut is a wildly imaginative–and genuinely creepy one–again, because Trace has a hard time telling the real from the ghostly (and ghastly), it’s often a bit tricky for the reader to tell who is spectral, and who is real.  But that only makes Trace’s adventures more intriguing, and his work with Miss Fairweather (who is a force of nature in and of herself) that much more enjoyable.

3651574Walk on Earth a Stranger: The Fantastical American West is also a prominent setting for YA novels, as well, offer the later subset of Millennials a chance to savor all the wild and wondrous things the West has to offer those who chose to explore.  In this adventure, Lee Westfall is making that journey along with her family and best friend, in the hopes of making it to the Klondike, and gold that is reported to found there.  But Lee has a secret gift–she can sense gold.  And while that gift has helped her keep those she loves safe, it also opens her up to a world of danger.  Because Lee lives in a world where gold is the be all and end all, and there are plenty who would kill to know how to find it .  This opening of Rae Carson’s Gold Seer Trilogy is a fascinating and richly detailed gem of a book that not only treats its setting, but also its heroine with an enormous amount of respect.

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Bibliophile Confessions…On Love Triangles

There are tropes in literature that every reader loves…and hates.

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“Tropes” are the very common and recurring themes in literature that help us, as a species that loves categorization and patterns, keep stories straight in our heads.  Tropes let us know, essentially, what happens in the course of the story, and define several rules for the book from the outset.  There are “locked room” mysteries, for example, in which a detective character must solve a seemingly impossible crime, or a “trouble with robots” trope in science fiction, where the line between human and machine inevitably becomes blurred, or the “unlikely hero/heroine” trope, where the least likely character somehow manages to rise to the occasion and save the day.

In many ways, tropes are like foods in a grocery store.  We are familiar, to some extent, with most of them, and we know the ones that we love, ones that we hate, and ones that we really intend to try one of these days.  Largely, it’s all a matter of personal taste, and there is no shame in loving–or hating–a particular trope.

For example, I cannot handle love triangles.
….you know those stories where the heroine (and it’s usually a heroine) must choose between two potential love interests?  Yeah.  Those.

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Casablanca: One of cinema’s most famous love triangles.

As an objective reader, I can wholly appreciate the value of love triangles…it gives the heroine (let’s just stick with the idea of a heroine here) a chance to choose her own future, with each of her potential heroes symbolizing the potential paths for her to choose.  It also adds bucket-loads of drama to a plot, because of all the uncertainty, hope, and despair implicit in every scene.

My problem with love triangles?  In probably 97% of cases, I choose the wrong person.

It all started when I was in sixth grade, with a historical adventure novel that isn’t in the NOBLE system, so it shall remain anonymous, in which a young heroine who had travelled out to Colorado territory was being courted by two gentlemen: one a young journalist whom she met on the train at the outset of her journey, and the other, a cattle rancher who was tied to the land and devoted to the promise of the American West.  I was in love with the journalist.  Absolutely head-over-heels dippy over him.  And in the end…the heroine chose to stay in with the cattle rancher.

And I didn’t speak to anyone for three days.

Love-TriangleAnd ever since then, I invariably fall in love with the unsuccessful suitor.  That’s why I was inconsolable at the end of Tale of Two Cities (which made for an extremely awkward high school English class); it’s why I could never enjoy Wuthering Heights as much as I should; for crying out loud, even if one of them turns out to be a villain, I’m still the weirdo sitting there with a little pennant, rooting for him have a happy ending!

Again, this is in no way a judgement on love triangles, or those who love them.  I wish I could.  However, there are a few books with love triangles that I could enjoy, and I figured, as a show of good faith, that I’d point them out to you.  Hopefully those readers who revel in the drama of love triangles will find some new stories to savor, and those who, like me, tend to shy away from them, will find the incentive to give one a try.

3176362A Rogue By Any Other Name: Sarah MacLean is one of my favorite romance authors of all time, so when the opening book of her Rule of Scoundrels book featured a fairly prominent love triangle, I forced myself to hold on tight and brave it out.  Her heroine, Penelope, has been convinced by years of unsuccessful courtships and a broken engagement that true love is not for her, especially after her father places an enormous dowry on her head in order to attract suitors.  But when the Marquis of Bourne, Penelope’s first love who was forced to flee society a decade earlier, suddenly returns, demanding Penelope’s hand, she finds that true love may be far more complicated than she ever imagined.  This is one of those books where the two heroes of the story represent perfectly the two paths open to the heroine, and MacLean makes Penelope’s choice emotional without beings devastating.  Best of all, she always provides all of her characters with agency and humanity, and in this case gives Penelope’s unsuccessful suitor the chance to be a hero in his own right.

3140489Anna and the French Kiss: This book turns the love triangle trope on its ear a bit, by making the heroine one of two women in the hero’s life–but doing it in a way that doesn’t compromise the heroine’s individuality or either woman’s potential for happiness.  Anna first meets Etienne St. Clair when her father unexpectedly ships her off to a boarding school in Paris for her senior year of high school.  Though Anna knows, deep down, that Etienne could be perfect for her, she also knows that he’s taken–and she still hasn’t forgotten the crush she left back home in Atlanta.  What I particularly loved about this book was the real and honest friendship that developed between Anna and Etienne.  Their genuine concern for each other, regardless of the other people in their lives, made this love triangle work for me, because they always had each other’s best interests at heart, no matter what.  It doesn’t hurt that this is a ridiculously romantic and heart-picklingly sweet story, making it impossible not to smile while reading, no matter what.

1603939The Phantom of the Opera: Gaston Leroux’s classic is surely the love triangle to beat all triangles, as the innocent, beautiful, and talented opera singer, Christine, finds herself torn between her recently-returned childhood love, and the mysterious, masked man who hides in the cellars of the Paris Opera House, and teaches her how to sing like an angel.  Remember when I said that even when a character turns out to be a villain, I still root for them?  Yup, this is that book.  But I would argue it’s pretty hard for a reader not to feel for Erik, the man behind the mask, after his long, fascinating and painful history is revealed, or want to follow him, even after the final pages have turned….