Here you won’t find anything too deep or detailed, just a retrospective on my reading life over the past year, both good and bad.

Total number of books read in 2016: thirty-nine, not counting the two I didn’t read in their entirety.

Best books of the year, from as objective a standpoint as I can manage based on prose quality, characterization, and world-building: Django Wexler, The Price of Valor and The Guns of Empire; M.R. Carey, The Girl With All the Gifts; Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo.

Favorite books of the year, from a subjective standpoint of pure enjoyment: Brandon Sanderson, The Alloy of Law; Kate Forsyth, The Pool of Two Moons (second in the sadly underrated Witches of Eileanan series); Todd Lockwood, The Summer Dragon; Leigh Barduro, Six of Crows.

Favorite characters whose acquaintance I made this year: Nina Zenik, the funny, deadly, but decent Heartrender (Six of Crows); Melanie, the “little genius” who doesn’t know quite who or what she is (The Girl With All the Gifts); Norah Blackstone, the shy wallflower who stumbles into a career as a silent-film scenarist while working to save her sister-in-law from an ancient curse (Bride of the Rat God); Prunella Gentleman, the woman who has more magic in her little fingernail than most men have in their whole bodies but is nonetheless forced to prove herself (Sorcerer to the Crown); Paama, the brilliant cook who uses common-sense goodness to defy evil (Redemption in Indigo).

Most enjoyable working of a theme I’m tired of: Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown. I may be sick to death of the repeated-ad-nauseum “you can’t do (x) because you’re a woman” conflict, but Cho’s historical fantasy won me over, thanks largely to the charismatic character of Prunella, see above.

Most enjoyable working of a theme I’m NOT tired of: Todd Lockwood’s The Summer Dragon. Dragons! Female dragons! Give me more, give me excess of them! Lockwood’s debut fantasy novel delivers. (There’s a brave, stalwart human heroine here, too.)

Biggest disappointment: Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor. All my friends loved it, and considering its intricate world-building and highly sympathetic protagonist, I can certainly see why. But the dearth of significant sympathetic female characters kept me at arm’s length.

2016 read I would most like to see made into a movie: K.B. Wagers’ science-fiction action-adventure Behind the Throne, with its kick-butt gunrunner princess protagonist, practically screams out for the big-screen treatment.

“It just wasn’t for me” award: Jon Messenger’s Wolves of the Northern Rift. Note to publishers: if the most important female character in a book has barely any page time and readers are not encouraged to care much about her at all, do not put a gorgeous picture of this character on the cover of said book. Please.

Most infuriating read: Shana Abe’s The Sweetest Dark. Not even the promise of a dragon shifter heroine could surmount my irritation with that misogynistic “Not Like Other Girls” trope with which this book absolutely reeks. The exceptional heroine is indeed brave and capable, but every other female character — every single one — is some shade of icky and untrustworthy, and it’s impossible for me to overlook.

Books I liked but wish had been just a little bit better: Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut’s Windlass; Marshall Ryan Maresca, A Murder of Mages; Sharon Shinn, Heart of Gold.

Welcome to my world — new authors I’ve tried and enjoyed: Todd Lockwood; Zen Cho; Karen Lord; K.B. Wagers; Stina Leicht (Cold Iron).

Welcome back — favorite authors who have continued to please: Brandon Sanderson; Django Wexler; Kate Forsyth; Barbara Hambly (Bride of the Rat God); Violette Malan (Path of the Sun); Guy Gavriel Kay (Children of Earth and Sky), Max Gladstone (Full Fathom Five).

What can one really say about 2016, the year with such a high celebrity body count that some have even suggested (jokingly) that TIME Magazine should name the Grim Reaper its Person of the Year? I won’t dwell on too many of the passings, but two that have occurred in the very last days of the year have struck home to me, as both have done work especially dear to my heart.

Author Richard Adams, the man responsible for Watership Down — my gateway novel into fantasy, which I fell in love with at the age of eleven — passed away peacefully on Christmas Eve at the age of 96. The sequel comprised of short stories, Tales of Watership Down, did not stir my soul to nearly the same degree (though I’ll admit to a measure of sentimental delight at revisiting Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, Hyzenthlay, and their world), and I’ve never read any of Adams’ other works. But for this one book I will always honor him. May Lord Frith hold him close.

Yet precious little attention could be spared for Adams’ passing amidst the flood of coverage of another death, that of Carrie Fisher, whose iconic portrayal of Leia Organa in the original Star Wars trilogy holds a substantial place in the hearts and minds of countless sci-fi cinema fans, mine included. My husband and I rewatched this trilogy last year in preparation for the release of The Force Awakens, and it had been years since I’d seen it. What I noticed on my revisit was how much Leia is a part of the action throughout the trilogy, at a time when most science-fantasy sagas would have kept her a beautiful, ethereal, passive figure in the background. Her character arc doesn’t get nearly as much development as Han’s or Luke’s, and that is indeed regrettable, but she’s always doing something. Even when she’s in captivity, she’s making plans. She may need rescuing in the first film (though she immediately takes charge thereafter), but in the third film she famously and awesomely rescues herself. Even though she’s injured at the climax of Return of the Jedi, she doesn’t retreat to the sidelines; she remains in the thick of the action, blasting away with her ray gun and hitting what she aims at. At a time when damsels were prevalent, Fisher gave us a heroine. Rey and heroines like her probably wouldn’t exist if Leia hadn’t come first. Of course we are devastated to hear of her death, especially when we heard of her “stable condition” after her heart attack and took hope that she might actually pull through.

Why has Fisher’s passing received so much more attention than Adams’s? Some might snark that in the world of pop culture, an actress always trumps an author, but I won’t take that cynical view. The difference is that Adams, at 96, got to live out a full life. His death is sad, but not tragic. But Fisher, like David Bowie, Prince, and Alan Rickman, still had years of work left in her. As a person, I mourn the loss of a funny, vibrant woman, a talented author as well as an actress. As a fan, I regret what I will never get to see of General Leia Organa, a figure I so badly wanted to get to know better after I saw The Force Awakens.

At the end of the day, it’s not a competition. Both Adams and Fisher gave me stories and characters that meant a lot to me. I’m happier for what they have left behind.

Now, on to lighter matters: my Star Wars wish list.

“It’s better than The Force Awakens!” came the cry when Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hit theaters. After a little more reading, however, I soon noticed that the cry was coming largely from fans who were less than thrilled with The Force Awakens or even out-and-out hated it. Since I loved TFA, this kept my expectations in check. My ultimate reaction to Rogue One: liked, but didn’t love. The movie has plenty of space-flights and battles to please the fans, along with intriguing locales and an eclectic set of characters, with Alan Tudyk’s re-programmed Imperial droid standing out, along with Forrest Whittaker’s dubious freedom fighter and Donnie Yen’s fearless blind martial artist.

Here’s where I ran into problems. I loved every minute of Yen’s screen time; the man has presence to burn. But what was his character’s name? I had to go to IMdB to look it up. The movie assembles a large cast of characters and lets us get to know them just enough to wish we could know them better. So many characters, so little time for development. I’d kill to see the eight-hour television miniseries this should have been.

Then there’s the more obvious problem, if you’re me: the Smurfette Principle is strong with this one. The Force Awakens had Rey as a primary character, Maz and Leia as secondary characters, and lots and lots of women and girls among the tertiary figures, both Rebels and First Order. Rogue One rolls back this progress, with Mon Mothma showing up only briefly and very few women visible among the throngs on either side of the battle. This wouldn’t matter as much to me if Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso had the same flash of personality as Rey or even original-trilogy Leia. As it was, while I appreciated her heroic actions, I never really got a fix on who she was, and so I could never quite take her to my heart as I did Rey and Leia. If only she’d been a tenth as quirky and charismatic as Donnie Yen — but that’s one of the biggest issues with stories that follow the Smurfette Principle. The female, the token, is very rarely allowed to be funny or to make mistakes. The male characters are nearly always more vivid, more memorable.

My reservations notwithstanding, I take much pleasure in knowing we’ll see a new film in the Star Wars universe every year for the foreseeable future, as long as they stay good to great. (I can’t wait to catch up with Rey, Finn, and Poe Dameron next year.) But I have a couple of things I’d dearly love to see in future movies.

1. A heroine who diverges from the established appearance template. The casting of Emilia Clarke, best known for her work on HBO’s Game of Thrones, as the female lead in the forthcoming Han Solo movie confirms the suspicion that the creative powers behind Star Wars have a fixed idea of what a heroine from their universe should look like: she should be white, she should be brunette, and she should be petite. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if I weren’t fond of Rey partly because she’s the only central heroine in the franchise who departs even a little from that description, being on the tall side of average and fit-looking and muscular rather than twig-thin. But what I’d really like to see in some future Star Wars movie is a heroic black woman with a Serena Williams-like physique. Someone a bit like Firefly‘s Gina Torres — or maybe even Torres herself, since it would also be cool to see a central Star Wars heroine who isn’t twentysomething.
2. A female-buddy pair. The original trilogy gives us Luke and Han. The prequels (which we can’t forget about, as much as we might wish to) give us Anakin and Obi-Wan and, at least in the first film, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. The Force Awakens gives us Finn and Poe. In Rogue One we also see strong bonds of friendship between the male characters. Yet the women have no one to befriend but menfolk. However awesome they may be in and of themselves, their teachers and their comrades are always men. Need this be? The all too brief time Rey and Maz Katana spend together in The Force Awakens suggests not, if the creative powers would devote a bit of thought to it. Please, powers, give the next female protagonist a female bestie. Let us see not only more women, but more of those women playing vital roles in each other’s lives.

Welcome, 2017. May the Force be with us all.

The movie year 2016 has been a disappointing one for female characters in every genre but one — the animated feature. The title of Pixar’s Finding Dory might suggest that the blue tang with short-term memory loss we got to know in Finding Nemo would plan an essentially passive role, to be found and rescued by others. Wrong. Dory is an active female lead who overcomes her limitations to find her parents and, along the way, herself, all the while having a positive effect on everyone with whom she comes into contact. Disney’s Zootopia gives us the ambitious, optimistic, and splendidly flawed rabbit cop Judy Hopps, who has the guts not only to change her world but to own up to her own need to change. Even animated movies with male protagonists, Kung Fu Panda 3 and Kubo and the Two Strings, manage to give important female supporting characters, Tigress and Monkey, indisputable Moments of Awesome. Now the year finishes up with Disney’s Moana, the company’s latest entry in its ongoing princess sweepstakes (though Moana herself spurns the title “princess”). And guess what? It’s great, too, although I can’t quite decide whether this one or Zootopia is my favorite female-led animated film of the year.

Almost from the moment Moana was released — even before then, really — comparisons to Disney’s previous princess film, 2013’s massive hit Frozen, started to crop up. Plenty of commentators have praised Frozen as a feminist triumph, with its focus on the problematic but still loving relationship between two sisters, as well as its depiction of a young woman rising to queenship who must find a way to master her powers or else be mastered by them. Along with so many others, I like Frozen. I love musicals, and while I may have heard “Let It Go” one too many times, I still enjoy the other songs, particularly the stirring men’s-chorus opening and snowman Olaf’s “I Want” song, “In Summer.” The character of Elsa is indeed a fascinating heroine, at times more of an anti-heroine, the like of which Disney had not really given us before. Had the movie been more clearly her story, I might call it one of my favorites. But it has one disappointing element that (for me) keeps it from being the feminist triumph it wants to be: Elsa’s sister Anna, the real central character.

While in Elsa Disney gives us something fairly new, Anna feels like a throwback to the princesses of an earlier era. That she dreams of finding true love and looks to marriage as a solution to her problems isn’t my main sticking point, since the plot critiques this and has her learn better. No, my issue is that she represents a backward step in a way the movie never bothers to correct. Sometime in the late ’80s, Disney’s artists and writers decided it was a good idea to give the female leads interests. The little mermaid, Ariel, was fascinated by the surface world well before she set eyes on her handsome human prince. Belle of Beauty and the Beast was a voracious reader. More recently we saw the aspiring restauranteur Tiana of The Princess and the Frog, and after her the artist Rapunzel (she of the thousand hobbies) of Tangled. But the creators of Anna in Frozen seem to have forgotten all that. What is Anna interested in? What are her hobbies? Surely in all the time she has spent secluded in the castle with nobody to talk to, she must have found something to do. But we never learn what. Tiana is a chef, Rapunzel is an artist, and Anna is … a princess. To be fair, she shows herself to be brave and resourceful on her quest to save her sister, but she never manages to find a particular skill, talent, or passion that might give her some purpose, some way of being more than just Elsa’s sister and (we may presume) Klaus’s bride. In the end, as at the beginning, she has nothing of her own.

This is where Moana outshines it. As if having picked up on most viewers’ finding Elsa much more interesting than Anna, Disney chooses to make its female protagonist a young woman being groomed for leadership. Moana, however, is no anti-heroine; though she makes mistakes, she is clearly a heroine throughout. There is no figure analogous to the “completely ordinary, but in a good way” Anna; instead, we see Moana bond with her wise, funny grandmother, the community’s lore-keeper, who turns out to be quite the badass in her own right. In the film’s first moments, Moana’s pull toward the ocean and her longing to see the world beyond the reef, and her chieftain father’s disapproval of such, have some strong echoes of Ariel’s situation in The Little Mermaid. But in the end, the movie isn’t about a choice between duty and desire. Moana’s journey begins where desire and duty mesh. She has to go beyond the reef in order to become the leader she is meant to be. This is a heroine with purpose.

So, what else do I appreciate about Moana?

Gender is no object. The oft-repeated conflict of “You can’t/shouldn’t do/be [fill in the blank] because you’re a girl/woman,” which a multitude of writers continue to trot out every time they tell a story with a female protagonist, is missing from this film. Moana will succeed her father as chieftain, and no one questions this. We see her preparing for this responsibility, so that we’re shown, not just told, that she’ll be good at it, but we’re never given the sense that she must prove herself because of her gender. Maui the demigod doesn’t take her seriously at first, but that’s because she’s mortal, not because she’s female. Moana is given other battles to fight than the familiar gender struggle, and by God, that’s refreshing.

Marriage is no object, either. Plenty of reviewers have noted that Moana’s story does not end in marriage, and I agree that this is a good thing. What makes it even better is that unlike other animated heroines, from Pocahontas to Aladdin‘s Jasmine to Brave‘s Merida, Moana never has to put up with one parent or the other pressuring her to marry. Marriage isn’t disparaged or down-rated; it simply never comes up, and so Moana is spared yet another too-familiar conflict.

The male lead is interesting, too. Ever notice how painfully bland most of the princes are in traditional Disney princess movies? Here, too, matters have improved significantly in recent years, with Naveen of The Princess and the Frog and Flynn of Tangled given personalities, flaws, and humor. The demigod Maui of Moana takes this up to eleven. For most of the film, he’s anything but a hero; he’s a trickster who would like nothing better than to ditch the pesky human who keeps insisting he think and act for the good of others besides himself. But he grows, and by the end we’re rooting for him (though thankfully — Spoiler Alert — he doesn’t steal Moana’s thunder by saving the day). The development of his relationship with Moana is all the more intriguing because it carries not the slightest hint of romance. This is a story of a friendship where both characters come to appreciate each other and end up bringing out the best in each other.

The songs are great! “How Far I’ll Go” may become the over-played second coming of Frozen‘s “Let It Go,” but in the contest of the movie it’s stirring. Even better is Maui’s signature song, “You’re Welcome,” which is so catchy that poor Moana gets caught up in it and lets herself be tricked. The songs do what all the best songs in musicals do: they move the plot along and reveal vital aspects of character. The more I hear of songsmith Lin-Manuel Miranda and his work, the more I’m a fan. I have a “Things I Love about Hamilton” post coming soon. Wait for it.

Diversity is a good thing. I can only hope the success of this film leads to our seeing more stories about nonwhite (preferably female) animated protagonists and the worlds they inhabit.

And finally I must mention the one clear thing Moana has in common with Frozen. It stands as proof that animated features with female leads can be huge hits at the box office.

In my previous post I proposed that good writing is always worth reading, whatever the age of the intended target audience, and suggested that one way that a reader might overcome a prejudice against YA speculative fiction would be to read some of the best the genre has to offer in terms of prose, world-building, characterization, or a combination thereof. Unfortunately, a single post didn’t give me quite enough room to touch on all the titles I think worth mentioning, so here are a few more that might pleasantly surprise the hide-bound critics of YA.

Anne McCaffrey, author of the Pern series of science fiction novels, is lauded as a pioneer, one of the first really successful female authors in the genre, along with LeGuin, Norton, and Cherryh. Yet many current readers find the gender politics of her earliest adult-targeted Pern novels a bit dated, as when a romantic hero frequently feels the urge to “shake” his stubborn and uppity love interest, and when a heretofore likable girl transforms into a repulsive shrew almost the minute she Impresses a green (“fighting”) dragon and thereby transcends her society’s gender roles. Yet the one subset of Pern novels designated as YA, the Harper Hall of Pern trilogy (Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums), has hardly dated at all, and remains a straightforward and satisfying endorsement of female creative ambitions. Its heroine, Menolly, escapes a nightmarishly abusive family situation in order to pursue her dream of becoming a harper — like Maerad in The Books of Pellinor, she’s one of those artistic girls for whom I have a soft spot — and McCaffrey peppers the text with lyrics of the songs her heroine crafts so that we know, not merely believe, this girl has talent. For a long time, her troupe of charming fire lizards remain her only friends, but eventually she finds a strong support system, including raffish young Piemur (one of those male-female friendships it’s always a joy to see) and Masterharper Robinton, one of the most wholly admirable of McCaffrey’s heroes. Eventually she falls in love, but romance never derails her ambitions or distracts her from them. In that regard, this book series, published as an omnibus in 1976, can serve as an antidote to the hordes of Twilight imitators in which the female leads are empty vessels waiting to be filled by a love interest. Anyone curious about the Pern series, however old, should start here.

Much of the work of Robin McKinley would merit a mention on my list, but I must single out my favorite, Spindle’s End. “Sleeping Beauty” is my least favorite among famous fairy tales, since its heroine is quite obviously and notoriously passive, but I read this retelling because I was curious to see what McKinley, a writer well-known for creating brave and resourceful female heroes, would do with it. She didn’t let me down. The vivid, lyrical prose is a strong selling point, but what I love most are the characterizations of the “sleeping beauty,” a tomboyish veterinarian (or “horse-leech” in the parlance of that world) named Rosie, and the fairy woman, Katriona, who serves as her guardian. The introduction of the beautiful Peony, who apparently conforms to the feminine ideal but who proves to be more than she seems, adds a welcome twist I will not Spoil here. McKinley’s Damar novels, The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown, are also worth a look. I find the prose a tad flat compared with that of Spindle’s End, but these novels offer welcome portrayals of day-saving young women.

Betsy Cornwell’s Mechanica defied my expectations more than almost any book I’ve read in the past five years. Do we really need another Cinderella retelling? Maybe not, but that folk tale has such staying power and malleability that we’ll continue to see retellings in the future, and if we’re lucky, they’ll be, well, as inventive as Cornwell’s tale, in which the Cinderella figure, Nicolette, is a budding genius inventor, and she’s less interested in attending the royal ball than in entering the competition for inventors despite all her stepfamily’s efforts to obstruct her. We know the Cinderella pattern so well that we think we know exactly where the novel is headed — and then Cornwell gleefully changes direction. The first-person prose invites readers to partake in the heroine’s loneliness, but also in her creative energy and defiant optimism.

The collision of disparate worlds with vastly different levels of technology is the thrust of two more worthwhile YA reads, Patricia McKillip’s Moon-Flash duology and Sylvia Engdahl’s Enchantress from the Stars. McKillip’s work showcases two brave, clever young people, boy and girl, whose venture away from familiar territory forces them to confront possibilities formerly beyond their imaginations. This, like all of McKillip’s writing, features gorgeous, luminous, almost poetic prose. Engdahl, in telling the story of a young woman from an advanced technological society tasked with guiding a young man from a primitive world on the first careful steps toward advancement, manages the masterful trick of shifting neatly from science fiction (the heroine’s chapters) to fantasy (the hero’s chapters), shaping the prose to fit the world.

I can’t leave unheralded the late, great Terry Pratchett’s ventures into YA, specifically The Wee Free Men, featuring the fearless, hard-nosed young witch Tiffany Aching and the troop of tiny warriors the Nac Mac Feegle, and The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, a fabulously fractured take on “The Pied Piper,” featuring a naive young lad and a super-intelligent cat and team of rats playing a long con. Critics who castigate YA fantasy for “sentimentality” will find none of that here,  for Pratchett sees no reason to abandon his customary no-nonsense style and incisive humor just because he’s writing about youthful protagonists. I can think of no earthly reason why anyone who enjoys reading about Pratchett’s kick-butt witch Granny Weatherwax should not also enjoy reading about his Tiffany Aching.

To refer yet again to the words of a guest of the YA Track at DragonCon (whose name tragically escapes me), the feature that distinguishes YA science fiction and fantasy from speculative fiction written for adults is not the quality of writing or characterization, but the presence of hope. And hope is something I think we could all use right now, at least a little.

Happy Reading.

One of my favorite reads of the past month was a fantasy generally shelved as YA. And according to some, I should be embarrassed.

The first name that comes to mind when I think of people who believe themselves qualified to judge my reading list is Ruth Graham, author of the now-infamous Slate.com article “Against YA.” The word “embarrassed” comes from her. Adults who read YA, she asserts, are stunting their intellectual and even emotional growth because they’re embracing a genre that supposedly relies on easy answers, happy endings, and likable protagonists, when they ought to be challenging themselves with the moral ambiguity that characterizes the best of adult literature.

I will agree with her this far: adults who read only YA should consider expanding their literary horizons, for a love of and familiarity with a variety of genres can only do a reader good. But I can’t accept her assertion that optimism and admirable/heroic protagonists are juvenile and simplistic, or that pessimistic to nihilistic storytelling is inherently worthier and more insightful. Graham mentions Charles Dickens as an example of an author of compelling adult-oriented literature. I fell in love with Dickens in college and read him voraciously, and the last time I looked into him, his work wasn’t exactly brimming with moral ambiguity. Tragedy, yes. Violence, yes. But in his work, the good guys, while flawed, are clearly good, and the endings are happy — just as in a lot of YA literature.

I will admit that YA has acquired a bad reputation over the last few years, thanks in part to the immense popularity of Stephenie Meyer’s emotionally overwrought Twilight series and the proliferation of its imitators. These works get so much attention that some readers may get the impression that “Ordinary, colorless high school girl pines for hunky supernatural boyfriend who stalks her and treats her badly” is a template for contemporary YA literature in general. If it were, if these were the only books in the genre, then YA might really be the embarrassment Graham and others think it is. But they’re not. One may have to creep through a minefield of Meyer imitators to find them, but YA speculative fiction contains some vivid world-building, engaging characterization, absorbing plots, and even gorgeous prose. We may “come of age” only once, but we never stop evolving, aspiring, and confronting confusing and even frightening dilemmas — so no matter how old we grow, we may find well-written young adult fiction worth relating to.

Here are some YA books that speculative-fiction fans of any age may find worth reading.

Leigh Barduro’s Six of Crows is the aforementioned favorite read of the past month, and interestingly, it has a dash of that moral ambiguity that Graham cites as worthwhile feature of adult fiction. This is a heist novel set in a vividly detailed second-world fantasy setting, and its protagonists are a band of thieves and would-be kidnappers from an urban underbelly. They’re given a mission that will save their world, as they must wrest a scientist from the clutches of their enemies before he can create and distribute a drug that will turn this world’s mages into soulless and unstoppable supervillains. A worthy goal, but our gang of rogues must stoop to some questionable methods in order to achieve it. The adventure proves a test of what lines they are willing to cross, and often we’re not sure just what they’ll do. Moreover, no simple happy ending awaits; I will say no more than that. There is a sequel, Crooked Kingdom, which I’m hungry to read.

So why did I like it so much? For one thing, the world — much like Django Wexler in his Shadow Campaigns, Barduro creates nations analogous to the Netherlands, Russia, and Norway, and sets them in political, cultural, and spiritual opposition — is a fascinating place. But clever world-building means little if I’m not invested in the characters, and the titular “six of crows” are a group of scoundrels I can get behind as they demonstrate friendship, love, and loyalty. I have a favorite: Nina Zenik, the female mage whose power can both mend and break. She’s capable, resourceful, and fearless, but it’s her wicked sense of humor, something “tough girls” are too rarely allowed to have, that makes her a heroine after my own heart.

Allison Croggon wrote The Books of Pellinor series (The Naming, The Riddle, The Crow, and The Singing) partly from a desire to see a female protagonist in a Tolkienesque epic/high fantasy adventure. Since I share this desire, I was primed to like these books. The world is complex, the stakes are high, the adventure is frightening and often painfully violent, and more than once the heroine, the gifted apprentice bard Maerad, is force to confront the darkness within herself. The series is not perfect. I lost interest in the third book, The Crow, in which the narrative leaves Maerad to follow her similarly gifted brother Hem and no heroine emerges to fill the Maerad-shaped hole; also, in The Singing,  Croggon introduces a secondary female character and gives me enough detail to persuade me to like her, then proceeds to under-utilize her. The friendship between girls/women I’m always keen to see is regrettably absent here. All the same, this is a gripping tale, with plenty of excitement in which a reader can immerse herself. Maerad emerges as a powerful day-saving heroine, her integrity all the stronger for having been challenged.

Fran Wilde’s Updraft is likewise not perfect. A friend of mine noted that while it’s very well-written and the society is developed in intriguing detail, it follows the familiar story beats of dystopian fiction in the Hunger Games mold. I can see her point, especially since Suzanne Collins’ wildly successful The Hunger Games, which I enjoyed, has almost as many imitators as Twilight. But I’ll go out on a limb and assert that Updraft is a better book. The prose itself is fresher to me, a sense of wonder mingling with the wrongness and oppression. The world is more complex and, for me, all the more interesting for being further removed from our own. And the purposeful heroine, Kirit, isn’t hampered with a love triangle to distract her from her heroic exploits. Like all my favorite YA in recent days, it’s a girl-power book, but with plenty of excitement and narrow escapes to please both male and female readers.

Coming soon: Part 2.

I honor the holiday of Thanksgiving less as a historical commemoration than as a time to set negativity aside and focus on the people and things we love. One thing for which I never cease to be thankful is fiction in all its varied forms — stories that sweep me away, touch my heart, and spark my imagination, pointing me in creative directions of my own. Every year brings new fiction for which I can give thanks. For Thanksgiving 2016, I salute the following:

New authors I have tried.

Four in particular have delighted me in the past several months. Todd Lockwood introduced me to a tough, resourceful heroine and a charming, fast-growing female dragonet in his debut novel The Summer Dragon. Karen Lord helped me see the power of common-sense possibility and darn fine cooking in Redemption in Indigo. Zen Cho took me to an alternate Regency London just begging for an unorthodox heroine to shake it up and force it to reconsider its sexist, racist ways in Sorcerer to the Crown. And Leigh Barduro brought together a band of troubled misfits, including two heroines after my own heart, and turned them loose in a detailed quasi-European urban landscape in Six of Crows. These authors have me wanting more, and I’m eager to see what’s next.

Supergirl, Season 2.

I wasn’t sure how the move from CBS to the CW would affect the quality of my favorite among last year’s freshman series, but I was quite disappointed to learn that Calista Flockhart’s Cat Grant, by far the funniest and on occasion the most moving character, would be demoted from regular to recurring because the Vancouver filming locale posed problems for the actress. Yet surprise of surprises, I find the show more compelling than ever. We may not get Cat Grant’s amusing and often incisive bon mots every week, but we have the confident, capable, out-and-proud detective Maggie Sawyer, as well as intriguingly ambiguous figures like Lena Luthor and M’gann, a.k.a. Miss Martian. Plus we have James Olsen showing how a non-superpowered individual can become a crime-fighting hero. There’s so much going on this season that I’ve scarcely had time to miss Ms. Grant. All the same, hopefully she’ll put in an appearance within the next few episodes…

British television on PBS.

It seems an odd thing to be grateful for at this proudly-American time of year, but some of my favorite entertainment over the past two months has come with a British accent. First there’s Poldark, a potboiler set in 18th century Cornwall, not only narratively engaging (despite, or perhaps because of, the lead character’s frequent bad decisions) but pictorially gorgeous, from its seaside vistas to its hunky lead actor Aidan Turner. Eleanor Tomlinson’s Demelza, with her fiercely intelligent green eyes, lilting voice, and pre-Raphaelite red hair blowing in the wind, is my new girl crush (but I still love you, Peggy Carter).

Then there’s The Durrells (US title: The Durrells in Corfu), which my husband aptly describes as Malcolm in the Middle set in 1930s Greece. If the mood of Poldark is one of stormy angst fueled by bad luck and betrayal, the tone of The Durrells is breezy and full of hope. The characters may stumble and hurt themselves and each other, but in the end, love and understanding prevail, thanks largely to the clan’s matriarch, Louisa, wonderfully played by Keeley Hawes. Playing a very traditional feminine role, Louisa is the kind of character I might have been tempted to overlook, but Hawes invests her with such intelligence, warmth, and humor that I can’t help but admire her, and I understand her even when she is in error.

The Durrells has finished its PBS run for the year, and Poldark has only one episode remaining. But both shows will be back next year, and for that I’m quite thankful.

Movies… the best is yet to come.

In a previous post I mentioned I haven’t been thrilled with the roles given to female characters in this year’s movies; only in Zootopia and the Ghostbusters remake have female heroes had a chance to shine. In the time since that post, no movie I’ve seen has made me change my mind. Yet hope is on the horizon. There’s Arrival, out in theaters now but yet to be seen by me, featuring Amy Adams as a linguist lending her expertise to a first-contact situation. There’s Moana, which early reviews assure me (despite all the advertising) is really about the girl and not about the Dwayne Johnson-voiced demigod who travels with her. And of course there’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, with Felicity Jones’ courageous rebel. And there may be female heroes in a number of films that haven’t yet flashed on my radar screen. Even in its last weeks, 2016 still has time to turn things around. My fingers are crossed.

The books in my future.

Trudi Canavan, Kate Elliott, Zen Cho, Brandon Sanderson (Oathbringer!), Laini Taylor, Martha Wells, Max Gladstone, and Django Wexler all have new books coming out in 2017. As long as writers keep writing books I want to read, I have cause for gladness.

So I am thankful for stories, since stories give savor to life. Stories open our eyes to possibilities in ourselves and in others. Stories give us the chance to see through the eyes and walk in the shoes of people different from us. Stories open up common ground. A fiction-less life is a barren, tragic life indeed, and anyone who tries to tell us that fiction is “a lie” without purpose or value deserves our utmost pity.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Very rarely do I read a straight-up bad book. I spend enough time researching on Goodreads and other sites to get a feel for whether a title will give me what I seek in reading matter. If by chance I stumble onto a book that is unequivocally bad, I don’t bother to finish it. I don’t enjoy hate-reading, and as they say, life is too short. So I can say with some confidence that every book I read and finish, I either like or love or somewhere in between.

Some books leave a more lasting imprint on my memory than others. Usually, though not always, they’re the ones that fall on the “love” end of my scale; sometimes, however, they leave their mark because despite being entertaining, they have some flaw that troubles me and/or makes me think. Here I highlight a few books I’ve read recently that have stayed with me, for different reasons.

1. The Alloy of Law

Brandon Sanderson’s books just do it for me, and I’m not even certain why. The prose isn’t exactly the most lyrical or breathtaking ever. The concepts are not especially challenging or thought-provoking. Yet I find his books immensely and wonderfully readable. I am not an uncritical fan. (Do not get me started on the climax of Warbreaker, though I think the reason I’m still angry about it is that I’d been enjoying the book so much up to that point.) But when a new Sanderson book set in “the Cosmere” — the alternate worlds he has created — comes out, I’m always keen to get my hands on it as quickly as possible. I can see myself camping out in front of my nearest Barnes & Noble sometime next fall so that I can buy Oathbringer, Book 3 of The Stormlight Archive, the second it hits the shelves. In the meantime, I’m tiding myself over with another series of his, popularly known as “the second Mistborn series,” of which The Alloy of Law is the first volume.

The book as the feel of a Victorian gaslight fantasy merged with a Wild West shoot-’em-up, and the combination works better than we might expect. Featured in the cast are a hero who is a badass supreme, whose tragic past and rigid adherence to his ethical code lend him an aura of admirable melancholy (I keep picturing a young Liam Neeson), a best friend who offers ironic commentary on the proceedings while being badass in his own right, and a heroine whose courage and skill surprise both her and the reader. All three are vividly drawn and worth rooting for, and all get their chances to shine in the course of the narrative. (Heroine Marasi’s participation in the climax almost makes up for my ongoing disappointment about Warbreaker.) And there is no question that they are heroes whose goal is to do what’s right and protect those who cannot protect themselves. At a time when grimdark anti-heroes are all the rage, I treasure the honest-to-goodness (though flawed) heroes that Sanderson creates.

Rating: Unqualified joy.

2. The Aeronaut’s Windlass

Jim Butcher is best known for his urban fantasy series The Dresden Files, and he’s also written epic fantasy in the form of Codex Alera, a sort of “Pokemon set in ancient Rome” (it’s better than that description makes it sound). The Aeronaut’s Windlass is his first foray into the fantasy subgenre known as “steampunk,” in which steam-powered technologies are injected into a quasi-historical setting. Not being into urban fantasy, I’ve never read the Dresden books, but I did like, with reservation, the first four volumes of Codex Alera, so I was curious to see what he might do with steampunk, and I tackled this thick book this summer. The good news: it’s a rollicking adventure, full of daring rescues, hair-breathed escapes, dashing heroics, nefarious villainy, and absorbing world-building. It’s also a fast read, despite its thickness, because it’s darn hard to put down.

The bad news (for me, anyway): I had an issue with Butcher’s writing of women, at least of heroines, in the Codex Alera books, and that issue persists here. To his credit, he eschews the Smurfette Principle and puts three women on Team Good, yet I can feel him holding them back, keeping them from living up to their full potential for awesomeness, making sure that they don’t become too competent to need occasional (or even frequent) rescue. Bridget, my favorite of the three, is physically big and strong, blessed with common sense, and able to communicate with cats; Gwen is a crack shot with a gauntlet, a steampunk firearm (and, regrettably, has a nigh unbearable personality); Folly is an etherealist whose crystals hold power. These strengths should equip them for full participation in the dashing heroics, right? Sadly, at this point in the series their only real knack seems to be for getting into trouble and needing some male character or other, even the male cat Rowl, to bail them out. The two villainesses, by contrast, hold authority. They get to be confident and capable. I guess to be a genuinely badass female character in Butcher’s world — at least, here and in Codex Alera — you have to be evil. Disappointing.

My rating: Qualified enjoyment.

3. The Guns of Empire.

I’ve mentioned it in previous posts, but it bears repeating: Django Wexler’s Shadow Campaigns series hits nearly every one of my reading-pleasure buttons. Stalwart heroes of both genders? Check. Warrior women fighting on the side of Good? Check. Compelling political intrigue? Check. A female authority figure depicted sympathetically? Check (twice)! Friendships between women? Check. Friendships between men and women? Check. Effectively drawn romance (both straight and gay)? Check. I’m hard pressed to think of anything I desire in a fantasy series that this one doesn’t have, and its fourth volume, The Guns of Empire, doesn’t disappoint.

Well, maybe it does, just a little, but it’s not the book’s fault. If I enjoyed the previous two volumes, The Shadow Throne and The Price of Valor, a tiny bit more, it’s because I find political maneuvers more engrossing than military ones, and this book, like the first book The Thousand Names, is very battle-heavy. Those battles are nonetheless stirring, and a reader can feel the bitter cold as our heroes march through Murnsk, this world’s equivalent of Russia. Generals Marcus d’Ivoire and Winter Ihernglass and their liege lady, Queen Raesinia, are as engaging company as ever, and they’re backed up by a diverse and colorful array of supporting characters. The threats are dangerous and palpably evil, and some of my favorites don’t make it to the end, felled by demonic possession or enemy soldiers’ bayonets. A riveting read, but be warned: while the previous volumes each had something resembling a conclusion, this one ends on a cliffhanger — and the next book doesn’t even have a title yet.

My rating: Just when is Book 5 coming out? I really need it.

Hi, everyone!  Matt Ceccato (Nan’s Husband) here.  Nan asked my help in letting you know about something exciting for those who have yet to sample her published work!

Today has been a busy day.  About 90% of the content here at my website is created by my wife.  When she needs assistance with the technical side of things, I help out with that. And, in all honesty, I will “sub-contract” some of the web design aspects.  That logo at the top of the page?  That was designed by our good friend Sketch MacQuinor, who only charged us “a hug each” for his gorgeous logo (thanks, Sketch!).  Also, some of the layout aspects came from our buddy Grant Goggans, the webmaster at Marie, Let’s Eat and Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time.  And if you aren’t reading Grant’s blogs, do yourself a favor and get yourself acquainted.  But wait until you’ve finished this entry first.

So, why has today been busy?  Well, that “Coming Soon” tag on the “Short Stories” page above?  It has content now!  Let me explain…

Earlier this year, Nan posted a “Five Things” entry about Chattanooga, Tennessee.  One of those things, LibertyCon, is a chance for her to connect with readers in person and learn aspects of the publishing industry.  On the Friday of this year’s convention, we were given an audience with Bill Fawcett, an author and publisher who “knows the business.”  On that warm July night in his converted sleeper car hotel room, we learned a lot from Bill, including the value of promotion.  He suggested “a sizzle package:” a short story and excerpts from my two novels.  We took his advice to heart and got together with Nan’s publisher, Gilded Dragonfly Books, to create for you a free (yep, totally free!) copy of “Firegale at the Festival!”  This story originally appeared in Legends of the Dragon, Vol. 1, published in 2015 for Dragon Con. But starting today, you can read this compelling short story of what happens when an actual dragon attends Atlanta’s largest gathering of fans of all thing geek.

So, as promised, here is your free copy of firegaleat-the-festival-promo-pdf

Thanks and spread the word!
Matt

We all know that in the world of superhero comics, male and female heroes exist, but very rarely do they fall in love with each other. Instead, men of steel typically seek out women of Kleenex as their romantic interests, women whose very ordinariness is part of their attraction. The job of this ordinary love interest is to keep the male superhero grounded, connected with the world and humankind, and to provide him with a sanctuary where he can relax and tap into what is ordinary within himself. Yet does this role have to be as thankless as it sounds? Can this Kleenex woman, this ordinary love interest, be written in such a way that audiences can take an actual interest in her, as an individual distinct from the male hero?

The traditional way of involving love interests in the superheroes’ adventures has been to have the villains kidnap them and have the heroes come to their rescue; with the women in peril, the men get to demonstrate their strength. Lois Lane is the best-known example of the perpetually kidnapped love interest type, so prone to misfortune that she apparently can’t get through a normal day without needing to be rescued at least once. Yet when she’s written well, she’s one of the more tolerable damsels, a passionate journalist whose zeal to discover the truth moves her to run headlong into those dangerous situations she’s not quite equipped to escape. She at least has some purpose of her own, aside and apart from what Superman does. She can be an interesting and intelligent character — again, as long as the writers know what they’re doing.

Far more irksome, to me, is Mary Jane Watson, the repeatedly captured and rescued love interest of Spider-Man (as portrayed in Sam Raimi’s big-screen Spider-Man trilogy) — captured, not because she’s diving head first into a mystery investigation, but simply because she is Spider-Man’s girlfriend. Everything I dislike about the character comes into focus in the third and weakest of Raimi’s films. Early in the film, we see a possibility for growth in Mary Jane, for we learn that she’s actually longing to find her own way to be special, a way she can be more than just Spider-Man’s girlfriend. The logical progression from this set-up would be for her to discover her own brand of awesome over the course of the story. Anyone watching for the first time might expect this to happen. But no. The screenplay abandons Mary Jane’s understandable dissatisfaction and desire to grow beyond her role in order to focus exclusively on Peter Parker’s own angst, his confrontation with his dark side in the form of Venom. The resulting climax has Mary Jane, yet again, captured and rescued, in spite of promises made to actress Kirsten Dunst (who does all she can to endow the character with vitality) that this wouldn’t happen. She never gets the chance to find her own way of being awesome. Instead, the movie implies she should be okay with just being Spider-Man’s girlfriend. To be loved by the hero is all she needs.

The key idea is relevance. The love interest may be important to the hero’s emotional needs, but how can she be a relevant part of the action, other than getting captured and needing rescue? Without any martial skills or training, she can’t stand beside her hero in a fight. So, how can the writers make her matter, without resorting to the old, familiar distressed-damsel option?

Among the last two decades’ glut of superhero movies, two stand out for evading that option. The first is Captain America: The First Avenger, but I’ve sung Peggy Carter’s praises in previous posts; I’ll settle for saying that the screenplay does give her martial skills that equip her to fight beside the hero, and for that alone she would be exceptional. The second is Thor. What makes this one unusual isn’t that love interest Jane Foster is a scientist (we saw that before with Betty Ross in Hulk), but that her scientific exploration figures into the action. She never needs rescuing, except as far as the entire human race needs rescuing, but she still matters to the plot as well as to the hero. I have only two regrets regarding Jane. First, Natalie Portman gives a lifeless, don’t-want-to-be-here performance, leaving me to wonder how I might have taken the character to my heart if a more invested and energetic actress had played her. Second, the good work of the first film is utterly undone by the sequel: Jane gets some cool action near the end, only after she’s spent the majority of the running time unconscious and being carted around by Thor or Loki — a huge step backward, and more proof that Hollywood’s writers are still clueless on how to write superheroes’ love interests as active and interesting people.

Doctor Strange comes out this weekend. I’m going to see it. It has garnered good reviews, but more importantly, my husband wants to see it, and since I made him go to Deadpool and Ant-Man without me, I owe him this one. If only, if only the glowing reviews I’ve read didn’t mention among the movie’s flaws the Rachel McAdams character, a more underdeveloped and colorless love interest than usual. I haven’t heard or read anything about her getting captured and needing rescue; the complaint, rather, is that despite her being a skilled surgeon, the screenplay gives her nothing significant to do. She’s window-dressing, there only because someone decided Strange needed a love interest. The cynic in me suspects that, having made the decision to gender-flip Strange’s mentor the Ancient One, the creative team decided any real development of McAdams’ character wasn’t necessary. We’ve got one interesting and active female character; why would we need two?

Thor has three interesting and active women. Not only can Marvel do better; they’ve already done better, so they should know better.

The big screen continues to be very slow to give us female superheroes in crucial roles. The least it could do is find a way to turn these love interests into actual people — the kind of smart, funny, and resourceful people that fans like me will enjoy identifying with.

I doubt I’m saying anything my readers haven’t already thought when I mention that 2016 has been an especially sad year for celebrity deaths. Not long ago we lost Gene Wilder, a much-loved comedian and frequent collaborator of director/screenwriter/performer Mel Brooks. Most of us have a favorite Wilder performance, be it Willy Wonka, Leo Bloom, Sherlock Holmes’ smarter brother, the Waco Kid, or the Frisco Kid. But as far as I’m concerned, if he’d done nothing else, he would be worth remembering for his wildly rangy portrayal of the title role in Brooks’ sublime 1974 parody masterpiece Young Frankenstein. Wilder not only starred but also co-wrote the screenplay, making him even more essential to the success of the film.

Wilder’s performance, which takes his character from mild-mannered brainy milksop to brazen scientific revolutionary (and sometimes back again) is but one thing I love about this movie. A huge part of what makes it work for this fan of classic cinema is that here Brooks and Wilder clearly understand the first rule of parody, as laid down by another comic genius, Chuck Jones, in his autobiography Chuck Amuck: “You must love what you parody.” Young Frankenstein is very funny if you haven’t watched the trilogy of classic horror films from which it draws inspiration, Frankenstein (1931), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). But it’s even funnier if you have seen those films, as you can see the way Brooks/Wilder’s film riffs on Una O’Connor’s screeching housekeeper in Bride (she becomes Frau Blucher, whose name makes horses screech) and the one-armed police inspector in Son (and I freely admit that the last time I watched this one, at a point where Lionel Atwill’s wooden arm was torn off, my mind shouted “To the lumberyard!” in Kenneth Mars’ voice). Moreover, Young Frankenstein can actually enhance enjoyment of the originals. When you’ve seen Gene Hackman as the blind hermit, whose gestures of friendship cause the Monster bodily harm and drive the creature to flee before the hermit has a chance to make espresso, the note-perfect sincerity of O.P. Heggie’s performance as the hermit in Bride becomes all the more impressive.

Interestingly, it is from Son, the weakest of the originals, that Young Frankenstein derives its basic plot: a descendant of the first monster-maker returns to his ancestral castle and becomes embroiled in the monster business himself. In Son, the new-generation Frankenstein is intrigued by his predecessor’s work from the outset, but Wilder’s Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced “Fronk-en-steen” at his insistence) has only contempt for his famous ancestor’s forays into the unknown, dismissing them as “doo-doo” — which makes it all the more hilarious when he’s seduced into repeating the forbidden experiments by his grandfather’s memoir, How I Did It, and soon there’s a brand-new Monster roaming the castle and the countryside. It’s with the arrival of the Monster that Young Frankenstein leaves familiar, though funny, territory and starts to surprise us.

We all know the story of Frankenstein and his Monster. We know the scientist endows his creation with life but can’t bring himself to take responsibility for it. We know the abandoned Monster makes a few fruitless attempts to belong, but since his very existence runs counter to the laws of nature, he’s doomed to spread chaos and dread wherever he goes. We know the creator and the creature become bitter enemies, though we wonder what might have happened had the creator met his obligation to the creature instead of running away from him. And we know the Monster has to die, however much sympathy we might have for him. Such an abomination should never have existed in the first place and cannot be allowed to continue. So Mary Shelley’s novel and its umpteen adaptations tell us; as Boris Karloff’s Monster declares to his equally unnaturally-created mate in Bride, “We belong dead.”

Young Frankenstein gives this story the outcome we wish it could have.

Frederick does not run away from the Monster, even though he’s initially terrified of him. He understands, as other Frankensteins haven’t, what the Monster really wants and needs, stating, “Love is the only thing that can save this poor creature.” In the pivotal scene, he orders his assistants to lock him in a room with the Monster and not to open the door, no matter what they hear. Of course, when the Monster comes at him, fear overwhelms him and he screams to be let out, but the assistants are true to their promise. So Frederick seizes the chance to show us what he’s really made of, by turning a smile on the Monster and saying, “Hello there, handsome.” By the end of the scene, his loving affirmations have calmed the creature. His curvaceous assistant Inga asks Dr. “Fronk-en-steen” if he is all right. Frederick shouts, “My name is Frankenstein!” Lightning strikes — the traditional signal for terror in traditional horror films, but here, the capper of a funny and surprisingly heartwarming feel-good moment.

That moment is the difference-maker, and I think a key reason why even those who don’t care much for Brooks’ other work love this movie. Instead of Frankenstein racing to erase his mistake from existence, here it’s Frankenstein and his Monster against the world, charming us all with their soft-shoe duet of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (which Brooks wanted to cut but Wilder, God bless him, insisted be included). We like them. Brooks likes them, too, and they’re both eventually rewarded with the happy ending that wasn’t possible in Shelley’s novel or any of the ’30s adaptations. At the risk of his own health, Frederick endows the Monster (winningly played by Peter Boyle) with intellect, and both creator and creature win brides. (For me, a big bonus is seeing Inga all set to live happily ever after with Frederick, since she’s played by Teri Garr. I adore the 1982 comedy Tootsie, but I’ve never been happy with the shabby treatment of the Garr character in that film, so it’s good to see Garr smiling at the end of this one.)

In the end, I love the movie for its heart as much as for its humor.