It was years before I rewatched Labyrinth after seeing it in the cinema, but I had a graphic novel version of it which I pored over repeatedly.

I also had the soundtrack. This was probably the first soundtrack to a movie that I ever owned, until Beauty and the Beast came along many years later. I listened to it over and over, despite the fact that much of the music is quite chillingly surrealist. I still think it’s one of the best all time movie soundtracks, completely cohesive. It’s also I think the only movie soundtrack I have ever bought in more than one format.

Okay, apart from Beauty and the Beast. But I really do need to get hold of Little Shop of Horrors on something other than audio cassette…

The first outfit I bought for my daughter (the only outfit I bought before she was born) was a red striped suit, like Toby wore in the movie. I did not actually want her to be stolen by the goblins, but it was a really cute outfit.

I cannot hear any criticism of Labyrinth. Even the cheesy bits are awesome. It is a truly magical piece of work, from beginning to end. Performances, design, script, everything. Except the 30 seconds at the beginning with the stepmother, who cannot act.

One of the greatest joys of my life is that my daughter loves this movie. Another joy is that my younger daughter is yet to experience it. We have that to look forward to! For all the marvellous special effects they can conjure up these days, no one has yet produced a fantasy movie to match Labyrinth for design, character, story, concept, music design and heart.

So thank you Jim Henson, Brian Froud, Wendy Froud, Jennifer Connelly, David Bowie, and everyone else who made this movie. I loved it before it was a cult classic. But it makes me extra happy that it has aged so well, and that it’s still so watchable today.

The Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices Book One), by Cassandra Clare

I enjoyed Clare’s first Shadowhunters trilogy, as a fun Buffy-style YA paranormal, though it didn’t rank among my absolute favourites because I wasn’t all that attached to either character in her central supercouple, and none of the far-more-interesting supporting characters got nearly enough page time for my taste.

The first book of this new trilogy, though, set back in the Victorian era of her same world, has absolutely knocked my socks off. Tessa is a touch too modern to feel like the Bronte-esque heroine she is obviously modelled after, as indeed are all the characters (the feel is more like that of a suave, postmodern TV adaption of a Victorian fantasy tale, than one which actually belongs in that era) but I didn’t care because it was just so delicious from beginning to end.

Fans of Gail Carriger will really enjoy this story of warlocks, shapechangers and magical secret societies. Tessa is an orphan girl with attitude, coping with more tragedy, betrayal and terror than Jane Eyre on a bad day, and somehow managing to keep her chin up. Will and Jem, two teenage boys who embody Clare’s fascination with deep, loyal more-than-family friendships, are both quite fascinating despite holding their mysteries close to their chest.

As with Clare’s earlier work, it’s the dialogue that really makes this a captivating page turner of a read, though the added bonus of really appealing protagonists this time around has made this a series I will be hanging out for, instead of merely adding to the reading pile if I have time.

The Last Stormlord (Watergivers Book One), by Glenda Larke

This is the kind of book which reminds me why I started loving fantasy in the first place. Glenda has created a stark, vivid and utterly convincing world which is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Her desert people live in cities that descend down slopes and cliff faces, and the society is (understandably) obsessed with water, which is the only currency. We see these gorgeous, harsh and cruel cities through many different perspectives: the rainlords who form the social elite because of their powers to manipulate water magically, and their proximity to the throne; and also the waterless, who barely survive on the fringes of society.

Everything hinges on the abilities of the Stormlords to lift and desalinate water from the faraway oceans, and to bring it over the cities in controlled storms. But there have been no new Stormlords for generations, and those few hopefuls have had “mysterious” accidents befall them. The only remaining Stormlord is old and sick and weak… and there is no one to replace him when he finally wears out. These are desperate times, and the lack of water leads to awful political decisions, civil unrest and, ultimately, to war. And all this before we even get to the end of Book 1!

Court politics, tangled societal rules, gender issues, romance, art and scimitars. How could I not like this book? It’s a measure of how much I did like it that I was able to get past the extremely gruesome death of a toddler early on in the story – for what should be fairly obvious reasons, death or cruelties visited upon babies and small children is one of my absolute pet hates in any kind of fiction, and something I just find myself unable to deal with. This one was rough, and still haunts me, but the story and the writing are both good and clever and crunchy enough to get me past that. I’m saving Book 2 (the one I share two shortlists with, in the Aurealis & Ditmar awards) for the plane, the one time I know I will have several of spare reading hours!

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

And moving into entirely different territory… This is a marvelous, awful, incredibly powerful graphic memoir (as opposed to graphic novel) of the artist/writer’s childhood, and particularly her relationship with her father, who died suddenly (and, she believes, intentionally) when she was twenty, shortly after she came out to her family as a lesbian, learned of her father’s own closeted homosexuality, and supported her mother in asking for a divorce. There’s an intensity to this book that comes from the layers and layers of meaning through each panel – often the illustration completely belies the text, or shows a different interpretation of reality. This means that you really get the sense that you are dredging through someone’s memories, circling round and round instead of following a single narrative line.

We are often told facts or details more than once, but each time it happens we understand more about the narrator and her family, and so we feel like we have been pulled deeper into the story. Bechdel exposes herself regularly as an unreliable narrator, but also pulls no punches in detailing her own perceived flaws or those of her parents – the three of them often feel like the only real characters in the story, or the only ones that she feels she can be honest and revealing about. Bechdel’s brothers, for instance, are only lightly sketched.

Most of all, this is a story about books – and it’s particularly interesting to me in light of several conversations this year on the topic of ‘books within books’ – Jo Walton’s Among Others, which I still haven’t got to, sparked off many of these, inviting comparisons with that classic book about reading books, Tam Lin by Pamela Dean. Listening to Farah Mendlesohn on the recent Coode St podcast, I was reminded in a sudden startlement that Diana Wynne Jones’ Fire and Hemlock is also a book about reading books, and was fascinated by Farah’s assertion that every book cited in that book contributes to a deeper understanding of what is going on in the story. I didn’t need an excuse to go back and reread one of my favourite novels of all time, but now I am bursting to do so.

But yes, Fun Home is a book about books – I find it really revealing that Bechdel barely mentions her interest in art, but the whole story is wrapped up in her halting beginnings as a writer. We see her progression as a diarist, under the critical eye of both parents, and there is a whole meta conversation about herself as narrator, and how early she began to weave ambiguity and misinformation into her text. Likewise, she examines her father’s letters, from his courtship of her mother as well as to Bechdel herself when she was at college, for clues as to his personality and his secrets. Bechdel discovers her sexual orientation through books, and we are treated to her reading list and her thoughts on several of the works which most affected her, through the narrative. Wound into the story also are the books she shared (sometimes with delight, sometimes with exasperation) with her father, an English teacher and (she felt) frustrated student of literature. After learning to fear, despise and be critical of Bechdel’s father for so much of the story, it is quite stunningly effective to show how he and his daughter, who seemed barely capable of having a conversation together, bonded so deeply over literature. Bechdel’s mother is an altogether less deeply realised character (as with her brothers, it seems likely that Bechdel was holding back here, only feeling completely free to write about herself and her late father) but we also see her portrayed through her intersections literature, the masters degree she regularly disappeared into and the amateur dramatics that seemed to consume so much of her attention.

Fun Home is a difficult, confronting read at times, but is a spectacularly realised memoir, and I was deeply affected by the artwork. Bechdel has copied in old letters and sketched new versions of real photographs, and you can see in her depictions of her family home in particular that she was using this book to capture and honour so many memories, from the deep and dark to the absurd. It’s a masterpiece, and the kind of book you need to reference when people start saying dumb things about how comic books are shallow, or just for kids, or only about superheroes.

My advice was to write Book 2. While it might seem counter-intuitive to keep putting all your eggs into one basket, when it comes to fantasy you learn a lot more from getting to the end of your series than the end of the first volume. Also, you learn so much in writing Book 2 that you can then go back and look at Book 1 with new, jaded, experienced eyes, and rewrite accordingly.

But now he’s finished Book 2, and I feel like I should be able to give a more comprehensive answer.

Only… I’m not exactly an expert in getting published for the first time. None of us are, of course – there are many ways to get published for the first time, and most authors only experience ONE of those. In my case, though, it was a pretty atypical route (involving a competition that no longer exists) so giving advice on how to get to that point is a bit like… well, when friends ask for advice on coping with relationship breakups. (Um, I’ve never had one. Still on my first.) Possibly that is a bad example, because I am AWESOME at being a complete EXPERT on other people’s break ups.

But anyway.  My point is that people often look to published authors for advice, and while we can often share really fabulous advice about working methods and business plans and all the stuff we actually do, I’m not sure that we’re always that useful when it comes to helping new writers figure out how to get started.  Started was a long time ago for some of us…  And while getting published isn’t necessarily easy for us, and certainly isn’t something to be taken for granted, it’s still a whole different game trying to sell a book as someone who has a track record.

I’d like to be able to offer my friend something a bit more substantial than “Query agents first, don’t send the whole books unless they ask for it, don’t pay ‘reading fees,’ yes they REALLY expect a synopsis to be a page or so…”  And while I’d like to just send him away to listen to five years’ worth of Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing and Will Write for Wine podcasts, possibly he was hoping for a slightly more efficient answer.

So what I’m wondering is – where should I point my friend?  What blog posts, what communities, what research hubs?  Where are the nearly-published submitting-like-crazy writers hanging out in 2011?

If you had just finished your first fantasy novel, what would you do with it?

I didn’t want to let The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms go without comment, though, because it’s one of the most interesting, original and intelligent fantasy novels I’ve read in a long time. It works against so many of the cliches and expectations of fantasy fiction, and while I think it doesn’t always succeed at everything it tries to do (it is, after all, a first novel), it made me genuinely excited for the genre.

For a start, it’s a complete story. Jemisin is writing a trilogy, but she has chosen to interpret that has being three individual novels set in different parts of the same world, with different protagonists and narrative threads. This is something I would love to see more of, as there is really nothing more satisfying than reading a novel that is complete in and of itself.

The premise of the novel is that the magical royal family of the hundred thousand kingdoms all live together in a city called Sky, forming an odd culture because only members of their family can live there – and so everyone from the king to the servants are all linked by blood. Part of this family’s power comes from the enslavement of the gods, who are trapped in mortal bodies. Portraying gods as characters is always a difficult task, as with any non-human race: if they are too alien it is hard for a reader to connect with them and their priorities, but if they are too human it seems inauthentic. I was impressed at the portrayal in this novel of various eternal creatures, and I did appreciate that while we have a clear cut heroine and some clear cut villains (everyone who wants to do bad things to the heroine), the story made it clear and believable that the culture had a different morality to our own. Many gods-as-characters in fantasy worlds are a little too amusing or shiny, like the children’s book versions of Zeus or Athena. I loved that the gods of Sky were so raw and complex and unpredictable, with humans only really able to understand them a small piece at a time.

Yeine is one of the Arameri, the family of Sky, but thanks to her mother’s rebellion and exile, she has been raised far from the crazy. Now, with her mother’s death, she has to travel to Sky and finds herself instantly swamped in a war for succession, in which she is intended to be a highly expendable pawn. I love court politics and I enjoyed reading about the complex and poisonous dipomacy Yeine had to learn to manage. I also enjoyed the very weird and unusual romance between Yeine and a demon, and the friendships that she formed. It is the gods rather than her own family that she feels a deeper kinship with, and that she longs to understand.

My hesitations with the text come largely from the structure: because we first see Yeine when she is arriving at Sky and only briefly visit her home, we have to be told a lot about her motivations and what is important to her, rather than seeing it – ultimately we have to rely on the fact that anyone would be upset if someone else threatened to destroy their home, because we as readers don’t really have much of an emotional attachment to where Yeine comes from, or the people who are dear to her in her old life. The only one we really learn a lot about is her mother, who is dead at the beginning of the story. Having said that, the offscreen relationship between Yeine and her mother, her hunger to learn why her mother left Sky and the way she pieces that history together was one of my favourite of the storylines.

Likewise, we have to be told that Yeine is a warrior from a warrior culture, and yet that doesn’t really come across in how she acts in Sky, where of course her physical skills aren’t likely to be much use because she is surrounded by people who can manipulate magic. The whole point of the story is that she is out of her element, and while I did appreciate that and I liked that she came across as quite human and vulnerable but slowly taking on the characteristics of the Arameri, I didn’t feel like her former existence as a warrior was really relevant enough to the story as it was told.

One criticism I have heard from other reviewers is the narrative style – Yeine tells her own story in first person, but it is often framed by her own commentary, meandering intercessions and explanations, just as if she is speaking the story aloud and occasionally tells bits in the wrong order and has to backtrack, and so on. I actually really enjoyed this aspect. I can see how people preferring a more straightforward narrative might be irritated by it, but I thought it was a good way to learn more about the protagonist, and I found it quite endearing.

At a prose level, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is exceptional. The language is just lovely, and not in an over-flowery kind of way. It is just beautifully told, and while I am rarely one to value pretty prose over the actual story, I did find that it more than papered over any of the novel’s weaker aspects. It helps that, along with the elegant narrative, the dialogue is sparkling, and there are some marvellous sensual scenes. Just about everyone has sexual chemistry with everyone else in this book, and while there is the squicky element of most of them being related to each other, it wasn’t a problem for this former classics student…

Also worth noting that both the author and protagonist are POCs – and thus part of the exciting wave of greater diversity in science fiction and fantasy that seems to be happening at the moment. I look forward to a time when this isn’t something worth noting, but in the mean time, having a non-white protagonist is still a rarity in traditional fantasy (though to be fair there isn’t a lot traditional about this book) and I think it’s important to have books like this that show that, well, of COURSE a fantasy novel doesn’t have to be all about white people.

More than anything, this is a novel of Ideas as well as character, and that gives the story of Yeine and Sky something of a science fictional sensibility. I was so entranced by what the book was doing, and how it was being told, that I only really perceived its flaws after the fact, which suggests to me that they are minor, and not really worth worrying about. I am excited to read the next book, even though I know that it is not about Yeine and the continuance of her story, purely because I want to see what the author is going to do next, as an exciting voice in fantasy fiction.

In many ways, I feel too ignorant to properly discuss this book and what it does. I know almost nothing about Africa’s history, modern culture, or any other books or stories which might put this novel better into context. One of my quite appalling realisations while reading it was that I couldn’t think of a single other novel set in Africa that I have read. Ever. So there’s some context for you, about the level of my literary ignorance, if nothing else!

I thought I knew a lot about this book going into it, from having read reviews and the author’s own description of what the book does. So I knew that it would be hard-going, that it tackled some traumatic themes about gender issues, particularly rape and female circumcision. I knew to some extent that it was both science fiction and fantasy, and that it was most definitely not intended for younger readers. I gritted my teeth somewhat, heading into it, because I did suspect it was going to be confronting.

And yes, confronting it most certainly was. Okorafor took what I like to call the “Margo Lanagan” approach in that she introduced some of the most confronting aspects of her book in the early chapters, rather than sneaking them up on readers in the middle or end of the story. The readers are taken through the brutal gang rape of the protagonist’s mother, and also a scene in which the protagonist goes through ritual circumcision in order to better “fit in” to her local community. Both scenes are incredibly hardgoing, and yet there is nothing gratuitous about either. The world of Onyesunwu, whose name means ‘who fears death’ is a world where rape and circumcision hugely affect the lives of women, and establishing this up front is an important aspect of the story.

Death, sexuality, love, friendship and magic are all powerful themes of this story. Onyesunwu’s story is also that of her mother, who was raped as an act of war (in order to be impregnated with a mixed race baby) and yet recovered to raise her daughter and find her a home. Onyesunwu is always marked as an outsider by her skin, and as she becomes a woman discovers another hidden part of herself which marks her as an outsider and a danger to her community: she has magic. It is a long time since I have read a fantasy novel which does anything that feels new and strange with magic, and I was awed at the way that power was described in this narrative. The sense of how hard it would actually be to learn to control magic, and just how dangerous a tool it is and how ripe for corruption, is beautifully conveyed.

Quite apart from our hero being a woman, which is not at all something to forget, the use of the quest narrative in this novel is also important and very different to the norm. There is a grim certainty about it, in that Onye has visions of her own death and in many ways (including the narrative structure of the novel which begins at the end and moves back and forth at times) is on a quest towards that death. The trope of a hero fearing their death and yet succeeding is quite common in Western Literature, but here we have a hero who is certain of her impending death and yet somehow being able to function. There’s an incredible courage about Onye, who never seems to rail against the unfairness of her situation, except for one moment in the story which is very understandable – that is, when the one man who could teach her about her magic refuses to take her on as a student.

Female friendship is another powerful theme here, and it is intricately tied in with sexuality, the sharing of intimate secrets, and with the circumcision that marked the beginning of Onye’s own (rather than that of her mother and fathers) story. Onye becomes close friends with the girls who shared the ritual with her, and they remain a tight enough group that when she sets off on her quest to find and vanquish the evil sorcerer who fathered her, they come along to support her. I very much liked the way that the group of girls represented different dreams and attitudes, and the way that sexuality and relationships impacts on each of them differently. This social aspect of the story often added a much-needed lightness to counterpoint the darkness of Onye’s journey, which is not to say that the issues were trivial – each of the girls is trying to find a path for herself and come to terms with the few options allowed to them in their society, and spending time with each of them allowed the novel to explore womanhood as a whole, rather than just through Onye’s experience as a woman dealing with extraordinary circumstance.

I am reminded of how often in science fiction movies, the sexy and super-extraordinary kick butt heroine is accorded a status entirely separate from other women, even assuming that other women appear in the story at all. Their power and kickbuttness seems to stem from being alone, out of the usual context of female characters. What I love most about Who Fears Death is the way that Onye’s far-from-perfect interactions with her female friends, and their loyalty to her, shows how such relationships can make a female lead stronger rather than in any way detracting from her specialness.

This is not a book that I would recommend without reservations. It is a gutsy, full-blooded read, and there is some quite horrific content above and beyond the early scenes (which would themselves be enough to put off many readers). But I do believe this is an important work of fantasy – post-future trappings aside, I read this mostly in the context of fantasy rather than science fiction – particularly in the way that it reframes the hero’s journey as a task for women. There’s also the issue of race, and how rare it is to find fantasy fiction that has an entire cast made up of POC, and shows that you can use many of the trappings of traditional fantasy without any reference at all to western, anglo culture. I found the post-future African setting absolutely compelling, and rich in detail. I’m the last person to be able to comment on how authentic the setting is (I don’t even like the beach, the desert is my idea of hell), but it felt incredibly real and convincing.

Who Fears Death is the kind of book that blows your preconceptions about fantasy fiction out of the water, and for those who don’t actually have serious trigger issues to consider, I think the overall experience is absolutely worth getting through the discomfort of its more graphic scenes. I don’t imagine myself ever re-reading this book “for fun” but I was highly impressed at how I came away from the stpry feeling uplifted and empowered, despite the grim nature of the content. Onyesunwu is not a heroine I will ever forget.

Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean.

It’s probably been close to twenty years since I first discovered this, one of the few perfect books in the world, and I would have reread it every year or two since. Not for five years now, since my last Great Re-reading phase. I would like to again soon, as it’s the kind of book that grows up with you.

It’s basically a love story to a liberal arts college education. I read it for the first time before I attended university and the real thing could never compare to this – to the beautiful stone buildings and dingy dining halls, to the friendships made thanks to random rooming lotteries. To the lectures and seminars about Shakespeare and poetry and Latin.

(by the way, all Classics students are crazy)

This leisurely, poignant read follows Janet, the daughter of two professors, a girl who loves books, through her college years. Here, she befriends frivolous Tina and awesome Molly. She falls in love with earnest, music-loving Nick and hangs out with his friends, dramatic Robin and rude, cranky but ultimately romantic Thomas. She reads a lot of Shakespeare, and forgets to write poetry. She takes fencing, and goes for long walks in Autumn, and resists the pressure to take up Classics, because English is really her thing, honestly. She goes to plays, and parties. She and her friends all sort out contraception, and have sex for the first time.

And of course it’s a fantasy novel, but exactly how it’s a fantasy novel is not clear until the end, in fact a lot of layers of story do not make sense until the every end, like why Robin laughed, and why his name and Nick’s are written there, and why Thomas was rude that day, and who rode those horses, and why the Classics students are all crazy, and what happened that time with Professor Medeous…

Which is why it is a book to be read and reread and reread, though there’s a magic here and somehow every time I try to pay attention to the important details, they slip away like water because there are all these gorgeous other things to re-experience like a youthful discovery of Shakespeare and a paper theatre of The Lady’s Not For Burning, and homemade signs that say Must Take Pill, and first love, and imperfect love and broken love, and friendship that lasts forever, and that other love that was under her nose all the time…

I read this book by accident, not knowing what I would find. Best accident I ever had.

Other Days of the Book Meme:

Day 01 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)
Day 02 – A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about
Day 03 – The best book you’ve read in the last 12 months
Day 04 – Your favorite book or series ever
Day 05 – A book or series you hate
Day 06 – Favorite book of your favorite series OR your favorite book of all time
Day 07 – Least favorite plot device employed by way too many books you actually enjoyed otherwise
Day 08 – A book everyone should read at least once
Day 09 – Best scene ever
Day 10 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving
Day 11 – A book that disappointed you
Day 12 – A book or series of books you’ve read more than five times
Day 13 – Favorite childhood book OR current favorite YA book (or both!)
Day 14 – Favorite character in a book (of any sex or gender)
Day 15 – Your “comfort” book
Day 16 – Favorite poem or collection of poetry
Day 17 – Favorite story or collection of stories (short stories, novellas, novelettes, etc.)
Day 18 – Favorite beginning scene in a book
Day 19 – Favorite book cover (bonus points for posting an image!)
Day 20 – Favorite kiss
Day 21 – Favorite romantic/sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 22 – Favorite non-sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 23 – Most annoying character ever
Day 24 – Best quote from a novel
Day 25 – Any five books from your “to be read” stack
Day 26 – OMG WTF? OR most irritating/awful/annoying book ending
Day 27 – If a book contains ______, you will always read it (and a book or books that contain it)!
Day 28 – First favorite book or series obsession
Day 29 – Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)
Day 30 – What book are you reading right now?

This is me now: I read YA books by the bucketload, mostly those that have come out this year. The same goes for SF and fantasy, mostly books by women, mostly standalones or urban fantasy in which every volume is short and sharp and self-contained. When it comes to the genre known as BFF (Big Fat Fantasy, referred to as such lovingly by fans and unlovingly by non-readers) I will defend it to the utmost and refer nostalgically to the books I consumed as a Reader Past, but in fact I don’t read much of it.

Or indeed, any. I don’t think I’ve cracked the spine of a BFF volume since the last time I judged the fantasy section for the AAs. I will wax enthusastic about current female fantasy writers such as Karen Miller, Jennifer Fallon and Glenda Larke, but the truth is that all of these writers have produced at least one if not several new series since I last read them. (I think Karen has put out about ten) I started keeping up with other aspects of the genre, and let this one slide. When I was remembering how much I love court fantasy with its intrigue and politics, I realised that I read all the books I love most from that genre some time ago. Because, you know, the books are long and they travel in packs.

Reading The King’s Bastard by Rowena Cory Daniells, who is a good friend of mine (which is why this isn’t really a REAL review though of course once I stop talking about myself it pretty much will be), I basically had to retrain myself how to read this kind of book. That makes it sound like homework or a chore, which it most definitely was not. But the first few times I opened it, I read too fast and missed everything that was happening, or read too slow and got distracted. I put it down, picked it up, put it down again.

I had forgotten how to read Big Fat Fantasy. My attention span since I had my second (and let’s face it, my first) baby has become almost non-existent, which is why the biting speed and efficiency of YA works so well for me. I don’t have time to stop and watch the scenery, I have to EAT BOOK NOW.

Last weekend, I finally caved and did what I was supposed to do. I got comfy on the couch, and actually immersed myself in the experience of reading The King’s Bastard. I learned its rhythms and cadences, and before I knew it, I was hooked. Having allowed myself to sink utterly into the world of the book, the pages flew by impossibly fast. I had forgotten the secret of reading Big Fat Fantasy – which is that it doesn’t actually take much longer to read than the shorter, snappier books I have grown accustomed to. It takes longer to begin to reading, to find the immersion point, and it’s harder to stop and start in the ten minute intervals I normally have for reading. But once you are immersed, it is the best kind of escapist reading, not least because it becomes so familiar to you that the story unfolds with ease. There’s also the pleasure of a fully realised imaginary culture, instead of the swiftly-conveyed worldbuilding shorthand of a YA or urban fantasy.

But enough about how fantasy works – which would be of no surprise to those of you who do still read it regularly, so I apologise for spending so much time to state the obvious! I’ve been waiting for quite a few years for a new series from Rowena, and this one does not disappoint. To hear her describe it, I was expecting something quite traditional. Indeed on the surface it is a story about medieval-style kings and princes, a tomboy princess, and a kingdom on the brink of war. But being Rowena, she couldn’t possibly tell a story that conventional. Within the first couple of chapters, her hero has found out his (male) best friend is in love with him and been thrown off the estate of the girl he loves on suspicion of being a) gay and b) a traitor to his father’s throne. He then spends almost the entire book desperately trying not to accidentally be more popular or successful than his twin brother, who is the heir to the kingdom, and attempting to be as loyal and obedient as he can despite the fact that half his family appear to have gone off their rocker.

The vivid landscape came across beautifully in this book, shown in the way that all the characters interact with it. I loved the wintry snow-based scenery and the way so many of them travel and hunt by ice-skates. The theme of wild magic affecting the land was shown through the variety of dangerous magical creatures that our characters had to deal with, and the way that this feature of the land is incorporated into the traditions and heraldry of the various houses. Those people who display magical ability (“Affinity”) are sent to an abbey full of power-mad monks and nuns, which gave even more scope for the kind of court politics intrigue that I love best in my fantasy fiction. And of course, anyone who doesn’t admit they have Affinity is marked a traitor… which is embarrassing if you happen to be one of the King’s own family.

There’s an edge of high school bitchiness to the court politics of the book – a bastard cousin comes to town and begins to show an unsettling influence over both the king and his heir, deliberately and quite unsubtly causing trouble between them and other members of the family, particularly our second son hero Byren and the queen herself. While Illien’s behaviour was quite blatant, I have to admit that the techniques he was using are insidiously effective in a high school setting, so why not in a king’s palace as well? The rift that develops between the twin brothers is quite emotionally wrenching, and it made me want to bash their heads together and draw a diagram of what exactly the villain was doing to them both. Sigh. Boys.

My favourite character in this was Piro, the reluctant princess – again, a quite traditional fantasy trope, but manipulated by Rowena’s twistily evil brain to defy expectations. While the men are rushing around with their grander adventures of honour, betrayal and warfare, Piro has a different rite of passage to go through: diplomacy, betrothal and grace under pressure, none of which turn out to be her forte. We follow an awkward, brave and noisy girl whose attempts to please her parents and play the elegant princess are doomed to failure because ultimately she’s just not as good at artifice as her mother is – and indeed, discovering the uncomfortable truths behind her parents’ marriage was one of her most interesting through-threads. I was as delighted as Piro herself when she finally got a chance to slip her confining bounds and go on a real adventure where her actual talents could be used.

What surprised me most, apart from the fact that I got through 600 pages of this book in a weekend (and I do NOT have much spare reading time, especially on a weekend, so I have no idea how this happened) was that many of the plotlines/character arcs I was expecting to build up towards a resolution in the third book pretty much came to a crashing, explosive climax at the end of this one. The rug has been well and truly yanked out from under me, I have no idea what is going to happen next – except that obviously I’m going to have to put another couple of weekends aside over August and September for Books 2 and 3, which are being released monthly by Solaris.

In short (ha!) The King’s Bastard is a compulsively readable, sneakily subversive traditional court fantasy, with manticores and ice-skating. It is published by Solaris and there isn’t currently an Australian edition, though I have it on good authority that Galaxy Bookshop has it in. I’m sure other specialty stores do too.

Now that my BFF reading teeth are all honed sharp and everything, it might be finally time to catch up on that backlog of Karen Millers and Glenda Larkes…

1.1. Sins of the Past
They manage to pack quite a lot into this episode. It’s rather clever in that it is basically a sequel to three linked episodes in Hercules: the Legendary Journeys from the year before, and yet there is no mention of Hercules or the fact that he pretty much set her on the road to redemption with his Magical Wang. Instead, we see Xena trying to deal with her decision to give up her warlording ways, and the various ramifications of this as she tries (not overly successfully) to change her spots.

Lucy Lawless has Xena down from the first few seconds of the episode – which is no mean feat for such a complex character. The opening scene in which she nobly buries her armour and weapons in order to disassociate herself from her old life, and promptly digs them up again less than a minute later to defend some villagers from their attackers, pretty much sums up Xena’s character. She used to fight for power and glory, and now she fights to defend those who can’t defend themselves, because that’s truer to herself than pretending not to have the skills she does. Less enjoyable at this point is Gabrielle, her earnest girl-companion-to-be, who makes me cringe as much as she always did in this first episode. Renee O’Connor did a brilliant job with Gabrielle and her journey as a character but… not in this episode. There are so many elements that should work – and indeed do work in later episodes, such as her sweet relationship with her sister, her reasons for leaving her village in search for adventure, and her gift for the gab as an alternative way (to Xena’s sword) to get her out of trouble, but it isn’t hanging together yet, mostly because O’Connor is still a bit too awkward and overacty. Also the blue and brown outfit makes me want to hurl things at the screen. That colour combination just makes me irrationally angry, which explains a lot about my previous dislike for season one Gabrielle.

The episode does show us Xena’s complex relationship with her mother, and introduces us to Draco, the best of all the Random Warlords™ who were introduced throughout the show’s run, played by a very buff and disturbingly hot Jay Lagai’ia. The fight scene at the end of this episode, in which Draco and Xena go at it with staffs, balancing on sticks and attempting not to fall, and finally battling it out while standing on the shoulders of the villagers, is still pretty legendary.

1.2 Chariots of War
While the first episode makes a strong case for watching Xena, the second one is a pretty strong case against. I always hated this episode, which I remember as being about Xena’s failed romance with a poor but honest single dad who makes her feel bad about herself – an attempt for her to live a “normal life.” There’s something so horribly Little House on the Prairie about it all. On rewatch, I disliked it just as much, but noticed something interesting. While the episode LOOKS as if it is about Xena trying out a more “feminine” life and being tempted by it, it actually isn’t. That is, Lucy Lawless is sneakily acting in a different episode to everyone else. Gabrielle tells Xena that she could try being “softer” (in radically different characterisation from the previous ep Gab also fantasises about having kids) and Darius (The Bloke Whose Wang Is Not As Magical As Hercules) attempts quite creepily to make Xena take the place of his dead wife (even dressing her in her clothes, yuk) but Xena herself never actually seems that interested. Also, though it is framed as if it is, it’s actually not a romance beyond a few speculative looks.

Even when wounded and “weakened,” Xena is tough as nails. She talks Darius through removing the arrow from her body, and never flinches about what has to be done. She puts herself in armour even when she is falling down with exhaustion. And oh yes, while everyone else is tangled up in the social mores of diplomacy and negotiation, she just kicks butt when she sees the villagers under threat. Symbolically she rips the hell out of the dead wife’s dress at the same time. She enjoys hanging out with the kids but we never see a single flicker of interest in staying with them.

While everyone else is sighing about how Xena can never have a normal life as a wife and mother, in other words, she’s rolling her eyes at them all and saying “Duh, move on.” I do kind of love her.

Even when the scripts are at their dodgiest and the characters are still being worked out (Gabrielle is truly awful in this one), the action scenes are brilliant. I never actually watched the show for the action, and thus took the high quality for granted, but come on. Episode two and we get a chariot race! I’m also enjoying the way that the various scenes from the opening credits pop out of these early episodes – they kept the same credits for most of the show’s run and they’re made up of these first few episodes, so I suppose the visuals had to be awesome.

1.3 Dreamworker
Thanks largely to episode 2, I only watched season one patchily and in some cases avoided it (or at least the first half of it) altogether, so there are some episodes here I’ve actually never seen. This one, in which Gabrielle is captured by a gang of priests to be the Bride of Morpheus, is one of those. It’s mostly forgettable, apart from the usual Lucy Lawless awesomeness, but at least Gab gets into a different outfit. I really, really hate that blue and brown thing, did I mention? I was intrigued to see that the concept of ‘blood innocence’ (ie not yet having killed someone) was introduced this early, as it was to form a pretty vital aspect of Gabrielle’s character arc over the first three four seasons.

1.4 Cradle of Hope
By Zeus, I think she’s got it! Gabrielle has suddenly shifted from being awkward and over-acty to funny and cute. Meanwhile, Xena has developed a touch more comic timing to match her dark and angsty angst. The relationship between the two actresses has warmed up nicely so that they are actually believable travelling companions instead of a pushy kid tagging along behind a grim warrior. I’m really pleased – I had a vague impression that this didn’t happen until much later in the season. It’s already less painful to watch, hooray!

This episode, another I hadn’t seen before, started out looking like it was a Moses story but unexpectedly turned into a Pandora story instead. Despite the unexpected Gabrielle coolness it’s mostly a throwaway, memorable only for having Xena pose as an exotic dancer (yes, that bit of the opening credits) to get close to the wicked/misunderstood king. I liked that while the main antagonists are men, the bulk of the story is told through four female characters. This is by no means uptypical for a Xena ep, but I had forgotten quite how nice it was to immerse myself in a fantasy TV world which is about the women first. I think I’m going to enjoy this box set!

CHAKRAM STATISTICS:
Boys who want romance with Xena: 2
Boys Xena wants to romance: 0
Gabrielle boyfriends: 2
“Adorable” children: 4
Babies: 1
Babies tossed humorously in the air during fight scenes: 1

Check it out!

The theme for this episode is ‘fantasy with frocks.’ Because yes, this is one of those books where clothes get described, a lot. One of my protagonists is a dressmaker, and that means that she sees the world through clothes. When she struggles for metaphors and similes to describe the strange world she is slowly becoming aware of, she uses crafting terms to do so. As she learns about the mysterious Creature Court, and is introduced to them, one of the aspects that stands out for her is the way that they dress: to make statements, to impress each other, to show off.

They are, after all, part-animal, and as I mention in the podcast, we have a long cultural tradition of anthropomorphising animals and putting clothes on them. Puss in Boots with his floppy hat and awesome footwear! Jemima Puddleduck in her bonnet. Cat from Red Dwarf in his tailored space suits.

Clothes also form plot points in Power and Majesty. The dress pictured on the cover represents a turning point in the story, and I read one of the key scenes for that dress aloud in this episode of the CreatureCourtCast. Ashiol and the Creature Court find out about Velody’s existence because of the dress, and it also introduces the idea that a person’s magic (though the word ‘magic’ is never used in the books) can bleed out into things they make. This will be important later…

There’s another clothes-related issue in the books, one which can be a source of humour, sexiness and… well, inconvenience, at times. Unlike the G-rated werewolves of JKRowlingland or DavidEddingsville, my shapechangers lose their clothes when they are animals. Which means, of course, they spend a lot of time naked! On rooftops. Looking for clothes. Or not. I’ve always liked to throw this sort of hassle at characters, to see how they deal with it, rather than write in an easy out.

The Creature Court themselves are beastly (ha!) careless about nudity. It’s a practical consideration. Which makes it all the more reasonable that they put clothes on in order to impress and attract each other. Once you’ve seen all the wobbly bits on a daily basis, it makes sense that you would derive sensuality from being fully clothed. Right?

That, and they really, really like to look pretty. And no, I’m not just talking about the men Though mostly, I am.

Fashions are also used to show the culture of the city of Aufleur – I was inspired by a mashup of the 1920′s, Victoriana and Ancient Rome when worldbuilding this city, and the clothes worn by many of the characters is one of the way that I show that culture – of the daylight folk as well as the Creature Court. I love playing with historical influences that are not medieval, and it excites me to see so many other people doing the same these days. There seem to be Twenties-inspired books popping up all over the spec fic community now, which makes me bounce like crazy. A movement, people! Do we have enough for a movement yet? Speakeasypunk anyone? Bobbedhairpunk? Or can we just call it Jazzhands?

What has excited me recently about the publication of the Creature Court books is that the cover concept now revolves around ‘iconic frocks’. After a talk with my editor the other week I spent a while Googling Victorian ballgowns to find examples of a particular plot-relevant frock in Book 2. It may say something about me as a writer that it was not the only potential iconic frock in the book, there were several to choose from! The other main contender was worn by the same character as Book 1, though, which left it out of the running. I don’t know yet which frock will adorn Book 3, assuming we carry the concept forward, which I hope we will. Hmmm. (is tempted to write scene in which Ashiol wears awesome frock, in order to get him on a cover – seeing the look on his sulky face would be so worth it!)

Last time we gathered for a ROR, my friends Rowena & Maxine suggested that I needed to set up a website for ‘the Creature Court collection,’ and gather artworks featuring the many clothes worn by characters in the books. I loved the idea, but figured it wasn’t possible to do it for the release of the first book as no one would have read it yet! I will seriously consider it for the release of Book 2, though, possibly as a competition if there is enough interest.