So, I finally got a chance to read J. Damask’s Wolf at the Door (published by Lyrical Press)–and really, really liked it. It’s a urban fantasy set in Singapore: Jan Xu is part of the lang, the Chinese werewolves: her pack is her family, and the thing around which her world revolves. She has married and settled down with her partner Ming, who isn’t a werewolf; and she has two small girls, whom she raises half like humans, half like wolves.

Then Marianne comes back. Marianne is Jan Xu’s sister, but there’s a catch: raised like all werewolves, Marianne failed to shape-shift when she hit puberty. Though considered a member of the family, Marianne has always chafed at what she saw as second-class membership of the pack, and left Singapore after quarrelling with Jan Xu. But now she’s back, boyfriend in tow–and she seems to have ideas of her own about where to take the pack…

This is original on several levels: the most obvious is the setting, which shows us not only Singapore seen through the view of an insider, with no exoticisation or over-description of familiar items and locations. It’s very casual about everyday life, but nevertheless effectively manages to convey not only Jan Xu’s life and her excursions to all ends of the city (including a hunting reserve in Malaysia), but also to effectively base its mythology on its setting, making the most of Singapore as a crossroads, teeming with immigrants who each bring their own folklore (I loved the bar which had vampires mingling with nagas). I also liked the way Damask ties her werewolves to Chinese folklore, rather than to European myths; it’s very nicely done.

The second thing is the emphasis on family. A lot of urban fantasy is focused on the single girl (who might have children of her own, but who is still secretly looking for The One); and while those are definitely strong stories, it was really nice to see a book which focused on, well, what happens after the wedding and the childbirths. Marianne’s returns has repercussions on Jan Xu’s family life, and her relationship with her husband and her two girls: some of my favorite scenes take place in the quiet times at the flat, when the emphasis is on how she and Ming can deal with the consequences of what happened, and how to best shield the girls from it all. Jan Xu also has strong ties to her extended family, which nicely dovetail into the pack mentality of werewolves.

It’s not perfect. There is a set of flashbacks to Jan Xu’s past as a teen vigilante (sort of The Famous Five, except with dragons and other supernatural creatures), which feel a bit out of place: I love the background and the fact that they place Jan Xu’s friends as strong individuals (and I would really love to see those expanded into a YA novel), but the way they’re scattered throughout the story feels a little haphazard, and I felt those sections could have greatly benefitted from tidying up. But, all in all, it was a very nice and interesting read, and definitely worth a look if you’re tired of urban fantasies set in the US.

J. Damask should swing by at some point for a guest post–look out for it soon!

You might have noticed I’ve been particularly distracted and/or busy lately. I wish I could say all that energy had gone into actual writing, but not so much…

Without going into gory details (there’s a bunch of things I’d rather save for private consumption), what I can say is that we have some big changes afoot. Namely, I’m changing jobs; and we’re moving flats, in order to be closer to where I will be working (and to my family).

It’s the moving flats that’s proving to be time-consuming, as we’re renovating the new flat pretty much from top to bottom, and of course you always spend so much time looking up what stuff you want to put there (and packing boxes).

At any rate, if you’ve been wondering, that’s where we are now; and why the attention span hasn’t been happening so much lately.

But I’m also in a position to confirm that both the H and I will be at Worldcon this summer. Looking forward to it; I’m on a few program items, and there are loads of friends I haven’t seen for a while there, too. We’ll be touring North California for a week or so before, doing the usual tourist stuff.

I realised I forgot to post this:

(yes, my shiny BSFA award on my desk. It came back from the UK in two pieces, but fortunately the H is a dab hand with the glue…)

So, finally… (apologies for the tardiness of this, I was very, very busy throughout last week, and when I finally had some time, I couldn’t get hold of the pictures Matthieu had taken).

Imaginales is a French con dedicated to fantasy (its “sister” con, Utopiales in Nantes, is more focused on SF). I’d never been before, but Stéphanie Nicot very kindly invited me, and so gave me the opportunity to discover Epinal.

Imaginales is pretty much the event of the weekend in May: you arrive at the train station and face the first of many billboards advertising the festival, listing all the authors. Unlike Anglophone cons, which are often put together and run by dedicated fans, Imaginales has the support of the town hall (and area council, …), and they put on quite an amazing show. They have strong ties to the restaurants, hotels and high schools of the area (teachers organise visits; authors drop by for chats, and every year artists paint a fresco which is later donated to a high school); and entrance to the event is free for everyone, which insures a very steady flow of local people curious to see the wares. There’s even a special Imaginales vintage (repackaged wine probably, but still cool).

Pretty much the centrepiece is the book tent, which is a ginormous space with a looooong set of tables, where each author has a spot: you sit there behind your books and sign stuff for whoever feels like buying. It helps if you think of it as a cross between a book fair (a Salon du Livre, if you’ve ever been) and an Anglophone con: there are a few events on programming (2-3 tracks), a gaming tent, and a café area, but the heart of the show is the book tent.

Two views of the book tent with authors signing (and yes, if you look closely at the first pic, I’m the second author on the right, behind the man in the orange T-shirt)

As an opportunity to meet readers, chat and peddle books, it’s pretty much invaluable; though I did feel it was a bit less convivial for meeting other authors, since you do end up sitting behind your table most of the time, and the café area is small and mostly used for restful moments rather than for impromptu meetings (unlike Utopiales, where everyone ends up in the bar). Might just be me; especially since I have close to zero experience of French cons, and don’t know many people in the French publishing industry either. And because of…

The small café space to the left of the book tent

The magic mirror (aka the space for panels)

Well, to put it bluntly, it was also a very bad idea to do the Nebulas and Imaginales back-to-back, since I arrived pretty much knackered from the Nebulas, and not in a mood for socialising (I’m not the world’s most social butterfly, and two weekends of constantly reaching out to people does take its toll, especially if you factor in jet-lag).

In spite of all of this, it was an amazing event: I had a very cool panel on “Rewriting History” with Eric Holstein, Johann Heliot and Pierre Bordage, where we discussed alternate histories; and a nice, well-attended interview with Stéphanie Nicot on “Being French and writing in English”. There was also great food in the many nice restaurants of Epinal–we had awesome couscous, flammekueche(s), cakes, … And, of course, I saw old friends, met new people (including a couple of Anglophones invited by the festival), and generally had a great time.

We also acquired a ton of books–the H is currently engrossed in Pierre Bordage’s latest space opera pentalogy, “La Fraternité du Panca” (The Panca Brotherhood); and I have the complete set of Elisabeth Vonarburg’s “Reine de Mémoire” (Queen of Memory), an amazing alternate history of France and its Indochinese colonies. Promises many sleepless nights…

So, awesome con; just that next year, I will make sure not to do two events back-to-back…

–“Dom Jaguara pogrążony w cieniu” (“The Jaguar House, in Shadow” in Polish), courtesy of polter.pl. With nifty illustrations, and a complementary author interview! Courtesy of Bartek, Izabela ‘Isabell’ Mazur, Bartłomiej ‘baczko’ Łopatka, and Artur ‘mr_mond’ Nowrot
–בונת הספינות (“The Shipmaker” in Hebrew) at sf-f.org.il. Courtesy of Ehud Maimon, and Ibar Inbar Grinstein (not entirely sure I got the names right, as this is the one page I cannot make head or tail of all fixed now!)
–“Constructorul de nave” (“The Shipmaker” in Romanian) at srsff.ro, courtesy of Cristian Tamas, and Antuza Genescu.
–“Casa Jaguarului, în umbră” (“The Jaguar House, in Shadow” in Romanian) at srsff.ro. Same culprits as above 🙂
–D’Obsidienne et de Sang, of course, the French translation of Servant of the Underworld, courtesy of Eclipse. My awesome pretty pretty softcover edition 🙂
-and a forthcoming French translation of “Jaguar House” (“Quand l’ombre se répand sur la Maison Jaguar”) in Galaxies, courtesy of Pierre Gévart and Camille Thérion, which I’m currently rereading…

Still holding out for a Spanish translation, which would amuse me (because of the Mexico connection, and also because I speak the language…) But pretty darn happy with all of these.

So… the humongous rice cooker has among its many functions a “cake” setting, and I’m intrigued… Any good recipes for rice cooker cakes? Are we talking about regular cake baking, or steam baking, or something in between? (I ask because I’ve got a bunch of recipes for steamed cakes, and was wondering whether they’d work)

Inquiring minds want to know 🙂 (well, OK, the H said he didn’t want to know, but I reckon it’s worth a try)

Hmm, what can I say about X-men? First, that clearly the recruiting pitch of the bad guys is way superior than that of the good guys. In no particular order:

Continue reading →

To Stéphanie Nicot (organiser of the French con Imaginales among many other activities), and her companion Elise, for tying the knot yesterday at the town hall of Nancy!

(you can actually see them both here, via big French daily Le Figaro, which covered this because of the–somewhat crazy–legal situation: homosexual weddings are still not allowed in France, but since they didn’t allow Stéphanie to change gender on the records, I guess it sort of worked out. Sort of…
ETA: don’t look at the comments on the article if you don’t want to get depressed at the general state of human tolerance and intelligence…)

Following excellent posts by Nicola Griffith and Cheryl Morgan on Women’s invisibility (if you missed the twitter storm, this started off as a Guardian article asking people to name their favorite SF–which mentioned more than 500 books in the comments, out of which only 18 women…), it’s high time I play my part in redressing the balance…

Part of the problem, as Cheryl and Nicola both point out, is that best-of lists tend to be made by men, and that it’s been proved that while women will read men and women equally, men tend to read and remember men (and women tend not to volunteer for voting or for making such lists in the first place). So it’s a vicious circle in which men continue to predominate on awards lists, and to be enshrined in history while women mostly slip by the wayside.

Accordingly, I’m making my list of favorite novels written by women. Pretty much no criteria (I’m no good at Golden Age SF, since the only authors in that batch I read were Asimov and Zelazny; and I came very late to fantasy): only that I read and enjoyed the book. Here you go, my recs:

SF
Dust, Chill and Grail, Elizabeth Bear
Moxyland, Lauren Beukes
Miles Vorkosigan series, Lois McMaster Bujold
Golden Witchbreed, Mary Gentle
The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin
China Mountain Zhang, Maureen McHugh
The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
The Snow Queen, Joan Vinge
Empire of Bones, Liz Williams

Fantasy
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley (as Kari Sperring points out, the history in this one is rubbish. Nevertheless, as a revisionist version of a well-known myth from a female POV, it’s definitely seminal)
The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper
Crown of Stars series, Kate Elliott
Tamir trilogy by Lynn Flewelling
Ash, Mary Gentle
The Liveship Traders, Robin Hobb
Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones
Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner
Cyrion, Tanith Lee
The Book of Atrix Wolfe, Patricia McKillip

What about you? What are your favorite genre books written by women? Feel free to make your own list! (whether you’re a woman or not, BTW. We need more people celebrating women in the genre)

ETA: additions suggested in comments:

SF
Virtual Death, Shale Aaron
Happy Policeman and Brother Termite, Patricia Anthony
Catherine Asaro
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
All the Windwracked Stars and sequels, Elizabeth Bear
The Darkover series, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler (and other books)
Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh (and other books)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins
The Mount, Carol Emshwiller
Sarah Canery, Karen Joy Fowler
C.S. Freidman
Slow River, Nicola Griffith
God’s War, Kameron Hurley
The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Lear’s Daughters duology, Marjorie Bradley Kellogg
Nancy Kress
A Different Light, Elizabeth Lynn
Dragonriders of Pern, The Talent series, Anne McCaffrey
The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon
The Healer’s War, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Virtual Girl, Amy Thompson
Star of the Guardians, Margaret Weis
Uncharted Territory, Connie Willis
Looking for the Mahdi, N Lee Wood

Fantasy
Blood and Iron and sequels, Elizabeth Bear
The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
Santa Olivia, Jacqueline Carey
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susannah Clarke
Deverry series, Katherine Kerr
The Farseer trilogy, Robin Hobb
The Fox Woman, Kij Johnson
His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
The Earthsea Cycle, Ursula Le Guin
Lavinia, Ursula Le Guin
Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link
The Riddle-Master trilogy, Patricia McKillip
The Folding Knife, KJ Parker (assuming KJ Parker is indeed a woman)
The Orphan’s Tales, Catherynne Valente
Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner

Catching up–those are both a bit late, but they do make for awesome sharing:

-Alexander Chee on comics, X-men and race, especially with regards to growing up mixed-race. It’s a great post, especially with regards to the experience of belonging neither here nor there–there must be other such accounts, but this is the first one I’ve seen. I’m probably reading the wrong blogs again, but the issue of mixed-race people often seems to get skipped over, or assimilated to POC problems. Which it is, partly–but for me, it does seem to bring extra problems, such the ones Chee points out. Mostly speaking from my own and limited experience there…

-Tricia Sullivan on the SF ghetto and issues of classification within the genre. Brilliant. Just darn brilliant.

-For the gamers amongst us, particularly those who’ve played Mafia/Werewolves (of Thiercellieux if you hail from France): there are people writing articles about Mafia game theory… Wow.