Writer to Readers: A Question ...

 I have always held ... sometimes adamantly ... that longer sentences have their place in writing. Nothing Faulknerian, you understand; just a single, unified, complex thought, carefully crafted for comprehension and readability. Which a sentence is supposed to be? Right? A single complete thought? And they work in nicely with medium and short sentences to give a paragraph flow.

And so I have argued.

Then I read the most wonderful book. I am not going to mention the author or title, because other than a single tiny nit it was a glorious read. But ... maybe a half-dozen times in that rather thickish book ... I ran into a longer sentence at the heart of a paragraph that sent me back to the top of the ‘graph to re-read. Usually twice. Then it made complete sense and I read on undisturbed. But still ... I was momentarily stopped.

Now, I fully expect that there were hundreds more of those long juicy sentences in that book, perhaps a trifle better crafted, that flowed beautifully beneath my eyes with never a hitch. But I don’t want to do that to my readers even once. Not if I can help it.

So here’s the question: do longer sentences give you grief? If so, how often, and how badly do they interrupt your read?  And is it all of them, or just an occasional poorly written one?

Please, do let me know. It matters.

‘Cause I still do love those long ones.

Maiden, Mother, or Crone?

A friend, recently lamenting the limited range of female roles in science fiction and fantasy, asked: “Why does a woman have to be a mother, a maiden or a crone? Can’t she just be a woman?”

Well, can a woman in science fiction or fantasy just be a woman? And does she always have to validate her exploits as fiction worthy by undertaking them in service of her children?

‘Yes’ to the first question, and ‘no’ to the second.

You have to know where, and sometimes when, to look, but strong non-mother, non-maiden, non-crone woman characters can be found, and reading them feels like coming home.

It is not often remembered now, but during the 1970’s there was a major upwelling of science fiction and fantasy by feminist women, and some men too, who appreciated the freedom to move outside the world they knew to explore genuinely egalitarian societies, or at least female characters who followed their own path in whatever worlds they inhabited. In fact, I’ve even heard it said that cyberpunk was created expressly to ‘save’ science fiction from what male writers feared would be the too-pastoral futures of the women!

I am going to be revisiting some of these authors and stories from time to time in future posts, beginning right here with a series of four anthologies published between 1975 and 1978.

The first, WOMEN OF WONDER, Science Fiction Stories by Women About Women, edited by Pamela Sargent (Vintage Books, 1975), contains 14 widely varying stories. I can’t say that I liked them all, but I admired the explorations they dared, and some of them I found unforgettable. Among these are:

“The Ship Who Sang” is an imaginative, heartwarming story by Anne McCaffrey which grew into a series of novels about the severely handicapped young woman who explored space as the controller of a powerful ship, singing all the way.

“Vaster Than Empires and More Slow,” a powerful environmental story by Ursula K. LeGuin featured  the forest as the primary character. Ursula will also get her own post sometime soon.

“False Dawn” by Chelsea Quin Yarbro led to what I think was her first book, a dark post-holocaust story that left me depressed but admiring.

The magnificent “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” by Vonda K. McIntyre, the story of a young woman trained as a healer in a medical tradition far different from our own, also grew into an excellent novel.

Two others in that series, More Women  Of Wonder, and The New Women Of Wonder, were also edited by Ms Sargent, (Vintage Books 1975 and 1978 respectively).

MWoW  includes classic stories by C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett, as well as Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Day Before the Revolution,” about Odo, the woman who made possible the revolution that created the Utopian society depicted in LeGuin’s great novel The Dispossessed.

TNWoW includes the great feminist classic “The Women Men Don’t See,” by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon). Ms. Sheldon kept her identity secret for some time, though many tried to guess who the promising new author might be. Robert Silverberg commented at one point (in print!) that whoever this writer might be he was most definitely male, because no woman could write that way. When the truth came out (someone staked out Sheldon’s P.O. Box) Silverberg was deeply embarrassed.

A fourth anthology of that period was Aurora: Beyond Equality (a Fawcett Gold Medal book, 1976, edited by Susan Janice Anderson and Vonda K. McIntyre) featured men as well as women authors. It includes two more stories by Alice Sheldon (one as Raccona Sheldon, the other as James TipTree, Jr.), Ursula K. LeGuin’s “Is Gender Necessary,” and Marge Piercy’s “Woman On the Edge of  Time.”

As I suggested earlier, not everyone will like all the stories in these books, but I offer them as an introduction to the feminist sf/f writing of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.  They were mine. 

Harry’s Side jobs, Part 3

Side Jobs
Stories from The Dresden Files
by Jim Butcher
ROC Books, 2010

In Part 1 of this series I mentioned that my review of this excellent collection of Jim Butcher’s short pieces from the Dresden Files would take two, and possibly three, installments. Well, Part 2 didn't quite cover it all, so what follows here is Part 3, with reviews of the final four stories.

I give fair warning that it is impossible to avoid spoilers in two of these discussions. The Warrior, the first of the four, should not be read before Small Favor, and the last one, Aftermath, should not by any means be read before Changes.

The Warrior, which first appeared in Mean Streets, fits into The Dresden Files sequence between Small Favor and Turn Coat.

Michael Carpenter, the former Knight of the Sword, though crippled by the injuries he took in Small Favor and no longer bearing the Sword, has recovered well enough to return to his construction business. When his second daughter, Alicia, is stolen by an unknown enemy he arms himself with a softball bat and joins Harry in the search.  The mission features the full range of well-imagined challenges and skilled responses – both magical and physical – that Butcher is known for. But in the end, we find, it is not the muscle and thunder that matter most.

Along the way is this particularly nice scene: Harry is shown into the Carpenter’s small guest room, which is also Charity Carpenter’s sewing room. Harry has used the room many times before, but looking around it now he comes to understand the dreadful worry that Charity had endured for years, and from which she was now released.

 … it took me maybe six or seven whole seconds to realize that this room had been Charity’s haven. How many days and nights must she have been worried about Michael … ? How many hours had she spent in this well-lit room, working on making warm, soft things for her family, while her husband carried Amoracchius’s cold bright steel into darkness? And now there was dust on the sewing machine.

 Only one of many reasons why The Dresden Files is loved as much by women as by men.

Last Call, which also takes place between Small Favor and Turn Coat, first appeared in Strange Brew, edited by P.N. Elrod. It’s a rather light-hearted look at a near-sacrilegious offense.

All Harry wanted was a quiet beer, and maybe a steak sandwich, but some nefarious supernatural being has had the audacity to tamper with McAnally’s Best dark beer, leaving Mac’s place littered with the battered, unconscious forms of his regular clientele. Harry discovers that large quantities of the beer have been sold for the box-seat patrons of that afternoon’s Bulls basketball game, and he and police officer Karrin Murphy head for the arena to forestall the carnage.

There are interesting, fanciful explanations for recent extreme behaviors of European sports fans, a very cogent insight into the complicated relationship between Harry and Karrin, and the following appreciation for human artistry. When the miscreant is subdued and her intentions explained, Harry asks why she hadn’t gone for the greater distribution potential of the large beer dispensary in the arena. Her response:
 “I needed something real. Something a craftsman took loving pride in creating.”

Love Hurts, first printed in Songs of Love and Death edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, comes between Turn Coat and Changes.

Some mind-bending black magic wielder is running amok, casting realistic love spells wholesale, sometimes with tragic results. Harry and Karrin go looking—together—for the perp.  As the story unfolds we are shown both Butcher’s lovely touch with the gentler emotions and a bit of the deeper feeling behind Harry’s and Karrin’s complex relationship.

In another age it could just as well have been titled “What Might Have Been.”

Aftermath, a previously unpublished novella, takes place an hour or two after the end of Changes, and just may be the finest piece of writing that Butcher has ever produced. Trust me when I tell you, you MUST NOT read either this review or the story before you have read Changes. And if you’ve read Changes, but not Ghost Story, you owe it to yourself to read this story now.

It is told from the point of view of Karrin Murphy.

Dressed for the date she and Harry had planned a few hours before, Karrin has arrived at the boat where he had been staying to find it spattered with blood and Harry himself missing and presumed dead. Heartbreak and despair almost overwhelm her as the forensics team do their work. Then, reminded that she is on suspension as the result of events in Changes and therefore not allowed on a crime scene, she goes home to face her doubly-empty future.

There she learns from the werewolf Will Borden that his pregnant wife Georgia and a number of others with moderate magical skills had disappeared overnight with no explanation. Karrin and Will track down the likely culprits and, using Will and another werewolf as bait, Karrin makes contact. She sells the two werewolves to a huge, inhuman-looking male, then trails them to a warehouse.

Terrified at the strangeness and power of the creatures she sees there, and missing Dresden’s support, she almost runs. Then she thinks of Fidelacchius, the Sword she had wielded to tremendous effect in the battle at Chichen Itza.

The Sword was a source of incredible power—but it was nothing but cool, motionless steel without the hand that could grip it, the muscles that would move it, the eyes and mind that would guide it … And if that was true, then it must also be true that it was my hand … my will that had made the difference. … Sword or no Sword, I had sworn to serve and protect the people of this city. My hands stopped shaking and my breathing slowed and steadied … I nudged the door open a few more inches, then slid into the warehouse. 

This brilliant novella is an indispensable part of the Dresden Files storyline: for its insights into Karrin’s battles through fear and loneliness to rediscover her own great strength, for its extraordinary images of her battle skills, for her poignant remembered views of Dresden at his work, for her memories of him personally, and for her first steps along the path to the role she plays in Ghost Story as protector of Chicago, the city and the people she loves.

And that’s the motivation, isn’t it? The bottom line. Love. Butcher’s theme here, as perhaps it is in all of his stories: love in various forms and intensities, love for one and love for many, close-knit love and the love of outsiders fearing more pain, love for one’s work. Love and laughter. Love and pain, and loss, and fighting on.

Harry’s Side jobs, Part Two

Side Jobs
Stories from The Dresden Files
by Jim Butcher
ROC Books, 2010

In Harry’s Side Jobs, Part one, posted here, I mentioned that my review of this excellent collection of Jim Butcher’s short pieces from the Dresden Files would take two, and possibly three, installments. Well, It’s gonna be three. These stories—and there are eleven of them—are just too good to pass off with a line or two.
I should warn you that it’s going to be hard to avoid spoilers in some of these discussions. This first one includes a major character-related spoiler for Blood Rites and (in case you’re not reading the books in sequence) all the books that follow it.
It’s My Birthday Too, which falls between White Night and Small Favor, first appeared in Charlaine Harris’s Many Bloody Returns. As a birthday-themed anthology, it offered Butcher the opportunity to examine a bit more of Harry’s solitary childhood. In the prolog he comments that “Birthdays are about family … it’s your family who gathers to celebrate the anniversary of you.”

The occasion is Thomas’s birthday and, for the first time, Harry decides to give his half-vampire half-brother a birthday present. Harry and apprentice Molly track Thomas down to a darkened shopping mall were he is involved with a vampire-ish LARP, “pretending” to be a vampire! An unwanted, and deadly, guest (who is celebrating a birthday of a different sort) crashes the party. Harry and Thomas swing into action, with the help of a neatly-imagined group of faeries who live in the mall.

Particularly interesting moments include the physically realistic side effects of earth magic, Harry’s solicitude when Molly’s growing magical sensitivity is shocked into to psychic near-breakdown, and the brothers’ concluding discussion of birthday gifts.

By the way, I have to say here how much I enjoy and admire Butcher’s style of opening scenes. Oftentimes you get a fascinating peek at the untold adventure just ending as the current one begins. In Birthday, for instance, it’s Harry and Molly dealing with the laundry after a tussle with something called a slime golem.

Heorot, which also falls between White Night and Small Favor, first appeared in Pat Elrod’s anthology My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon. A new bride is snatched from her husband’s side, along with a keg of mead, by a supernatural misfit whose family lineage you may recognize. Harry teams up with Miss Gard, gangster John Marcone’s supernatural security consultant, to rescue her. The two of them and Harry’s Foo dog Mouse follow the bride’s trail to the beast’s lair in Chicago’s dreaded Undertown.

In addition to the well-drawn beast and interesting revelations about Miss Gard—which are not so much spoilers as foreshadowings of events in Changes—there are a large number of seriously not-nice cat-like fae-critters and Harry’s growing skill (thanks to his work with Molly) at illusion. One of my favorite aspects of Butcher’s treatment of Harry’s magic is the detailed fantasy-logic with which he imbues the how as well as the challenges involved. If magical illusion were real, this story could be a primer for it.

Somewhere between Small Favor and Turn Coat, Harry takes an actual Day Off. The story first appeared in Blood Lite, Kevin J. Anderson’s anthology of humorous stories by authors known for supernatural and horror fiction. While Butcher is an expert at dishing up Harry’s smart-mouth brand of humor, this is his first attempt (so far as I know) at out-and-out comedy. He was, he says, “…intrigued with the idea of making him suffer just as much frustration and embarrassment [as usual] in a situation where his opponents and problems were relatively trivial.”

Harry has planned to spend his day off quietly with Anastasia Luccio, their first full day together without monsters and villains to deal with, and he just wants to show her a nice time. Not to be. There are, among other distractions, vindictive wannabe wizards, Molly-made explosions in the lab, infestations of supernatural fleas, and a truly epic canine chase scene around the apartment. Made me wish for the video version.

Back Up, also set between Small Favor and Turn Coat, was first published as a novelette from Subterranean Press. Like It’s My Birthday Too, it is character-related spoilerage for Blood Rites and succeeding books.

Back Up offers a very interesting twist in our view of Dresden’s world. Set in Thomas’s point of view, it not only shows us his half-vampire existence as no full human could know it, but gives us our first look at Harry through another’s eyes.

Thomas, called to duty in a shadowy supernatural war by his vampire sister Lara, learns that Harry has unknowingly taken on a fake stolen-child search. The client, who among other things wants Thomas killed, is a devotee of hideous and malevolent demons long forgotten by humanity. When Thomas attempts to track Harry using his less than professional skills, he finds himself face-to-face with the client who casts an illusion giving Thomas the likeness of the “kidnapper” that Harry believes he is seeking.

The story not only explores Thomas’s struggles with the vampiric Hunger that is his daily trial, but also unveils, however slightly, a multi-millennial supernatural war that lurks in the shadows of the entire Dresden series. A war for the memory, and ultimately the survival, of the human race.

That’s it for now. Next time, the final four accounts of Harry Dresden’s Side Jobs.

References from Worldbuilding 101, Sonar lecture at StellarCon 36

Worldbuilding 101
Paula S. Jordan
SONAR 2012

A few of Many Sources for Further Study

Each of the following references offers something a little different from the others, and so you would likely find them all of use. Of course there are other useful sources as well, many of them listed in the books and online references below.

Except for THE EERIE SILENCE these sources have been around for a few years, but that doesn't mean they're irrelevant. They have good information and and background for the newer information.

THE EERIE SILENCE Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence
by Paul Davies, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston New York, 2010
www.hmhbooks.com

Paul Davies is an internationally respected physicist, cosmologist, and astrobiologist, and director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. As his summing up of 50 years of the SETI program (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence)this is an excellent, authoritative, recent source for information as to just what types of intelligent life might really be out there, and why it is at least somewhat reasonable to think so. And he does NOT restrict himself to vaguely Human-like Beings! This book has played a powerful role in the recently renewed SETI searches. Well footnoted and with a very useful bibliography.

ALIENS AND ALIEN SOCIETIES A Writer’s Guide to Creating Extraterrestrial Life-forms (Part of the Science Fiction Writing Series)
by Stanley Schmidt, PhD., Edited by Ben Bova
F&W Publications, Inc.1507 Dana Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 1995

Stan Schmidt is the editor of ANALOG as well as a physicist; a university professor of physics, astronomy, and science fiction; and a science fiction writer on his own. This book discusses in detail what sort of Beings might be out there, what they need in the way of planets and start to evolve and live, and a workable approach – with very useful formulas and data sources – for designing some of your own. The book also contains an excellent resource list which he calls A Xenologist’s Bookshelf.


LIFE IN DARWIN’S UNIVERSE Evolution and the Cosmos
by Gene Bylinsky, Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York 1981

This book has a little age on it, but is still a very interesting resource. Bylinsky was an award-winning journalist and science writer, and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences. In LIFE IN DARWIN'S UNIVERSE he considers what kinds of life forms might evolve in various hypothesized extraterrestrial environments. The book touches on the astronomical bases for the worlds he considers and then goes right ahead with designing them in great detail. Drawings of a great many of his critters are included.
HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY (part of the Genre writing Series) bY Orson Scott Card, Writers Digest Books, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1990.

This detailed description of Card’s own approach to writing science fiction won the Hugo for best non-fiction book of 1990, Along of lots of other useful information is a chapter on World Building that, in addition to information on that subject, also discusses various issues of space travel and other standard tropes (commonly recurring motifs or devices) in science fiction as well as the creative hatching and amplification of science fictional ideas.

LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
by Francis Jackson and Patrick Moore, W.W.Morton & Co., New York, London, 1987

Begins with the life sciences as a foundation for studies of opportunities for life of our sort on the various planets, moons, and asteroids, etc. in the Solar system. Includes detailed physical information about the orbits and physical make-up of such bodies. Ends with a discussion of fundamental ways in which alien life forms (elsewhere in the universe) could differ from us.

Interdependence of Biosphere Features

•Higher Gravity
– Higher planetary mass at equal radius
•Implies denser planetary components
– Things fall faster and hit harder
•Natives are adapted to this.
•Visiting humans are not.
– Natives are denser bodied, stronger,
•Maybe shorter, thicker limbs and bodies.
– Denser, maybe shallower atmosphere.
•May not be any birds, or very powerful ones.
– Heavier, denser liquids, stronger tides.
•Lower Gravity
– Lower mass at equal planetary radius
•Implies less dense planetary components
– Things fall slower, tend to drift more
– Natives are less dense and weaker,
•Maybe taller, more willowy bodies
•Plants may also be taller, more graceful
– Thinner, maybe deeper atmosphere
•Many creatures may fly
– Lighter, frothier liquids, lazy tides
•But – changing the planet’s mass changes its orbit
• That changes its distance from the star.
•Could move it out of the biosphere.
– Another option: Could alter surface gravity by changing radius
•Greater radius at same mass = lower gravity
•Smaller radius at same mass = higher gravity
– But then you have to explain what causes – or allows – the radial changes.
– Maybe it’s an ice planet?
– That’ll make changes in your Aliens
– etc.

Best Chances for Life*
•Near late F, G and early K stars ~ 10% of stars, or ~ 20 billion stars in the Milky Way alone.
•½ the galaxy’s stars are binaries, may cause abnormal planetary orbits. 1% - 2% of binary/ multiple systems can support habitable planets.
•3% - 5% of stars in galaxy may support planets.
•May be alone in our neighborhood. Only Tau Ceti (of the 40 stars within 16.7 light years) is a strong possibility for intelligent life. The chance of a concurrent high civilization, however, is very small.
*As we know it


ON THE INTERNET:

Search on such terms and phrases as:

Worldbuilding

Building worlds for carbon-based life forms

building fictional worlds capable of supporting life

And so on.

If you find something terrific, please share it!

mail@PaulaJordan,name

Thank you!

Harry’s Side Jobs, Part One

Copyright 2012 by Paula S. Jordan

SIDE JOBS
Stories from The Dresden Files
by Jim Butcher
ROC Books, 2010

There are eleven stories to review in this excellent anthology – all but three or so of the shorter Dresden pieces written to date – and there’s a good bit to say up front about the collection itself. So I’m going to take this in two parts; anthology comments and the first three stories now, and the rest next time. Unless it takes three parts. Butcher’s stories are that good.

As regular readers of the Dresden Files Series know, Jim Butcher lets some time elapse in Wizard-Detective Harry Dresden’s world between one novel and the next. Gives you the sense that Harry’s always out there somewhere, making his way in the really-mean streets of Butcher’s urban fantasy Chicago, and not bothering to tell you about it unless it’s something notable even for him. Something like a more-or-less friendly zombie T Rex running loose in the streets. And all that time, between the books, Harry is living a human life as well as a magical one. Maturing. Growing in magical knowledge, power and skill. Meeting adversity. Collecting scars.

With these stories Butcher gives you a few vivid glimpses into Harry’s life between the books. You get to see him grow.

The first story in the collection – and they are given in the order of the Dresden Files chronology – is a treasure for any reader who is also a writer: the first Dresden piece Butcher wrote and, in his words, “an anxious beginner’s first effort” at marketable fiction.

Restoration of Faith takes place some time before Storm Front, during Harry’s apprenticeship at detective Nicholas Christian’s agency, Ragged Angel Investigations. Nick (who also appears briefly in Ghost Story) specializes in finding lost children.

On this occasion the lost – actually runaway – child is Faith, the smart, feisty, ten-year-old daughter of rich but unloving parents. After hiring Nick’s services to find her, they decide they’d rather not be known as the parents of a runaway. So they report her to the police as a kidnap victim, giving Harry’s and Nick’s descriptions as the perpetrators.

Two things impressed me about this story: the remarkably detailed backstory that Butcher had developed at that early stage and the level of writing skill he’d achieved in “only the third or fourth” story he’d ever written. Granted, he wrote it as a class assignment at the University of Oklahoma’s Professional Writing program, so he was not untrained. Even so, his ease with the language and keen insight into his characters’ inner lives were surprisingly good for a student writer.

As to backstory, a great many of the props, behaviors, and characters of the Dresden Files are already in place. Harry has his black canvas duster and a prototype of his power ring. He has a workable tracking spell and other dependable magical skills, complete with evidences of the system’s drawbacks and limitations. His intelligence, courage, sense of humor, and soft, self-sacrificing heart are already recognizable as the Harry of the later books. He encounters a powerful and nasty inhuman opponent out of fairytale who has violated the Unseelie Accords, and defeats it with the help, at first meeting, of a short, blonde, female ‘uniform cop’ named Murphy.

I call that a satisfying beginning.

Vignette, a brief piece written for a sampler handout at a convention, takes place between Death Masks and Blood Rites. For its length, and its quick midnight creation just before deadline, it gives some good, amusing insights into Harry’s life at that point in his still-developing career: the kinds of every-day distractions that could interrupt his studies, his relationship with Bob the Skull, and his cluelessness about certain aspects of the mundane world.

Something Borrowed takes place between Dead Beat and Proven Guilty. It came about when Butcher was invited to write a piece for Pat Elrod’s anthology My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding. He took it as an opportunity to explore the changing lives of the Alphas, the pack of young werewolves who were, at that point in the series, completing their college years and embarking into adulthood.

It’s a werewolf story almost – but not completely – without fur, exploring the impacts of both the mundane and magical worlds on the human lives of Alphas leaders Billy and Georgia on their wedding day. It is not, however, without magical challenges. Those come in the form of a powerful Winter Sidhe bent on avenging the Alphas’ involvement in the battle of the fairies described in Summer Knight.

Butcher’s character skills make for especially good reading in several insightful scenes: Billy’s response when a hung-over, post-bachelor-party Harry, at his snarky best, confronts Georgia’s snooty stepmother; Harry’s slow realization that Billy is no longer a kid; the first encounter between Murphy and Bob the Skull; and the maturing team-of-two trust between Harry and Murphy.

All in all it is a well developed, satisfyingly suspenseful story of search and rescue, deadly magical tricks and traps, a foray into Chicago’s treacherous undertown complete with Harry’s special brand of pyrotechnics, and the multifaceted power of a kiss. A good read.

That’s it for now. See you next time for more of Harry’s Side Jobs.

Favorite Reads of 2011

Beyond all doubt my most momentous read of the year was Jim Butcher’s urban fantasy Dresden Files: the whole series through volume 13, Ghost Story, and including Side Jobs, a collection of his shorter works that interleave beautifully with the novels.

I love these books for the exuberance of detective Harry Dresden’s wit and wizardry, the vividly imagined cast of good and bad characters both human and not, and yes, for their thrill quotient. And on top of all that, Butcher is an excellent writer, particularly in the challenging realm of character development. As noted in “Jim Butcher and the Human Condition,” posted here on Dec 15, that’s his special gift: a clarity and depth of insight that is rare indeed.

Patrick Rothfuss was another stellar find for 2011. His brilliant first novel, The Name of the Wind, Day 1 of The Kingkiller Chronicle, gives us the first third of wizard Kvothe’s story, set in a world somewhat akin to Ged’s in Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea Trilogy. Kvothe’s experience of life and schooling is also closer to Ged’s than to Harry Potter’s, but on the far side of Ged’s rather than a point between the two. This is the story of a boy cast loose into an uninvolved, even brutal adult world almost from the start. And though he is not without friends, his pilgrimage of learning lacks the safety that Harry, and Ged to some extent, experienced in their trials, errors, and very survival in the course of learning. Day two: The Wise Man’s Fear, is high on my reading list for 2012.

My two favorite non-genre reads of the year were The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova, and The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.

Kostova, whose first novel The Historian is (in my humble opinion) the finest vampire novel ever, takes her fascination with obsession in an entirely different direction in Swan Thieves. As in Historian, obsession drives figures on both sides of the protagonist-antagonist equation. This time the field of contest is French Impressionism: the art and life of a young French woman of that school, a modern-day artist obsessed with the Frenchwoman’s story to the point of attacking her masterpiece in a modern-day museum, and a psychiatrist obsessed with unraveling the roots of that artist’s violent action. While not a work of fantasy, this extraordinarily well-written story interweaves past and present so intimately that it is you, the reader, who are the time traveler.

In The People of the Book Geraldine Brooks creates an imagined history of an actual volume, the priceless Sarajevo Haggadah. Her stunningly beautiful and gripping novel weaves fiction together with fact, creating vividly imagined characters and stories to flesh out the actual tracings of its travels from its creation in thirteenth or fourteenth century Morocco through the many dangers of the intervening centuries. This is a story of passion and conflict and, above all, of devotion to a sacred and beautiful creation of human hands. If you love books, this is one you must read.

That's it. Happy reading in 2012!