Eat the strawberries

It certainly isn’t an overstatement to say I’m melodramatic. If I read something in a book that I find particularly inspiring, I’m likely to respond to it in quite a spectacular way. Say, for example, wanting it tattooed upon my person (by which I mean myself, of course, I don’t actually own a person just so I have somewhere to put inspirational quotes).

Bearing in mind my tendency for melodrama, there have been two particular passages in two wonderful books that changed me.

The first is in American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I have always been a careful person, sometimes at the expense of trying new things. I still firmly hold the belief that I would find the one corner that existed in the Trebor Softmints universe and, with the dexterity of a wardrobe trying to cartwheel down a flight of stairs, proceed to bounce off it using only my eyeball. However, there is a part in American Gods where the main character, Shadow, seizes the moment, with no thought for the future and because he can, and because he should. He recalls a fable and suddenly the meaning of this tale clicks with him. Something clicked in me too, and I had an instant of clarity where I realized that not every little thing in life requires a thorough worrying over, or even needs to have more meaning beyond the act itself. This doesn’t mean I’m not concerned about impaling myself while walking down the street, but I do, just occasionally, stop to eat the strawberries (though I might wash them first).

Still, there was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below.
What should he do? went the question. And the reply was, Eat the strawberries.

My response to the next passage was, if possible, even more self-indulgent. I was going through a breakup. It was tragic. The universe became gaping void. Diet Coke lost its taste. It was, in short, pretty bad. Then I ordered the latest Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. It was White Night. I booked the day off work. I wandered into a café. It sucked. I felt too raw to sit in the sunshine reading. I went inside. I read to distract myself from myself, and as joylessly and painfully as possible. I thought that Butcher would be a frivolous tonic. And then I read this.

We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.

Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind - graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There’s the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.

And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth, which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.’

That’s right, Butcher and Gaiman? They’re all about me.

review: Robert Jackson Bennett's Mr Shivers

I chose to review Orbit’s Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett because Orbit were doing their usual persuasive hype for this title, putting their all into marketing it at every stage, including a ‘create your own hobo signs’ competition, and with Creative Director Lauren Panepinto’s ability to get excited about a huge spectrum of Orbit’s titles and subgenres, it was hard not to get caught up by it all.

Way back when in September 2008, then-new Editor Dongwon Song flagged up Mr Shivers as his first requisition, calling it ‘chock full of hobos and murder and blood’.

And it is. This thriller/alt-history Horror is set in Depression-era America, but not as we know it. All across America people are travelling in droves, leaving their homes and belongings behind them to seek out a better life. Marcus Connelly is also blazing a trail through America’s dustbowl, but not to seek his fortune. He only wants revenge; to kill the mysterious scarred man, the stranger, Mr Shivers, who murdered his little girl. Connelly has left his wife behind and family home to become one of the new generation hobos. Risking the perils of riding the trains, of hunger and thirst, of the strange company he keeps, Connelly relentlessly hunts the shiver-man through the sightings and folktales of the people he encounters along the way. Like his companions, Pike, Roosevelt and Hammond, who have also lost loved ones to the mythical killer, as he gets closer to the legend, he must also come to terms with his mission, and whether he can commit the murder he desires more than life itself.

Mr Shivers has a simple but effective plot. Although at times it felt frustrating that the characters continued their relentless pursuit at the expense of all else, including plot intricacies and character development, this is a feeling that the book is supposed to evoke. The characters don’t have much in the way of background or personalities, and Connelly is barely there at all. But this is because they are victims of their own grief, their twisted journey across a barren land a metaphor for how they’ve sacrificed their own lives to this all-encompassing emotion.

I love the world that Bennett has created. You can practically feel the heat from this red-tinged, dust-ridden, dry desert landscape rising up from the pages. The land has a personality, and a cruel and pitiless one at that. It reflects the despondent age of the Great Depression, and the desolate shells of human beings navigating across its pitted surface.

Like Neil Gaiman’s American Gods-lite, Mr Shivers deals with mythology and the creation of folklore through oral tradition. This slight book doesn’t have the scope of American Gods however, merely hinting at a deeper mythology beyond the basic goings-on, and it would have been fulfilling to have seen more done with this theme throughout the narrative, as opposed to it cropping up in odd, but effectual, places.

This is a thriller/Horror but there are times when you want it to be more horrific than thrilling. There are key moments throughout the narrative where the writing pulls away from the ‘big reveal’, missing out on the pay-off at the end of a gripping, tension-inducing set-up, leaving the average Horror reader no doubt feeling slightly cheated. This is also, however, another mark of debut-author Bennett’s writing prowess, as he deftly manipulates and builds his readers’ frustrations, so that they mirror his characters’ own lack of fulfilment.

Unfortunately, there is a turning point towards the end in Mr Shivers where reader sympathy with the lead protagonist, Connelly, shifts. The way the book is going to end from then on seems like forgone conclusion and, ultimately, this is where the book lost me.

You can read an extract of it on Orbit’s site. It is well worth a look as overall I really enjoyed this book; I just prefer my protagonists to retain my sympathy until the last possible sentence.

The next tile by Bennett is The Company Man, again set in an alternative history of America, but is not a sequel to Mr Shivers. It's a detective noir in the Horror genre. I’m genuinely excited to read this author again (plus I’m an old romantic when it comes to alternative detective noir, like Malcolm Pryce’s underrated Aberystwyth series).

7/10

bite me: the week in bite-sized chunks

SF Signal: I’ve been enjoying this week’s Mind Meld. They’ve been discussing what fantasy books or series are better than LOTR. Personally I find Tolkien to be more sprawling and languorous than an Ent family reunion, so for me it’s a bit of a balm to see other authors being recommended. Mine would be most things, but primarily Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, George R. R. Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire series and Robin Hobb’s (getting on for) 12-title-epic, starting with The Farseer Trilogy. Based on one recommendation, I’ve picked up a copy of T. H. White’s compilation The Once and Future King, which I suspect will provide more of a thorough telling of the tale than the BBC’s thoughtful and compelling take on Arthurian legend, Merlin (tragically, I actually love this series).

Angry Robot Books: I’m really excited about this publisher and if you’re a blogger you can join their Robot Army for free eBooks or hardcopies. Launched in 2009, Angry Robot Books state that they are a ‘global imprint dedicated to the best in modern adult science fiction, fantasy and everything in-between.’ So far I’m a failed recruit but my next book to review is going to be the new UK Science Fiction release Amortals by Matt Forbeck (who has 8-year-old quadruplets, Fact Fans). Apart from Douglas Adams I haven’t read any SF, and this seems a pretty good (free) place to start.

Neil Gaiman: It was the House on the Rock weekend over Halloween, so above is a lovely picture of Gaiman on the World’s Largest Carousel. For a slideshow of photos from the weekend, go to the Huffington Post and indulge in full geek-out session of wishing you had been there. I would have ridden the zebra. Hopefully he’ll blog about it this week.

Roc (Penguin USA): Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files short story collection Side Jobs is out now in the USA , which includes two novellas from Thomas' and Murphey's POV. I wish I knew how to order a new copy of this title from Roc because I lust after Chris McGrath's artwork. See Butcher talk about his short stories (which he describes as ‘trying to have a knife fight in a phone booth’) and his short hair at the NYCC here.

Urban Fantasy: a definition

If you Google Urban Fantasy you will find a hectic range of definitions. One quote by SFF author Elizabeth Bear is a favourite of mine (I found it just now): “In urban fantasy you don’t leave the chip shop and go to another world to find the unicorn. Rather, the unicorn shows up at the chip shop and orders the cod.”

But what is Urban Fantasy, and what makes it so different to Paranormal Romance?

Once an all-encompassing term for nitty gritty Fantasy with a distinct urban setting, associated with authors like China Miélville and Charles de Lint, it’s becoming a much-narrowed term, as other SFF subgenres enter the mix.

Defined as thus in J. Clute’s Encyclopaedia of Fantasy (1997):

Urban fantasy … A city may be seen from afar, and is generally seen clear; the UF is told from within and from the perspective of characters acting out their roles, it may be difficult to determine the extent and nature of the surrounding reality. UFs are normally texts where fantasy and the mundane world interact intersect and interweave throughout a tale which is significantly about a real city.

To me, to class a book as being of this Fantasy subgenre, it needs to contain the following ingredients: contemporary setting, set in the real-world and with a real sense of place, city-based, with a male or female lead who has supernatural powers and uses them to kick ass and help people, detective/crime plot, humour, and set in a slightly alternative ‘now’ as humans are usually aware or becoming aware of the existence of certain supernatural beings. These beings include, but are not limited to: vampires (new and old mythology), were-creatures (from wolves to coyotes), wizards/witches, and the fae.

This definition is subject to change, but authors whose series/titles currently fall in this category include: Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files), Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson), Chloe Neill (Chicagoland Vampires), Kim Harrison (The Hollows/ Rachel Morgan), Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld etc), Ilona Andrews (Kate Daniels), Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere), Karen Chance (Cassandra Palmer) and Rachel Caine (Weather Warden). Here’s a great place for more information.

As for comparisons with Paranormal Romance, I mean, it like totally has girls in it, right? And don’t most of them fall in hopeless, soul-entangled love with the most inappropriate of brooding rogues?

Well, yes. And, to further confuse matters, some authors crossover into both subgenres, sometimes in the course of one series (ah, ‘crossover fiction’, a blog topic for another time, you lucky folks). Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series (1993 – present) started off as Urban Fantasy. Kick ass lead with mystical power: TICK. City-based: TICK. Crime-solving: TICK. Supernaturals: TICK. Sexy: tick. And then about halfway through, the themes shifted. Kick ass lead with come-f*ck-me boots: TICK. Sexy: TICK. Bedroom-based: TICK. Crime-solving: who has the time? Supernaturals: yes please!

The eponymous lead went from celibate to, quite literally, gagging for it *blush*. This proved too much for my naive sentiment at the time and I stopped at Narcissus in Chains, book 11. It takes a lot for me to stop reading a series that many books in. Group sex ought to do it though. Inappropriate. I wanted my heroine to kick ass, not kiss it.

But what about other sensitive readers, I hear you cry? Calm yourselves, Headline took over from Orbit (presumably as scandalised as I was) and solved the problem by reissuing the whole series with new covers. Going from the typical photo-realism of Urban Fantasy:



To coming over all Gothic with black and reds, in these quite frankly beautiful covers:



Now readers know a bit more about what to expect. And my moral outrage will have to find another outlet.

To sum: Urban Fantasy made like the universe and expanded, only to contract again, becoming more specialised. If it’s a city filled with supernaturals and policed by a vigilante with burdening powers, and a enjoying a little bit of sex, why not, it’s probably safe to dub it Urban Fantasy. But if the plot is merely a mechanism to make with the happy, it’s probably Paranormal Romance. And if it’s city-based but set in an alternate time and place, it’s probably too confusing to go in to. Let’s just call it ‘Alt-reality Urban Fantasy’, and leave it at that.