We have all done it. Stolen into a bookstore’s hoard of stories then scampered off with a freshly purchased fantasy, the treasure held close, to be savored in blissful solitude or amid the buzz of bus rides or as a ward against wasting time in waiting rooms. Yet why do we choose fantasy? Why do we feel that burst of expectation, of hope, when our download completes for our eReader and we can glimpse that first line, that first step into a new fantasy story. If we could chose but one word to describe why we love the fantasy genre, what would it be?

After asking over two hundred people just that question, I swirled the answers in a Wordle caldron, added some eye of newt, mumbled the magic words of my New Year’s resolution, and created a pictorial art. Before viewing it, feel free to pick your own word describing why you love the fantasy genre. You may even add it to the word trove.

#4: Our bubbling anticipation turns into a flash of joy when a fantasy story takes us where we never expected to go, shows us that epic visual that steals our breath. Fantasy is the spoonful of Wonder that helps the reality go down.

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AUTHOR INFORMATION: Kirsten Miller has previously held a variety of jobs like dental assistant, publishing copywriter, advertising strategist, etc. before turning into a wordsmith. She was inspired to become a writer from a young age and had read almost all of Stephen King’s by the time she turned twelve. Her favorite Children’s authors are Phillip Pullman, Stephen King, Jonathan Stroud, and Lemony Snicket who have in turn inspired to her to twist her stories towards the darker and weirder side of fiction. She has two previously published series called The Eternal Ones and The Kiki Strikes series.

OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: A meth dealer. A prostitute. A serial killer.

Anywhere else, they’d be vermin. At the Mandel Academy, they’re called prodigies. The most exclusive school in New York City has been training young criminals for over a century. Only the most ruthless students are allowed to graduate. The rest disappear.

Flick, a teenage pickpocket, has risen to the top of his class. But then Mandel recruits a fierce new competitor who also happens to be Flick’s old flame. They’ve been told only one of them will make it out of the Mandel Academy. Will they find a way to save each other—or will the school destroy them both?

FORMAT/INFO: How To Lead A Life Of Crime is 358 pages long, divided over thirty-four numbered and titled chapters and an epilogue. Narration is in the first-person via Flick who is the sole narrative voice. This book is a standalone story and is unconnected to the author’s previous works.

February 21, 2013 marked the US Hardback and e-book publication of How To Lead A Life Of Crime via Razorbill books.

ANALYSIS: If you read the blurb to this book by Kirsten Miller, it becomes very hard not to be interested in it. The book beckoned me with oh-so-intriguing premise and so I got my hands on a copy and started reading immediately.

The story begins with a sly and street-smart teenager who is slumming in the seedier parts of New York City trying to toughen himself for a Herculean task that he has to accomplish. He goes by the moniker of Flick and is desperate to emulate his father to turn in to a hardened diamond. He hangs out with a girl named Joi who is a Mary Poppins figure and helps the meek among the runaways. He however leaves her when he gets an opportunity to join the Mandel academy for the gifted; this school is like the Hogwarts for people with nefarious talents with a major Hunger Games-like enforcement. He tries to gauge what the school principal’s angle is, in allowing him to join the academy and why he should strive to graduate. Flick is also wary as his brother Jude who appears to him as Peter Pan doesn’t want him to join but Flick decides to follow the path of moral ambivalence. This step thus allows him to do whatever is necessary to become crude and violent enough to do what he plans.

The next step amidst his plan is to find out the truth about Mandel academy, its alumnae and the path that leads to his final reckoning with his patriarch. Flick however doesn’t know the many pitfalls in passing out of Mandel academy and the many sacrifices he will have to give to steel his resolve. There are many surprises in store for the protagonist and the reader and is the final culmination of the tale that resolves all the mysteries that sprout within.

The best part of the story for me was the plot setting and the blurb, as the reader is introduced to this exciting and dark [YA level] story that showcases a world wherein the nefarious are being trained for the next level. As a reader, this is a tremendously cool setup and full points to the author for coming up with it. The next plus point for the story is its fast pace that constantly sweeps the plot threads in a forward manner and make it exciting all the way to the final twists of the tale. Lastly the author has to be lauded for making this into a standalone story and not dragging it out over several volumes. Amid the era of series, this standalone story makes it a good investment of time for any new or old readers.

Now these were the points that I liked about the story unfortunately my overall experience wasn’t an entirely fun one because of the following factors that depreciated the read. One of the main reasons that I didn’t like about this story was the uneven characterization. Beginning with our main protagonist Flick who is shown to be struggling in the first third then suddenly becomes this uber-cool fantastic student that crushes everyone and is great at everything and then in last third again does a turn-around to become a semi-confused persona. Then there’s Joi who surprisingly turns out to be the best at everything and is the Mary Sue for this story. Following on with this trend there are the antagonists Gwendolyn who’s supposed to be this ultimate badass but comes across as unhinged and weak. The main villain is also a mastermind who gets fooled ridiculously at crucial turns. This was especially disappointing as the villains became caricature-ish and thus the predictability of the story become apparent to the most novice readers.

This is one of the aspects of the YA storyline that I don’t understand exactly. The cool concept which isn’t properly explored perhaps considering the YA nature of the book This was the most frustrating part about this story that while it seemed that the author had this fantastic idea/plot but the execution faltered majorly for the story to fall into the category of “could have been awesome but…” stories. Perhaps I’m not so familiar with YA stories and how they are executed but in this book I was more than waiting to be surprised. However the ending came and my expectations took a downward turn. The climax while not so surprising becomes a bit comical in regards to the solution about the Mandel Academy?

The author does try her best to come up with a twist of sorts in regards to Flick’s revenge plotline and however the overall predictability of the climax makes it a moot point of sorts. In this regard, my opinion of the book is a subjective one and it will be up to the readers to see how they find the story. I think this could have been a fantastic piece but ultimately went sideways for me. Lastly one good thing about the story is that it ends on a poignant note of sorts and perhaps the author can also explore the characters in a future book for those who did enjoy this story and want to know more about the characters and world.

CONCLUSION: A fantastic idea that intrigued me however the book didn’t hold up to the impressive happenings as promised in the blurb. How to Lead A Life Of Crime is a book that will finds its fans and detractors, sadly I find myself leaning towards the latter camp and couldn’t really enjoy the story as it was written.

I characterize my writing as historical fantasy. At first, that might seem paradoxical. How can history and fantasy coexist? Even more paradoxical, at least to me, is how someone who has three graduate degrees in history can be writing fantasy! But then, I do teach two courses in the Boston University Writing Program that deal with writing and with paradox: “Paradox of the Hero/Heroine in East Asian Cinema and Fiction” and “Paradox of the Strange in East Asian Cinema and Fiction.” And these academic writing courses grew out of my fiction writing. Perhaps I should start at the beginning – which for me is a long way back.

The only things I was ever good at in high school were history and fast cars. I chose history to be my path through college and took my fast car with me. However, once I chose Chinese history as my graduate field of study, the car was sold – couldn’t fly it to Honolulu – and I settled down at the University of Hawaii to study Chinese history. History at the graduate level meant learning the language of your field of study - off to Taiwan for four years of language school. I had decided that it was medieval China that most fascinated me – that meant classical Chinese study, an ancient language much more terse and complicated then modern vernacular Chinese. To make things more complicated, I had developed an interest in Chinese Buddhist history, which meant I had to study Buddhist, classical Chinese and eventually Japanese, since at the time they were the best scholars in that esoteric field.

I received my masters in Chinese history and decided to move back to Taiwan. Life, however, had other plans and I did another masters degree, this time under my University of Hawaii’s professor at Yale in East Asian Studies. One thing led to another and I ended up capping my academic study with a doctorate in Chinese history at the University of Hawaii. At that point, I needed some fresh air from almost two decades in those historical archives. I was working in the field of medieval Chinese Buddhist intellectual history and had read so many fascinating stories in those ancient texts that I wanted to tell them in English. The stories couldn’t be told in an academic context because there was neither an audience nor tolerance for such tales. So I decided to write fiction.

The obvious genre would be historical fiction, but my stories involved many fantastic adventures. So I adopted historical fantasy. Yet, and here is another paradox, as a historian I had learned that “fantasy” is a relative term. If a culture believed something to be real, it will act on those beliefs regardless if another cultural viewpoint claims those beliefs to be irrational, unscientific, or otherwise. I realized that by attempting to portray a medieval Chinese viewpoint and worldview, I was actually opening a door to a “real world.” Thus in the “Author’s Statement” to my novels (Dream of the Dragon Pool and Listening to Rain) I write:

 "The adventure you are about to embark on is based upon a 7th/8th century Chinese understanding of reality. While many of the characters, incidents, and locations in the story appear in Chinese historical records, some are yet to be discovered, and others may never be. It is up to you to decide if any of this matters."

These words were carefully chosen to express my fiction writing approach. My stories are based on “Chinese historical records.” Yet some of the claims in those records, “have yet to be discovered and others may never be.” In the end, it is up to the reader to decide the success of the story – some might clamor for more historical accuracy, while others might deem there be too much and more “fantastic” elements should have been added. In the end, the story should stand on its own without explanations from authors or reviewers – the reader either connects or not with the writer.

The issue of “what is fantasy” is another aspect of my work. I am a genre writer and like most, my genre is a sub-genre nestled within a number of ever-broader genre categories: fiction/historical/fantasy/heroic. But since my space and time zones are medieval China, that heroic genre is known as wuxia – a Chinese term that literally means “martial hero.” It is commonly translated as “martial arts fiction.” However, I translate it as “heroic fiction,” more specifically, “Chinese heroic fiction.” And within that Chinese genre, my more specific genre is wuxia shenguai. The additional term here, shenguai, literarily means “mystical/uncanny”. Some translate it as “supernatural” others as simply “fantasy.” For some, numerous fantastical scenes in Ang Lee’s popular movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, are expressions of wuxia shenguai, while a classic Bruce Lee movie would have no shenguai aspect to it.

Yet, my writing is grounded in the history of 7th and 8th century China, where such amazing capabilities were taken as a reality achievable by humans with “special” or “esoteric” training regimes. Daoists believe in the ability of humans to attain immortality and Buddhists preach of mystical powers attainable through various cultivation practices. In my own experience of several decades in the Chinese martial arts community, I’ve heard numerous tales of such feats. Fantasy?

In my Boston University writing courses we consider several interesting viewpoints regarding the nature of fantasy. While many of the sources I use refer to the commonly acknowledge “escapism” aspect of the genre, they also consider a deeper perspective. For example, Susan Napier, a Tuffs University professor of Japanese literature and a foremost expert in Japanese Anime film, points out that the film critic Robin Wood, “in discussing fantasy film has stated that fantasy ‘can be used in two ways, as a means of escaping from contemporary reality or as a means of illuminating it.’” Further, her study of contemporary Japanese literature, The fantastic in modern Japanese literature, is subtitled: The subversion of modernity. When we consider fantasy in my classes, we are looking at its power to “illuminate” the culture that produces it, not as a literature of “escape.”

In a more Western take on fantasy we also read a penetrating analysis of the genre by the SF/Fantasy critic and scholar, Gary K. Wolfe. In Evaporating Genres, he argues that to view fantasy through the criterion of the impossible is to miss its most profound aspect – that, “fantasy not only sustains our interest in the impossible, but finally wins our belief and reveals that the impossible is, after all, the real.” Sounds like an academic’s “slight of hand,” but you’ll have to read his chapter, “The Encounter with Fantasy” to judge for yourself.

These views of fantasy inform my writing in the genre, as I hope to illuminate not only a distant culture’s understanding of life, but also to discover the “reality” of their human experience - an experience that I believe has much to say about our humanity. There is much more about all of this on my website, which has materials relating to my novels – like maps and location diagrams for Listening to Rain, more detail about my background, and articles about the historical and literary traditions that I write about in my fiction. I look forward to your visit to the Dragon Gate Inn.

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Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Listening To Rain 

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Albert A. Dalia was born and brought in New York state. Growing up the author loved fast cars and coincidentally discovered Chinese culture. The author graduated from State University of New York majoring in History and Political Science and later studied Classical Chinese and Classical Buddhist Chinese literary languages at the National Taiwan Normal University, Mandarin Training Center in Taipei. Since then he's gotten two Masters and a PhD as well. He has also held a variety of jobs like broadcast journalist, assignment editor; copywriter for an ad agency, editor-in-chief, Associate Professor, Editorial director, etc. He currently lives nearby Boston with his family.

NOTE: Author picture courtesy of the author himself. Wuxia picture courtesy of The Daily Zombies. To find out more about Albert Dalia and his Wuxia fantasy series "The Adventures of the Shaolin Blade Tanzong", read the sequel to Albert's guest post in the next couple of weeks.