Showing posts with label spfbo 2019. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spfbo 2019. Show all posts
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Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Before we start, tell us a little about yourself.
Thanks for having me! I’m the mother of nine; my oldest is twenty-three and my youngest, who has Down Syndrome, is three. I’ve been writing for practically ever, and I even published some short stories in the early 00’s, but I took a long break from writing for publication while I was having most of my kids. I live in northwest Mississippi, and I like to travel, to garden, and of course, to read. Our house is basically one big library… if libraries also came with Legos and Nerf guns.
Thursday, January 16, 2020
SPFBO Finalist: Fortune's Fool by Angela Boord (reviewed by David Stewart, Justine Bergman, Lukasz Przywoski and Mihir Wanchoo)
Official Author Website
Order Fortune's Fool over HERE (US) and HERE (UK)
OFFICIAL AUTHOR INFORMATION: Angela Boord published a handful of short stories in the early 00s, then had a bunch of kids who are now all sleeping at night, making it easier to write again. She lives in northwestern Mississippi with her husband and their nine kids, plus two dogs, one cat, and varying numbers of chickens. She is currently hard at work on more books in the Eterean Empire series and plans to release Book 1.5 in early 2020.
Official Author Website
Read FBC's Review of The Sword of Kaigen
M. L. Wang was born in Wisconsin
in 1992, decided she wanted to be an author at the age of nine, and never grew
up. She currently splits her time between writing fantasy books and working at
a martial arts school in her home city of Madison.
When she isn’t building worlds on the page, she
builds them in her aquarium full of small, smart fish that love to explore
castles and don’t make noise during writing time.
[Q] Hello M.L.!
Welcome to Fantasy Book Critic and thank you so much for taking some time to
chat with us. Your book is making quite a splash in this year's SPFBO, and
you certainly have made some fans within this blog. Could you tell us a bit
about yourself? What do you do when you aren't writing fantasy books?
[ML] Thank
you so much for having me! The Sword of Kaigen is the first adult
fantasy book I’ve ever written, so it’s been kind of a shock how people have
taken to it. A good kind of shock. Happy shockwaves.
In
high school, when people asked about my hobbies, I would always say writing and
martial arts. In the intervening years, both of those turned into jobs, so now
I just sound like a loser with no hobbies. Maybe that’s not completely true. Other
than writing stuff and kicking stuff, I enjoy walking along bodies of water,
getting too into TV shows, and doing amateur art projects that are too bad to
be shared online.
[Q] Why do you write
fantasy books? Or if that phrasing is too pointed, why do you write? Do you
have any formal training?
[ML] Writing has always
been my way of processing the world. That
might sound like a recipe for contemporary or non-fiction, but I only ever
write speculative fiction (of my own will, anyway; obviously, in my youth,
there was the odd school assignment). For me, a lot of the
fun of fictionalizing the human experience is in the grandiosity, which in my
published books takes the form of emotionally charged superpowers. You don’t
have to take a microscope to an emotion if you can blow it up to the size of a
dragon.
I have little formal
training mainly because every creative writing class that’s ever been available
to me has centered on writing short stories, a medium I despise. Not short
stories by other people, I love those. They’re perfect for my slippery
attention span. But as a writer, I prefer working on the kind of expansive
worlds, serial adventures, and slow-burn character arcs that don’t fit in a few
thousand words.
[Q] What made you
decide to enter the SPFBO? Had you entered previously? To add to that, why have
you taken the self-publishing route over traditional?
[ML] This
is my first SPFBO entry. Petrik Leo, who was one of the first people to review The
Sword of Kaigen over at Novel Notions, recommended that I enter. Prior to
that, I had only heard about the competition through Kitty G’s SPFBO 4 videos
and hadn’t thought of entering myself. Petrik and JC Kang both (separately)
made sure that I marked the competition on my calendar and knew when to enter,
so big thanks to them!
[Q] The Sword of
Kaigen is such a melting pot of cultures, what would you say your primary
cultural fonts are? Does your own background integrate into these inspirations?
[ML] Ninety
percent of my world-building research has been devoted to the Mande of West
Africa. This is because the Mande are the primary inspiration for the dominant
people on Planet Duna, called the Yammankalu (those dark-skinned fire
elementals who show up very briefly in The Sword of Kaigen). Theonite
explores that larger African-dominated world, while The Sword of Kaigen focuses
on a little corner of it that is loosely based on Japan. Even in backwater
Kaigen, you’ll find the West African influence in their occupational caste
system, facets of their religion, and some of their terms of address.
As the name Wang might
suggest, I am neither West African nor Japanese. My mom is American and my dad
is from Jiangsu, China. For those unfamiliar with Eastern World War II history,
Jiangsu is the province where the Nanjing Massacre happened. Growing up, I had
a weird relationship with Japan—basically trying to reconcile my fondness for
modern Japanese culture and people with the genocide that affected the previous
generation of my family and left a scar on the collective Chinese psyche.
Earlier in the year, I
wrote this
long meditation on how my experience
of being a biracial kid trying to communicate
across cultural lines drove me to create an ‘upside down’ version of our world.
I won’t dump all that baggage here, but the underlying premise of Planet Duna is
that it takes the racial hierarchies of our own
history and flips them, giving the reader a chance to walk a mile in someone
else’s shoes. In Theonite, ‘Europeans’ (Hadeans) have been colonized by
‘West Africans’ (Yammankalu). In The Sword of Kaigen, the ‘Chinese’
(Ranganese) do some genocide in a ‘Japan’ (Shirojima, Kaigen) ruled by an
Imperial ‘Korea’ (Jungsan, Kaigen). You get the idea. Like I said above,
fiction is the way I process reality. This was all a coping mechanism of my
teenage brain.
[Q]
Your decision to set The Sword of Kaigen in a modern setting is an interesting
one. Had you considered setting it in a historical setting, or was modern-with-ancient
techniques always the goal?
[ML] I
never thought of the modern setting as an interesting decision—though maybe
that’s because it wasn’t really a decision at all. The central conflict of The
Sword of Kaigen was cemented into the larger Theonite timeline long
before I ever thought to write a spin-off novel about it, so it wasn’t like
changing the era was on the table. I suppose, if I had really wanted to tell a
traditional fantasy story, I could have gone back to Shirojima, Kaigen’s age of
founding heroes, but that would have robbed Planet Duna of its underlying
function, which is to explore contemporary realities.
All
Theonite stories are really about modern people in the modern world. And
to me, one of the most interesting things about the modern world is the interplay
between traditional lifestyles and new technology. Some of the Japanese
officers who shot at my relatives during World War II carried katanas. I’ve
been to mountain villages in central Africa where men headed out to hunt with
spears in their hands and iPhones in their back pockets. The mutual exclusivity
some people imagine between swords and cell phone towers is a product of genre,
not reality. And that bums me out. Genre fiction is supposed to expand the imagination,
not narrow it. This answer got away from me a bit. Sorry.
[Q] Tangents are always appreciated, and I happen to agree with you. There’s a lot
of what you could term narrow fantasy out there that’s basically comfort food –
sometimes necessary but not always useful.
[ML] Most of my favorite
sci-fi and fantasy mixes genres in weird ways—and I include the pioneers like
Tolkien and Shelley in that; they were so weird people had to invent genres
around them.
 |
| Misaki by Coralie Jubénot (Merwild) |
[Q] We don't often
get to see middle-aged mothers as our hero protagonists in fantasy fiction,
much to the harm of the genre. Was there ever any fear that this would not land
with readers? Spoilers - it lands.
[ML] I actually just published
a
guest post on how Misaki was never intended to be a
protagonist and the series of accidents that led to her becoming one. To sum up
that post here, Misaki originally features as a mentor figure in the Theonite
books and was constructed accordingly. When I started writing The Sword of
Kaigen, I thought a) that the whole story would be about half its current
length and b) that Misaki would be a secondary point-of-view character to her
more active, protagonist-y son, Mamoru. She wasn’t initially designed to be a main
character, hence her protagonist-atypical characteristics, like her age and
marital status.
It was as I ran into
the unexpected complexities of her rage, grief and regret that she became a
main character—at which point I wasn’t thinking ‘can readers handle this?’ as
much as I was thinking ‘can I handle this?’ Misaki’s arc was one of the
most challenging I’ve ever written, which makes it so meaningful to me that
readers have managed to connect with her.
[Q] Your prior books
are labeled as young adult, but The Sword of Kaigen is not. These are connected
books, but how do they relate to one another in a series sense? Do you consider
them vital to one another? Do they share any characters?
[ML] The Theonite
books take place thirteen years after The Sword of Kaigen and follow a
set of younger kids, including some of the tiny babies from The Sword of
Kaigen (most prominently Robin’s son, Daniel, and Misaki’s youngest, Izumo)
through their teenage years.
I wrote Theonite
and The Sword of Kaigen to function as complete stories, independent of
one other. Aside from my personal preference that a given story stand on its
own, this approach was my only option from a marketing standpoint. A lot of
parents don’t want their ten-year-olds who enjoy Theonite reading The
Sword of Kaigen and a lot of readers who enjoy The Sword of Kaigen aren’t
into YA, so I really did need the option to sell them separately.
[Q] Without
spoiling things, The Sword of Kaigen seems ripe for a sequel, while at the same
time telling such a complete story that it could easily stand on its own. Is
that your plan? Is this a trilogy or series? How far have you planned?
[ML]The Sword of Kaigen will never have a direct sequel for a few reasons. First, I was
very depressed when I wrote it and I’m glad the experience is behind me. Second,
the book represents a tiny cross-section of a planet-wide story I’ve been
plotting since I was a teenager, meaning that major events are set on an
inflexible timeline. Holding to that timeline, there aren’t any novel-worthy
developments on Mount Takayubi between The Sword of Kaigen and Theonite.
This isn’t to say that the Matsuda family’s story is over—far from it—but their
ongoing adventures will be tied up in the plot of the main series.
I have just
started work on a newsletter serial called Rage and Whisper, which takes
place nine years after The Sword of Kaigen. It isn’t a sequel per se but
does feature some of the same characters. The Sword of Kaigen itself
started out as a newsletter serial, so if people enjoy this project, I may end
up publishing it as a book or novella down the road.
[Q] Follow up question that is somewhat
repetitive, but will your further books also stick to YA, or do your
characters, in essence, “grow up” in to adult fiction?
[ML] Theonite was originally modeled after Harry Potter, a series in
which the tone and content age substantially with the protagonists, so yes,
that is the plan.
[Q]
Your book manages to create in-depth, authentic characters, an engrossing plot
full of unknowns, and some of the best action scenes that I've ever read in any
book. How do you balance this? Do you have literary priorities?
[ML] First
of all, it’s deeply flattering to hear that you liked the action scenes so
much, since action certainly hasn’t always been my strong suit.
I’m
a character-oriented writer before anything else. In my opinion, an otherwise
beautiful story without strong character development is like a sexy car without
an engine; cool, but what’s the point? This is why Shakespeare inventing
ridiculous plot contrivances in order to push his characters to their emotional
limits will always be stronger storytelling to me than a logical sequence of
events that doesn’t challenge its characters.
When
I write, everything—the plot, the magic, the religion, the martial arts—are
negotiable based on the arcs of the main characters. I know that the action
scenes in The Sword of Kaigen were satisfying to write because
they served as expressions of the characters’ emotions, relationships, and
personal growth. I think (at least, I hope) they’re satisfying to read for the
same reason.
 |
| The Duel by Arielle Werthaim (arielle_the_merms) |
[Q] Not a question, but
that specific spouse duel later in the novel illustrates that point perfectly.
I’m not sure I’ve ever read an action scene that was so necessarily narrative.
Speaking of fight scenes, what influences are you drawing from to plan them
out? They have the feel of professionally choreographed sequences. Are there
any particular martial arts movies you're drawn to, or does it all stem from
your own experience (you know, fighting with ice swords)?
[ML] The influence of Avatar:
The Last Airbender on my universe should be obvious, alongside kung-fu
movies and lots of anime. Going into the project, I did take some sword courses
in order to get a better feel for armed combat (my forte is traditional taekwondo,
which is closer to the bad guys’ fighting style than the main characters’).
Sadly, there were no swords made of ice.
[Q] And speaking of
influences, do you have any fantasy or literary influences that particularly
stand out? And tangentially to that, how would you say the experience of being
an Asian-American fantasy author is in a world where Asian culture is only
lately being properly represented in fantasy?
[ML] Okay. Here’s the part
where I have to admit that I don’t read much fantasy, or indeed much at all. I
know that everyone and their mom insists that you need to read in your genre
constantly in order to be a good writer, but that had better not be true
because reading has never been part of my writing process. I very occasionally
listen to fantasy audiobooks (my hands-down favorite in recent memory was
Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings) but when I read with my eyeballs,
it’s almost always history books.
The
world is full of fantasy based on other fantasy, meanwhile, there are whole
real-world cultures that go unexplored in modern SFF. I have a tragically
limited attention span for reading—just ask any of my grade school teachers, I
was the worst—so when I am able to read, I prefer to put that energy into the
neglected histories of our own world. If these count as literature, I would
cite the Kojiki, the Nihon Shoki, and The Tale of the Heike
as influences for The Sword of Kaigen.
As for being an
Asian-American author… all I can say is that I got lucky with my timing. I wish
I could claim that I’m a sales genius who planned to release an Asian-inspired
fantasy at exactly the time that books like The Poppy War were taking
off in the traditional market, but I’m rarely that tuned in to the trends. JC
Kang and Petrik were the ones who initially compared The Sword of Kaigen
to The Poppy War and pointed me in the direction of that market, which I
think played a role in getting the book off the ground.
In
the long run, I hope I’m not known as Asian author of Asian fantasy, since that
isn’t my focus and I don’t plan on releasing any more Asian-centric stories.
Asian cultures, martial arts, and characters will always be an important part
of my work; you’re just unlikely to see anything as bluntly, homogenously Asian
as The Sword of Kaigen from me again. Samurai have been done. They’re
done all the time by writers more capable and better informed on the subject
than myself. I’m going to try to devote the rest of my writing career to things
you haven’t seen before.
[Q] What would you
do if you won the SPFBO?
I’m not sure. Run in
circles like a toddler? Probably tell my parents, who will say “That’s great,
honey,” and then move on with their lives. It’s not something I’ve planned for,
though it would amazing. Another happy shockwave.
As avid fantasy readers, we love discovering new voices and hidden gems. SPFBO contest gives us such possibility and we’re thrilled to participate in it for the fifth time. The first stage of the contest has just ended.
After five months of a bloodbath, ten bloggers have chosen their champions. We’re excited to read all of them and would love to encourage you to do the same.
Our approach
Each of us (David, Justine, Łukasz, Mihir) will read all the books from cover to cover. If it sounds lame and obvious allow me to rephrase it by using numbers - each of us will read 4509 pages and, approximately, 1 239 975 words! Almost one million two hundred fourty thousand words. Not too shabby, right?
Reviews
We plan to start posting reviews of SPFBO finalists in January. If you decide to read along with us, consider dropping your review on Goodreads, Amazon or Barnes & Noble. For an indie author trying to draw attention to their recently published book, reviews are hugely beneficial. Help us to spread the word about the books you love.
And now, let's take a look at SPFBO 2019 finalists listed in alphabetical order.
Secrets have a price.
After enduring weeks of torture and being convicted of witchery, Ris escapes, only to discover the Darkness and the Lady are hunting her. They need the magic that sings within her.
Creator of all, the imprisoned Lady needs Ris, her last vessel, to find the Heart of Creation. The Darkness seeks to corrupt the vessel and retain his hold on the Lady, and with it, the world.
Ris finds help from a pair of Paladins of Light who aid her in cleansing the evil taint from the lands. As her power grows, so do her questions. How can she restore balance to the world and free the Lady? Should the Lady be trusted or is she as much at fault for the evil in the world as the Darkness? With powerful demons War, Ruin, and Plague at her heels, Ris struggles to stay alive as she tries to unravel the secrets hidden within her before it's too late.
Secrets that may cost Ris her soul even if she does succeed.
A TALE OF STARS AND SHADOW by Lisa Cassidy
502 pages, published on May 18th, 2019, Order it here
502 pages, published on May 18th, 2019, Order it here
Can a broken warrior and a lost criminal find hope in a world of darkness?
Dumnorix princess and born warrior, Talyn Dynan was the finest fighter of her generation. With her Callanan partner at her side, she was invincible, reckless, a death-knell to their enemies. But after her partner is torn away from her, Talyn is left broken, wracked with guilt and unable to regain the confidence she once had. Could an unexpected mission to the mysterious country of Mithranar, home of the magical winged folk, be the thing that saves her? Or will the danger and secrets she finds there finally break her completely?
The Shadowhawk lives a life in the shadows. Constantly hunted for his criminal exploits, yet desperate to help the human folk of Mithranar who are oppressed by their winged folk rulers, he haunts the streets of Dock City. The arrival of a foreign warrior threatens to upset the carefully balanced life he leads, but when she begins to offer a hope for the humans he’s only ever dreamed of, can he risk trusting her?
And unbeknownst to both, a mysterious foe stalks the dark corners of Dock City. One that answers to a single purpose…
Vengeance.
The Councilate controls everything except the truth. I have nothing save my discovery—but with this shall I destroy an empire.
Tai Kulga lost the rebellion and his best friend on the same day, stripping him of his will to live even as a strange power flooded his bones. When the friend returns as a spirit guide, it feels like a second chance—but his friend is not who he was, and the Councilate is not done oppressing his people. When trouble with lawkeepers lands Tai’s surviving friends in a prison camp, he must go underground to find the last of the rebels and convince them to break his friends free.
Along the way he meets Ellumia Aygla, runaway Councilate daughter posing as an accountant to escape her family and the avarice of the capital. Curious about the link between spirit guides and magic, her insights earn her a place among the rebels, and along with Tai’s power help turn the tide against the colonialists.
But as the rebels begin to repeat the Councilate’s mistakes, Tai and Ellumia must confront their own pasts and prejudices, before the brewing war turns them into the monsters they fight.
BLADE'S EDGE by Virginia McClain
314 pages, Published on January 23rd, 2015, Order it here
314 pages, Published on January 23rd, 2015, Order it here
Mishi and Taka live each day of their lives with the shadow of death lurking behind them. The struggle to hide the elemental powers that mark the two girls as Kisōshi separates them from the other orphans, yet forges a deep bond between them.
When Mishi is dragged from the orphanage at the age of eight, the girls are unsure if or when they will find each other again. While their powers grow with each season-cycle, the girls must come to terms with their true selves--Mishi as a warrior, Taka as a healer--as they forge separate paths which lead to the same horrifying discovery.
The Rōjū council’s dark secret is one that it has spent centuries killing to keep, and Mishi and Taka know too much. The two young women have overcome desperate odds in a society where their very existence is a crime, but now that they know the Rōjū’s secret they find themselves fighting for much more than their own survival.
BLOOD OF HEIRS by Alicia Wanstall-Burke
323 pages, published on October 23rd, 2018, Order it here
323 pages, published on October 23rd, 2018, Order it here
Lidan Tolak is the fiercest of her father’s daughters; more than capable of one day leading her clan. But caught between her warring parents, Lidan’s world begins to unravel when another of her father’s wives falls pregnant. Before she has time to consider the threat of a brother, a bloody swathe is cut through the heart of the clan and Lidan must fight, not only to prove her worth, but simply to survive.
Ranoth Olseta wants nothing more than to be a worthy successor to his father’s throne. When his home is threatened by the aggressive Woaden Empire, Ran becomes his city’s saviour, but powers within him are revealed by the enemy and he is condemned to death. Confused and betrayed, Ran is forced to flee his homeland, vowing to reclaim what he has lost, even if it kills him.
Facing an unknown future, and battling forces both familiar and foreign, can Lidan and Ran overcome the odds threatening to drag them into inescapable darkness?
FORTUNE'S FOOL by Angela Boord
737 pages, published on May 18th, 2019, Order it here
737 pages, published on May 18th, 2019, Order it here
A secret affair. A disfiguring punishment. A burning need for revenge.
Kyrra d’Aliente has a bad reputation and an arm made of metal.
Cast out of the safe and luxurious world of silk to which she was born, played as a pawn in a game of feuding Houses, Kyrra navigates a dangerous world of mercenaries, spies, and smugglers while disguising herself as a man.
War destroyed her family and the man she loved.
Vengeance is within her grasp.
But is she willing to pay its price?
KALANON'S RISING by Darian Smith
424 pages, published on October 15th, 2016, Order it here
424 pages, published on October 15th, 2016, Order it here
Solve the murder. Stop the war. Save the world.
Sir Brannon Kesh spent years building a new life as a physician, leaving the name Bloodhawk and the war that spawned it behind. But when the King's cousin is murdered, duty calls him back. The crime scene suggests dark magic and the evidence points to the ambassador of Nilar, an alluring woman with secrets of her own, who sees Bloodhawk as little more than a war criminal.
As bodies pile up and political ramifications escalate, Brannon must join forces with a vain mage, a socially awkward priest, and a corpse animating shaman to solve the murders and prevent another war. But who can he trust when the phases of a bigger plan take shape?
The Risen are the greatest danger Brannon has ever faced. If he and his team cannot stop the killer then all of Kalanon - and the world - will descend into darkness.
NEVER DIE by Rob J. Hayes
274 pages, published on January 29th, 2019, Order it here
274 pages, published on January 29th, 2019, Order it here
Ein is on a mission from God. A God of Death.
Time is up for the Emperor of Ten Kings and it falls to a murdered eight year old boy to render the judgement of a God. Ein knows he can't do it alone, but the empire is rife with heroes. The only problem; in order to serve, they must first die.
Ein has four legendary heroes in mind, names from story books read to him by his father. Now he must find them and kill them, so he can bring them back to fight the Reaper's war.
Erroh has a plan. A simple plan. It’ll never work.
Despite his family's warrior pedigree, he'd rather gamble and drink while living from one tavern to the next. But when his wanderings bring him upon a gruesome slaughter of innocents he is torn from carefree ways.
Spark City is on the horizon and with it the mysterious trials of The Cull. After a life spent rejecting his birth right, the time has come to pick up his sword and accept his destiny.
With an army marching forward, and unlikely companions buy his side, does Erroh have what it takes to stop the coming war?
Spark City is the gripping first novel in Robert J Power’s new epic fantasy series. If you like spectacular combat, unlikely heroes, and slow burn romance, you’ll love this thrilling tale.
THE SWORD OF KAIGEN by M.L.Wang
651 pages, published on February 17th, 2019, Order it here
651 pages, published on February 17th, 2019, Order it here
A mother struggling to repress her violent past, a son struggling to grasp his violent future, a father blind to the danger that threatens them all.
When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores?
High on a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire’s enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name ‘The Sword of Kaigen.’
Born into Kusanagi’s legendary Matsuda family, fourteen-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: to master his family’s fighting techniques and defend his homeland. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen’s alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies.
Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Misaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.
Friday, October 25, 2019
SPFBO: Semifinalist Interview with Allison Pang (Interviewed by Łukasz Przywóski)
Order Magpie's Song over HERE (USA) or HERE (UK)
FBC's Review of Magpie's Song is right HERE
Allison's webcomic Fox & Willow can be found on Tapas and Webtoons as well as here 
Read Fantasy Book Critic's First Semifinalist Update
Read Fantasy Book Critic's Second Semifinalist Update
Read Fantasy Book Critic's Third Semifinalist Update
It has come to me to provide Fantasy Book Critic's next culling and fourth semi-finalist, and boy am I eager to announce the winner because it's a hell of a book. The titles I've read so far this year are:
Wanderer by Nancy Dunne
Beggar's Rebellion by Levi Jacobs
The Harvest by KB Benson
Into the Labyrinth by John Bierce
Devian by Shanna Bosarge
Petrified by Ben Weeks
I set myself a goal of reading through each of my books this year, even if I didn't like them. This was more of a personal goal than anything because it becomes obvious within the first 10-20% of a book whether or not it's going to advance. I almost did it, only abandoning one book in the batch as simply not for me.
But to get the sad news out of the way right up front, Wanderer is the only book in my bunch that I could not finish. There is so much sexual violence, implied and overt, that I simply couldn't continue - especially when I fully expected a book about tree magic. There is magic, Dunne has populated her world with elves and dark knights and all manner of typical fantasy ideas, but there's nothing engaging about that magic (unless the later portion of the book really changes up the formula). It's basically people pointing their fingers at stuff and having magic happen. Add in characters that act and are characterized like anime tropes, and this book was not at all what I wanted.This was the last book in my bunch, and had I read it earlier I might have stuck with it, but it became clear very quickly that this was not going to advance in FBC's batch.
Beggar's Rebellion has nearly everything that people look for in epic fantasy these days, with robust power systems and political machinations complicated enough to make George R.R. Martin blush. Levi Jacobs managed to impress me with a courtroom scene, and I hate anything to do with legal drama. By the last page, I could not have been happier with Beggar's Rebellion being in my lot. This is a book that could easily stand beside any traditionally published book on the shelf, and in fact shares many features of some of the best-sellers. Jacobs writes strong characters, Ella being one of the most likable characters I've read in fantasy, and his world-building is both familiar and unique. It might even be easy to label Beggar's Rebellion as traditional, but I think it brings enough to the table to keep it from such common labels.
I read Twilight, and while I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, it is certainly readable and found resonance with a great many readers. I would not say the same for The Harvest. The characters were in no way believable for me, and the blend of saccharine, Christian-themed, puritanical tones with dark, sea dwelling monsters put me off completely. I wish I could say that anything worked for me in this book, but it was a struggle to read through to the end. It's possible that fans of romance, and in particular the Christian romance one finds in a Hallmark Store, could enjoy The Harvest. It's possible that I am the least qualified reader in the world to judge its merits based on that metric. But even had I loved the subject matter and believed any of the character motivations, the writing in The Harvest is too simple to win a contest like this, a competition that features truly beautiful and complex writing. I did finish this book, and it is technically competent, but I would not say I enjoyed it very much at all.
There were some things that didn't work for me in the book. The characters aren't very well developed for one. This is a difficult thing to nail in younger-reading fantasy, but the main character in particular is hard to root for due to his unfailing self-deprecation (even if that self-deprecation is a major plot point). However, the systems in place, as well as the mythology surrounding it, make it a worthwhile read.
Devian by Shanna Bosarge - Devian is another book whose premise intrigues me, despite the title confusion I felt when scanning its Goodreads page. There is a Celtic feel to the setting, which I am always interested in, and right from the start the world-building sucks in its reader.Unfortunately, Devian suffers from some of the same issues that Wanderer does. There is a violence towards women in Devian that is hard to stomach, and while violence is an accepted form of expression in fiction, when it is purely directed towards one gender I begin to feel uneasy about the intent. That the male villains are all mustache twirling psychopaths is also telling. I would have also appreciated an ending, but Devian stops mid-plot, and I don't really understand where it's going nor why. All these things might have been acceptable had the writing itself been stronger, but it is peppered with grammatical errors, and there is a constant switching of tenses that bothered me throughout. I think Devian's dark tone and intriguing familial plotlines could work, but the book needs a lot of work to make that happen.
Petrified by Ben Weeks - Some tough honesty here - Petrified has one of the worst covers I've seen on a book. It's so off-putting that it really soured this reader on the experience of even beginning it. I mean, look at that thing. It's right over there, staring at you, daring you to open it and knowing you won't. This is tragic because Petrified is a solid urban fantasy with interesting mythology and characters that feel worth knowing (for the most part).The biggest regret I had with Petrified was the main character's ability to animorph into an otter/otter-man. To the very last page, this felt ridiculous to me, particularly when other characters in the book were transforming into less comical animals. This might have worked better had it been a comedy, but the book, while having jokes, takes itself fairly seriously. This even wraps back around to the cover, which also makes Petrified look like a comic fantasy, and I can't help but wonder what the book might have been had it featured a stronger main character. Overall, Petrified remains a solid entry into the contest, but one that doesn't match up to some of the really great books in our batch.
So, it would come as no surprise to anyone reading this far that Beggar's Rebellion is the semi-finalist here. Levi Jacobs' entry into the 2019 SPFBO is big. It has everything: fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles - okay it doesn't have giants but you get the idea. Levi Jacobs will feel familiar to anyone who has been reading Brandon Sanderson, but he out-Sandersons Sanderson because I think Beggar's Rebellion is a better book than anything Sanderson has written (and I like Sanderson!). I think this is the book to beat, which is the case for a lot of the books in this year's contest because there are some real whoppers. I can't even say whether or not this wins at FBC, but I think it is something special and I hope people read it regardless of how far it advances.
Congratulations Levi Jacobs! You have written a great book, and I for one and eager to read the sequels. Tai and Ella are both great protagonists, your world is well-built and immersive, and your prose is solid. Good luck in the contest!
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