The True Adventures of Hector Kingsley by Kindal Debenham

The True Adventures of Hector Kingsley by Kindal Debenham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Right from the beginning, I was hooked. Of course, it's hard not to be when a story opens with the hero being held up at gunpoint by two hired killers, one of whom is a werewolf. This is some of the best steampunk I've read because it captures not just the whirling gears and Victorian aesthetic, but also the Victorian language and setting of London. In Debenham's world, humanity has found a material called the Distillation which alters the fundamental nature of matter. It will make a gear spin of its own accord or make a mechanical wing flap. When a person is exposed, their fundamental nature is augmented. Hunters take on some of the aspects of their hounds. Fiery tempered people become fiery in the literal sense of the word. These Changelings live as outcasts in polite society.

Hector Kingsley works as an investigator in this milieu, solving cases with both his natural intellect and the help of some Distillation technology. A nobleman with a blast crater in his front yard wants to know who made an attempt on his life. A school for Changelings in the industrial sector is victim to some hateful graffiti that the owners fear may be a warning of worse to come. With the help of a hilarious woman bounty hunter (from the rough and tumble USA) and two of his Distillation Changed friends, Hector has to put all the pieces together before lives are lost.

So why the four stars? Well, it'll have five when I post a copy of this review on Amazon. Here I'll just point out, for what it's worth, that there are some logistical issues. The most obvious, to me, was that a character who is taken hostage has the ability to walk through walls, which would make her very hard to catch or contain, so I didn't quite understand why she was in any danger. Some special Distillation handcuffs might be in order there. There was quite a bit of repetitive language - i.e. the main character would narrate twice things like his happiness that he wasn't dropped off too far from his home and thus was able to get there straightaway. And there were some English/American translation errors. The "first" floor of a building here in the UK is what we Americans would call the second. What we'd call the first, Brits call the ground floor. One wouldn't put a foundry on the first floor over here. All minor stuff, though, and not enough to detract from a good fun ride. I'm glad to see this is one of a series.
 

Polar Shift is on Amazon and will be free for the next five days

 All right, no one mock my cover designs. I'm uploading my previously published short stories to Kindle, and at this time I can't afford a professionally designed cover for each one of them. This first one is the first short story I ever sold. It's the first anything I ever sold, and from February 23-27, it's free on Amazon.com.

I've told the story of its sale before, but here it is again. My Clarion West class had people who'd already had pro sales before they attended the workshop. Those of us who didn't were called the Nada Crew (a name we chose for ourselves). Over the next five years the Nada Crew shrank and shrank. Very few Clarion West classes get 100% pro publication. In fact, I don't know that any ever had. So if I were to exit the Nada Crew, we just might be making Clarion West history.

This story killed the Nada Crew. I sold it to Julie Czerneda for her anthology, Polaris: A Celebration of Polar Science, which came out in 2007. It's the first of my short stories that I've uploaded, but it won't be the last.

 

Kevin Olusola, the beatboxing cellist

Many may have already seen this, but I still think it's pretty cool. Kevin Olusola went on to win The Sing Off with the group, Pentatonix.

Ghost Rider Blues - on George RR Martin's blog

This is something that seemed to bear linking. I confess I'm not planning to see the movie, Ghost Rider, and I don't read comics, but George has blogged about the plight of the original creator, and it's worth sitting up to take notice. George writes:

So, maybe you're thinking of going to the movies this weekend, and catching the new GHOST RIDER flick. Hey, why not? Choppers, demons, plenty of action and eye-popping special effects, and Nicholas Cage with his head on fire, this movie has it all. 

What it doesn't have, alas, is a dime for the writer who created the character. 

Gary Friedrick is reportedly penniless, sick, and about to lose his house... and he's just lost the lawsuit he filed, hoping to get back rights to the character, or at least some portion of the millions that Marvel is making off him. In fact, just to salt the wounds, the court ruled he owes Marvel $17,000 for selling unlicensed prints of the Ghost Rider.

He goes on to provide a link to donate what you would have paid on movie tickets to Friedrick. Head on over to George's blog post to learn more.

Interview with Walter Jon Williams up on Black Gate

Today's blogpost is over on Black Gate, and is my interview of my friend and former writers group-mate, Walter Jon Williams. I've known Walter for over a decade now, and here are a few facts that you may not know: 1) He is not the only person I've seen pose for a wedding photo (later printed in Locus), with a toilet; 2) He has his own action figure; and 3) He is 100% Finnish, despite his name. Oh, and he also writes books and stuff and is running the Taos Toolbox workshop again this year.

Here's an exerpt:

Taos Toolbox is a workshop I’ve created for writers who haven’t really broken into the market yet, but aren’t beginners, either.  I call it a “master class,” but don’t let that scare you.

For two weeks in the summer, I rent an entire ski lodge at Taos Ski Valley, and I and other instructors and the students work on our fiction.

We do a lot of things that other workshops do: round-robin critique, talks on world-building, character-building, exercises, contracts, etc.

We also do something few workshops do: we will workshop novels, and we’ll spend a whole week on plot, structure, and pacing.

Teaching that is really hard, which is why so few other workshops even approach the topic.

Terracotta Walter

This year I will be teaching along with Nancy Kress, who is absolutely sublime as a reader and teacher.  And we also have hot young writer Daniel Abraham as special lecturer.

In addition, the workshop takes place in an absolutely gorgeous mountainside retreat complete with hot tub, wi-fi, and an occasional bear.

Meals are catered, and if you get stuck staring at your keyboard, there are plenty of other things to do: hiking, horseback riding, river rafting, and wandering through the wonderland that is Taos.

We’re still accepting applicants for this year.  For information, please go to www.taostoolbox.com.

To read the rest, head over to Black Gate!

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don't expect my review or other ones like it to deter people from reading this book. Anyone who follows this series is going to want to know what happens to the characters they love and the world they inhabit. Though I don't often think this, I hope the movie franchise Hollywood-izes the finale. Without giving too much away, I felt this ending was an attempt to portray what would really happen to people in the circumstances these characters have been in.

There are two problems with this, though. 1) Readers will be used to reading these books as an escape from real life, not to have gritty reality rubbed in their faces and 2) I didn't find it realistic. See, the thing is, I know people who've been tortured. One of my teachers was a survivor of Robben Island and has been one of Amnesty International's highlighted prisoners for a year. A letter writing campaign moved him from one torturous situation (I don't remember which, because before being on Robben Island and after, he was shunted around to work camps and other horrific places) to a slightly less torturous one. Another advisor of mine was imprisoned in Chile's national stadium, which was converted in to an enormous prison when their Marxist government was overthrown. I've known people who were child soldiers, refugees, and the survivors of genocide attempts, so when I say Mockingjay is unrealistic, I don't mean that I merely wish life were different.

I felt that this series started with a promise, that Katniss was going to be someone whose journey mattered, and I felt this third book fell a little short of that promise. Her final act of rebellion is shrouded in a haze of psychological detachment. It's hard to say why she did it. The love triangle is resolved for her, not by her. My biggest disappointment, though? Peeta. He was the survivor of the Hunger Games who lacked the ruthlessness to win them. He was a classic example of someone who's witnessed atrocities and not allowed himself to be changed by them. I fully expected him to go on to have a major role in the new political system, and what happened instead made me wonder why I'd been following his journey all this time. I don't regret reading this book at all. I had to know how things turned out, but I think the characters I met in the first book really were capable of more.