Emera | The Black Letters

Locke and Key Volume 1, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (2009) E

Date read: 1.26.10
Book from: Borrowed from Kakaner
Reviewer: Emera

(Locke and Key Volume 1: Welcome to Lovecraft collects Locke and Key #1-6.)

After their father is murdered by a disturbed former student, the three Locke children travel with their mother to start a new life in an unlikely haven: the Keyhouse, an ancient mansion on an island named Lovecraft, off the Massachusetts coast. Keyhouse, with its sprawling, dilapidated grounds and many doors, is where their father grew up, and where he insisted – with unaccountable prescience – that his family stay should anything ever happen to him.

Here, oldest son Tyler immerses himself in guilt over his tumultuous relationship with his father and his possible culpability in his death, while middle sister Kinsey struggles with her overwhelming fears and loss of sense of self in the wake of the violent attack. Meanwhile, 6-year-old Bode explores the house unattended, and soon discovers something of the curious properties of Keyhouse’s doors, and the keys that can be used to unlock them. Unfortunately, Bode’s explorations bring him within the reach of an unsavory force dwelling on the mansion’s grounds, with a particular interest in keys and what they can achieve.

First of all, books with ribbon bookmarks and nicely designed endpapers = win:

(might be a bit hard to see, but the papers have a pattern of black keys.)

For those who might not already know, Joe Hill is Stephen King’s middle son, but has eminently succeeded in making a name for himself outside of his father’s reputation. I’ve been meaning to read his first novel (Heart-Shaped Box) and short story collection (20th Century Ghosts) for a languishing Forever, but Locke and Key Volume 1 ended up being my first foray into his work, after I grabbed it off of Kakaner’s shelf last summer. I went in with high expectations, and came out jonesing for moooore.

Continue reading Locke and Key Volume 1, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (2009) E

BBCF: Diamond Star

For this week’s Bad Book Cover Friday, I present the cover of Catherine Asaro’s Diamond Star:

Catherine Asaro - Diamond Star

Yet again. Yes, the book is actually about rock stars in space (rather, a rock star in space). And it actually sounds like a very entertaining, cleverly conceived book, too. Unfortunately, when the cover artist was told “futuristic,” s/he seems to have settled on “the 80’s” as the nearest approximation. And so we are granted the bargain-bin equivalent of the love child of David Bowie and the vampire Lestat as our cover boy.

Let’s just hope that proximity to cosmic! star! light! won’t reduce his sperm count as much as those pants will, because then where would we be? Deprived of a new generation of starlets with mullets, that’s where.

– E

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Bad Book Covers Friday Archive
BBCF: The God Engines
BBCF: The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16
BBCF: The Gathering Storm

Sebastian O, by Grant Morrison, art by Steve Yeowell (1993) E

Date read: 6.11.08
Book from: Personal collection
Reviewer: Emera

“One must commit acts of the highest treason only when dressed in the most resplendent finery…”

After over four years of squalid captivity, the infamous dandy Sebastian O escapes from Bedlam Asylum, determined to seek revenge for the treacherous destruction of his Club de Paradis Artificiel, an association of “free-thinkers.” Battling officers of the Queen and crazed assassins alike, Sebastian makes his way through several wardrobe changes and the sewers and railways of an alternate Victorian England, where a strange conspiracy is beginning to make itself known.

Sebastian O is one of the earliest contemporary steampunk creations, as well as being an obvious tribute to Oscar Wilde. Not surprisingly, it’s also one of my absolute favorite comic series – I love sneaking re-reads of it whenever I’m feeling down and in need of some amoral, witticism-wielding libertines in my life. Unfortunately, it’s quite short – only 3 issues – and though Grant Morrison does excel at packing a lot of content and tight plotting into his mini-series, you’re left wanting much, much more of the characters and settings, all of which are colorful and vividly imagined. On top of that, it’s out of print, though used copies run cheap.

Artwise, I’m lukewarm on Tatjana Wood’s pastel palette, but it does work with Yeowell’s delicately lined, Beardsley-inspired art – one gets, appropriately, the sense of a brittle confection of spun-sugar. I also enjoy how Yeowell renders facial expressions, particularly Sebastian’s perpetual air of weary self-possession and amusement just a little too slight to be called mockery.

All told, Sebastian O is a perfectly paced, literarily aware romp through decadence and dandisme, full of gadgets, duels, one-liners, and speculative-fiction braincandy. I would love to see a full-length return to Sebastian’s London, but unfortunately, it looks unlikely to happen.

Go to:
Grant Morrison

Dodgy business at Amazon, part three hundred and two

And this would be why Amazon tends to make me uncomfortable:

Amazon removes all Macmillan books from its store listings, in retaliation for pricing disputes. (via the New York Times)

Cory Doctorow provides useful perspective on the matter here, with a general consideration of the problems of market concentration and Amazon’s DRM policy.

(You may remember the awkward brouhaha dubbed “Amazonfail” last year, during which over 50,000 books having anything to do with sexuality were pulled from Amazon’s sales charts – most controversially, books, including classics, with LGBT themes, which caused much slinging about of heated claims of censorship. Amazon, after a great deal of public miscommunication and apparent internal confusion, eventually issued a statement attributing the problem to “a glitch.” I wish I could find an article with better coverage of the thing than CNN’s, but right now I’m not up to further newsdigging.)

– E

The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau (2003) E

Date read: 1.26.10
Book from: Borrowed from Kakaner
Reviewer: Emera

“The city of Ember was made for us long ago by the Builders. It is the only light in the dark world. Beyond Ember, the darkness goes on forever in all directions.”

At the age of twelve, every child in Ember is assigned a job. Curious, bright-spirited Lina Mayfleet longs to be a messenger, but is instead assigned to dreary, dirty work in the underground Pipeworks. Doon Harrow, her classmate, is convinced that the sporadic blackouts of the great lamps of Ember – the only lights in a world of immeasurable darkness – forebode worse troubles for the city. He longs to investigate the enormous generator in the Pipeworks that provides the city with all of its power, so when he receives the job of messenger, he and Lina eagerly swap their assignments. As the blackouts increase in frequency and fear spreads among Ember’s citizens, Lina soon comes to share Doon’s suspicions that Ember is a dying city. Together the two embark on a search to uncover Ember’s origins, and to find a way to lead their people to the bright city that Lina is sure exists somewhere in the Unknown Regions beyond Ember.

I didn’t enjoy The City of Ember nearly as much as I thought I would, for all that it’s a rather endearing book. The characters and setting are warmly evoked, with detailed and frequently beautiful descriptions, and of course the concept is fantastic to begin with – Ember is one of those fictional realms you wish you could visit, and more often than not end up carrying around with you in your head after reading. (I imagined it looking like a less anarchic version of the city in the film La Cité des Enfants Perdus/The City of Lost Children, and would pay a large amount of imaginary money to run along its streets and peer into its shops.)

Continue reading The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau (2003) E

BBCF: The God Engines

By request of Kakaner, the star of this week’s Bad Book Covers Friday (an hour and a bit late by my timezone; whoops) is the unreleased* version of the cover of John Scalzi‘s The God Engines, released by Subterranean Press:

John Scalzi - The God Engines
Missing the baby-fresh complexion, the rosy glow that once graced your youth? Just try stripping down to a loincloth, wrapping yourself in chains, and screaming as block letters loom over your forehead and you, too, can feel fresh and perky once more. Your pores won’t just open – they’ll scream for mercy. Side effects may include washboard abs, inhuman rage, and neckbeard.

From what I’ve gathered of the plot, this cover is actually a fairly accurate representation of what occurs in the book (I won’t go so far as to say “what the book is about”). So yes, one part of me rejoices in those cover artists who actually produce something remotely relevant to the contents of the books they illustrate. The rest of me is wishing that this one didn’t make something that looks like the dreams of a ninth-grade boy who just overdosed on Dragon Ball Z and Pepto-Bismol.

The best/only good part of this cover disaster is that Subterranean Press later released a very, very delicately worded admission that the cover was Not What They Were Expecting, and shortly thereafter presented a different cover illustration for the actual printing:

“Our previous cover to John Scalzi’s dark fantasy novella, The God Engines, didn’t quite convey the spirit of the tale, so we’ve had it redone by SubPress favorite Vincent Chong.”

“Didn’t quite convey the spirit of the tale,” you say… Ah well, blessings upon independent presses that a. have the taste and b. actually take the time to effect quality control. That is dedication.

Also, is it just me or has the running theme for all the BBCF’s so far been “stuff that’s screaming and/or thrusting fists in the air”?

* corrected from “first-edition;” thank you to the scarily fast John Scalzi for pointing this out.

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Bad Book Covers Friday Archive

Roosterguarded

is the euphemism that Kakaner and another friend helped me come up with for how I felt after I walked a fair distance under rather chilly conditions, only to find that the target of my latest and much-anticipated awesome-bookstore visit, Argosy Books (116 East 59th Street, New York, New York) was CLOSED.

Approaching the target (green banner spotted ahead):

And it is…

…CLOSED WHYYYYY. On top of having beautifully lit and presented displays out for me to stare at longingly through the bars, they even had a “New Year’s Sale!” prominently advertised. Well I can’t abuse my savings account on behalf of your sale if you’re CLOSED, can I?

So my visit to Argosy had to be put off to another time, but I did get to see some fun bookish things when my brother and I ducked into the New York Public Library to poke around.

Continue reading Roosterguarded

Self-portrait, off the bookshelves

Andy passed on a nifty meme to Kakaner and me – pick 10 books off your bookshelves, with your eyes closed, then use them to tell a bit about yourself. Here goes!

Night Shadows: Twenthieth-Century Stories of the Uncanny, ed. Joan Kessler

The editor is my mother’s friend, which tells you that a. my mom has some pretty cool friends, and that b. I have a lot in common with this particular friend, because holy crap do I love stories of the uncanny. Aesthetically and literarily, I’m about 30% shameless Goth-in-disguise. Unfortunately, I have yet to read this, and the other volume that I was gifted by this friend – a collection of her translations of French ghost stories.

The Lady and the Unicorn, by Tracy Chevalier

Love historical fiction, love the Unicorn Tapestries, like Tracy Chevalier quite a bit, though I only got into her books via the Girl with a Pearl Earring bandwagon. I also own this in French, but have only read about two chapters of that version.

The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, W. Y. Evans-Wentz

One of my friends got me this when she spent a semester in Glasgow. Ummm yes, Celtic stuff, another of my longstanding obsessions. And fairies. Haven’t read this yet.

Birth of the Firebringer, by Meredith Ann Pierce

Okay… my thing about Meredith Ann Pierce is a little scary, and will probably have to be gone into at greater length at another time. Suffice it to say that I can’t imagine who I would have been had I never read any of her books. I picked the original hardcover, but I also own the paperback reprint. Also, more unicorns. Not gonna lie, I like unicorns. What is wrong with me?

The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

In my eyes, Ray Bradbury can do no wrong. The copy that I own of this is a mass-market paperback in terrifyingly bad condition, since it used to belong to my father and thus has been through many reads and moves.

The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper

And this would be one of the two books that started my obsession with Celtic mythology, and another core book in my “canon.”

100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories, ed. Robert Weinberg

Have I ever mentioned that I really, really like vampire fiction? Reviewed here.

Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams

…I’m a predictable nerd? Actually, out of all of the Hitchhiker’s books, this is the only one I disliked, though I can’t really blame Adams for the “I’m throwing my hands up and getting rid of the lot of you” approach to ending the series.

Selected Poems of Byron, Keats, and Shelley

Again, Romantigoth. I do read modern and contemporary poetry too, though. I actually haven’t touched this ever since I got it, but it’s a very pretty green leatherbound edition from… 1967. Crummy paper, though.

The Gormenghast Trilogy, by Mervyn Peake

More Romantigoth, more fantasy. Haven’t read it, beyond 15 pages a number of years back. Aiiieee. I’ve meant to ever since I saw the Masterpiece Theatre edition and began cultivating a crush on Jonathan Rhys Meyers, but… you know. Things happen. Books languish.

– E

The Woman in the Wall, by Patrice Kindl (1998) E

Date read: 3.22.06
Book from: Borrowed from Kakaner
Reviewer: Emera

book-kindl-woman

Rendered nearly invisible by her painful shyness, Anna is the middle girl of three sisters living with their mother in a rambling Victorian home. At seven years old, terrified by the impending threat of school, she retreats into passageways and secret rooms of her own construction, and lives within the walls of her home for the next seven and a half years. Anna is content to hide away as a sort of household ghost, nearly forgotten by even her family, until her own growth as a woman renders her “invisibility” no longer possible. A stray love note pushed through the walls of her refuge appeals to her developing emotions, and the time approaches for Anna to once more venture into the outside world.

I randomly spotted The Woman in the Wall on Kakaner’s bookshelf at some point around when we first began exchanging reading material on a regular basis, and the premise deeply appealed to me since I’m a. sorta shy and b. obsessed with secret nooks and passageways, to the point that a home-within-a-home sounds right up my alley. Even outside of my particular quirks, the concept is an emotionally powerful and imaginatively appealing one.

Unfortunately, Kindl’s writing isn’t up to the task. Although the book aims for a wistful, playful mix of Gothic fairy tale and magical realism, it increasingly dissolves into a weepy, unconvincing pastiche, with the narration lurching between “artsy,” “quirky” whimsy and banal adolescent histrionics. Too much pretension (or, more charitably, ambition), not enough substance. Though Anna’s story could have been a moving modern fairy tale about escapism and self-isolation, The Woman in the Wall more often seems clumsy, superficial, and implausible.

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Patrice Kindl

“A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica,” by Catherynne M. Valente (2008) E

Date read: 8?.09
Read from: Clarkesworld #20
Reviewer: Emera

I had previously mentioned “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica” as being one of my favorite short stories read in 2009, yet had never gotten around to posting a review.

I don’t want to spoil a single bit of it, so I’ll just say that it’s like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell except with Antarctican cartography (yes, duh – seriously, I refuse to reveal any of it, please just go read it if you’ve got the chance), and that it’s funny, delightfully imagined, and ravishingly beautiful. I rather wish it had won the 2009 World Fantasy Award that it was nominated for, but clearly that’s not up to me. So instead I’ll just flail about it here.

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Catherynne M. Valente
“Urchins, While Swimming,” by Catherynne M. Valente (2006) [E]