My regular “Fun With Friends” interview has now posted on SF Signal — and my February March guest is Ian Irvine.

Mainly we’re talking about Ian’s new novel Rebellion, but also about his writing generally — and with 29 novels to his credit, there is plenty to talk about! — but check it out and see for yourself:

Fun with Friends: Helen Lowe Talks with Ian Irvine

As always comments are welcome. 😉

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth series features locales and places from The Wall of Night series’ world of Haarth.

This week we’re starting on places in the world that begin with the letter “B.” 😉

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Barren Hills:  uninhabited hills to the south of the Border Mark.

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“Malian’s dark, slender brows were drawn together, the set of her young mouth thoughtful as she spun the table surface slowly round, so that the Wall and surrounding Gray Lands gave way to the Barren Hills, then to the River and all the countries to the south.”

~ from © The Heir Of Night: The Wall of Night Book One; Chapter 17 — Eye of the Storm

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 ““Just what we need,” said Garan. “A coterie of Stone priests.” He had led his company out of the Barren Hills just on dusk, intending to camp overnight by the Border Mark, only to find another group of travelers already settled in by the standing stone.”

~ from ©  The Gathering of the Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 28 — Border Crossing

As I know I have said before—so please excuse me for saying it all over again!—one of the great things about the internet is that it facilitates communication with fellow authors, even those on the far side of the world.

Those of you popped in last week will also see that this communication has recently led to my participation in the newly formed BookSworn — whom the “Welcome” post declared “today’s hottest new authors in fantasy.” (I like that! 😉 Say it again please!)

One of my fellow BookSworn authors is Stina Leicht, whose work has indeed enjoyed some very nice notice, and for both those reasons, not to mention just loving having new books to read, I am delighted that this week’s new additions to the TBR table are Books 1 and 2 from Stina’s The Fey And The Fallen series: of Blood and Honey, plus and Blue Skies from Pain. *

And if you’re wondering whether I’ve done an author swap with Stina just as I did with (yes–now fellow BookSworn-ers, too) Courtney Schafer, Teresa Frohock and Elspeth Cooper, you’re quite right: I have!

Now, just to give you a bit of the flavour of  The Fey And The Fallen series — here’s the backcover blurb for:

of Blood and Honey

“Fallen angels and The Fey clash against the backdrop of Irish/English conflicts of the 1970s in this stunning debut novel by Stina Leicht.

Liam never knew who his father was. The town of Derry had always assumed that he was the bastard of a Protestant. Liam’s  mother never spoke of the man, so Liam had assumed him dead.

But when the war between The Fey and the Fallen begins to heat up, Liam and the woman he loves are pulled into a conflict invisible to most humans — a war in which Liam’s father fights on the front lines. The centuries-old war between supernatural forces seems to mirror the political divisions in 1970s-era Ireland, and Liam is thrown headlong into both conflicts.

Only the direct intervention of Liam’s father, and a secret Catholic order dedicated to fighting The Fallen can save Liam from the mundane and supernatural forces around him, and from the darkness that lurks within.”

It sounds really interesting doesn’t it? Needless to say, I’m really looking forward to getting started on The Fey And The Fallen.

*Btw, looking at the second book title, who else thinks Stina might just be a Pink Floyd fan? 😉

UK/AU/NZ mass market paperback

Last week I received word that the mass market edition of The Heir of Night is being reprinted in the UK — that’s the very best kind of news for any book and author!

My sincere thanks to everyone in the UK who has supported The Wall of Night series by buying the book.

Because at the end of the day, that is the only thing that keeps books, series, and authors “in the game.”

And so long as I am telling tales that people enjoy reading, I do very much appreciate being able to stay in the game — on that note: time to push on with Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three!

Or as Sherlock Holmes (via Henry V and Shakespeare) would say: “The game is afoot!’ Onwards, indeed.

Ti
Akaroa Heads

Cordyline on a windswept point    stark
each frond stabbing
sharp as a taiaha’s  blade
defying the elements
facing down the ocean – that vast expanse
conquered first by Kiwa
the far voyaging     salt encrusted
sculpted by endless distance
always looking    ever longing for land
lying over the next line of horizon –
the darker smudge of blue
lifting to green above the deep swell
the first sighting    eyes shaded
of that solitary tree piercing sky
above a coastal headland    marking
the moment of transition
the place between.

(c) Helen Lowe

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First Published in Blackmail Press, “Crossed Cultures” Special Edition, 18 April 2008
Re-published, Crest to Crest: Impressions of Canterbury Prose & Poetry, Ed. Karen Zelas, Wily Publications, 2009

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Notes:

i) Ti Kouka—the Maori name for the NZ ‘cabbage tree’; scientific name Cordyline Australis
ii) Taiaha—a Maori stabbing spear, used now in ceremonies of greeting and challenge
iii) The Maori name for the Pacific ocean is Te Moananui a Kiwa, ‘the great ocean of Kiwa’, a mythic voyager

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I will be featuring poems that respond to works of art over the next while—not necessarily exclusively every week but as they come to hand, and thought I would start with one of my own: Ti, which was written in response to a print by Diana Adams, a New Zealand landscape painter. The print was given to me as a gift in 2004.

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub—and link to other Tuesday Poets posting around NZ and the world—either click hereor on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

UK/AUS/NZ

With the mass market edition of The Gathering Of The Lost recently published in the UK, I’ve been re-posting a few of the features from last year’s Blog Tour.

Today’s feature was first published on the Supernatural Underground on 1 April 2012 — almost but not quite a year ago!

I alluded to it in this month’s post on the Supe, as well, as part of my 1 March feature on “High Romantic Fantasy”, which I maintain is something quite different from Romance per se.  (I also followed up with a few more thoughts on March 4, here.)

But just because High Romantic Fantasy and Romance are quite different genres, doesn’t mean that they are completely foreign countries: their boundaries do march in places and even overlap, which is why I can write a post titled:

“R is For Romance in The Gathering Of The Lost:

“…When considering different aspects of the book, what better to talk about on the Supernatural Underground than romance in The Gathering of the Lost.

Because Malian and Kalan, the two central characters from the first book, The Heir of Night, aren’t kids anymore. They are five years older and so of course romance is going to be there in the story, especially as they are hanging out with other young people — and at least part of their adventures take place in the land of Emer, which even has a tradition of “springtime love”:

“A springtime love, Kalan thought now. It was one of the oldest traditions in the knightly history of Emer, with a cycle of songs composed around both the tradition and some of the more famous lovers.” 

Why springtime love? Well in the story it’s because of the nature of the society, where young people are brought up together and so of course there is love and romance — but they all know marriage is about political alliances and wealth and land, so such romances can usually never come to anything. But it’s also springtime love because romance is not only an inescapable part of the fabric of life, but also brings that bubble of joy and delight, not unlike the first hint of springtime in the air — however fleeting that moment may prove to be.

” … springtime love meant transience, coming into bloom and then gone again with the spring flowers. And already it was Midsummer …”

And of course this is epic fantasy so there has to be an element of the star-crossed and the doomed to its swag bag of romantic love. But there are also beginnings …

“The light brightened, growing stronger as the maelstrom fell away and she rose through impenetrable white mist. Unexpectedly, she smelled jasmine, as dizzyingly sweet as when she first stepped into the temple grounds. The mist thinned and trees appeared, their trunks a smooth dappling of light and shade. Somewhere in the distance, a nightingale was singing its moonlit song.

The nightingale, Malian knew, was one of the enduring motifs of Emerian springtime love. She wanted to smile, but already her bare feet were touching grass and the mist had grown fine as a veil, with only a single drift, like smoke, crossing the crescent of the blue moon overhead. A second moon, three-quarters full and green as winter twilight, shone lower toward the horizon …

as well as endings:

… The nightingale, which had been quiet for some time, was singing again and now the old Derai sorrow was all she heard of its song:  Kerem the Dark Handed and Emeriath; Xeria’s grief for Tasian; Yorindesarinen dying alone, her body hacked and riven, with the Chaos Worm’s venom racking her veins.”

So perhaps we are back to High Romantic Fantasy after all…

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But on a slightly other note,  it may be that sometimes you, too, struggle to keep the many shadings of genre and subgenre in speculative literature straight? My fellow Supernatural Underground author, Merrie Destefano, addressed this very question in her March 10 post. To clarify the fine distinctions between: —

‘Creature—yay!
Creature—run!
Creature—smooch!
Creature—thwack!”

just click on:

Confused About What Genre You’re Writing?

And — as always — enjoy!

“Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.”

~ Carl Sagan

Andrew Robins did a “proper” review of Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Fractal Prince recently, so this is going to be a very brief reading report, not a reiteration of that review.

But you’ll also recall that I read and enjoyed Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief last year, so I was very keen to read the second book in the series for myself. Like The Quantum Thief it is set in a future solar system in which human beings and the societies they inhabit have become as much virtual as real. There also appears to be a war going on between those who wish to see society fully uploaded into a virtual existence (think Matrix here) and those who have other objectives—although I remain unclear as to what those objectives are at this point in the series.  Just to add in further layers, there is also an internal conflict going on within the uploader faction.

Like Andrew, I did enjoy The Fractal Prince, mostly for one of the reasons I mentioned in relation to The Quantum Thief last year: “it’s not only definitely space opera, but a richly baroque variant distinguished by the sheer imagination of the world building.” I not only like the whole ‘verse Rajaniemi has created, but also enjoyed the specific world of Sirr (on the last remnant of Earth) in this book—effectively the counterpart of the Oubliette in the first book.

I also liked that readers get to learn more about several of the characters, particularly Mieli and Perhonen and the backstory to their mission.

Overall, I still enjoyed the book a lot—in terms of sheer imagination, I think it’s a series that would be hard to beat over the past few years. But although the ethos of this story is what Andrew Robins described as “a story with layers, as well as plenty of smoke-and-mirrors”, I did not feel that the twists and turns hung together quite as well as they did in the earlier book.  In fact there were elements where at the end I thought: “What on earth was that all about? Why was it in the book?” As well as: “How the heck did that happen at all?”

Now it may be that these apparent disconnections are simply a failure of perception on my part. Or it may be that they will resolve in the third book—I do hope so. But even if they don’t, I will still hold to my view that overall I enjoyed the book, liking many of the characters a great deal and loving the extravagant imagination of the world building.

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So how about you—what are you  reading and enjoying this weekend?

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth series features locales and places from The Wall of Night series’ world of Haarth.

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“Arun-En:  a town on the Wildenrush river, on the boundaries of The River Lands .”

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“‘The whole world comes to Ij in the springtime’—isn’t that what they say?” He addressed the gray-clad rider cheerfully. “Just my luck to be going the other way as the festival’s beginning! But Arun-En, on the Wildenrush, has lost its minstrel and someone must take her place.” He settled the pack on his back into a more comfortable position.”

~ from © The Gathering of the Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 1 — The Road To Ij

I sometimes think “…there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so…” much fun as receiving new books in the post!

Last week’s book fun was an advanced review copy of Juliet Marillier’s first short story collection, Prickle Moon, which is due for release in April (2013) from Ticonderoga Press.

The book contains 14 tales, many previously published but 5 written specifically for this collection, including the eponymous Prickle Moon.

One of the previously published stories is Juggling Silver, which you may recall I featured as part of my A Peek Inside Tales for Canterbury series, here. Lovers of Ms Marillier’s Sevenwaters series will also be pleased to find the novelette, “‘Twixt Twilight And Water” in the collection.

Prickle Moon has already received a very positive review from Publisher’s Weekly: click here to read — early review.

As a taster, here’s that excerpt from Juggling Silver again:

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from Juggling Silver

by Juliet Marillier

“Grandmother kept her silver plates in a row on a high shelf. They sat there looking down at us like three round eyes. Every day she took them off the shelf and polished them with a soft, red cloth, and then she put them carefully back. If we climbed up, we could see our faces in them. Ulli climbed up a lot.

“Ulli, Ulli, what are we going to do with you?” Grandmother would say. “Eight years old and never out of trouble! Eight years old and still babbling baby talk! Get down off there before you break something!”

The plates were very old and very valuable. They had belonged to Grandmother’s great-great-grandmother. On the rims of them were silver berries and leaves, owls and wolves, whales and dolphins. Grandmother called them the tree plate, the eye plate and the sea plate. Sometimes she let me hold them.

“Careful, Sami! That’s treasure you have in your hands!” She never let Ulli hold them.

Ulli was different.The other boys and girls his age ran around and played with a ball. They hunted for shells and went swimming in the rock pools. They helped their mothers to salt fish and gave their fathers a hand with tarring boats or untangling nets. I could talk to them and they’d understand me. Not Ulli. My little brother wasn’t safe on the beach by himself. He’d just walk into the water and keep on going. I’d waded in and fished him out hundreds of times. Ulli didn’t understand what people told him. And he couldn’t talk, not the way other folk talked. All he would say was a sort of rhyme, over and over, in words that didn’t make any sense: tipi api sipi oh, tipi api sipi oh. He’d sit on the bottom step outside Grandmother’s hut and play with a little pile of round, black stones, throwing them up in the air and catching them one, two, three, and all the time he’d be saying it, tipi api sipi. There was no point yelling, “Stop it!” Words meant nothing to my brother. Grandmother said Ulli would never be able to cast a net or paddle a canoe, not even when he grew up. All he would ever do was talk nonsense and juggle stones and get into trouble. It was just as well he had me to watch over him. Taking care of Ulli was my job.”