Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon

I signed up for the Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon because I needed something to nudge my reading this year. I've been suffering a weird slump this year where I could start books fine, but couldn't finish them. My plan was to finishing some pesky books on my TBR shelf and maybe mixing in some short stories/ graphic novels, if I was lagging.

What I managed to finish:

1. Mary Robinette Kowal's Lady Astronaut of Mars is her bittersweet Hugo Award nominated novelette. This felt strangely timely now thinking about my aging family members.

2. The Mask of the Red Panda TPB: I've listened to a lot of Decoder Ring Theatre's Red Panda Adventures audio show, so it was easy to "hear" the main characters. What is harder to adjust to is the artwork, since the "theatre of the mind" means you provide how you think the characters and world should look like. Best example was Max Falconi aka the Stranger who I pictured more as a Zatara/Mandrake type, not the Zorro half mask. As the Red Panda, it's a "interesting" problem to have!

3. Robin Bridges' "Unfailing Light", the second book in her Katerina Chronicles, is set in a fantasy embued version of 19th century Russian court of the Romanovs. This has stubbornly been on my TBR pile for awhile, so I finished the last fifty-sixty pages of it today. I also started book three "The Morning Star" but don't anticipate finishing it tonight.

4. Seanan McGuire's "Ghosts of Bourbon Street" is a short story set in her Incryptid universe featuring the stars of the first two books on a road trip to meet the family... if your family is slightly less traditional than most. Along the way, they get a peek at the ghost world. This is a great setup for "Sparrow Hill Road", although you might want to read it after "Half Off Ragnarok".  

Brandon Sanderson signing

I’ve done a number of author signings over the years. Most have been on the smaller scale, nestled into an independent bookstore or library. But it has been awhile since I’ve been a signing for a bestselling author at a big chain bookstore, where you needed to worry about tickets and time and endurance. Such was the case Thursday night. I was used to a nice easy sprint. I was unprepared for a full out marathon.

Brandon Sanderson is an author of epic fantasy, including his Mistborn trilogy and his current Stormlight Archive. He was also tapped to fill the shoes of the late Robert Jordan in finishing his “Wheel of Time” series. He co-hosts a Hugo-award winning writing podcast and teaches creative writing. His books regularly appear on the New York Times best sellers lists.

All of which goes to say Sanderson is not a niche author by any stretch. So I should have been worried when I saw the notice yesterday afternoon that his event at the Tysons Corner Barnes & Noble would be a ticketed event. You’d need to buy his latest book to get one of the fabled wristbands that allowed you to get your books signed. The bookstore ran out of his backlist fairly early on, not that seemed to deter anyone. That should also have been my first warning.

But what really alarmed me was the mob scene I saw at the store. The upper floor was crowded with people with nary a seat to be had. The spillover were standing by the bookshelves and surrounding the signing area several people deep. The first people showed up when the store opened at 10AM! If I’d known it was going to be so crowded, I might have taken some time off work.

The bookstore was quite well organized as far as the actual signing. The wristbands were broken down into zones, like boarding a flight, so when they called your section, it was time to line up. By the time I arrived, they had already handed out bracelets through zone E and at least one more zone behind that one. The line wound its way up and down and around through the fiction and science fiction sections, so we had plenty of time to window shop. Or mock cover trends unceremoniously. Sanderson warned people outright that he would be there all night, so if we wanted to go off and grab a bite to eat and maybe catch a movie, he’d understand.

Sanderson gave out little Szeth stand up cards for people that asked questions and wore costumes and even to the guy that showed up the earliest. He enjoyed flinging the cards towards the person like a frisbee. Sometimes it came close to its target and well other times… let’s just say it was entertaining?

To start, Sanderson did a quick 15 minute speech that explained about his books and his career. Then he’d do a question and answer session and reading and finally the actual signing. The pre-signing stuff took about an hour all told, which is probably fine when you’re sitting down, but brutal when you’re on your feet. I was grateful for the comfortable shoes, but my knees gave out a good way into his talk.

Sanderson started as a chemistry major of all things, but eventually studied creative writing. He used to be a professor until his schedule prevented it. Now he teaches one class on writing sf/fantasy, which he’s trying to keep. He wrote twelve(!!!) horrible books before he was published. He was working on the original incarnation of Way of Kings when Elantris (#4) was bought. He dumped everything he loved about epic fantasy into Way of Kings and didn’t care how long it wound up. So if it wound up 400K instead of the usual 100-200K for epic fantasy?

He showed the original WoK to them when they asked innocently “What else are you working on?” In what sounds like a trend in Sanderson’s career, they looked at the idea and went “Brandon, what are you thinking? Artwork?” But he willingly admitted there were problems with the original and he decided to shelve it for awhile.

Sanderson only touched on briefly the enormous privilege and honor of being asked to continue Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books, describing them as “enormous freight train”. He mentioned how he’d learned some things from writing those books. Jordan could weave multiple arcs/POVs very well. On the other hand, Sanderson could also step back and recognize some of Jordan’s flaws. Ironically this gave him the courage/confidence to think “Yes, I can write Way of Kings now”. His editors were of course more concerned about getting the *other* books on his plate out on time. Stormlight Archive is planned as 10 books with two sets of five books.

Words of Radiance started life as what he described as a horrible Dragonlance book. Sanderson originally had all his titles for the Stormlight Archive all mapped out with the idea each would named after a fictional book from the universe. (I can only imagine his editors/publishers/marketers going “Oh god, writers, there is a reason we don’t let them name things.”) He was convinced however that maybe naming “The Book of Endless Pages” was perhaps not the best choice for a 1000+ page behemoth. No sense in giving the critics more firepower. So suddenly he had to come up with a completely new title and work it into the book somehow. He called “Words of Radiance” the hardest three words he’d written for this book. It took so long to come up with one that the marketing material all read “Unnamed Brandon Sanderson Project” for the longest time.

The Mistborn books are envisioned as three sets of trilogies -- one trilogy is epic fantasy, one is urban fantasy, and another science fiction. Alloy of Law and its followup are not part of these books. He did them when he realized how long it’d be before he’d do this universe again. Again his editor/agent is going “Wow, you’re certainly... ambitious” whenever he’d give them these crazy ideas.

Throughout the speech & Q&A, he’s nimbly going back and forth on all his different projects. I amazed he can keep them all straight, especially given how tired he must be during a book tour. He loves jumping around between different projects, so he’ll write one Stormlight book and then a Steelheart book and then he’s onto the Arithmatist, rather than working on one project continuously.

The Q&A session followed his initial talk. He tried to avoid spoilers for his books, which I appreciated. Questions ranged from what he looked for in artists to what would happen if Hoid appeared in our universe. Sanderson pointed out Hoid is only here when there is a presence of magic, so we might have a reason to be worried. He was also asking about his tendency to give his magic systems a scientific approach, rationalizing that most of his worlds would at least have reached the Renaissance and the basic scientific method. He is one of the few authors I've encountered to consider technological progress into his worldbuilding; most seem to stop at medieval.

After the Q&A session, Sanderson gave a short reading. Instead of reading from one of his books, he read an unpublished short story he wrote in between “Steelheart” and “Words of Radiance”. He hopes to go back to the story at some point.

Then came the waiting for my zone to be called. I had a snack and drink in the B&N cafe and rested my feet for awhile and listened to the conversations around me. The ages ranged widely from teenagers to older fans. You could choose to have your books personalized or if you were in a hurry he was pre-signing some books so you could grab and go. In retrospect, if I’d know how late we’d run, I might have considered it.

By the time I wound up at the table to get my books signed, the store had officially closed, unless you were there for the signing. So yes, we closed the store and possibly then some, since he was still signing books when I left nearly at midnight.  I was physically fried, but it was nice to say hello and to thank him for the Writing Excuses podcasts I’ve enjoyed. I had to hoped to ask him for encouragement/advice when the writing isn’t working, but that’ll have to wait for another day.

NoVaTeen Book Festival

Last weekend I was able to spend a day indulging in my recent love of YA fiction with NoVaTeen Book Festival sponsored by One More Page Books and Arlington County Library. Held at the local high school, the festival included an amazing lineup of 23 Young Adult authors, featuring Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and Marie Lu.

Inside the event, the festival had tables set up from One More Page Books with books from the authors, free swag, and most importantly snacks. This last bit can't be overstated because the high school, while easily within walking distance of Metro, is pretty far from restaurants and cafes. So it was good to be able to grab a quick bite and hydrate before the next panel. Unfortunately the initial part of the event was a comedy of errors as the poor OMP booksellers valiantly tried to get wifi to work so they could sell all those books in their nice piles. You were allowed three outside books, so I brought my copy of Victoria Schwab’s Unbound and bought Meagan Spooner and Amie Kaufman's These Broken Stars and Marie Lu's Legend. The event ended with a mass signing at Arlington’s Central library.

The opening focus panel was on Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, author of the Alice series and Newberry-award winning Shiloh. I had heard the name before, enough to be impressed, but had never had occasion to read her books. Checking her bibliography suggests I was just off the generation for her books.  By the time she was popular, I was at college and discovering new science fiction authors. She talked about growing up in the Great Depression and how it impacted her family and how much she'd look forward to "story" time where her family would read from the classics. She's had such a wide career from writing little short stories for a church magazine to her novels to even her autobiography. She'd never intended the Alice books to become the long ranging series, covering 28 books! She talked about how they'd become the most challenged and banned books in the country, because she covered topics that were considered taboos. As an example, Naylor picked a sequence from "Alice in April" where she is struggling with the changes of puberty and the cruelty of boys.

After the Naylor speech, I went to the first breakout panel. These were smaller focus panels where two authors would talk and answer questions, held in one of the classrooms. Each breakout panel was named after a song title, so Victoria Schwab and Marie Lu's was "Wrecking Ball". Schwab and Lu both described at length how they'd become writers and their respective publishing careers. Their trajectories were eerily similar in some ways.

Victoria Schwab came from a poetry background originally and discovered writing novels when she was trying out other forms of writing. She also changed majors SIX times in her college career, which makes my one switch pale by comparison. But she'd taken classes in nearly everything and discovered  narrative in all of them. Her first book had sparkling prose that everyone loved, but no plot. This confused people no end. Near Witch, Schwab’s first published novel, was a dark fairy tale where all the children disappear after a stranger comes to a town. Setting wasn’t a focus in fairy tales. They could literally happen in any little village or any forest. Marie Lu had thought about becoming a lawyer or doctor, a nice stable career, which her family heartily approved of, until she had the opportunity to get a video game internship and took a chance on the creative side.

Lu also gave a wonderful final speech as the featured author, so I learned even more about her background. She learned to write because her mother made her to improve her English after they’d emigrated from China. Their first experience of American culture was seeing Mardi Gras in New Orleans! But I felt very old when Marie Lu described living in Beijing at a tender age of five and seeing the "local" Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. I was graduating high school two weeks later. Perspective.

 I laughed a little learning that Marie Lu had written fanfiction in her youth. She loved animal stories, so her favorites were Brian Jacques' Redwall and Sonic the Hedgehog. As a sf/fantasy fan of Eddings and Tolkien, Lu wrote her own horribly bad books, including the dread behemoth book of a party going after the shiny object and… even she willingly admitted "okay, yes, it was Lord of the Rings."

One piece of writing advice I heard repeated throughout the day was that you often didn’t need just one spark of an idea, but several, often combining in ways you hadn’t imagined. Her Legend series came from two sources : rewatching the old Les Miserables movie with Liam Neeson, thinking a detective vs thief would be a fun idea. And a map showing the world would look if the freshwater ice melted, including destroying her hometown of Los Angeles. Rather than be horrified, she reacted like most writers "Oh cool I can use that!"

Schwab and Lu answered questions from the audience. Some questions were process related, others for encouraging aspiring writers. We were cautioned not to ask spoilerly questions, which was a relief from my perspective. We had a nice discussion about Word vs Scrivener. Scrivener worked wonders for Schwab with her multiple documents and windows – although she admitted it worked only when she started the project there, rather than import an existing one.

After the first breakout session, I grabbed a bite to eat and then headed into the auditorium for the next panel. "The Scientist" was all about the intersection of science and technology and morality. Jon Skovron was co-moderating. He'd been at the library's Shut Up and Write event I had attended last year. Fascinating topic. I wish I’d been more familiar with the authors to appreciate their answers more.

In between the panels, I was amused when the auditorium played music, including "Carry on My Wayward Son". I half expected to hear discussions of demon hunters in the next panel.

Instead the “Survivor" panel showcased authors with characters in difficult situations. Again I appreciated being introduced to authors I had not encountered and hearing more about their writing process. Meagan Spooner’s These Broken Stars proved a particular challenge, since it was written with her writing partner Amie Kaufman in Australia. One wanted to write about a shipwreck and one wanted a space story, so they combined the idea. What surprised (and gratified) them was hearing that one particular character was embraced by readers rather than ripped to shreds. Kirsten Simmons was imagining a world without the Bill of Rights and other statues. Simmons’ character remembered the way it’d been before, so there was a tendency to survive by just getting by, put head down and don’t attract attention, and whether that was the right way. Both Jessica Spotswood and Claudia Gray wrote about witches, but approached them differently. Spotswood’s books were about the power also of sisterhood and their combined strength. Claudia Gray’s witches had to maintain their secrecy, even when it prompted awkward questions. How do you tell that local boy that well… yeah, actually he *was* cursed.

The only thing that bothered me in the Q&A session was the question about world building. To me, just because something is set in the “real” world doesn’t mean I have to research or think it through any less than if it’s a Middle Earth style fantasy. There was, though, a hilarious sidebar on the research questions you’ve had to ask your friends in the course of writing. For instance, how *do* you explain to the State Department your fascination with dead bodies and massive injuries? And how your friends go from “Why do you need to know this?” to “Oh, it’s for a book, isn’t it?” in the course of knowing you as a writer.

The second breakout session featured Diana Peterfreund and Meagan Spooner discussing science fiction in YA. This was more low key and informal than the earlier breakout session. Lu & Schwab were very business-like in their approach, but quite fun and personable, where Peterfreund and Spooner gabbed like old best buddies having a grand old time. At length they discussed the covers for their books and the market struggles, especially the boy book vs girl book demands. Peterfreund had a librarian tell her that she loved her second Star book, but she couldn't get boys to read it because of the cover. Spooner admitted asking the publisher if they realized the cover for These Broken Stars would turn off potential boy readers. Publishers didn't care; they were perfectly okay with losing that potential market. Another unfortunate side effect of the pretty covers: you might not guess they’re set in outer space.

Markets and labels was another common refrain I’d heard throughout the day. Some writers were not allowed to call their books “science fiction” or “dystopia” because the Trend was over. Yet Jenna Black truly believed her “Replica” series where you can create a duplicate of yourself if you have enough money was a *true* dystopia, in that her science was intended towards “the good” and went horribly horribly wrong. But her publisher wouldn’t call it that.  It’s a bit of quandary for writers. But all of them dissuaded wannabe writers from “chasing the trend” because by the time your book is out the trend may be long over.

In the end, the first NoVaTeen Book Festival was a great success. I was exhausted by the end of it, but I quite enjoyed the book festival and meeting all the authors and hearing their experiences.  If I have a regret for NoVaTeen, it was that I wasn’t more daring.  I do lean more heavily towards science fiction and paranormal sides of YA in my own reading. Ah, well, judging by the bookshelves, there is plenty of time to learn.

Busy Fall

So it has been a busy month and a half, starting with two comic book conventions and then hitting a literal wall of book and reading events. In retrospect, I wish I'd gone to the Arlington Library's 813 Ball, a 1920s/Great Gatsby inspired fundraiser complete with band. The ball takes its name from the Dewey Decimal location for literature because well... librarians. The ball coincided with the fall book sale which was the usual chaos on opening night.



On September 19th afternoon, I went over to the National Spy Museum to see Elizabeth Wein. She was signing copies of "Code Name Verity" and the newly released "Rose Under Fire." It was a small event, so I was able to talk to her a little, how so many of my friends on twitter particularly had loved (and sobbed) through "Verity" but carefully hadn't spoiled me. Interestingly Wein warned me that the first chunk of "Verity" was a tough go, so wouldn't hold it against me if I didn't love it unconditionally. The Museum shop person had read "Rose Under Fire" to the underprivileged teen group she worked with and they were now reading Verity as well. Wein was bowled over by this news and all the acclaim for her work.

Then September 27th was the V.E. Schwab "Vicious" event at my local independent bookstore One More Page Books. Since the book is about superpowers and villains and heroes, the book event invited people to dress up in costume. She'd have masks (red for villain, black for hero) and a cool set of trading cards you could obtain for preordering the book or attending her signings. I'm not a natural cosplayer, but I figured I could enter the spirit when I saw this retro Black Widow t-shirt at the Spy Museum shop. (Romita doesn't actually portray Natasha wearing heels with that then new costume, I might add, but I love the style of art.) I paired it with an old goldish bracelet and OPI's "Affair in Red Square" nail polish for effect. I felt very Polyvore Black Widow. The other three people were pretty off the rack too -- a Lizzie Borden in black clothes and an axe as prop, a lady in a black cocktail dress and wand as Bellatrix and another in suit jacket / name tag as Agent Jemma Simmons from Agent of SHIELD because her name actually was Simmons. Bellatrix won mainly because Schwab admitted a love for the character.



Then Schwab gave a reading from "Vicious" and answered some questions. Some were book specific, like whether there was a traditional hero in "Vicious" or not. She also talked about the storytelling format since the book covers several time periods. She wrote it in order but then had markers to tell herself where things fit chronologically. She intended the chapters to be in short chunks like panels in a comic book. (I'm picturing some of the awful DC/Marvel captions where the story starts "NOW..." to cue you and so forth.) She wrote the book over about two years in between other book deadlines and wasn't originally about Victor and Eli. She had a different leading character and she was writing the backstory on the rival gangs and realized they were more interesting than she realized. She didn't tell anyone about the project for awhile. She talks a bit about writing "Vicious" on Scalzi's blog here and Tor.com published a short story Warm Up as a lead-up to the release. (Hilariously they didn't mention it was tied to "Vicious" so some of the regular sf/fantasy commenters were confused everyone knew about some upcoming book and assumed it was spammy.)

She has now three publishers: one for middle grade (Scholastic), one for YA (Hyperion) and adult (Tor) and will publish 4 books next year. (EEP!) She was asked why Vicious couldn't be YA and it wasn't the ages as much as the tone and black humor that she didn't think fit that mindset. She hates cliffhangers, so even her series book feel like they can stand on their own. She's more of a classic Marvel comics fan, although she did her thesis on Bat-villains and how they're personifications of chaos/Batman's fears. She just prefers the Marvel shades of grey. She's an X-men fan, Magneto specifically.

What I find fascinating as a "no, no, don't tell the authors" fangirl of long standing is how Schwab has utterly embraced the fans, hoping someone will write the Victor/Eli epic of her dreams. She finds it the best compliment that someone wants to spend more time with her characters and world. She has since even started a forums for people to play in.

Then last week my local library hosted their first YA lit/writing event. They're gearing up for Nanowrimo in a big way, at least on the teen front. I've asked about the adult side of the coin and there is some furious discussions about the idea, so hopefully something will happen on that front. I didn't realize how much I missed having real people to talk to about writing. Not that the Internet isn't lovely (I do love you all really), it's just isolating at times, too.

For the event, they had several YA authors to answer questions, along with the teen librarian to give her perspective on Nanowrimo and reading. The first panel was all about "rough drafts" and the process, rather than the business/market side of things author events get bogged down on lately. The authors were Diana Peterfreund, Jessica Spotswood, and Jon Skovron. I was only vaguely familiar with Peterfreund; she'd done a book signing at One More Page fairly recently. Her "For Darkness Shows the Stars" is a science fiction version of Jane Austen's "Persuasion". The second book in the series "Across a Star Swept Sea" started life as Scarlet Pimpernel in space. The other two authors I wasn't as familiar with, but they gave some good advice about outlines and when to start projects and how to juggle real life/writing. (What I gathered from this is wishing my commute was longer -- mine is strangely too short for writing or podcasts/audiobooks anymore.) The event seemed very well attended and most would-be authors, whether YA genre or otherwise.

All in all, I'm a little worn out by book/author events, but encouraged leading up in Nanowrimo. As much as I love reading, I miss writing as much.

Marissa Meyer in Bethesda

I was delighted when I heard Marissa Meyer was planning a book signing at the Bethesda Library in Bethesda, MD. I was little nervous after my previous excursion to this location, but this time I was far from the only adult reader present. The crowd was much smaller, so it was easier to find a seat and enjoy the event. Politics and Prose had both Cinder and Scarlet on sale with some of the proceeds benefiting the library.

Meyer started by explaining the story behind Cinder and Scarlet and how it all started with Sailor Moon fanfiction and a Star Trek walk-on. She'd been writing for some time, cutting her teeth in the Sailor Moon anime fandom. She was surprised so many people in the room knew the series; apparently she's asked the question in other locations and they've usually stared at her. She explained how she'd entered a Sailor Moon writing contest where she had use several elements -- she chose science fiction and fairy tales. Because Sailor Moon has its share of talking cats, she wrote a version of Puss in Boots.

Still with the science fiction/fairytale blend stuck in her brain, she had a Cinderella inspired dream where instead of her shoe falling off, her whole foot came off, thus inspiring the idea of the cyborg Cinderella. She merrily continued planning and plotting and gathering inspiration when Nanowrimo came around again in November. Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month where participants try to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days or less.

The Seattle ML upped the ante for that year -- the person writing the highest word count would receive a walk-on role in the new JJ Abrams Star Trek movie. Meyer comes from a very geeky family, the sort that wasn't above dressing in costume for Star Trek movie nights or apparently completely redoing their attic as a Enterprise bridge! So the walk-on prize was very exciting to her. She'd done Nano successful several times; she'd just have to write a lot more. She wound up writing 150K for that Nano comprising of Cinder and Scarlet and some of Cress. She actually did not win the contest, falling about a thousand words short of her victory and finishing third. Undeterred Meyer went back and revised the hell out of the first book until it was ready, found an agent and then they shopped it around to various publishers. They sent the book out on a Friday and received their first offer on Monday. (I should have asked if they'd shopped it as one book or the complete series, because the titles were already lined up in the first hardcover.) The funniest punchline is she received the news of the book selling on November 1st, the first day of Nanowrimo.

Meyer read two small sections of "Scarlet" aloud. One introduced Scarlet and Wolf, the new main characters in the second novel. The other section reintroduced Cinder to reassure her fans that she wasn't gone from the story. The scene was from Captain Thorne's POV who she described as possibly her favorite character of the whole series.

Before Meyer took questions, she discussed fairy tales and the parts of the story left out in most adaptations. Her examples included Little Mermaid, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. I'd heard the unsanitized version of Cinderella before; Sondheim had incorporated the stepsisters chopping up their feet into his musical Into the Woods. But instead of the birds being the ones to alert the prince it was spirit of Cinderella's mother. (I shudder how they'd have to adjust their feet if the glass slippers were geared to fit my narrow feet.) I had not heard the earliest version of Little Red Riding Hood with the cannibalism and nudity. What an... edifying version to take to dinner with me.

Then she opened up the floor for questions:

- Four books are in the series and they cover different fairy tales. Cinder is Cinderella, Scarlet is Little Red Riding Hood, Cress is Rapunzel and Winter is Snow White. But all the main characters will continue to appear throughout the series.
- Wolf's photo inspiration was the Turkish pop star Tarkan. An audience member surprised her by knowing his name!
- She picked her locations because of their connections with the original fairy tales. For instance, one of the earliest Cinderella stories was found in 9th century China, while Little Red Riding Hood is tied either to France or parts of Eastern Europe. The fourth book deals with the moon, so there's connection there.
- She didn't have a specific ethnicity in mind for Cinder, thinking she was mixed -- brown hair, tanned skin, very thin and no curves. She wouldn't stand out in Eastern Commonwealth, but rather blend in.
- Meyer was not mechanically minded. Her husband rebuilt old cars and helped explain certain parts and sometimes she'd rename parts/tools so they'd fit her world/voice better. She did laugh when her neighbor read her book and asked why Cinder hadn't used a specific tool used for removing screws in the one of the first scenes. She hadn't known such a tool existed, but allowed as how it would have been a boring scene if she'd used it.

Two of the fans behind me had created a pair of adorable necklaces -- one of Cinder in her ballgown w/ cyborg arm and leg and one of Sailor Moon/Usagi.

Vive le France!

 January is over alas. I have finished three books for my Mt TBR list and started several on my Classics Club list. "Persuasion" is still lagging somewhat, so I didn't complete the Unputdownables read-a-long but I hope to tackle finishing it soon. So with the calendar changing to February, I need to find my non-existent passport and say "Bon Voyage" and say a hearty "Bonjour!" to the Classic Club's French February. Initially I hesitated coming so soon after the "Persuasion" read-a-long, but Choderlos de Laclos' "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is already on my list and I happen to adore epistolary novels. The choice of books fits nicely into the Month of Letters challenge for February.

Vintage SF: Randall Garrett's Murder and Magic

In 1199, Richard the Lionhearted died from a crossbow wound at the Seige of Chaluz, leaving his neglected English throne in the hands of his brother Prince John.

At least that's one way the story goes. But what if history had gone a little differently?

In the world of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy, Richard the Lionhearted recovered from his wounds and settled down to the running of England and France. Without heirs of his own, Richard entrusted the kingdom over to Arthur, the capable son of his dead brother Geoffrey. Arthur made a brilliant marriage and expanded the kingdom until the Plantagenet Empire was the most powerful on the planet. 

But this is also a world where the laws of magic were codified and treated as a science. Those with the Talent are trained to be sorcerers or healers, fully licensed and sanctioned by the Church. Healers perform their work through the laying on of hands, allowing people to live longer. But superstition and distrust hasn't disappeared completely from this world, creating an underworld of hedge wizards and "black magic" users that feed off the general populace's fears. These fears are also encouraged by agents abroad.

The Chief Criminal Investigator to Richard, Duke of Normandy, Lord Darcy must solve the unsolvable, while aided by Master Sean O Lochlainn. Lord Darcy is the master detective of this universe, lacking any Talent of his own, except his remarkable mind and powers of observation. Master Sean O Lochlainn is a master sorcerer with a particular interest in forensics. Lord Darcy and Master Sean work as an able team, confident in each other's special abilities.

The first Lord Darcy collection, Murder and Magic, was published in 1979, but all four stories were published earlier. Each story is what would be called "fair play" murder mysteries as all the clues are provided. Master Sean provides the bulk of the magical evidence, quick to lecture on the various magical laws and how they relate to a particular situation. Lord Darcy does his own investigating and draws his own conclusions. Very often he just needs Sean to back up his suspicions.

Rereading these stories, I was struck by several things. A reviewer commented on the religious overtones of the series and it's quite true. The Church is a strong component of everyday life in this universe.  Priests and clerics appear as characters throughout the series. Only "The Muddle of the Woad" shows a glimpse of how they regard challenges to traditional Christian life with the Society of Albion with its claims to Druidic paganism. No Reformation is mentioned, but compared to say Keith Roberts' Pavane, there's also no reference to the Pope or Vatican in this first collection. All the same I could see how the religious references might feel overwhelming.

What irked me throughout the collection were the women or lack thereof, although to his credit, there were no female murder victims. But there are also no female magic users and with the Church so heavily involved, one wonders if they're even allowed to wield magic. In "Stretch of Imagination", Damoselle Barbara allows as she has "above average" Talent, but no one asks why she is never trained, so one could see her perspective cast aside as feminine intuition, nothing more. None of the stories pass the Bechdel test either; even there are multiple female characters, they don't interact with each other.

Garrett is also quite repetitive as a writer. Presumably Garrett was trying to make the stories to standalone, so he had to repeat his world's history. That meant reading about Richard's survival multiple times and he didn't vary the story all that much. He also used the same pet phrases when describing certain characters, like Lord Darcy speaking Anglo-French with an English accent or describing Master Sean as the tubby Irish sorcerer. As separate stories, it probably wasn't so bad, but taken together in one volume, the combined effect could get rather tiresome.

In his lifetime, Randall Garrett published two Lord Darcy short story collections (Murder & Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates) and one novel (Too Many Magicians). All of these stories, plus several uncollected stories, were published in one volume Lord Darcy by Baen Books in 2002. Michael Kurland also published a pair of Lord Darcy books continuing the series with Ten Little Wizards and A Study in Sorcery.

All told I still enjoyed this first collection. Lord Darcy has a certain undeniable charm and I love his interactions with Master Sean. Since it's the first series of stories, I'm willing to allow a certain leeway to see if Randall Garrett develops the universe further.  This series both fascinates and frustrates me as a reader. I love the world and how it melds so well with the mystery genre. I intend to continue my Lord Darcy reading with the rest of the series, so we'll see if my misgivings are assuaged.