Book Log 33/2012 - Patricia Wrede: Caught in Crystal

Patricia Wrede's back-catalogue is now being published electronically. This one seems to be published as YA but certainly crosses age boundaries well.

Kayl, a single (widowed) mother with two children is an innkeeper living a quiet life. Her biggest worries are taxes and a suitor she would rather have as a friend. When Corrana, a member of the magical Sisterhood of Stars arrives on her doorstep, closely followed by Glyndon, Varnan mage and her late husband's friend, her quiet life is overturned.

Kayl has not always been an innkeeper. Fifteen years ago she was a member of the Sisterhood herself, a warrior and a strategist, but when a joint mission to the Twisted Tower with three Varnan wizards (including Glyndon) went horribly wrong she decided enough was enough. She gave up her place in the sisterhood, married Kevran, one of the wizards, and settled down. Since his death (from natural causes - yes it happens even to wizards) she's carried on running the inn and raising her children, Dara and Mark, alone.

But that first mission to the Twisted Tower has had disastrous after effects and now Corrana is here to persuade her to take up her sword on behalf of the Sisterhood again and return to the place where her friends died. With a posse of dangerous magic seekers on their trail Kayl, Glyndon, Corrana and the children set off across country to the Sisterhood and from there, after some negotiating, to the Twisted Tower.

It's great to see the heroine of the story is a single mum with two kids. If not exactly middle aged, she's at least in her mid 30s. (Note I would have classed that as middle aged once, but now it seems incredibly young.) Her kids are not bolt-on extras, but are real people in their own right, the daughter, Dara, on the brink of growing up. There's a romance blossoming between Glyndon and Kayl though this isn't central to the story and is played down – much of the development off the page because a lot of the travelling (which takes months) is glossed over. The Sisters, however, apart from Corrana and to a certain extent Kayl's old team mate Barthelmy are a bit interchangeable.

As ever Patricia Wrede's worldbuilding is superb. There are humans and a glimpse of non-human races, too. There's a wider world of politics and racial tensions bubbling beneath the surface and a fair bit of infighting within the Sisterhood itself. There are – I believe – five books set in the universe of Lyra. This is the only one I've read so far, but the world is fully fleshed-out and you always feel as though there's a lot more going on here off the page.

Book Log 34/2012 - Vonda McIntyre: Pitfalls of Writing Science Fiction

I don't know that this is an entirely fair assessment because what there was was fine - but this chapbook was disappointingly content-light.

I'm reviewing this here because it was sold as a book, but this leads me to ask: what is a book? Or perhaps, more specifically, what constitutes an e-book? When you can't see the thickness of the spine, or flick through the pages, or pick it up and weigh it in your hand, how do you know - in advance - what you are getting for your money? This is at best an essay and looks as though it was originally produced for a con goody-bag with almost 40% of it being about Vonda McIntyre and therefore not entirely what it says on the package. With just 36 kindle pages/screens dedicated to the actual advertised subject matter (and plenty of white spaces on those pages) I read it in about ten minutes.

OK, going back to the Book View Café site I admit that it calls this a 'chapbook' but all it contains are 14 brief points which are (mostly) about writing in general and not specific to writing science fiction. I admit they are 14 good points, such as 'don't infodump' but I expected things much more specific to SF like whether to write hard SF and stick to the physics of FTL and time dilation or to sacrifice physics to story.

There's no information here that you can't pick up on the web for free, so at $2.99 for a few brief pages this is not great value for money. On the other hand Book View Café is a good enterprise, being an author co-op, and I've had some excellent fiction from there so I'm glad to support it.