The Wicked + the Divine, vol. 1: The Faust Act, Kieron Gillen (writer) and James McKelvie (artist).
The Wicked + the Divine, vol. 2: Fandemonium, Kieron Gillen (writer) and James McKelvie (artist).
The Wicked + the Divine, vol. 3: Commercial Suicide, Kieron Gillen (writer) and James McKelvie (artist).

(I’m listing them all together for the sake of convenience, but they were interspersed with other things.)

This is a comic book series set in a slightly alternate version of our world, where every 90 years there is a “Recurrence”: twelve gods manifest in twelve mortal hosts (not the same gods every time). They become instant rock stars, or period equivalent, with people falling at their feet in ecstasy; within two years all twelve are dead.

The storytelling here is a little bit disjointed — especially in the third volume, which is basically a collection of one-off issues that go into more detail on a selection of this particular Recurrence’s pantheon. But even when the story is moving forward, it often does so in a fashion that’s a little hard for me to follow; what I thought was the through-line turned out very much not to be. Despite that, I’m enjoying the series. I like the variety of gods: at the start of the series, not all twelve have manifested yet, but you’ve got Amaterasu, Baphomet, Minerva, Lucifer, the Morrigan (and Badb and “Gentle Annie” — she switches between aspects), Inanna, Woden, one of the Baals, and a Tara nobody’s quite sure of — there are several different Taras she could be. The gods appear to be no respecters of detail; Lucifer is a woman, Inanna is a man, and there’s discussion of what it means that Amaterasu showed up in the body of a white Englishwoman.

The main thing I will say — and I don’t think this is a spoiler — is that I don’t trust a single word that comes out of Ananke’s mouth. She is (in some theogonies) the Greek personification of Necessity, and she seems to be some kind of mentor figure to the pantheon each time around. She is also a highly dubious character, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s really up with her and the whole Recurrence thing.

Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho. A fun romp, though ultimately it didn’t hang together as much as I wanted it to. You’ve got the decline of magic resource in England, the challenges to Zacharias as the Sorcerer Royal, the troubles on Janda Baik, and Prunella’s mysterious legacy — but because all the Janda Baik stuff was offstage, being reported second-hand by characters who mostly didn’t stick around long enough to make much of an impression, it felt more tacked-on than I would have liked. And Prunella’s backstory wound up being wholly unrelated, except insofar as she happened to be involved with the rest of it. Certainly it’s possible to go too far with linking things, tying every narrative strand up in such a neat little bow that it comes across as entirely contrived. But this didn’t link them enough for my taste (a Big Revelation doesn’t mean much if the facts revealed are entirely without context), and the resolution of some of the problems felt much too convenient — all the stuff at the seaside, basically. But I very much liked the complexity of the relationships between the two protagonists and their surrogate parent figures, and the fact that Prunella keeps one very practical eye on the necessity of securing her future by ordinary means.

Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate, Richard Parks. Set in the same continuity as his Lord Yamada stories. I mentioned after reading the collection that the last piece felt much less like a short story and much more like setup for the novel; well, it turns out that it’s literally the beginning of the novel. It works much better in that context. Overall, though, I prefer the short stories — not necessarily because there’s anything wrong with this book, but just because I like what the stories are doing better. Each one of them tends to be a bite-sized look at some aspect of Japanese folklore, with Lord Yamada investigating and solving the mystery, then resolving the spiritual problem; here the same thing is generally true, but the additional wordage is almost entirely filled with politics instead of additional supernatural things, and that’s not really what engages me with this series. Plus, I do think Parks leaned overly hard on the “my protagonist and narrator has figured out what’s going on, but you the reader must remain in the dark” trick — which I know is a trope of a certain kind of mystery fiction, but it works better for me in third-person stories, or at shorter lengths. It made the Lady Snow stuff fall kind of flat in the end. Still, I’ll go on to read The War God’s Son at some point.

The Dragon Round, Stephen S. Power. Read for blurbing purposes. This was pitched to me as “the Count of Monte Cristo, with dragons” — which, yes, thank you, I’ll take that. As it turns out, it was less Monte Cristo-ish than I anticipated; it lacks the element of “mysterious and fabulously wealthy nobleman” which I think of as being the defining characteristic of that story type. But it’s a revenge tale, and one with certain kinds of complexity I very much like: for starters, when Jeryon is dumped into a boat by his mutinous crew and set adrift, he’s not alone. There’s an apothecary with him, a woman who refused to go along with the mutiny. And it turns out that the whole survival at sea/on a deserted island narrative feels 300% fresher when it isn’t just a tale of Rugged, Manly Individualism; Jeryon and the poth (as she mostly gets called, though she does have a name) have complementary skills that are both necessary, and along with struggling to survive, they have to figure out how not to kill each other during the lengthy period of time when they’re the only two human beings around.

As for the rest of the story — it doesn’t go the way you expect it to, and knowing not to expect the usual is probably helpful. I didn’t actually realize while I was reading this that it’s the start of a series, and the series is not about Jeryon getting his revenge. According to Power’s website, it’s about changes in the way humans and dragons interrelate — and Jeryon’s quest for revenge is more of an inciting incident than the spine of the tale. So if “revenge story” is not your cuppa, this may still be interesting to you.

Avatar: The Promise, vol. 1
Avatar: The Promise, vol. 2
Avatar: The Promise, vol. 3, Gene Luen Yang.

I read the first of these a while ago, but forgot until I went to shelve my new acquisitions that I hadn’t read the rest of the set. So I backed up to the start again.

In this trilogy of comic books, Yang takes on issues of postcolonialism and interracial marriage — no, really. It got me reflecting on the differences between what I’ll term a “simple” treatment of something and a “simplistic” one: here, those issues get resolved more easily than they would be in the real world, but they are present. I think of that as a simple treatment, but not a simplistic one. The city of Yu Dao is a Fire Nation colony, but it’s a century old; it has been built up from a tiny village by a mixed group of Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom citizens, some of whom have intermarried, others of whom are close friends. Making amends for Fire Nation imperialism by yanking all people of that ethnicity out of Yu Dao would not actually be justice . . . but just leaving them there isn’t quite a solution, either. And this all gets tangled up in a promise between Zuko and Aang, which provides your regularly scheduled dose of Zuko Angst. 🙂 I quite enjoyed it.

Avatar: The Rift, vol. 1
Avatar: The Rift, vol. 2, Gene Luen Yang.

Haven’t acquired and read the third volume yet. Aang takes the Gaang to see an old sacred Air Nomad site, and finds a factory has been built on top of it. Things get complicated from there. I’m really enjoying these comic-book continuations; they provide nice explorations of the world and how it changed from Aang’s day to Korra’s. And I really like how the Air Nomad fankids are being handled.

Chains and Memory, Marie Brennan. My own books don’t count.

a friend’s novel in manuscript I won’t give the title or author here, because this book hasn’t even been submitted to editors yet, and it would be cruel of me to taunt you all with gushing about its awesomeness when you won’t be able to read it for who knows how long. 🙂 But never fear! I will be back to talk about it more when the time comes.

Chains and Memory, Marie Brennan. Can you tell what I’ve been revising this month?

Taltos, Steven Brust. The structure of this one was interesting. Based on the cover copy, I was quickly able to make a general guess at what was going on in the brief/later bits opening the chapters, and it added a nice (if slightly vague) element of tension. The flashback stuff . . . I liked it, but I think I would have liked a smaller/less frequent dose of it, just because it kept pulling me out of the main story with Aliera/Morrolan/the Paths of the Dead/etc. The latter had some very cool moments in it, and I would have liked to stay in that mood, instead of jumping back and forth. But hey: I don’t fault Brust for experimenting. With a long series like this, it’s nice not to have every installment be like every other installment.

The Guns of Avalon, Roger Zelazny. I was a little unfair to this one: I started reading it some number of months ago, got interrupted, and when I came back I didn’t feel like re-reading the beginning. So it took me a while to get my footing and remember what Corwin was doing, apart from “trying to take over Amber.” I got into it pretty well by the end: there was a point where it seemed entirely possible that the message of the story was going to be “by the way, the protagonist is the villain,” and even though it didn’t go down that path, it went far enough to be interesting. And I want to see what’s up with Dara, though given the time period these were written, I recognize that the answer to that question may frustrate me more than it pleases.

Was still mostly busy with revisions, but I did get some reading in.

Steelheart, Brandon Sanderson. I’ve bounced off several of his works before — something about them just hasn’t clicked with me — but this one was in my World Fantasy bag, and its opening pages drew me in enough that I kept going.

More than anything, Steelheart reminds me of Mike Underwood’s Shield and Crocus. They have a similar “superpowers in a weird dystopian city” vibe going on, though Underwood’s book partakes of the New Weird aesthetic, and Sanderson’s does not. In this case, Epics are the source of the dystopia: they all seem to be sociopaths, and since they started appearing, the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. Steelheart follows the efforts of the Reckoners (a resistance organization) to overthrow the title character, who rules the city of New Cago with <fails her Pun Resistance roll> a steel fist.

Sanderson is either not quite as mean as I am, or else he thought of the same thing and couldn’t find a way out of that particular corner, either. You see, in order to kill Steelheart, the Reckoners have to figure out his weakness. I had a theory for what that weakness might be, and the evidence wholly supported my idea . . . but Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, it would have made Steelheart almost 100% impossible to kill. The actual answer was still pretty tough, but not quite as bad. Anyway, the book moved at a good clip, and I may pick up the sequel, Firefight.

The Winner’s Crime, Marie Rutkoski. Reviewed here.

Avatar: The Search, vol. 1, Gene Luen Yang.
Avatar: The Search, vol. 2
Avatar: The Search, vol. 3

My husband and I wandered into the local comic book store on the way back from dinner one night, and I noticed there were more Avatar volumes out. Thinking I had finished the first series (I hadn’t, and you’ll be seeing reviews of those in next month’s post), I went ahead and bought the second one.

This series deals with Zuko, Azula, and their long-vanished mother. It’s been a while since I watched the TV series — ye gods, I had forgotten how unstable Azula became at the end. She’s, um. Not much more stable here. It also turns out that the story of their mother is a bit on the convoluted side . . . but I forgive that because the Mother of Faces is an excellent spirit character. Creepy and cool and very, very much not human. (And not secretly Zuko’s mother, which I just realized the juxtaposition there might imply.)

On the whole, I have to say the Avatar comics are a pretty solid example of continuing a story in comics form and doing it well. The plots here have substance, but aren’t the kind of thing that needs a whole TV series to work out. On the screen, they would feel like a letdown after the series finale. On the page, they’re reasonably substantial snacks, and do a nice job of addressing some of the dangling threads without feeling like unnecessary fanfic.

ItLoD, Marie Brennan. My own work doesn’t count. No matter how many hours I spent on it.