Living the Fictional Dream

The Summoning is a new young adult novel by one of my favorite adult urban fantasy authors, Kelley Armstrong. There are mild spoilers in this review, so if you’d rather stay pure you might wait until later to read this, but I’m not going too deep. The spoilers are more about the premise and set-up, not about the ending.

The Summoning takes place in Armstrong’s Otherworld universe, which includes witches, warlocks, werewolves, vampires, shamans, half-demons, and necromancer. In fact, I reviewed the most recent paperback in her adult Otherworld series, No Humans Allowed, earlier this summer. The Summoning, however, takes a different approach, asking what would happen if someone had one of these powers and had never heard of the supernatural world.

Chloe sees a dead janitor walking the halls at school one day, freaks out (who wouldn’t?!), and manages to get herself sent to a groups home for emotionally troubled teens, earning herself a diagnosis of schizophrenia. But, while she’s at this home, she discovers that she’s not the only one with strange talents, and that’s when things start to get interesting.

Overall, I enjoyed this book very much. The characters are great, especially Chloe and Derek, and the premise is interesting. I also love how Armstrong takes her Otherworld universe and goes somewhere completely new with it. She could have made a Y/A series based on Savannah — a teen character in her adult series — but, instead, she breaks new ground and gives us a whole new mystery to chew on.

I also like the dynamics between the characters. Angst and drama is part and parcel of merely being a teenager. Add to that supernatural problems and the possibility of more going on than meets the eye with the adults in your life, and things get interesting really quickly.

But, I was very disappointed in one element of The Summoning, the ending. I have the same complaint about this novel as I mentioned when talking about Meg Cabot’s Airhead in this post: there’s no ending, the book just stops. And that really drives me nuts!

The worst part was, I totally wasn’t expecting it from Armstrong. The beauty of the adult books in the Otherworld series is that they are complete. There are overarching character struggles that carry over, but each novel has its own mystery that is solved by the end. You have closure. But The Summoning does not.

According to Armstrong’s website, Chloe’s story will be a trilogy. I’m glad to know that, because now I know that I will get the closure eventually; however, if I’d known this up front, I would have waited to read the novels until all three had been released. I hate going into a book thinking one thing, and then, surprise, having to wait until a later book release (months or years away) for any closure. There should be warning labels right up front! I’m even OK with elements that carry over, but I just want some closure on some of the levels, and The Summoning does not deliver on that regard. We end with Chloe… well, I guess I won’t give that away, but suffice to say that all is not well for her at the end of the novel.

However, if that’s not the kind of thing that bothers you, then I would definitely recommend this book, both for Y/A readers and for people who’ve enjoyed Armstrong’s other books. It’s really well written and an enjoyable read. But if you have issues with lack of closure, you should wait to dive in until the trilogy is complete.

This article is a list of publishing terms. Some of them I knew from my day job (we publish reference materials), but some of them were new on me.

I had a “Ralph the Duck” moment this morning. I woke up to the sound of my golden retriever vomiting (though, sadly, not being a man strong enough to lift a 70-lb. dog, I didn’t get her outside before the big “moment” and she puked in my bed).

I read this short story in the Intro to Creative Writing course I took as a freshman in college. At that time, there was this one guy in the English dept. who taught all the creative writing classes (my college didn’t have a huge writing program at that point). He taught me a lot in that first class. I’d never learned anything about hooks, not using dialog as an information dump, etc. I’d written a (bad) draft of a novel, but I was still a raw beginner.

He liked the beginning of RtD because of that visceral image that sucked you right into the story, and that’s something I always think about when I’m beginning a story. I try to capture the reader’s attention immediately. Not with biological functions, necessarily (canine or otherwise). Sometimes with a sharp piece of dialog or a vivid image. Mostly just something interesting. Of course, such expectations of an opening sentence or paragraph can make it tough to begin!

Writing-wise, this week has been a tie. I got one rejection and on acceptance. The acceptance was exciting — it was for a story I’ve been sending out for a while. I think this story, “Hair’s Breadth,” has a pretty good beginning hook — a man in a hovel talking to a disgusting hag. But, I won’t give anymore away. It’s a flash piece, so it wouldn’t be too long until I’ve given away the whole story! It will be out this winter, and of course I’ll link to it when it appears.

Have a great Wednesday, and happy writing!

I finished Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in the Twilight series last Monday night, but it’s taken me a while to articulate my thoughts on the subject. Then, today, I was flabbergasted to realize how much controversy there’s been over it in fandom. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s the last book in a series… a series that’s very important to a lot of people. It would be hard for any one book to meet everyone’s expectations.

So… what do I say about this book. Well, first of all, I’ll start by saying that this entry will include spoilers, so read on at your own risk.

Spoilers. Got it?

Sure you want to continue.

OK then, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Now that we’re actually talking about the book, I’m going to come right out with it. I enjoyed it. Perhaps I’m in the minority, but like it, I did. Stephanie Meyer has this way about her writing and her characters. Her books suck me in and refuse to let me go. She is a master at creating the vivid, continuous fictional dream, and that is the mark of a good writer in my mind.

That said, the previous books in the series I read in about 24 hours. This one took me much longer. Though, that had something to do with the fact that I had to help my sister move, so I was separated from the book for most of the Saturday following the book release party.

After having a little time to reflect on it, I will say that this is not my favorite of Meyer’s work. It is possibly the weakest book in the Twilight series. It’s definitely not as good as The Host, my favorite of Meyer’s books to date. But, I think that Meyer did some things right, too.

So, I’ll start off with the things I liked:

• The wedding — Bella and Edward’s wedding was the culmination of several books’ worth of expectations. Very sweet.
• Jacob’s pack — I loved the Jacob/Seth/Leah pack. Very cool. Jacob learning how to ascend into his own. I hope we get a book all about the La Push werewolves. That would be awesome. Leah would be a really interesting main character, I think!
• Bella’s transformation into a vampire — I had some problems with this, too, but, as a whole, I liked that she was good at the whole vampire thing. It made sense to me. She was so clumsy as a human, and she struggled for so long and was never able to find her place. Maybe this was what she had been born for all along. A dramatic illustration of coming of age.

  All along in this series, people have criticized Meyer for being so hard on Bella, and Meyer said that it wasn’t that she was anti-woman, she was anti-human, meaning that of course a human would be weak and pitiful next to the incredibly powerful vampires that inhabit her world. In some ways, this proved her point. Bella ascended into that pantheon, and now she is as amazing and wonderful as all the rest of them. It fit to me that she was good at immortality. Bella came into her own.

  I also liked the writing from the Bella-vamp’s POV. We’ve watched the vamps through Bella’s human eyes for so long. Getting their POV was very cool, and Meyer explained the way the world is to them very well.

• Renesme — Like with the previous subject, there were things I didn’t like about this, but it was definitely an unexpected plot twist. Once they were on their honeymoon and Bella started having those dreams, I figured out what was going on, but it definitely wasn’t something I ever saw coming before that. Though, perhaps I should have figured it out from that immortal child thing discussed early on…

  I read some comments where people thought Bella’s devotion to her unborn child was uncharacteristic, given her fear of marriage and commitment and stuff she said in previous books about not liking kids. I’ve also read people who thought it was Meyer putting a didactic pro-life message into her books. Honestly, I don’t think either of those are true. Well, maybe the latter, but it didn’t feel that way to me. I totally believe that you might think you don’t want kids, but then get pregnant and change your mind. Motherhood is a powerful thing. No one knows what they are going to do or feel about it until it actually happens to them.

  I actually liked the character of Nessie fairly well. There was a bit of the saccharine to her, but the sweetness wasn’t all bad. And I really liked the whole nonverbal communication thing. There was stuff I didn’t like, too, but I think when the character grows up, she might actually be interesting.

• The expansion of the world — I loved meeting all the different vampires in this ‘verse. I wish we’d gotten more time with them. Despite the length of the book, the sheer number of characters brought in during the last segment limited how much we could know about each of them. We couldn’t get very much depth. But I thought the additional knowledge about the rest of the vampire world was quite interesting. There were more characters I would like to know more about in future stories.
• The happy ending — OK, there are problems with this, as well, but considering this was the last new Bella/Edward story (Midnight Sun doesn’t count since it’s an old story from a different POV) I was glad that it ended happily ever after for them. This is not great literature — it’s fun, escapist fiction. I deserved a happily ever after for Bella and Edward, damn it!

Now for some things I didn’t like:

• The happy ending — The problem with the happy ending is that it was too happy for too many characters. We should have had something bad happen in the end, possibly the death of a more minor character (but more major than Irina… I had totally forgotten about her until they talked about her in the book). I wanted Edward and Bella to end up together and happy, but a note of bittersweetness to the story would have made that happiness more poignant.
• Nessie and Jacob — I’m not sure about this imprinting thing. At first, I thought it was a good thing, because it was the lynchpin that allowed so much of the rest of the happiness to fall into place. I read someone being creeped out because of their age difference. That didn’t bother me. Quinn imprinted on a child, too. I guess I don’t see imprinting as a sexual kind of love. Maybe eventually it could turn into that, but I just see it as love. I actually think of it more as the love a dog has for its human (which makes me sad, because poor Jacob!). It’s pure and unconditional, not pervy or weird. I actually think that if Nessie ends up choosing someone else, while Jacob would be hurt, he would probably do whatever he could to make her happy anyway — it’s that kind of love.

  However, because Jacob imprinted on Nessie, it solved things too easily. Suddenly, the whole Cullen/werewolf fued is over — poof. Everything’s great. Between Jacob and Edward, too. There was a realism about the sacrifice and the choices in Eclipse and New Moon. The pain was real, gritty, and hard. This fixed it almost too pat. And while the Jacob fangirl in me was really glad that he doesn’t have to go through that pain any more, I kind of feel cheated about getting to read about him going through that pain. I love Jacob, and I loved the POV bits we’ve had from him. I was really hoping that he would get his own book after this — a book where he (and whoever else was in his pack, perhaps) went on their own adventure, and Jacob would have his own coming of age. Now that’s mostly moot. The rest of his life will be about Nessie, and that’s the end of it. There are still seeds for a future book about Jacob and Nessie, but I think it would have to be told from Nessie’s POV. Jacob’s POV probably will be boring because it will be Nessie time 24-7.

  Also, I just gotta say… Renesme is the stupidest name in the whole world. Yikes! (Though, since I’ve read Anne McCaffery’s Pern series, name smooshing does have other origins for me. It’s not all Bennifer and TomKat. So perhaps I wasn’t quite as horrified as some people were.

• The other characters — There was so much going on in this book that a lot of the regular characters got the short shrift. Pretty much all of the Cullens, most notably. I kinda think we should have had an Alice book, even if it were just a short one, shorter than the Jacob book. I love her and Jasper, and it killed me that they were gone. I have to say, it was almost more interesting, though, that they’d run off to save themselves. Though them showing up to save the day was interesting. I wish we’d had more Rosie time. I actually started to like her in the last book — I would have liked to see more of her in this book than the snarling beast who only cares about the baby and not Bella.
• The climax — There was so much build up, and then… nothing. That was a let down. Pages and pages of build up for absolutely nothing. No fight at all. There should have been a fight. Even if they won in the end, there should have been a fight. Or, alternatively, we shouldn’t have had that much build up for it. With less build up, there would have been a lot lower expectations for the encounter.
• Super Bella — The super shield thing and the extreme ease with the blood lust was a bit much. It bordered on Mary Sue, or how I felt about Anita Blake after she became the most uber-powerful person in that ‘verse. I stand by my opinion on liking the idea that she’d been made for immortality. However, if that was going to happen, then she shouldn’t have had the uber-powerful shield, too. It was just ridiculous at the battle. She’d worked so hard with no results and then, poof, she could shield not only herself but every other person on their team?! That was just dumb. Too much perfection is just wish fulfillment, not a story.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the series. It was enjoyable to read. It swept me up and wouldn’t let me down. Meyer is a talented writer, and I would read more of her stories.

I word of warning though (for anyone who’s actually read this far). If you have younger kids, I would recommend reading the series, and especially Breaking Dawn before you let them read it. This book veered more into adult territory than any of the others. I’m not going to say don’t let them read it. I would just say, you read it, too, so you can talk about it with them.

I was cruising the EDF forums this morning, and I found a link to this website. I didn’t know there were markets overseas that would translate English short stories and publish them (some for a nice fee). Of course, I read all the time on agent and author blogs about selling the foreign rights to novels, but the short story idea is a new one on me. I wonder if it is worth trying, or if you’d have to have big name publishing credits like Asimov’s, etc., to get in the door… Hmmm…

June was a hotbed of writing goodness for me. Acceptances and published stories all over the place. Since then, things have been pretty slow. Molassas, even. Though, as always, the rejections trickle in.

I’m waiting to hear about another semi-related gig, as well. No details on that right now, but if it pans out, you’ll be sure to hear about it here!

I don’t know where the summer has gone! I can’t believe it’s August already. I swear I just blinked at it was June! Of course, my day job as a technical writer has been overwhelming lately, so that is the reason behind some of that. And it looks like things at work will stay hectic throughout the fall (as fall is our traditional “busy season”).

But, I shall perservere and find time to write. On Monday, I finally wrote that new superhero story that I’d been ruminating on for a while. It’s about a girl with the power to change her appearance (face and body type). It turned into a nice little flash piece, if I do say so myself. We’ll see how it does at the market to which I sent it.

I don’t know that I should call the girl a superhero, specifically — at least not with all the baggage that term implies (Alex wrote a really interesting post about that recently… read it!). It’s more that she happens to have this amazing power — the term superhero seems to suggest that she is all about using her power for the forces of good and justice, and I’m not sure this character has such pure motivations.

Of course, characters who fall into the shades of gray are inherently more interesting than those who are black and white, in my opinion.

All right, that is enough babble from me today. I hope you all have an awesome Thursday!

Part 1 of a sci-fi novella by my writing group mate Jens is live on SpaceWesterns.com. It’s called “Corazon,” and it’s action packed. I know… I critted it! Dixie O’Dell is a kick-butt lady, too, which is always great. Check it out–you’ll be glad you did!

Why is it that when you have deadlines, your muse wants to write something else? I had to tie her down so that I could finish writing my guest blog for Jens (I’ll put a link here when that appears in August) and so I can make progress on my actual work work (this summer has been unusually busy!!!).

I also have a couple of stories in need of revising and another that I wrote a good first scene for, but now my muse is whispering intensely of another story all together. Arg! I just hope that she doesn’t clam up out of spite when I finally get some of these other obligations out of the way so I can sit down and pound out this new idea. The other stories I can put on hold, because that’s my stuff. It’s the deadlines for other people that have to be met first!

If you’re in the mood for a little fantasy flash, check out my story in the new issue of AlienSkin e-zine. It’s called “The Mad King.”

I love the graphic of the king that they used. He’s so snooty!

I wrote this story back in February. My writing group runs a monthly prompts contest, and I wrote enough prompts that month to win the prize. This was one of the stories that I wrote. Though, it was edited. I actually took out all but one of the words required for the prompt in the final version. But, that’s the way prompts are sometimes. They get your mind going in a good way, but the actual mechanics (must-use words, starter sentences, etc.) aren’t the best choices in the final version.

So, enjoy, and if you like it, leave me a comment!