Shannon Phillips

Quick link: Noor A Jahangir at Trollking has posted a review of The Millennial Sword, giving it a solid 3 out of 5 stars: “The story is well-written with an almost whimsical style and it is clear that Phillips has done her research without info-dumping or the story reading like an interesting history lesson. The lead character is likable in that she feels compelled to her duty by her employer, her colleagues and the mantle of the Lady of the Lake, but selfish enough to make her more human and interesting.”

http://trollking.co.uk/2013/01/05/book-review-the-millennial-sword-by-shannon-philips/

I wanted to throw up a quick link to the Beauty in Ruins book review blog, which has posted a very kind review of The Millennial Sword:

It’s a fun story, lighthearted and humorous where it can be, but serious and action-packed where it needs to be. Given the rather fantastic premise, it’s a remarkably believable story, owing as much to Viv’s character as to the way in which Phillips pays equal attention to both worlds. In that respect, she makes the most of her setting, using the real San Francisco as a solid backdrop, as opposed to just going with a generic big city. I’ve never been, but the setting feels genuine, as if you could use the story as a roadmap around town.

It also needs to be said that despite Viv being armed and designated for a special role, she’s no victim of prophecy or destiny. This is not one of those stories where things happen despite the characters, but because of them. Well-told, with engaging characters, and a generous mix of humour, romance, and adventure, this is a book that I suspect will have a lot of cross-genre appeal.

The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo

Zen Cho is a Malaysian fantasy writer living in London, a largely “undiscovered” author whose career I’ve been following with avid interest ever since stumbling across her short story “The House of Aunts.” I think she’s an absolutely massive talent, the Ursula K. Le Guin or Neil Gaiman of our generation. She is eventually going to be discovered by the wider world and become a Huge Frickin’ Deal, but so far she’s mostly published short stories in zines and small press anthologies. I’ve bought them all, and they’re all good, but “The House of Aunts” is the best and if you haven’t read it you must, you must. It’s a vampire love story that’s like no other vampire love story ever written, it’s fresh and powerful and real and wrenching, and her writing is so masterful that you almost don’t notice as it reaches in and disembowels you.

Anyway, Zen Cho is running a free promotion for her self-published e-book, The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, which is a romance set in London of the Roaring Twenties:

Jade Yeo is a very different project from “The House of Aunts.” It’s not really working on multiple levels or anything like that. It’s just a sweet, fun bit of pure escapism, featuring a headstrong literary heroine in an Austenian sort of tradition. If you like stories of smart, artsy heroines who get themselves into trouble with their willful ways but eventually stumble into happy endings (with the help of a smart, artsy hero who is obviously smitten by her charms except she doesn’t quite notice until it’s Almost Too Late)…well, then you will like The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, and you should grab it while it’s free. Or wait and shell out ninety-nine cents, I mean, either way.

Cold Days

I don’t know how useful it is to review the fourteenth book in a series. I could talk about what I feel the place of this book is in the larger scheme of things and what I think of the directions that the characters have taken, but that’s only going to be of interest to people who are already reading the Harry Dresden books.

So instead, let me talk a little about why I’m reading the Harry Dresden books. I can sum it up in one line. At the climax of the first book (Storm Front), the protagonist (Harry Dresden, wizard P.I.) is found hanging off a balcony in a mansion that’s burning down all around him, while giant scorpions snap at his toes. If you don’t think this is rad, I have nothing further to say to you, sir.

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories

This is the first book that challenged my Goodreads ranking schema. Goodreads reviews are done on a five-star scale, with the rankings summarized thusly: One star, “I didn’t like it.” Two stars, “It was okay.” Three stars, “I liked it.” Four stars, “I really liked it.” Five stars, “It was amazing!” I actually find this a pretty useful sorting system. Ambition, execution, characterization, setting, momentum, freshness of plot and invention of style: all books have strengths and weaknesses along different axes, but I don’t have to juggle them against each other because it all comes down to how excited am I about this book? The base measure is a purely subjective one of personal enthusiasm, which generally makes things easy to rank.

And then I finished The Bible Repairman, and had to rank a book I found quite exciting and consistently disappointing at the same time. I really wanted to give it 3.5 stars. The ideas in this book are wonderful and the writing is ambitious, literary in quality. Yet somehow the stories themselves rarely “gel.” To give one example: there’s a story based on the idea that an overthrown angel rips through the fabric of space and time as he falls. Then it adds a time cop agency, a couple of innocent bystanders, and a Lovecraftian sense of creeping doom. (It could almost be a pun: “the angles are wrong,” and so is the angel…) This is all totally awesome, and Tim Powers is a fine stylist, so the result should be a slam-dunk short story. And yet at the end I was left going, “Huh, so I guess that was…Lucifer? Hunh.”

Basically, these are stories that perform dazzling triple Salchows and then don’t stick the landing. I liked them all. I really liked many of them, at points. And so I was left dithering over the Goodreads ranking for longer than was probably necessary. Eventually I gave it three stars, but I just went back and changed it to four. Ambition ought to be rewarded, I think, even when the execution is imperfect.

The book review blog Fangs for the Fantasy has posted a very thoughtful and well-balanced review of my novel. The reviewer has some criticisms which I think are quite fair (they’d like to see more development of some of the side characters), but overall it’s a positive review:

Viveka has arrived in San Francisco from the Midwest to start a new job. That’s already pretty challenging, a new work place, a new city, finding a place to live (despite a limited budget) and trying to keep her very grumpy cat amused and tolerant during the move.

And then a woman gives her a sword and runs off. A sword that virtually no-one can see—Excalibur. She’s just been recruited as the new Lady of the Lake with a solemn duty to try and protect the people of San Francisco from Morgan Le Fay—queen of the fairies who has a specialty of kidnapping children. And like it or not, she can’t stand by while children are taken—especially with redcaps moving against her. She has a few friends, a complicated love life and a lot to learn.

This book did a very good job in setting up the world, the characters and the concepts of the story. By the end, everything is firmly in place and it’s a lot of fun getting there, from battle the tomte in her home, to swordfighting with the Society for Creative Anachronism to just moving to a brand new city, starting a new job and trying to set up a new life. We get to know Viveka, her life, her duties and the people that are part of it.

…

Viveka is an interesting character in new situations, both conflicted and determined. Originally I think she adapted to the whole Lady of the Lake gig perhaps a little too easily but she did come back with a lot of doubts and questions, but whatever doubts she had are eclipsed by the simple fact that kids are in danger. I liked that she did sidetrack a lot of the usual “whyyyy meee, it’s soooon unfair!” we see in the genre and instead got on with it—kids were in danger, there’s no time for whining.

In all, it’s a fun read. It has an interesting world, but one that could use development. It has some potentially interesting characters that, again, need to be taken further. I think it’s a series with a lot more to give, on its own it’s still a fun book.

For those of you who avoid Amazon, I’m pleased to announce that you can now buy the paperback version of The Millennial Sword through IndieBound or Barnes & Noble online. Also, while your local bookstore is unlikely to have it on their shelves, they’ll be able to order it for you if you ask. (In the Bay Area, you can find it on the shelves at Laurel Book Store and hopefully other independent retailers soon.)

The e-book version is going to remain Amazon-exclusive for another couple of months, but will be up on other e-bookstores early in the new year. At that time, it’s likely that I’ll raise the price by a dollar (to $3.99, which seems more consistent with the current e-book landscape)…so, um, stock up now?

You guys, I am super excited to announce that The Big Booger Bubble is now a real book!

Unfortunately the Amazon page hasn’t auto-generated a “Look inside!” previewer thingummy—I’m working on getting that up. But in the meantime, let me show you some of Ingrid Steblea‘s fantastic illustrations (clicking the image will take you to my Flickr account, where you can see larger versions of the pages):

And the story continues from there!

I have pretty much resigned myself to the fact that when I’m dead and gone, The Big Booger Bubble will be my legacy. I might write ten more novels, I might put my heart and soul on every page, but still: “Oh, Shannon Phillips,” they’ll say. “Didn’t she write something about boogers?” It’s my bequest to the literary tradition. You’re welcome, future generations. You’re welcome.

These reviews are cross-posted from my Goodreads account.

Peter S. Beagle at his best is a master conjurer, but I don’t think any of the stories here really show Beagle working at the top of his craft. “Sleight of Hand” is a good title for the collection: these tricks of the imagination are fairly slight, but good fun nonetheless—a pleasant and diverting way to spend a few hours.

It seems weird to call a book about the zombie apocalypse a “light, fun” read, but that’s ultimately what this is. I picked it up expecting something similar to Stephen King’s The Stand, a book that’s stuck with me even though it has one of the single hackiest endings I’ve ever read. But there’s not nearly as much meat to World War Z. It’s a series of vignettes, each well done, but short enough that you don’t end up really getting attached to any particular characters. My favorite bit involved the story of a downed Air Force pilot making her way through a zombie-infested swamp, guided by the remote voice of a ham radio operator who seems to be keeping some secrets.

All Hallow’s Read is a movement started by Neil Gaiman a few years ago. The idea is simple: on or around Hallowe’en, you give somebody a scary book. It’s a promoting-the-joy-of-reading kind of thing. (Gaiman himself is giving away a short story this year, as part of a charity drive for schools and libraries.)

I want to get in on the fun, so I’m going to send a gift copy of Anna Dressed in Blood to the first commenter on this blog.

I read this book because my awesome sister-in-law, The Anti-Sara, added it to her “want to read” list on Goodreads. I was all like, hey, I want to read that too! So I did. It’s an action-packed story of a ghost hunter and the bond he forges with the spirit of a murdered girl. I thought the world-building was good (I like Blake’s take on ghosts in general) and the trio of main characters were all sympathetic. I particularly liked that the blonde, popular high school girl also turns out to be nice and smart and brave. The book’s treatment of voodoo is problematic from a cultural perspective—it’s really unfortunate that the book’s only black character is a scary villain—but the sequel, Girl of Nightmares, goes some way towards providing a more balanced perspective. Anyway, I don’t think it’s great literature, but it is a fun, spooky book, and a good candidate for All Hallow’s Read.

First, a quick sales note: Amazon’s mysterious algorithms have priced the paperback version of my book at a 36 percent discount. I don’t know how long the discount will last, but for the time being, the price is a pretty reasonable $8.29.

Next up, a couple of reviews. Unfortunately, I haven’t really loved any of the books I’ve read lately.

I really wanted to like this book. I feel like we need more swashbuckling sci-fi with a feminine perspective, and so I was very ready to root for down-and-out starship navigator Sirantha Jax. Unfortunately, the writing struck me as lackluster, the plotting choppy, and the characterization…well, I guess I’m pretty sick of hearing about the sheer alpha-male dominance that Romantic Hero #10,567 exudes, and how Our Heroine instantly decides she hates his guts even as she is drawn to him on a primal level, blah blah blazzzzzzz…huhwah? Sorry, I think I fell asleep for a minute there.

Don’t get me wrong: I find the whole realm of male strength to be a fascinating topic, and I’m as happy as the next gal to read in-depth excavations of the subject. Particularly if the “subject” is frequently sweaty and/or shirtless. But I guess I feel like strength is more convincingly signaled through discipline and quiet courtesy than through bluff and bravado: I’d rather read about the scientist’s focus, the artist’s dedication, or the soldier’s stoicism than hear at length about how “dominant” some dude is while he stomps around the ship displaying his not-so-hidden manpain at every opportunity. I abandoned this book about halfway through.

The Spirit Lens is the first book in a trilogy, and the fact that I continued on to the second and third books is mostly a testament to the power of the “whodunit” plot. I was initially irritated by the book’s narrative style: the setting is a Renaissance-style fantasy world, and the point-of-view character tends toward a wordy, circuitous locution that only exacerbated my tendency to skim. But he’s given a mystery to solve, and I was drawn deeply enough into the plot that I was dismayed when the book ended without fully resolving the central conspiracy. I had my suspicions about the villains, dammit, and I wanted to find out whether or not I was right!

As it happened, I liked the second book (The Soul Mirror) a lot better, mostly because the narrative point of view shifted to a character I found much more sympathetic. But the third book was a disappointment again: repetitive in structure and kind of weirdly plotted out, introducing new characters to do important things while the fates of important figures from earlier books were forgotten. A love triangle was introduced, and shattered, in the book’s last twenty pages. The world-shaking conflict that had built across three books was ultimately resolved off-screen. I’m not sure if there are more books intended for the series, but I won’t be reading them. Still, I don’t want to be too harsh in my assessment: the setting was original and interesting, the pacing was strong, and at least some of the characters were likable. I can easily see how this series has won its fans, even though ultimately it didn’t work for me.

Quick announcement: the paperback version of my book is up on Amazon now.

I’ve had people ask if there will be a hardcover version, and the short answer is “no.” The profit margins on hardcovers are too slim for POD; Amazon won’t sell them. They will allow me to special-order hardcovers if I want to, but there’s a $99 “setup fee” for this service, on top of which the per-book cost is quite high. So no, there won’t be hardcovers—but my family members can all expect to get copies of the paperback with their Christmas presents.