Book review: Fly Into Fire

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Conni
Fly Into Fire, by Susan Jane Bigelow. 2012, Candlemark and Gleam

Fly Into Fire picks up three years after Broken left off. Be forewarned that this review contains a few spoilers for the ending of Broken.

Sky Ranger has spent the last three years hiding from and fighting the Confederation government, which he had helped to uphold. He believed them to be honorable. He was wrong. He's bought passage on a refugee ship bound for Räton space.

When the ship crash lands on a desert planet which the Rätons had given to the Confederation, Sky Ranger and the handful of survivors build a small tent city while they figure out a way off of the planet before the Confederation finds them.

He befriends Renna, and he tries to take care of Dee, a young girl who was orphaned in the crash. Dee runs off one afternoon, and when he goes looking for her, he finds a massive sandstorm coming in. The survivors take refuge in an abandoned Räton house, except Sky Ranger, who searches futilely for the last two members of the search party for Dee. They're captured separately.

Sky Ranger finds unexpected friends and allies in his captivity: remnants of the Extrahuman Union. He also finds unspeakably cruel captors in his former employers, the Confederation.

Fly Into Fire is just as compelling as Broken. It's a fast-paced adventure story, where well-drawn characters have to figure out how to survive the government that oppresses them long enough to escape.

Another aspect of this book that may appeal to some readers is that Renna is a trans woman. It's not a book about transitioning or being trans*; Renna's just this woman who's a refugee, who falls in love, who makes friends, who fights for her friends...and she's trans. Granted, being trans is the reason she's a refugee, but that's still not the main point of the story.

Fly Into Fire comes out January 24. If you want to whet your appetite and you haven't read it yet, you can pick up Broken here.
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Book review: No god but God

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Conni
No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan. updated edition, 2011.

Reza Aslan was born in Iran, and his parents fled to America with him and his younger sister in 1979, during the revolution. He's a scholar of Islam and its history. When Aslan originally published this book in 2005, it was in response to the growing Islamophobia in the United States and the western world. He wanted to show that Muslims are no different than any other residents on this planet, and that, in the US and other (theoretically) secular western democracies, they are as deserving of religious freedom as Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, atheists, and everyone else.

The book that resulted does this very well. He begins with the Arab tribes in what is now Saudi Arabia, where Mohammed lived, and he describes Arab polytheism and their tribal traditions. The origin of Islam that he describes, when Mohammed moved to Medina (then called Yathrib), is one of equality for all.

Aslan spends a good half of the book on Mohammed, his life, and the internecine, often literal, warfare that occurred after his death. He also describes the two main minority sects, Shi'ism and Sufism, each in their own chapter. Then he skips forward to the mid-1800s, when Muslims yearned to throw off the yoke of colonialism in India and Egypt, touching on the effects colonialism had on Islam and its evolution, including the beginnings of the Taliban.

There's a chapter set in the Islamic Republic of Iran, beginning with a description of his trip back to Tehran as an adult after the travel ban was lifted, which leads into a reminiscence of his family's run, hand gripped firmly in hand, through the airport to catch a plane out.

This same chapter ends in India, with the British partitioning of it into Pakistan and India. He says that pluralism and secularization, not secularism, are the key to democracy in the Muslim world, declaring
Finally, neither human rights nor pluralism is the result of secularization, they are its root cause, meaning that any democratic society--Islamic or otherwise--dedicated to the principles of pluralism and human rights must dedicate itself to following the unavoidable path toward political secularization.

Because, in Islam, only the Prophet held both secular and religious authority, and he is no longer here, so the leaders in an Islamic democracy can only be in charge of civil things (like, for example, traffic laws, business regulations, etc).

The final chapter is dedicated to the Islamic reformation. Aslan compares the internet age to Gutenberg's printing press and Luther's translation of the Bible from Latin into German. (In an echo of this concept, The Economist wrote how Martin Luther went viral.) He discusses the various movements in Islam right now and what some of them could result in.

He glosses over the Crusades, unfortunately, and any chapter could easily be twice as long. He gives an extensive bibliography and very detailed end notes, which someone who wants more detail can turn to.

It's very well-written, not dry or tedious, but still with a turn toward the academic at times. It's a very accessible history of Islam, and I highly recommend it.
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Long time, no update

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Conni
I keep meaning to not get so far behind in writing here, but I keep getting distracted.

I bought myself a Kobo Touch for Christmas. I like it so far, though it has trouble with rtfs over a certain size, so I had to do some workarounds to be able to use it to beta read a friend's novel. I've also read two more books on it, one of which I'm reviewing for Bull Spec, and the other I'm probably writing up here, though I'll ask Sam if he wants it. I'm also on the list for an ARC of Exogene, the sequel to Germline. Pretty excited about that!

You should read Pilgrim of the Sky by my friend Natania Barron. This is the one I'm reviewing for Bull Spec, so I'll just say here that it's a compelling whirlwind adventure with lovely, poetic descriptions that are still accessible to people who weren't English Lit majors or MFA students. I'm not just saying that because I know her, either. I couldn't put it down, especially once it took the left turn at Albuquerque.

I just finished a book I bought back in October, and I intend to review it here in the next few days.

In personal-life stuff, I've applied for jobs and been rejected every time. I got to the interview for one of them, but no farther. I got advice from the HR person on what I need to either work on or find better examples of, and I can apply for similar positions again in May. Assuming there are any. I'm not holding my breath.
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Nervous anticipation

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Conni
Lois McMaster Bujold recently posted that she's finished the near-final draft of her next book, which focuses on Ivan. Since Ivan is my favorite character in the Vorkosiverse (though Cordelia rocks, and Elena Bothari is awesome, and Laisa's pretty darn cool, too, and... yeah, it's hard to pick just one), you'd think I'd be jumping for joy at a book finally focusing on him.

I'm awaiting the release with trepidation. As much as I love Bujold's books (especially Memory), the constant backbeat of "happiness = man + woman + babies" is really frustrating to me. It's so darn heterocentric.

Not all relationships are man + woman. Not all man + woman relationships result in babies. (I have none, and no plans to do so!) Not every person who is single is desirous of and pining for a marriage/other long-term relationship.

Yeah, the Vor have the excuse of needing to carry on the family line because they're basically inherited nobility, but there's precedent in the text (and, you know, actual Earth history...) for nephews or cousins, etc, to inherit.

I'm sure I'll read it, and I'll enjoy it, but I'll be saddened by Ivan, who has spent the last 14 books avoiding marriage but having plenty of girlfriends and otherwise enjoying the bachelor lifestyle, succumbing to marriage fever. The explanation that he's "grown up" or "matured" and finally realized he needs to settle down and get married isn't all that great. It assumes that the only way to be a real grown-up is to get married (and, of course, have babies), which bothers me on a visceral level.

People say that you should write the book you want to read. That's why my characters reflect my experience. There are happily married people with children, happily married people without children, happily unmarried (single or partnered) people with or without children, unhappily married people (with or without children), and unhappily single people. That's a fairly reflective cross-section of people I know in real life (though I don't think I know any people who are currently unhappily married; I know some who were, but divorced and are in happier relationships now).

Fiction reflects (or should reflect) reality. Reality is pretty diverse and awesome.
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So you like male writers. So what?

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Conni
A writing pal of mine recently wrote that he figured he ought to read more books/short fiction by men, because he realized his shelves were mostly full of books by women. Cool, whatever.

My shelves are mostly full of books by women. They're mostly full of books by two authors: Lois McMaster Bujold's entire bibliography (including The Spirit Ring) and a sizable fraction of CJ Cherryh's bibliography. My shelves are a good 4' wide, and her books take up two of them. The only other author whose books come close to the same amount of space? Terry Pratchett. Lynn Flewelling comes in fourth place, with seven books.

That doesn't count the random selection of Literatyoor from high school or college and assorted non-fiction, nor the extensive manga collection (mostly by women, except the large Naoki Urasawa section).

Apparently, it's brave for people to say they like male authors, or that they plan to read more male authors. I disagree with another writing pal that the drive to promote women in fiction has evolved into open season on men, as if a predominately male field of writers in the past means that men writing now must all be assholes.

I didn't talk up male writer TC McCarthy's debut novel Germline, because I hate male writers and think no one should talk about them. Oh wait, I blogged about it and wrote a really positive review of it for a magazine, and I've talked it up to everybody I know who enjoys military SF.

I didn't review books by Mark Van Name, David Drake, Eric Flint, Tom Standage, or Patrick O'Brian in the last three months, either. The feminist anti-male-writer conspiracy has me silenced!

But, apparently,
This is what we’ve done, readers. We’ve allowed ourselves – as a community of writers and readers – to think that talking about women (in a positive way, of course) is right and good, but liking men leads to shady behavior.

As they say on wikipedia, [citation needed].

It is good to expand one's reading horizons. It is good to find books written by people who come from different backgrounds than you, because they often have different perspectives than you do. If you are reading books by only one type of person, you are limiting yourself. If you say that only men can write SF, and women don't belong in the SF clubhouse, you may be sexist.

No one is saying that reading books by male writers makes you a bad person prone to "shady behavior." What people are saying, and this comes up more often than it should, frankly, is that readers should expand their horizons.

Isn't expanding horizons and exploring different perspectives what science fiction's supposed to be about? Why's there such a push-back, then?
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Book review: A History of the World in Six Glasses

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Conni
A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage, 2005.

I often enjoy reading pop histories, especially if they have a sort of gimmick to them. In this book, Standage looks at how beverages shaped world history.

He starts out with beer, which was invented/discovered by the Mesopotamians around the same time humanity was working out agriculture. The Hymn to Ninkasi was a recipe for beer, and a brewery in California made some based on it. I'd be interested to try it! (The Mesopotamians made a bread of sorts with the malted barley and used that as their beer starter. No hops, at that point.)

Then the Greeks started making wine, which the Mesopotamians called "beer of the mountains," and that became fuel for Greek philosophy. The Romans and early Christians adopted the drink, and wine became important for ritual.

The Age of Sail and colonization brought sugar plantations, which brought molasses, which brought rum. Rum bought slaves in Africa, slaves produced sugar, and the byproduct of sugar refinement--molasses--was turned into rum. The colonists in the inland US, where buying molasses was too expensive, turned to corn and rye to make whiskey (bourbon and rye, respectively).

Coffee was very popular in the Muslim world, where alcohol was forbidden, but with the advent of rationalism in the 17th century, people wanted a drink that increased their mental acuity rather than make them drunk. Coffeehouses became clearinghouses for news (the internet of its time), and people held discussions in them. The London Stock Exchange grew out of a coffeehouse!

The Chinese kingdoms and empires of the tenth century had spread tea throughout Asia, but the British Empire popularized it through the world. Tea became the drink for the masses in England.

The sixth glass is Coca-Cola, which, for better or for worse, parallels the rise of American power. (Standage entitles one chapter "Globalization in a bottle.") Unsurprisingly, Coke became popular in the US during Prohibition. It went to Europe and North Africa with the troops in World War II, and after that, there was no stopping it.

As an epilogue, Standage asks what the next beverage to shape human history will be. Water, he says. He's probably right; much conflict today is about water use and water rights, and that's not going to go away.

I enjoyed the book, and if you like pop histories, you may, too. It's not extremely in depth (at just over 300 pages, including endnotes, index, and references), but there are always the sources he drew from.
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On eating vegetarian in Germany

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Conni
John Scalzi is back from Germany, and he says he's happy that I was not a vegetarian. In comments, someone agrees.

There's a pervasive myth that German food consists entirely of meat, notably in the form of sausage. I can assure you it doesn't. It's true that a lot of the traditional recipes are based on meat, and there are a lot of sausages, but there are a lot of other options. Yes, even in traditional restaurants.

I've been vegetarian since 1993. I spent my junior year of college (1996-97) living in Germany. I had, frankly, a much easier time eating vegetarian there than I did in my college's dining hall in Pennsylvania, or than I do eating here in North Carolina -- where even the vegetables have meat in them (often in the form of a hambone thrown in, or bits of bacon), at least in traditional Southern restaurants. Germans caught on to the organic food thing much earlier than Americans. I had probably the best soy sausage in my life while I was living in Marburg, picked up at a Bioladen (organic food shop) and grilled for Canada Day (one of my neighbors was Canadian).

When in Germany, if I'm staying in a pension (akin to a B&B), I eat the traditional breakfast: rolls, cheese, butter, jam, Nutella, quark, muesli, soft-boiled eggs. Everything except the cold cuts. If I'm in a hotel, I'll pop over to a bakery or cafe and get a pastry or two: nut-nougat croissant, pretzel roll, cheese roll. Left to my own devices (with a kitchen and grocery store), I eat the same thing I do here: cereal and milk.

For lunch, there's always falafel or vegetarian döner, pizza, sandwiches from the bakery (or your own kitchen), or whatever sounds interesting. For dinner, you can sit down anywhere. I've had really good Indian food in Munich, a nice Mission-style burrito in Berlin, vegetarian Maultaschen (also in Berlin), spinach strudel, baked pasta casserole, South Asian fusion (also in Berlin), amazing brown butter tortellini (in Berlin), delicious cheese spaetzle in Vienna...

I think you get the point by now, and I'm not the only one who's had a relatively easy time eating as a vegetarian in Germany. The folks at Happy Cow have a section for Germany to help you out, and I've found that Lonely Planet guides are good at pointing out places that have veg*n options as well as listing some straight-up veg*n places. (They're my favorite guide books, and they've never steered me wrong.)
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Book review: Master and Commander

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Conni
Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian. 1970.

Since I enjoy space opera, I've been told many times I need to read this series, since, really, space opera is a riff on the Age of Sail (in space!). After giving David Drake's futuristic take on this source a go, I thought I'd give this a try.

Captain Jack Aubrey, British Navy, meets Stephen Maturin, a doctor and naturalist, and persuades him to join his ship as its surgeon. They sail through the Mediterranean a lot and fight the French (and maybe also the Spanish? I was never very clear on that, and the whole Napoleonic Era is largely skipped in US high school curricula). There's also a subplot about the Irish Catholic rebellion.

I'd been warned about the quantity of ship-talk, but, man, that was more than I expected. There were entire pages I had no idea what was going on, except they were talking about topsails, mainsails, gallants, topgallants, royals, studdingsails, staysails, masts, yards, xebecs, snows, sloops, frigates, and cannons. "Oh, they're doing something with the ship again," was basically my take-away from it. That was fine when all they were doing was setting the rigging, but when it was important to what was going on, like during the naval battles, the result is just confusion. The only time I understood what was going on was when Jack was explaining in normal-people language to Stephen.

It's meticulously researched and written in meticulous 1810-era British navy slang and jargon. If you can handle that sort of thing, have at it. I find that it's too hard to wade through, honestly. Needs more spaceships.
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World Beer Festival, Durham, 2011

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Conni
These are my notes from this year. I didn't take very detailed notes, because I, in a fit of talent and rushing out the door, forgot both my pen and my carefully-planned list of booths I wanted to hit. I managed to recreate it on my phone, at least. A bit of a pain in the ass, but what can you do?

Unibroue, Quebec, Canada: Don de Dieu (tripel) I tried this toward the end of the night, and I remember it being good. Fruity and sweet, like most tripels.

Legend Brewing, Richmond, VA: Tripel: nice, drinkable. Quad: fucking amazing. I passed this one around, and everyone liked it (even Ben, who isn't into quads), then I had to get more, because I didn't have any left.

Kind Beers, Charlotte, NC: Belgian Style red ale: Mo got this, and I had a sip. It was awful. Very bitter and unpleasant.

North Coast Brewing Co, Fort Bragg, CA: La Merle (Belgian specialty ale): It was fruity and pleasant, and it had a thick mouthfeel. I had a sip of Enne's Brother Thelonious (Belgian dark strong ale), and it was as good as I remembered it.

Kuhnhenn Brewing Co, Warren, MI: I wanted to try their White Devil (imperial white), but they didn't have it. The imperial creme brulee java stout was really good, though it had a strong coffee bitterness (unlike the Southern Tier creme brulee stout). So I tried the Simcoe Silly (Belgian/American hybrid) and strongly disliked it.

Timmermans Brouwerij, Dilbeer-Itterbeek, Belgium: Bourgougne des Flanders (Flanders brown ale). When I got the sample, the pourer said, "It's sour, just warning you." I told him I drink straight Berliner Weisse, which is really damn sour, so bring it on. This was easily my favorite beer of the night, with Legend's quad in a very close second. It wasn't very sour; I'd argue that it's not sour at all, but someone who doesn't enjoy sour beers might disagree. [Interestingly, Belgian whites/wit beers are also technically sour beers, though I don't find them sour at all. I can kind of taste it if I think about it while drinking one. Lambics are another popular sour style.] It had a fruity note to it, and a heavy, thick mouthfeel. Very, very nice.

Mystery Brewing, Hillsborough, NC. I sponsored their Kickstarter project last year or the year before, so I had to go try their beer. I tried the Langhorne (rye wit), and it was odd. It tasted like a wit, but it had an unfamiliar note to it, which was the rye. I'd try it again to see if I liked it. Sadly, the beer we all wanted to try, the Six Impossible Things chocolate breakfast stout, had fallen victim to a catastrophic beersplosion. Ben got the Queen Anne's Revenge (black IPA), and I think he said he hated it less than other black IPAs he'd tried. (Neither of us is a fan of IPAs in general; they're victim to the American craft brewers' belief that MOAR HOPS is better. Yuck.)

Bull City Burger and Brewery, Durham, NC. Pro Bono Publico (porter): All I have written down is "bitter."

Aviator Brewing Company, Fuquay Varina, NC. Devil's Tramping Ground (tripel). I don't know if the batch was off or if it had gotten skunked (or if they gave me the wrong one), but this was very unpleasant. It wasn't like a tripel at all.

Roth Brewing, Raleigh, NC. Forgotten Hollow cinnamon porter: I still love this beer. I first tried it when I went to the Flying Saucer one time when my dad was in town and they had it on draft. It's kind of like drinking autumn. Their Dark Construct stout was nice, though it's not going to be my new favorite stout. Ben really enjoyed it.

Palm Brouwerij, Steenhuffel, Belgium. Palm (Belgian amber ale). Dear readers, I poured this one out.

Boulevard Brewing Co, Kansas City, MO. The Sixth Glass (quadrupel): Not as nice as the Legend quad, but it still had a good flavor and modest sweetness to it.

Holy Mackerel Beers, Fort Lauderdale, FL. Panic Attack (Belgian Strong): very sweet, thick mouthfeel. Special Golden Ale: good, but not as sweet.

Anderson Valley Brewing Company, Boonville, CA. Winter Solstice (seasonal ale): tasted like Christmas spiced cider. It was really good. This would probably be my third favorite new beer.

Number of beers sampled: 18 (plus refills on two of them, one of them twice...)
Top three samples: Timmerman's Bourgogne des Flanders; Legend's quad; Anderson Valley's Winter Solstice.
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Movie review: Space Battleship Yamato (2010 live action)

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Conni
I imprinted on Leiji Matsumoto's works at a very early age. I was about 5 (we only had HBO for a year), and I was watching the cartoons they showed one day. There was a kid, a space train, and this woman with long blonde hair, which was all I could remember about it until I found a VHS (remember those?) of Galaxy Express 999 at Suncoast (remember them?) when I was in college. Those were the days when you had to pay extra for the "collector's edition," which was Japanese audio with subtitles, because those letters were really expensive.

Back in the 80s, Matsumoto's other main work, Space Battleship Yamato, was dubbed into English and shown on American TV as Star Blazers, renaming ace pilot Kodai Susumu to Derek Wildstar. (I almost put Rick Hunter there, but that's what Ichijou Hikaru ended up as in Robotech, the US adaptation of Macross.) This fan site has plot summaries.

Last December, the live action movie was released in theaters, starring quite a few famous Japanese actors like Kimura Takuya (from the J-drama and movie Hero, about a lawyer, among other things). They made a few changes, notably making Dr Sado, of the bottle of sake and large orange cat, a woman, making it a little less of a sausage-fest. Still, there are only three named women on the Yamato: Sado, Mori Yuki, and the one whose name I forget but who's one of the Black Tigers.

It's the year 2199, and about five years ago, meteor bombs started hitting the Earth, making the surface too irradiated to live on and sending people underground to try to eke out a living. Humanity is fighting off Gamilas attacks, and everything they do, the Gamilas adapt to counter them. Captain Okita is leading an assault/defense force at Mars, and the Gamilan fleet is too strong for their weaponry. Kodai Mamoru, captain of the Yukikaze, uses his ship as a shield to allow Okita to escape and take the news to Earth.

Kodai Susumu is a scavenger. He goes out looking for metal to take to the military. While he's out scavenging, a strange object falls from the sky and knocks off his protective gear. He picks it up and mysteriously survives the deadly radiation levels. At the same time, Okita's ship returns. He takes the object to the military, and they examine it and find coordinates for planet Iscandar, where the Gamilas come from, and blueprints for a warp engine and a powerful weapon, the wave motion gun.

The leader of the military decides to send the Yamato out to Iscandar to find a decontamination device, which would allow people to move back to the surface, and Kodai joins up again. He'd been an ace pilot at the time of the initial Gamilan attacks, but he left after a personal tragedy. He is angry at Okita, because he believes Okita sacrificed his brother in order to escape. He meets up with his old buddies, the Black Tigers.

The name for the ship wasn't chosen at random. The Yamato was a WW2 battleship that was sent on a mission to defend Okinawa until it was destroyed, to give the Japanese people a last hope (as Kodai explains in a speech at the end). Pasting from wikipedia, Yamato's symbolic might was such that some Japanese citizens held the belief that their country could never fall as long as the ship was able to fight. The word Yamato also carries significance in Japan as a poetic name for the country and remains as a metaphor for the end of the empire.

While they're in transit, they're repeatedly attacked by Gamilan forces, and when they eventually make it to Iscandar, they find something unexpected. I won't spoil the ending, but I saw it coming, because I've seen the old anime movies.

At times, it's goofy. I couldn't help but laugh at the Star Trek-like "the bridge is shaking, everybody lean to the right and look like you're hanging on" effects, but the CG was really nice. I couldn't figure out why they made a land assault at Iscandar rather than stay in their nice ships, other than to allow for heroism and sacrifice. The zero-g-love scene made me giggle (mainly because it put this song in my head). But it's based on one of the classics of science fiction anime, and even as it changes and updates a few things (like the Gamilans being energy beings (they're still blue, though) and the Cosmo Zero having something like a Valkyrie's Gerwalk mode, probably just because it looks cool), it's still the story Matsumoto wrote at its core.

It's worth seeing, if you know how to get hold of it. There's no word yet of an English release.
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