Last year on I attended the Los Angeles Festival of Books and reported on the event for DA. My biggest negative takeaway that year was that the romance genre was not represented at the festival. This year (Halleluja!) they actually had a panel devoted to romance. A single, lonely panel mind you, but it was still a huge improvement to my mind. Here’s hoping for more next year!

I spent the day taking so many notes for my report on the festival (which is long enough to run in three pieces) that I lost one pen, got another bleeding, and finally had to borrow a third from a friend. My wrist was aching by the end of the day, but my notebook had been filled with notes. I did the best I could to capture what the speakers said but they talked fast so in many cases these notes aren’t exact quotes but rather paraphrases. I also missed some of the things that were said. My apologies to anyone I may have misquoted.

And now, onto the festival report:

Sunday, April 22, the second day of the festival and the only one we attended, dawned cloudy, so we didn’t slather on sunblock or even bring hats – something we lived to regret when the sun came out in the afternoon. Still, the USC campus, where the festival was held, was not an inferno like last year. We met up with our friends (Bettie Sharpe and her husband) and headed into our first panel of the day.

Fiction: World Building

The speakers on this panel were authors Frank Beddor, Lev Grossman, and John Scalzi. The moderator was Charles Yu. I will be quoting the bios of the speakers from the festival guide throughout this series of articles, and here are theirs:

Frank Beddor is a film producer whose credits include “There’s Something About Mary.” He’s also a screenwriter, professional skier, online gamer and novelist. He is the creator of the bestselling “The Looking Glass Wars” among many other books and graphic novels.

Grossman, an international best-selling author, began his writing career as a freelance journalist. In 2002 he became Time magazine’s book critic as well as one of its lead technology writers. Grossman has written four novels, including “The Magician King.”

Scalzi’s debut novel, “Old Man’s War,” was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. His other novels include “Agent to the Stars,” “The Android’s Dream” and the “Ghost Brigades.” In 2006 he won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. His most recent book is “The Last Colony.”

Yu is the author of “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” and received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award for his story collection “Third Class Superhero.” His work has been published in the Harvard Review and the Gettysburg Review, among other journals.

We snuck into this panel a couple of minutes late and missed the introductions, but Yu began the discussion by posing the question “Worldbuilding – what is it?”

Lev Grossman replied that a world is not exactly a static thing but it is not a story. He said that in his youth, he played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons and practiced worldbuilding. To him this was not the same as storytelling and he cautioned writers that worlbuilding can overwhelm your fiction by keeping the story from moving forward.

Scalzi disagreed with Grossman and said that worldbuilding is a form of fiction because it comes from the imagination. He did agree, however that Grossman was right, “You can spend all your time building a world without creating a story.”

Scalzi also added his “heretical view” that the Lord of the Rings movies were superior to the books. He said that was because Tolkien created a detailed world and was deeply involved with the worldbuilding whereas Peter Jackson was more involved with the storytelling.

He contrasted this with “The C.S. Lewis approach” and this led to a discussion of how some authors create the world first while others start telling the story and then build the world according to the needs of the story. It was a question of “Are you writing from the inside out or from the outside in?”

The C.S. Lewis approach was to create what the story needed – even Lewis scholars can’t make a continuity out of the world of the Narnia books because that wasn’t what Lewis was trying to do. Scalzi said his approach was similar and that he doesn’t describe things (for example, aliens) that are part of his world unless a description is needed.

Frank Beddor said he uses concept artists to draw some things so that he can describe it in his writing and the image draws readers in.

Beddor also said that he outlined his first book and spent too much time describing the rules of the world. With the following books he had more confidence and wrote more fluidly.

Yu then asked the authors to describe their books. Beddor shared an elevator pitch for The Looking Glass Wars, a reverse-Lewis Carrol world. I didn’t get all of it in my notes but it went something like this: Princess Alyss of Wonderlandia is enjoying her seventh birthday when it is interrupted by a coup. Alyss escapes to our own world through pools in Wonderlandia and ends up in Victorian England, begging an Oxford don to writer her story (he gets it all wrong and writes Alice in Wonderland) while Hatter, her bodyguard, ends up in Paris.

Scalzi described Old Man’s War as “Starship Troopers with old guys” and Grossman, who declined to pitch or describe his books, instead read an excerpt from The Magicians.

Yu brought up an Amazon review that said that Grossman’s book was not a fantasy, and speculated that this may be because his worldbuilding pokes a hole in the fantasy world.

Grossman explained that as a child he was disturbed by C.S. Lewis’ Narnia world because of the way Narnia ends. In The Last Battle (the final Narnia book) Narnia collapses and the kids go to Aslan’s land. When Grossman read this he thought, what if Aslan’s land collapses too? What happens to the children then? And so when he began writing he wanted to explore a situation where worlds keep collapsing.

Yu brought up the subject of social media and connecting with readers. He asked Scalzi about his blog and Scalzi went on about it at length (I didn’t get good notes here). He said that some of his readers are politically conservative and when they arrive at his blog they are surprised to learn that he espouses liberal views like support of same sex marriage. He also added that he withholds a lot of personal information on his blog and so his blogging also creates a fictional construct, a John Scalzi author persona that isn’t the same as the real Scalzi.

Frank Beddor mentioned that he created a game space for the readers where they could play the characters in his books in order to create a community for readers. Readers write fanfiction set on his world and one thirteen year old boy even created a claymation video book trailer for his book on YouTube.

Fanfiction then came up and Scalzi said he views fanfiction favorably — it’s a sign that readers are really addicted to the world and can’t wait for the next book.

A fascinating discussion emerged about how J.K. Rowling announced that Dumbeldore was gay and some fans reacted negatively, with cries of “Dumbeldore can’t be gay!”

Scalzi said he believed that if Rowling says her character is gay, he is gay. Grossman disagreed with Scalzi on this point and argued “The world is what is in the book, not outside of it.” To which Scalzi replied “There’s the torah and there’s the commentaries.” Grossman said, “I don’t know what that means.”

Scalzi explained that there was evidence, in Rowling’s advice to a screenwriter on one of the Harry Potter movies not to make Dumbeldore a womanizer, that she knew all along that Dumbeldore was gay. Because it’s not inconsistent with the world Rowling created and “Everything that Rowling says about Dumbeldore being gay checks out,” Dumbledore is gay.

Lev Grossman still disagreed, saying: “The book has a beginning and an end.” He added that “No one reads the same book – that’s what’s great about reading.”

Scalzi agreed with that but still insisted that Rowling was the authority on Dumbeldore.

Grossman said: “I don’t think writers are the only ones who do worldbuilding. Readers worldbuild too.”

Yu, the moderator mentioned that now people want worldbuilders rather than fiction writers or storytellers. Paramount is making a movie of Scalzi’s book, Old Man’s War, and there’s a television show in the works for Lev Grossman’s book. Beddor, a producer of Something About Mary is planning to produce The Looking Glass Wars into a movie as well.

Scalzi responded to this by saying that readers of science fiction and fantasy select for immersive experiences but added that readers don’t always want worldbuilding. Sometimes what they want is a consistent reading experience which is why authors like James Patterson and Nora Roberts are so popular.

The authors discussed the temptation of continuing to write in the same world of their most popular series. Scalzi said he could write more books in the same world as Old Man’s War and readers would buy those books but indicated that he could get bored doing that so it’s a double edged sword.

Yu asked the authors about their next projects and Grossman said he is working on another book set in the same world as The Magicians as well as on another book set in a different world. Beddor said he wrote a murder mystery set in a high school but his publisher said it was out of his demographic. Scalzi said he was working on a book called Red Shirts and had two more projects in the works in addition to his work on the movie.

The discussion was opened up to an audience Q& A. The first of the audience questions was “How do the novels interact with real life for readers?”

Grossman replied that literature is not realism and that traditionally (in earlier centuries) literature was fantasies like Hamlet and The Faerie Queene and “Fantasy was all there was.” He explained that Fantasy is “a way for you to encounter the problems of the real world but in a transformed way.” He said that made the experience of reading about those problems easier for readers than it otherwise would be.

The next question was whether fan fiction was hijacking. Scalzi replied to this by saying there will always be people who feel proprietary about worlds but fan fiction is purely for the joy of it.

Grossman said that this idea that fiction should be original is relatively new – an eighteenth century attitude and a “bizarre literary singularity.” He said that “The Iliad is Aeneid fanfiction” and that “Story is not the property of the author.” The author is only the caretaker of the story.

I got to ask a question and asked if the authors’ story conceptions began with the worldbuilding or with the characters and also, whether they discover new things about their worlds during the writing process.

Scalzi said “I make shit up as I go along.” He explained that upon request for a sequel to Old Man’s War, he had to explain the conception of the earth he’d created out of laziness, and the reason why the earth was the way it was in his world.

Beddor stated that he starts with the characters rather than the world and that the stuff to solve, the problems, begins with the characters. Grossman nodded along with Beddor’s comment.

Fiction & Fantasy: Otherworldly Adventures

The next panel we attended was also on a science fiction and fantasy topic. This panel’s participants were authors Greg Bear, Raymond E. Feist and Boyd Morrison. The moderator was Rob Latham. Here are their bios, taken from the festival guide:

Bear is the author of more than 30 books, which include thrillers, science fiction and fantasy. Some titles include “Blood Music,” “Eon,” “The Forge of God” and “Hull Zero Three.” “Halo: Primordium: Book Two of the Forerunner Saga” is his newest book.

Feist is the author of the best-selling Serpentwar Saga: “The Shadow of a Dark Queen,” “Rise of a Merchant Prince,” “Rage of a Demon King” and “Shards of a Broken Crown.” His latest book is “A Crown Imperiled: Book Two of the Chaoswar Saga.”

Morrison has worked as a mechanical engineer, Microsoft video game usability manager and professional actor and writer. In 2003, he became a “Jeopardy!” champion. “The Catalyst,” “The Ark,” “Rogue Wave” and “The Vault” are his novels.

Latham teaches contemporary American and British literature, cultural studies and science fiction at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of “Consuming Youth: Vampires Cyborgs and the Culture of Consumption.”

Once again, we walked in a little late (this happened to us with every single panel, because they overlapped with each other or with lunch), this time in the midst of a discussion of writing in other people’s worlds.

Greg Bear was talking about writing books in other people’s universes including Star Wars books and books set in Isaac Asimov’s world. He said he’d written about Darth Vader as a teenager and along the way he created a planet that has appeared in nineteen other Star Wars books.

Feist then said that he feels he writes historical novels about a place that doesn’t exist. He mentioned that he played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. Three years after that he started writing bad books set in the same universe to amuse other kids, and in the process of doing so he started stretching storytelling muscle and realized he wanted to write.

Because he and his friends had already created the world during their games, he didn’t have to do much worldbuilding but did have to create the politics and other aspects. He said that you have to be consistent with what had already been established when you write in someone else’s world. Because the world reflected the personalities of Feist’s friends who had been involved in its creation, the story also reflects them.

Latham mentioned that Morrison has engineering training and writes books that read as though they require a tremendous amount of research. Morrison said that for a lot of writers research is the most fun part of writing. He has stories he wants to write and he just does the research those stories require.

Morrison added that he started researching Rogue Wave one and half years before the Asian tsunami and researched what could happen in such an event. The Ark involved archeology which is not his background, but he made his character an engineer so that he could use his engineering knowledge. His Tyler Locke books present an alternative, science fictional explanation for ancient mysteries.

Latham asked to what extent genre categories are an important concern to the panelists when they decide what to write.

Bear replied “Marketing strategies don’t mean a hill of beans.” He added that through most of history writing didn’t fit into these categories. Homer was half fantasy and half real.

Feist said that the sales of categories like romance, fantasy, science fiction and horror dwarf the sales of the mainstream writing that is reviewed in the New York Times and considered highbrow. He said “There has to be a fundamental understanding of what you’re trying to write” and that he writes what he likes to read.

He said he’d written a series of magical books where the trope is “There is no magic.” He loves Grimm and once upon a time – “Great examples of Urban Fantasy” and added that “If you’re writing a western there better be a gunslinger in it.”

Morrison said he loves thrillers and it doesn’t matter where they are set. He considers The Hunger Games a thriller. He added that in genre you know the experience you’re going to get and mainstream is anything that doesn’t fit into the genre categories.

Feist then said that fiction is otherworldly and that when Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby he wrote about a world – Long Island – that was alien to people in the Midwest.

Bear talked about scientific discoveries and said “Reality beats us out there.” He said this was grist for the mill and that “Anyone who says you should write what you know doesn’t realize English majors don’t know a hell of a lot. You have to research.”

Feist added “If you want to be a writer, don’t study English—study philosophy, history, or political science, because you’ll have to write about something.”

Latham threw in “I’m an English professor” and got some laughs.

Morrison said that he doesn’t include anything supernatural in his books – no gods or demons that affect the plot — but he does give an alternative explanation for things. One of his books was set in Naples and while researching it, he discovered the Greeks dug tunnels under Naples. He went to Naples to explore these tunnels and while there, he realized they were the perfect setting for his book, which takes place in those tunnels.

Latham talked about reading fantasy and science fiction when he grew up. He doesn’t remember these genres getting as much attention back then, but when Star Wars came along it brought along an explosion of media tie-ins. He asked the panelists if fiction has changed as a result of media attention.

Bear replied that writers have always reflected other writers so the media had always been there.

Feist said that the old days were no different from today, it’s just bigger now – the media is saturated. He gets on the internet after waking up and his son has the Xbox in the middle of the living room. There are tons of cable channels, Hulu, and other media outlets. It’s overwhelming. It’s the same but there’s a hell of a lot more of it. When he and Greg Bear were first published, self publishing was vanity publishing – now it’s a real, attractive, potentially viable option.

Bear said he was fascinated by how, as the media ages it gets very jealous of new media and there is not a lot of cross-marketing.

Feist gave an example from a time he talked to people who worked at Time Warner about video games. Every movie at Time Warner had to be self-sustaining. Around this time “Batman” came out, and because of that policy, rather than giving “Batman” to Time Warner’s video game platform, Activision got it. Eventually Time Warner stopped producing video games.

Morrison said that nowadays there is more cross-marketing. If something is popular, they want to put it into every media.

Feist said his original agent sold The Winds of War to CBS for what was the most successful television miniseries at the time. That was as big as a book could get back then but nowadays big stars, HBO, etc. are looking for content.

Latham asked a question (I’m guessing this was because the panelists on this panel were all male) about writing female characters.

Bear said he’s always had strong female characters in his books, scientists and mathematicians.

Feist said that historically women have been better writers of male characters than men are of female characters for reasons that have to do with what has been published in literature.

His first three books were written from the male POV and it was easy for him to portray women through the male POV, but he had a much harder time when writing from the female POV after that. He co-wrote the following three books with Janny Wurts to learn how to do it and since then he has gotten better with practice. He added that his female characters think more globally while his male characters are more linear.

Morrison said that his wife is his first reader and his agent and editor are both women so he actually has to worry more about his male characters and how they are portrayed.

Bear added that if you try to portray women as more intuitive than men or some such stereotype, “You’re going to lose definition on your characters and they will fight back.”

Next up in Part 2 of my report on the festival: “Anne Rice in Conversation with Scott Timberg”

Related posts:

1. My Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
2. Los Angeles Times Book Review Section Is Folding
3. Sunday News Roundup: Free Books from All Romance eBooks

From Reader Lana:

Your midday link about Amazon being evil really got me thinking. See, I live in Canada, you know that place just North of the USA. Really close by in fact. Now, it seems a few authors that I have been reading for years are deciding to only sell their books with Amazon from their backlist. I have asked some of these authors about perhaps listing with KOBO, as that is what is mainly supported up here in Canada. Most authors are more than willing to try this, but within the past few weeks, one author has said, no she wants Amazon Kindle exclusives only. In fact, she just released a new book there as well. This has made me decide that I will no longer be supporting this author at all. Am I alone in this? Are there authors that others have stopped supporting because they are sticking to exclusivity?

Have other readers stopped supporting an author? After all, if she goes exclusive, is she really supporting you the reader?

Kobo to become a publisher – Arts & Entertainment – CBC News – Kobo is offering self publishing services to authors akin to BN’s PubIt! and Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. “Canadian-based e-book seller Kobo is following in Amazon’s footsteps and creating a publishing arm that will deal directly with authors, CBC News has learned. Kobo, whose major shareholder is Indigo Books, will roll out its program sometime next year, according to CEO Michael Serbinis.” I’ve heard that Kobo has been romancing agents so it will be interesting to see if there are some agent firms that begin to utilize (or maybe already are) Kobo’s service. CBC News

Thanks To E-Books, Publishers Find Flat Is The New Up | paidContent – Ebooks are profitable for publishers. More profitable than print books under the current agency pricing scheme. In three cases – Random House, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster – rising ebook profits have helped publishers maintain their profits, although not grow them. paidContent

MIT Develops Self-Sculpting Sand That Can Replicate Objects | TPM Idea Lab – Science fiction authors are going to have to try harder to keep one step ahead of actual science. “On Monday, MIT announced that researchers had successfully developed a prototype of the system out of robotic, magnetic cubes — “robot pebbles” — each one cubic centimeter, or 10 mm per side, that could successfully replicate 2D shapes. Shapes replicated so far include 2 x 2 cubes and 90-degree blocks. The team has also developed algorithms that reliably simulate what the system would be like when scaled down to “sand-sized particles” and it has the potential to be revolutionary, allowing someone to stick a solid object in the smart sand and watch it self-sculpt itself into an exact copy within several minutes.”  TPM Idea Lab

A Beautifully Illustrated Stop-Motion Animation of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea – the old man and the sea from Marcel Schindler on Vimeo. Gorgeous stop motion animation of Old Man and the Sea. Gizmodo

the old man and the sea from Marcel Schindler on Vimeo.

Like the new look to the links Roundup?  I’m using this fantastic and free plugin called “Argo Links.”

Deals

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1. Friday Midday Links: Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Love Story
2. Tuesday Midday Links: Self publishing stock rises and so does traditional publishing
3. Tuesday Midday Links: Harlequin Horizon’s, A self publishing venture

Readers: This book is hardcore, heavy-duty, almost-but-not-quite non-consensual BDSM. I hesitate to call it a romance and yet it really almost is. It’s total 24/7 dehumanization of the female submissive. It is NOT for everyone. I loved it and I heartily recommend it, but readers, please read my review before buying, because it’s unlike anything else I’ve reviewed.

Ms. Jacob, I’ve tried your As She’s Told and it’s just slightly too…squicky for me. I never enjoyed the pony-play parts of Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty series. Ditto Molly Weatherfield’s (aka Pam Rosenthal) Carrie’s Story when it gets into pony play. I have friends who adore pony play and it’s seriously beautiful, but I’m pretty uninterested. So the dehumanization and pony play of the contemporary set As She’s Told is…not my thing. It goes just a bit too far for me, no matter how well-written it is.

This story, though, takes those ideas and moves them to a hypothetical far future. Humans have colonized the galaxy and there are two sister planets, Henth and Raniz. Background is infodumped in Chapter 3, but the upshot of it is that Raniz is populated by small, entirely lesbian women and Henth is populated by huge, entirely homosexual men. Except for the few throwbacks. Heterosexuality is almost unheard-of and something to be ashamed of. If women on Raniz are convicted of a severe enough crime, they are offered the choice of rehabilitation, exile, or slavery on Henth. They have to choose to go to Henth and are then subjected to a month of intense attempts to convince them to choose otherwise. Once they get to Henth, they are sold to the highest bidder. There is intense competition among the small group of men on Henth who realize they’re heterosexual. When one manages to buy a pet woman, he can then choose to do to his new exotic pet whatever he wants.

The narrator is a woman who has worked hard most of her life to get to the point that she’s given the choice to go to Henth. That is, she’s a malingerer and a random sabateur, hoping she’d finally do something awful enough to be convicted and offered the choice. Because she wants to go. She wants to be owned by a man, she wants to be a pet, she wants to have decisions taken away from her. When she gets to Henth, she’s bought by Garid who has worked hard for years to be able to afford a woman. With full awareness that his new pet is human, intelligent, with a mind and a will, Garid treats her like an animal. He refuses to allow her to learn the language, he trains her using trial and error and severe physical punishment.

The narrative tension is in the narrator’s loss of will. She narrates her complete and utter submission to Garid. The story is also told from Garid’s third person point of view, and from the perspective of one of Garid’s friends. The “romance” in the story is in the progress of Garid’s utter control over the narrator. There are set-backs and changes. There’s pony play and orgasm control and humiliation and group sex. But it’s all about how Garid becomes the narrator’s will:

My master had taught me a great deal, far beyond my childish imagination. One thing he taught me was that I had been completely wrong about what I had wanted. I didn’t really want my Ranizen fantasies. Behind every one of those was a mind and an imagination – mine. Every one had a star, bound, abused, and brought to ecstasy – me. I was the center of those fantasies; I controlled them. I controlled the outcomes. I made them safe and scary and sexy and orgasmic.

I had fantasized about losing control, giving up autonomy, always to a man who would want what I wanted and give it to me. It wasn’t losing control at all, it was choosing the plot by inventing my own cast of characters. Playing at helplessness. But my master didn’t give me what I wanted; he took what he wanted. And I was utterly, utterly grateful that it was so. All I needed to know was what he wanted from me. All I had to be was the instrument of his will and pleasure.

How many times had I been like that stupid animal at the vet, coming to the end of its chain and looking surprised? I didn’t choose. I was an animal – less than that – a slave of an animal that had less than an animal’s autonomy and less than an animal’s rights. Even pets get off the leash from time to time. I had no rights to attention, no rights to orgasm, no rights to anything at all. My master had bought every privilege I ever owned.

I had been halfway there, that night in the tool shed. I had reached the point of resignation. But now I think I’d reached the point of joy.

The brilliant thing about this book, the thing that made it work for me, that made it one of the hottest things I’ve ever EVER read, was the 110% consensual nature of what happens in the book. The narrator is beaten, humiliated, fucked, shared, turned into an animal with no will of her own, and she craves every single thing that’s done to her. Every woman discussed in the book is utterly happy with her situation. The rightness of the situation for the characters is written into every word of the story. So readers can have their non-con with an utterly clear conscience.

More quirkily, I especially loved how the men in this book are aberrant. Garid has to come out to his father about buying a woman. There’s a whole chapter early on in which Garid and his friend discuss how they figured out that they’re heterosexual and dominant, how it’s changed their lives, how their families deal with it — all the things gay people go through here. It’s a lovely conceit in the book.

Calling it a “romance” is perhaps a stretch. Although Garid thinks at the end that he loves his pet, and indeed wouldn’t want any other relationship, he would have bought any slave at that point because they’re so rare and he had the money. Neither of the main characters have much choice in who they “love” — it’s almost a fated mate story in that respect. But the focus of the story is still 100% on the growth of the relationship between them.

Readers, if you like hard-core dehumanization BDSM, then this story is for you. I loved it. I thought it was almost a “sweet” story, in some respects. Both main and secondary characters have personalities that feed into how the story progresses. It’s not merely a bunch of stroke scenes sewn together. There is narrative arc and emotional progress throughout the story, so it’s worth reading end-to-end, as well as picking out individual scenes for closer…inspection, shall we say.

Grade: B+

Best regards,

-Sarah F.

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The YA dystopian subgenre is fast becoming glutted. It seems like so many titles fitting the category are coming out these days. But sometimes I wonder if that’s because they genuinely fall into that category or are just being placed there for marketing purposes. When I first heard of your novel, I was given the impression it was just another dystopian. Upon completing it, however, I realized it was less dystopian and more science fiction.

In the future, technology has made great advances. People can live until 200. You can leave your body and take over someone else’s while their consciousness “sleeps.” Unfortunately, not all technology has positive, or even neutral, uses.

At some point, wars took place all over the world. The one most relevant here were the Spore Wars. During this conflict, a biological agent was released in the U.S. that resulted in the deaths of everyone between the ages of 20 and 60. This led to society being split into two distinct groups: the Starters (people under the age of 20) and the Enders (people above the age of 60).

Life is difficult if you’re a Starter but it’s far worse if you’re an unclaimed minor. Callie, our heroine, is one such person. She and her younger brother have been living on the streets since their parents died during the Spore Wars. It means scrounging around for food and supplies while avoiding rival street gangs and the law enforcement agencies that make daily sweeps through the slums, rounding up kids to work in factories. In this world, Starters have become second-class citizens.

But as their situation grows dire, Callie becomes increasingly desperate. She eventually takes up an offer to rent out her body to wealthy Enders who want to re-experience the joys of being young again. Most of the time this means partying, clubbing, and athletics.

The money is good so Callie decides to accept the deal. Unfortunately, complications soon arise. Namely, the chip in her head that allows the “renting” to take place malfunctions and Callie finds herself in control of her body again. This should be a dream come true. Big house, servants, fast cars, and lots of money — what’s not to be excited about? Except the more time Callie spends pretending to be an Ender in a Starter’s body, the more she realizes that partying is the last thing on her Renter’s mind.

I think I liked the idea explored by this novel more than the novel itself, if that makes sense. The ethical dilemmas were what kept me turning the pages. There’s a huge gulf between the very rich and the very poor. It’s an echo of issues we’re seeing played out in current events. In the world of Starters, the Enders’ fear of the younger generations usurping their place in society too soon is what led to the relegation of the Starters to second class citizens.

It’s this opinion of Starters that gave rise to “renting.” Poor Starters see it as a quick easy way to earn money. Enders have to sign a contract that ensures their body be taken care of. Any damage results in heavy fines. And it’s expressly prohibited to have any sexual contact with Starters while inhabiting a Starter’s body. So no fears about coming back and discovering you’re pregnant. Plus, you get a makeover.

But how messed up is that? Does society really value youth so much that people would be willing to take over other people’s bodies just to get it back? The social commentary here is pretty evident. I appreciate that because it balances out the novel’s other implication: the young have no power and are convenient slave labor for the old. On the other hand, I can see why the latter would be a popular idea for the target audience.

For the novel itself, however, I’m of two minds. There are parts I really enjoyed. I loved the sections where Callie would “wake” up and find herself in control of her body again. Sometimes she finds herself lying on the floor of a nightclub. Other times she discovers she’s holding a gun.

The thriller aspects are the strongest parts of the plot. The sections where Callie tries to figure out what’s going on while she has control of her body are suspenseful. How long will she have control of her body this time? What has her renter done now? The plot enhances the fears we all have about losing control of our own bodies. So many things could be done to Callie’s body while she’s “asleep.” Given what her renter is doing, she could die or find herself awake in a prison cell.

By contrast, the romantic subplot bored me. It should have interested me since it was a complicated situation. Callie’s an unclaimed minor and Blake is a Senator’s son. She’s pretending to be an Ender renting a Starter’s body so the people who buy into this lie are disgusted by the relationship. Not to mention that it’s against the rules laid out in the contract. Blake thinks she’s a rich girl even though she’s anything but. Even to him, she’s also telling a lie. All the complications here should have kept me riveted.

Instead I was utterly bored because Blake was the blandest love interest ever. I suppose you could say there were plot-related reasons for this but for the majority of the novel, I failed to understand the attraction. But then in the final pages of the novel, there’s a reveal that makes everything before extremely creepy. I would have been on-board with that except Callie’s reaction to this revelation made no sense to me.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

On top of this, there’s a tacked on love triangle. Like many readers, I’m bored by love triangles. They’ve become formulaic and an easy way to add emotional conflict. But the one in Starters is so half-hearted, I couldn’t help but wonder what the point was.

Though the novel has its weak points, I found elements of it very compelling. I especially found some of the ideas really interesting and wished there’d been more attention given to them. Of course, I suppose that’s why this is a YA novel rather than an adult SF novel. All things considered, this is a B for me.

My regards,

Jia

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I keep meaning to try more self-published books, but I admit I get overwhelmed by sheer amount available. There’s so much out there that I just don’t know where to start. I have no idea how January does it. But when you offered your novel up for review, the premise and excerpt caught my interest and I decided to give it a try. For my first foray into the world self-published YA novels, this was a good place to start.

In a future where everyone is telepathic, Kira is a zero — someone who can’t read other people’s minds and someone whom other telepaths can’t read. Obviously, this makes her an outcast. Now not all hope is lost. She could simply be a late-bloomer but the days pass without Kira changing, she’s coming to accept the fact she may spend the rest of her life as a zero.

Zeroes have a hard lot in society. Very few people trust them. After all, how can you trust someone you can’t read? What’s more, Kira has to kiss any chances of her relationship with best friend, Raf, changing into something more goodbye.

Then one day a mishap lands her in the lap of a high school senior named Simon. Literally. As a result, Kira learns the truth. She’s not a zero at all. She’s something else entirely: a mindjacker — someone who’s capable of controlling other people with her mind.

I enjoyed this book a greal deal. The plot was packed full of action and kept moving. It didn’t take the route of girl meets boy, falls in love at first sight, and holds hands with him for the rest of the book. There’s plenty of stories like that out there already, and I’m definitely up for something different.

I liked that Kira wasn’t solely focused on one guy. It’s obvious that she really has feelings for Raf but she feels like circumstances make it impossible to be with him, to even take that chance and see if he’d like to be something more. First, she’s a zero while he’s the reigning high school soccer god. Then, she’s a mindjacker who has to keep that fact a secret. Three generations ago, the first readers were rounded up into camps when the trait started showing up in the general populace. It’s not unreasonable to think they’d do the same thing to mindjackers, who appear to be a mutation of the original reader gene.

Kira’s conflict with Simon is genuine. She has feelings for Raf but feel like she can’t be with him. So here comes Simon, who knows what she is and can teach her how to use her gift. He’s a senior and he seems to like her, which can be flattering for a girl who up until now was a zero, considered invisible by everyone around her.

That said, a part of me wishes there were more interactions with Raf after Kira realized she was a mindjacker. And when I say that, I mean interactions that did not involve Raf being jealous of Kira’s relationship with Simon. They were best friends, after all.

Overall, I think the portrayal of the world was the best part. It’s kind of creepy to imagine a place where you could read anyone’s mind, provided you were within distance. The thought of completely silent classrooms because teachers would plug the lessons directly into students’ minds makes me shudder just a little bit. Plus, there’d be no secrets and gossip would spread even faster, supported with mental visuals from witnesses.

I think this book is a good choice for readers who want a YA novel filled with action and focuses less on introspection and tortured relationship. It is a science fiction novel versus a paranormal, but we still could have gone that way easily. It didn’t though, so readers wanting a change of pace may want to give this a try. B

My regards,
Jia

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Thank you for sending me a complimentary copy of this short story. Because it is short, I admit I don’t have much to say about it. When I was told that this book was connected to another short, “Silent Blade”, it made sense to read it and review it together. I had no problems reading “Silver Shark” as a stand alone should the readers wonder where to start. However, the couple in “Silent Blade” play a role in “Silver Shark” and thus scenes from “Silver Shark” serve as a kind of epilogue (complete with kids!) to the couple in “Silent Blade”. While both stories are set in New Delphi, Silver Shark takes the world building a different place. It could be argued that absent the New Delphi setting, these were two very different worlds.

One thing I think is wonderful, though, is the examination of the clan idea here. Andrews writes about this topic in all of her books, but most obviously in “On The Edge”, a book I enjoyed tremendously every time I read it. The clan is both powerful and protective, but it can also be stifling and dangerous. It can be a haven or a hell. In these shorts, I think you see both sides of the clan system and within the clan system, the niche that can be carved out for two special people.

Silent Blade

In a world where family meant everything, Meli excised herself from her clan to become their silent blade, an assassin that carries out threats on behalf of her family but because of her excision, the acts don’t reflect poorly on her family. The Galdes clan asks her to do a hit on Celino Carvanna because he is underbidding a project that the Galdes clan needs. The request is sweet because Celino Carvanna once broke Meli’s heart and led her to excision. Meli decides on a course of revenge that was surprising and held quite a bit of suspense. Would she kill him? Is there something worse than killing?

One thing that is remarkable in these shorts was the ease of the world building. I particularly liked the small details. This story and its sequel is a sexier, more romance oriented story than previous Andrews’ works. I thought that the sexuality of the story fit better here than in Silent Blade. The one problem I had Celino. I understood why Meli loved him. She was brought up to love him, trained herself to love him, and believed in her love for him wholeheartedly. I did not find Celino to be worthy of Meli’s love. He was cruel in his initial rejection of her. She forgives him because he was fighting the yoke of obligation and bondage and Meli was persistent in her pursuit. Unfortunately, I found his rejection of her to be telling of his character which was shallow and thoughtless and his later pursuit of her really didn’t change my mind. He pursued her relentlessly but didn’t show any change of character. He was still selfish but maybe less shallow. At least older, he appeared to appreciate different things although much of them still seemed physical. This was a quick and enjoyable read but I did wish that Meli found someone else to love, as her undying devotion seemed wasted on Celino.  B-

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Silver Shark

Claire Shannon is a psycher who can kill people via mind attacks. In a Matrix-like interface, Claire and other psychers enter the technological world by hooking up to a network and then entering the bionet. While both “Silent Blade” and “Silver Shark” take place in the same world, I don’t recall the bionet being mentioned. This story felt a bit more science fiction whereas the first one was more fantasy. Claire lived on the planet Uley and was part Brodwyn retainer, one of the two entities that fought for supremacy on the planet. She was not a Brodwyn retainer by choose, but by circumstance. When Brodwyn falls to Melko, the other competing Uley faction, Claire is shipped off planet to New Delphi. As a Grade A Psycher, Claire would be terminated so she hides her abilities and passes herself off as a secretary. As a refugee, she must find and maintain employment or be deported back to Uley where the Melkos would kill her. She is accepted as a secretary for Venturo Escana, the head of a powerful Escana family. When Claire meets him, she is literally struck dumb by his golden magnificence.

Claire lives in a building with other refugees and they come to her, knowing that she is a high level psycher, when something goes awry and she needs to enter the bionet. Once in the bionet, however, she can be detected and her placid safe life might be destroyed.

Claire has very protective instincts, ones that won’t allow her to turn her back on those that look to her for protection. Veturo is much like that as well. He’s created an empire from which he cares for people and destroys those that work against him. As in “Silent Blade” the small details are used to great effect:

Claire watched it for a few seconds, picked up the knife, and chopped the pepper.

It was Saturday morning and she had woken up with a sudden need to prove to herself that she could cook. Immigration had fully stocked her refrigerator with raw ingredients, so she set them out on the counter and had the AI run a comprehensive analysis finding a combination that would result in a beginner-level recipe.

“One peeled compa, cut into strips.”

“Define compa.”

“Compa: fleshy fruit of Karlovskaya species, rich in Vitamin A. Flavor: sour, with sweet aftertaste. Appearance: red tetrahedron with rounded corners.”

Claire picked out a rough pyramid-looking red fruit. “Demonstrate peeling.”

I found the immediate sexual attraction that Claire had toward Venturo to not be in keeping with her character that is supposed to be totally locked down and numb from her war experience. I understand that she was evolving due to the exposure of color and life at New Delphi, but the immediate lust seemed jarring. The bionet scenes seemed a little strange to me.  Once in the bionet, the characters can shape shift and do all sorts of different things. It also seemed like a humid jungle.  In my head, it looked like a cross between My Pretty Pony and Avatar.  The story tends to jump around a lot, first from the planet, then to New Delphi, and then into the bionet, and then to Meli and Celino’s home.  For a short, we covered a lot of ground that could have been better used in developing the emotional components that seemed to underpin the story.  C+

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It’s hard for me to grade these two shorts because of their length, I found myself wanting more. For existing Andrews fans, it would be a shame to miss these stories. On the other hand, for new Andrews fans, I’d recommend one of her traditionally published books like “Bayou Moon” first because the fuller length story is more satisfying.

Jane

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