Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One, Second Semifinal :: Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz vs. The Just City by Jo Walton

Our second semifinal match in Bracket One of the Battle of the 2015 Books features Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz going against The Just City by Jo Walton. In the semifinal round, the books are judged after reading 100 pages. The winner, the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 100 pages, will advance to the championship round.

Flex:  Angry Robot, March 2015, 423 pages, cover art by Stephen Meyer-Rassow. Flex is the first book in the 'Mancer trilogy. The second book, The Flux, appeared last October, and the third book, Fix, is just out this month. Steinmetz was a Nebula Award nominee for his novelette "Sauerkraut Station."

Flex overpowered Human Monsters by Gregory Lamberson in the first round, then Flex edged by Hexed by Michael Alan Nelson in the second round to reach here, the semifinals.

In Flex, it seems the key to doing magic is to be sufficiently obsessive about something. Our protagonist Paul Tsabo is that weird guy in the office who actually enjoys doing paperwork. In the first 50 pages of Flex, Paul discovered that he could do bureaucromancy, magic performed with paper. Unfortunately, when a 'mancer does magic, there is always a dangerous backlash called "the Flux." So Paul's first experiments with bureaucromancy led to a fire that severely injured his six-year-old daughter. The insurance company Paul works for has declined coverage for her reconstructive surgery, because they can tell the injuries resulted from magic, which is excluded. Paul realizes he will need to use magic to help his daughter obtain the treatment she needs. So in the second 50 pages, he tracks down another 'mancer operating illegally, in hopes that she can help him learn how to do magic while deflecting the Flux. The other 'mancer is Valentine, who performs magic by compulsively playing video games. She has been using her magic to destructive ends, but now seems suspiciously willing to help Paul.

The Just City:   Tor, January 2015, 364 pages, cover art by Raphael. Jo Walton won a Hugo and Nebula for her novel Among Others, and has also won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, and a Tiptree Award. The Just City is the first book in a series. The second volume, The Philosopher Kings was published in June 2015. The third book, Necessity, is just out.

The Just City overpowered Towers Fall by Karina Sumner-Smith in the first round, then The Just City got by Letters to Zell by Camille Griep in the second round to reach here, the semifinals.

In the opening 50 pages of The Just City, the goddess Pallas Athene decided to create a city modeled on Plato's Republic, apparently just to see if it could be done. A group of 300 scholars were designated to run the place, including Maia, a young woman who felt limited by her options in 19th Century England and prayed to Athene for a way out. Maia's viewpoint chapters take place as the city is first founded. Unfortunately, in the second 50 pages, Maia discovers that applying platonic ideals is easier said than done, a point made very clear when one of the other scholars rapes her. The other chapters take place later on, from the viewpoints of Simmea, a young woman rescued from slavery, and a dynamic young man named Pytheas. Simmea and Pytheas are among the 10,000 young people brought in by Maia and the other leaders to be educated Plato-fashion. Simmea befriends Pytheas, unaware that he is actually an incarnation of the god Apollo.

The Battle:  We have an urban fantasy and a mythical historical fantasy battling it out to make it into the finals. As in the previous semifinal, it's a difficult contest to call, because both books are nicely written and display obvious strengths.

Flex begins with a sympathetic protagonist, wracked with concerns about his daughter, concerns that understandably make him feel compelled to step outside the bounds of the law. (Although why he initially started using magic is less understandable, since he knew very well the nature of the Flux.) Steinmetz set himself a fun writing challenge in the 'Mancer series by creating a form of magic based on bureaucracy and a central conflict that turns on obtaining insurance coverage. These are not the usual tools of genre fantasy, but Steinmetz makes them work quite nicely.

The Just City offers two very sympathetic young female protagonists and a third protagonist, the god Apollo, who seems to mean well but is liable to mess things up for those around him, as gods do. The concept of setting up a city based on Plato's Republic is an interesting philosophical challenge, but was not necessarily making for a compelling storyline through the opening 50 pages. But the second 50 pages successfully tied the larger issues about how to create and run the city with the personal aspects of the story for Maia and Simmea.

So how to choose which of two well-written, original, interesting novels to keep reading? I suspect if these books had met in the second round after only 50 pages (which they didn't, because I was especially looking forward to both of them and so designated them as seeds in the bracket), Flex would have won, because The Just City was a bit slow to get going. But after 100 pages, I feel fully engaged in both stories.

The deciding factor in this battle: ambition. The characters in The Just City are engaged in a great, ambitious project, the outcome of which I am very interested to see. While the protagonist of Flex is just trying to dig his way out of a hole, which he himself foolishly dug. It's okay to tell a story of a guy trying to redeem a dumb mistake, but to me it's a bit less compelling than the characters' goals in The Just City. Similarly, I admire Jo Walton's ambition in trying to tell a utopian story in The Just City, at a time when the concept of utopia is generally regarded as passé. Another urban fantasy series isn't quite as distinctive in the present market, although I give Ferrett Steinmetz credit for putting some interesting twists on the subgenre in Flex.

I also respect Walton having the nerve to include a disturbing scene where one of her two primary protagonists is raped. The scene is key to her development while simultaneously demonstrating the potential flaws in creating a utopia—how do you deal with a member of the society who genuinely does not understand why what he's doing is wrong? Rape scenes are overused in media SF/F, but this book illustrates why it's wrong-headed to tell authors in the written genre never to write such a scene.

The Just City is broad concept fantasy, something Samuel Delany or Joanna Russ might have written during the New Wave, the kind of thing we don't see often enough any longer. I want to know where Jo Walton is going with the concept. While I'm enjoying Flex very much, The Just City is the novel I can't bring myself to put down.

THE WINNER: The Just City by Jo Walton

The Just City advances to the championship round to face The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One :: Final Four

We're down to the Final Four in Bracket One of Fantastic Reviews Battle of the 2015 Books:

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
vs.
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz
vs.
The Just City by Jo Walton

We hope you've enjoyed this tournament so far. Now only four books remain of the starting sixteen. This bracket contained books from across the genre. There were secondary-world fantasy books, historical fantasies, urban or contemporary fantasies, science fiction books, and a horror novel. To get to the Final Four, these four books won their first two matches. The other books in the competition, and some of them were quite good but by chance faced a strong competitor, have been knocked out of the running, like in college basketball's March Madness.

Judging between books, which can be totally different, based on reading only 25 or 50 pages can be difficult. It's also inherently subjective. But our Battle of the Books format allows us to sample and spread the word about many more new books and authors than we otherwise could.

In this bracket, all four books which we named as the "seeded" books at the outset ended up advancing to the Final Four. This is atypical, but not unprecedented. Usually at least one and sometimes two unseeded books pull upsets to reach the Final Four.

Thanks again to all the authors and publicists sending us great books to consider. If you're an author or publicist, click here for the rules and an address to send your book if you'd like to be included in a future bracket.

We have had a great response to the Battle of the Books format. Several future brackets of Battle of the Books are now in the hands of our reviewers, so check back for many more battles to come.

Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One, Second Round :: Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz vs. Hexed by Michael Alan Nelson

For our third match-up in the second round we have Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz doing battle with Hexed by Michael Alan Nelson. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 50 pages.

Flex: Angry Robot, March 2015, 423 pages, cover art by Stephen Meyer-Rassow. Flex is the first book in the 'Mancer trilogy. The second volume, The Flux, appeared last October. Steinmetz was a Nebula Award nominee for his novelette "Sauerkraut Station." Flex overpowered Human Monsters by Gregory Lamberson to get into the second round.

In the universe of Flex, 'mancers can perform impressive magic (and anyone can do it with the help of a drug called "Flex"), but there is always a backlash (called "the Flux"), so dangerous that use of this magic is illegal in the United States. In the first 25 pages, our protagonist Paul Tsabo, a former cop turned insurance company bureaucrat, was surprised to find he could do "bureaucromancy," magic performed with paper. But the first time he did it a fire ensued, severely injuring his six-year-old daughter. In the second 25 pages, Paul learns that the insurance company he works for has declined to pay for his daughter's reconstructive surgery, because it has determined the fire was deliberately caused by another 'mancer. (The fire was a backlash not only from Paul's use of magic but also from magic done by a young man in the same apartment building who was intentionally given an overdose of Flex, bad luck for Paul and his daughter, but just the kind of bad luck that tends to happen with the Flux.) Paul is afraid of his magic, but it appears he will have to use it in order to track down the offending magician (the one who gave that kid his overdose) and get his daughter the surgery she needs.

Hexed: Pyr Books, May 2015, 278 pages, cover art by Larry Rostant. Hexed is the opening volume in the Sisters of Witchdown series, which is based on Michael Alan Nelson's Hexed comic books. Hexed beat Blood Will Follow by Snorri Kristjansson to get into the second round.

In the opening 25 pages of Hexed, a teenage girl named Gina went with friends to a haunted house called the Worcester House. A creepy old woman she saw in the mirror there followed her home and later pulled her into a mirror right in front of Gina's bewildered father. The father then begged our young protagonist, Luci Jenifer Inacio das Neves (Lucifer, for short), to use her knowledge of the occult to help. In the next 25 pages, Lucifer visits the Worcester House with Gina's boyfriend, David. He tells her one of Gina's girlfriends got hold of an old book they used for a summoning in the Worcester House. Gina visits the friend, who needs immediate help with the demon who has possessed her.

The Battle: Doing battle in this match-up are two urban fantasies with an "X" in the title. I admit urban fantasy is generally not my preferred subgenre of SF/F, but so far these are both well written and fun to read.

Hexed moves along a nice pace, making it easy to keep turning pages. Lucifer is an interesting character, a teenager leading a lonely life as an outsider, who feels resentful at times but doesn't let that prevent her from helping other people. The strength of the book is the wry humor, which comes through both in the narrative voice and in Lucifer's snarky dialogue. Lucifer tells David she is a thief and when he asks her why she decided to become a thief, she says, "The brochure said I'd get to do a lot of traveling." I'm not in the target audience for a book about a teenaged girl battling demons and witches, but I'd be happy to keep reading this one.

The opening chapters of Flex are also nicely written, engaging the reader in the story very effectively. The opening passages have quickly gotten me into Paul's skin, as he is nearly overwhelmed by everything happening to him: pain and dread from his daughter's injuries, confusion when confronted by his ex-wife, fear but also excitement over his new-found magical abilities. By the end of 50 pages, he decides his only way to help his daughter is to find the magician out there using Flex to destructive ends and compel that person to help Paul learn how to use his powers safely. It's a dubious plan, but I want to see how it plays out for him.

So how to choose between two books that I'm enjoying through the opening 50 pages? Since I'm not usually an urban fantasy reader, the key is for a book to convince me that it's got more going on than the run-of-the-mill urban fantasy. While I'm enjoying Hexed, so far it feels like it could have been a script for an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That's not a bad thing, but it doesn't make me feel especially compelled to keep reading.

Meanwhile, Flex feels more original and unusual to me. It introduces a non-standard magical system — I especially like Paul's emerging ability to do magic by paperwork. Also, I very much appreciate how Steinmetz has quickly painted his protagonist into a corner. The first time Paul uses magic, his daughter ends up severely injured. That's an awful thing for a parent, and would naturally make him want to disavow ever using 'mancy again. Except it seems Paul won't be able to help his daughter recover without using it. That's the kind of dilemma that does indeed make me feel compelled to keep reading.

THE WINNER: Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz

Flex advances to the semifinals to take on either Letters to Zell by Camille Griep or The Just City by Jo Walton.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the 2015 Books, Bracket One, First Round :: Human Monsters by Gregory Lamberson vs. Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz

We continue the first round of Bracket One of the Battle of the 2015 Books. The bottom half of the draw begins with Human Monsters by Gregory Lamberson going up against Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

Human Monsters: Medallion Press, March 2015, 400 pages. Human Monsters is the sixth and concluding volume of the Jake Helman Files, which began in Personal Demons. One of the Jake Helman books, Cosmic Forces, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, one of three Stoker nominations Lamberson has received.

Jake Helman is a private eye specializing in supernatural forces, to which most of the world remains oblivious. As Human Monsters opens, New York City has been devastated by a storm summoned by the storm demon Lilith, just before Jake killed her in the last book. Jake's girlfriend Maria Vasquez is a detective with the NYPD. She has been assigned to investigate a series of deaths attributed to a serial killer taking advantage of the storm, but which she knows to be collateral damage from Jake's last misadventure. Meanwhile, Jake is anxious to locate his missing assistant Carrie, who seems to have run off with all his files.

Flex: Angry Robot, March 2015, 423 pages, cover art by Stephen Meyer-Rassow. Flex is the first book in the 'Mancer trilogy. The second volume, The Flux appeared last October. Steinmetz was a Nebula Award nominee for his novelette "Sauerkraut Station."

Flex is set in an alternate version of our world where 'mancers can perform various kinds of magic, although it's been illegal in the U.S. since magic devastated Europe. And 'mancers can distill their magic into a crystal drug called "Flex," which anyone can take and become temporarily magical. Flex essentially allows you to bend random events to your favor, so you can have nearly anything you want, by apparent good fortune. But there is a backlash, called "the Flux," in which you will suffer from bad luck in proportion to how much you relied on Flex.

In the prologue, a young man uses Flex to win over a beautiful woman, whose boyfriend just happens to call at that moment to confess he's been cheating, which makes her want some angry revenge sex. That's pushing Flex a bit too far, and so after some amazing lovemaking, the gas main underneath them explodes. Then in the first two chapters, we meet Paul Tsabo, a former policeman filled with guilt from shooting a young 'mancer. His marriage has ended and he has gone to work for an insurance company, where he has discovered he has a talent for "bureaucromancy," performing magic with paper. His six-year-old daughter is staying with him when the gas main bursts. He uses his magic to tunnel through the flames separating him from his daughter, only to have the Flux from his bureaucromancy set her on fire.

The Battle: If you like labels, you can say we have two urban fantasies doing battle here, although I think both authors are trying to step outside the usual conventions of the sub-genre.

Human Monsters starts out at a slight disadvantage, because it's the sixth in a series. Lamberson spends most of the first 25 pages filling in background information that regular readers of the series surely already know. Meanwhile, Flex introduces us for the first time to the type of magic in Steinmetz's universe, effectively illustrating just how dangerous it can be.

So there's a lot more drama to the opening 25 pages of Flex. And, as always with Steinmetz, the prose is first rate. Even though Paul, the main character of Flex, doesn't appear until thirteen pages in, I feel like I've already gotten a pretty good sense of his personality. The guy was having a tough go of things even before his daughter caught fire, and my sympathy for him makes me want to keep reading.

I don't yet feel that kind of connection to the characters in Human Monsters. In the opening 25 pages, Maria Vasquez describes some of the bizarre experiences she's had hanging out with Jake, including battling "zonbies" (dunno yet how they differ from zombies) and demons in Central America and back home in New York, but in a dispassionate way that hasn't much drawn me into the story so far. Perhaps reading further would have pulled me in, but the Battle of the Books is cruel that way.

THE WINNER: Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz

Flex advances to the second round to face either Blood Will Follow by Snorri Kristjansson or Hexed by Michael Alan Nelson.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Aaron's 2011 Hugo Recommendations :: Best Short Story & Best Novelette

I like to make recommendations for Hugo nominations in all the fiction categories, but this year I don't feel I've read enough novels and novellas to make recommendations. For what it's worth, however, so far my favorite novel from 2011 is Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck), and my favorite novella is "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson.

On the other hand, I've read over 150 short stories and novelettes from 2011, so I'm very happy to make recommendations in those categories.

MY FIVE FAVORITE SHORT STORIES OF 2011:
Aliette de Bodard, Shipbirth (Asimov's, Feb '11)
Nancy Fulda, Movement (Asimov's, March '11)
Jeffrey Lyman, The Hanged Poet (IGMS, June '11)
Patrick O'Sullivan, Maddy Dune's First and Only Spelling Bee (Writers of the Future Vol. 27)
Ferrett Steinmetz, "Run," Bakri Says (Asimov's, Dec '11)

MY FIVE FAVORITE NOVELETTES OF 2011:
Ian Creasey, "I Was Nearly Your Mother" (Asimov's, March '11)
R.P.L. Johnson, In Apprehension, How Like a God (Writers of the Future Vol. 27)
Adam Perin, Medic! (Writers of the Future Vol. 27)
Matthew Sanborn Smith, Beauty Belongs to the Flowers (Tor.com, Jan '11)
Brad R. Torgersen, Ray of Light (Analog, Dec '11)

The fact that four of my fellow 2011 Writers of the Future winners appear on the list may reflect unconscious bias, but not conscious manipulation -- they really were four of my very favorite stories of the year.

I've listed these in alphabetical order, but out of all of them, my single favorite novelette of 2011 was "Ray of Light" by Brad R. Torgersen, and my single favorite short story was "Movement" by Nancy Fulda.

For more excellent short fiction from last year, click on the "Story Recommendations" label below.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: "Run," Bakri Says by Ferrett Steinmetz

My Story Recommendation of the Week is for "'Run,' Bakri Says" by Ferrett Steinmetz, from the December 2011 issue of Asimov's. This is Steinmetz's second SROTW.

Authors have been writing stories inspired by video games since I first began reading science fiction in the 1970's, and for far longer than that they've been writing fiction to illustrate the dehumanizing effects of war. Yet in "'Run,' Bakri Says," Ferrett Steinmetz manages to do both in an original and powerful way.

In an unnamed battlefield in the War on Terror, Irena is desperate to rescue her brother, captured by American soldiers, before he reveals to them what he has invented. She uses the invention to try to save him, but its effects are not predictable. The inexorable progression of the rescue attempt is both poignant and disturbing.

I don't want to reveal the way the brother's invention works, for fear of spoiling how the story unfolds, but I will say it involves a subtle form of time travel. And so I'm most annoyed the story came out at the same time as my story Random Fire, thus entirely overshadowing my own attempt at writing a fresh time travel story.

"'Run,' Bakri Says" is not a pleasant story to read, but you'll be glad you did.

Aaron's 2011 Hugo Recommendations :: Campbell Award for Best New Author

Technically the Campbell Award is not a Hugo Award, although I couldn't tell you why that is. It's voted on alongside all the other Hugos, and I've actually read enough excellent new authors recently to make Campbell recommendations this year.

Here in alphabetical order are the new authors I am planning to nominate. I'm also listing in parentheses a story I particularly enjoyed by each one, to give you a place to start if you care to check out their work:

Gwendolyn Clare ("Iron Oxide Red," Daily SF)
Keffy R.M. Kehrli ("Advertising at the End of the World," Apex)
Malinda Lo (Ash)
Ferrett Steinmetz ("As Below, So Above," Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Brad R. Torgersen ("Exanastasis," Writers of the Future, Vol. 26)

Except for Malinda Lo, all of these authors have to date focused on short fiction -- I confess I haven't read some of the new novelists who have been getting a lot of buzz, such as Lauren Beukes and Dexter Palmer -- and they all do it so well I would love to see some of them on the ballot.


UPDATE: I was poking around other folks' recommendations on the web, one of which suggested Malinda Lo for the Campbell. She is not on the Writertopia list of Campbell-eligible authors, but I can't figure why not -- I believe her first genre publication was Ash in 2009. Ash was an outstanding novel, so I'm adding her to my Campbell list. Unfortunately, that means someone else has to be bumped, so apologies to Monica Byrne, who still has a great future ahead of her.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: As Below, So Above by Ferrett Steinmetz

The story recommendation of the week is for As Below, So Above by Ferrett Steinmetz, published November 18, 2010 at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

If I blurt out the story concept of "As Below, So Above," it will sound silly. And the story would have been silly if not handled so adeptly, right from the opening lines:

Up at the shimmering edge of the sky, where the water met the air, Son spread his tentacles out beneath the terrible shadow of his father. They were waiting for the ships. Son felt the approaching heart-thrum bouncing off the coral-crusted hulls below as the ships crested the painwall.

You don't really know what's going on yet, but you know it's pretty darn strange. Some of the strangeness is misdirection —— water is meeting air in the sky simply because the narrator lives underwater, so to him the surface of the sea is the "edge of the sky" —— but it helps put you in the right frame of mind to take in the real strangeness: our narrator is a giant kraken, who with his father guards the mysterious island home of their scientist creator.

More accurately, the scientist created the father and his late wife, and they in turn created the son. This layer of separation from their creator makes all the difference in enabling the son to begin to evaluate the krakens' place in the world dispassionately, just as the greatest assault yet on their master's hideout begins.

The proof of how well Steinmetz gets you into the skin, er . . . scales, er . . . I just don't fucking know, of his characters is that you really start to care about what happens to the giant-squid father, and about the narrator's potential moral dilemma when he meets the mad-scientist creator. Good stuff!

In the past two years, Ferrett Steinmetz has published about a dozen pieces of short fiction, including two pieces in Asimov's and a story forthcoming in Shimmer. Another name to add to the watch list.