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Book Review: Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders

5/30/2018

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Book Review:
 
Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders: A Writer's (and Editor’s) Guide to Keeping Historical Fiction Free of Common Anachronisms, Errors, and Myths
 
Susanne Alleyn
 
2012, Spyderwort Press
 
B-
 
The Basics:
 
A guide to common historical errors made and perpetuated by fiction writers, and how to avoid them.
 
The Downside:
 
One gets the clear and early impression that Alleyn has read How Not to Write a Novel (as should everyone, incidentally — it’s a useful and hilarious guide to fiction writing in general), and thought, “Hey, I’ll bet I can be even snarkier than that!”
 
Unfortunately, that snark does not come accompanied by all of Mittelmark & Newman’s wit or knack for helpful analysis. Instead of laugh-out-loud, over-the-top caricatures of a systematic list of general errors, followed by discussion on exactly what's going on and what could be done better, we get repetitive ramblings, calling out specific authors (often by name) for the very specific errors they’ve made that particularly annoyed Alleyn, usually related to the French Revolution.

There are many points when the whole book feels like an excuse to vent these annoyances, in better English but with comparable pomposity and unnecessary meanness to an Internet comments section, cloaked in a line or two of lip service to the cover’s promise of constructive advice. This constructive advice generally boils down to the true but unhelpful “do more research.”
 
The Upside:
 
Underneath the off-putting tone, there is some good general advice to be found here as well, particularly about common areas where errors are made, and therefore good targeted starting points for some of that research. There are sections on things like money, noble titling conventions, the availability of certain goods and technologies throughout time and space, origins of common phrases, and traditions (like permanent graves) that are newer and less ubiquitous than many people think.
 
Other advice — such as choosing time periods you’ll actually enjoy researching, anticipating the different mindsets of people with different experiences from your own, and distrusting the accuracy of movies and historical propaganda penned by the victors — should be fairly obvious to those with some existing background in either writing or history, but are certainly valuable pointers for brand new beginners.
 
For more seasoned writers/historians, the most useful part of this book will likely be the appendix, detailing rich and underutilized sources of historical information.
 
Altogether far from a comprehensive guide for beginners (or anyone else), but worth adding to a large stack of introductory books for a hopeful future historical fiction author.




Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)!

Want more Fiona J.R. Titchenell? Become a patron to gain access to exclusive extras. Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter
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Cover Reveal! Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir

5/16/2018

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Time to ooh and ahh over the unbelievably gorgeous cover of Matt's and my upcoming adult sci-fi title, Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir!

This one's coming in August from Talos Press (pre-orderable now!), and you might or might not have heard Matt or me talking excitedly about it approximately a billion times by now.

It's chock-full of our signature dark humor, some affectionate riffing on comics tropes and history, plenty of social satire, and tons of gritty noir flavor. We're champing at the bit to share it.

And just look at this cover!


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About Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir


To some people, Pinnacle City is a glittering metropolis, a symbol of prosperity watched over by the all-star superhero team, the Pinnacle City Guardians. But beneath the glitz and glamour is a gritty underbelly, one still feeling the physical and economic damage of the superhero-villain battles of generations past, where the lower class―immigrants, criminals, aliens, sorcerers, and non-humans alike―jostle and elbow for scraps to scrape by on.

Private investigator Eddie Enriquez is an ex-con and veteran with powers of his own who still bears the scars of his time as a minion for a low-level supervillain. Good work’s been hard to come by until a mysterious woman shows up at his office with a case the police and superheroes are ignoring: the suspicious death of a prominent non-human rights activist.

Meanwhile, superhero Kimberly Kline, a.k.a. Solar Flare, has just hit it big, graduating to the Pinnacle City Guardians. With good looks, incredible superpowers, and a family name that opens doors, the sky is the limit. But in trying to make the world a better place . . . she’ll discover Pinnacle City isn’t as black and white as it once seemed.



From the minds of Matt Carter and Fiona J. R. Titchenell, Pinnacle City is a pulpy, throwback noir of yesteryear, where two people from opposite sides of the track must team up to do good in a world full of bad.

Coming August 7th 2018, from Talos Press.

Oh, hey, look! Pre-order links!

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Google Play

Indigo


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Book Review: Derelict (Halcyone Space #1)

5/6/2018

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Book Review:
 
Derelict (Halcyone Space #1)
 
L.J. Cohen
 
A-
 
The Basics:
 
To most people, Halcyone is a derelict ship, relic of a bygone war, taking up space in the docks of Daedalus Station. To Ro, it might mean freedom from her father, if she can restore it well enough to impress the University boards. To Micah, it was, until lately, his secret lab, the place where he would find a way to break the cartel’s monopoly on medicinal marijuana. To brothers Jem and Barre, it's the wrong place, wrong time -- or maybe the right one, an escape from Barre’s impending forced brain surgery at the hands of their perfectionist parents.
 
The Downside:
 
An odd complaint from an odd reader: the flat, unvaried use of simple past tense robs the prose of the nuance and precision that some well-placed past perfect could add.
 
The intended subtext also sheds its sub a bit annoyingly often, with characters repeatedly stating out loud how important it is for them all to reject the mistakes of their parents and establish who they are independent of their last names, and hey, what a lot they all have in common! Then there’s the trouble of many of the critical adventure moments coming in the form of hacking, which is, for the most part, as crowd-pleasing as it sounds.
 
The Upside:
 
A group of very believably competent and determined teenage characters. Ro is the brusque, rough-around-the-edges, shell-like-a-tank-around-a-gooey-center type, for reasons that are understandable and plainly shown, and she has the skills to get away with it most of the time, but not too often. The whole accidental crew of the Halcyone hangs in the true-to-life adolescent in between, ready to take charge of their lives but doomed to flounder through the mistakes of inexperience that can only be cured by said floundering and mistakes. It’s the most terrifying state to exist in on a ship where mistakes mean explosive decompression, drifting for eternity through space, or execution by the mob, and that's why it works so well.
 
The antagonistic adults are not simply unreasonable, tyrannical, and condescending, as they might be in a more simplistic narrative, but deeply involved in their own fleshed-out agendas, and there are decent adults to be found too, just doing their jobs as best they can.
 
Futuristic aesthetics are well established but unobtrusive. The story is not an excuse for the author to wax on about how these future inventions are different, or about the minutiae of the history of a dozen alien worlds, but nor is it told in front of a verbal green screen that might as well be displaying a cafe in San Francisco as an industrial corridor through an endless star field. This future is lived-in and commonplace to its inhabitants but visible to us.
 
Shifting third person perspective is particularly effective here, for both scene setting and the story at hand. Rather than causing the plot slowdown that often comes with the juggling of several locations and subplots, it allows for special attention to each character within a very tight, interlocking situation, even when some of them are separated by the vacuum of space.
 
The surprising heart of the story comes in the form of Ro and Nomi, the beautiful and gregarious comms officer. Instead of having their first date as planned, the two women end up spending the duration of the book trying to find each other, and the result is stunningly affecting for a couple who have only about three scenes together.
 
Definitely worth a read for fans of grungy space opera and prickly, take-charge heroines.




Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)!

Want more Fiona J.R. Titchenell? Become a patron to gain access to exclusive extras. Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter
, or signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!


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