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Quarantine Reads — Freebies and Markdowns

3/24/2020

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Hey, everyone,

I dearly hope, as you read this, you're in good health and hunkering down somewhere safe and warm if you can.

If you or someone you know is sick, I wish you a speedy, uncomplicated recovery.

If you're on the front lines providing healthcare, food, utilities, household essentials, shipping, sanitation, and other life-saving services, I thank you, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you'll finally, miraculously receive the living wages and all-around consideration you've always deserved for the work you do.

As a writer, editor, and voracious reader, I'm one of the lucky ones in all this. I'm used to working from home alongside my husband, and apart from worrying about other people, fending off existential dread about the world, and nursing some disappointment over a few specific events I was looking forward to, I actually enjoy the day-to-day of quarantine living.

Like many purveyors of digital media, Matt and I are cutting prices and offering new freebies, in the hopes that everyone will have access to something fun to pass the time in isolation — preferably something that doesn't require going to a store or waiting on our overstretched physical shipping infrastructure.

If this isn't the time to read an ebook, I don't know what is.

If you've already read all of our indie books that you're interested in, or if Horror and dark Sci-Fi just aren't what you turn to in times like these (they are for me, but it's a totally personal thing), I recommend checking out the Smashwords Authors Give Back sale for tons of different indie options across genres.

As for our catalogue, here are the details on discounts and freebies:

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Obsessed monster hunter, Mina Todd, and easy-going skeptic, Ben Pastor, wage a secret resistance against the shape-shifting aliens infesting their small town of Prospero.

The whole 4-book Prospero Chronicles series is marked down from $9.96 to $3.96 through the end of March. (Amazon doesn't allow individual non-KU books to be marked down any further than $0.99 on short notice).

Amazon
Smashwords
Barnes & Noble: book 1, 2, 3, 4
Apple: book 1, 2, 3, 4
Kobo: book 1, 2, 3, 4

This YA Horror/Sci-Fi series is about neurotic, mismatched teens struggling to trust each other so they can deal with an alien invasion of shapeshifters. The fourth book involves their entire town being quarantined while they fight for the fate of the world, and it might be my favorite thing I've done so far.

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Once upon a time, on a glamorous space station called Eris, there was a young woman who could spin base metals into gold…
At least, that’s what she tells people to separate them from their money.

The Acid Test of Naia Mills is going to be free on Kindle from March 30th through April 3rd (using my KU allowance of free days). Also, if you're a KU member, you can read it for free whenever you want.

Amazon

This one's a Sci-Fi retelling of "Rumpelstiltskin" set in the distant future, after humanity has survived the death of Earth and joined a wider bi-galactic community. Not without growing pains, of course. It's part of the Escape Velocity series of Sci-Fi folktales, but they can be read in any order. No cliffhangers, no reliance on previous installment info.

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Once upon a time, on the second planet from Apocrytus, there was a monster whose face men trembled to behold…
Or they would, if they knew who she was. Perhaps she should leave more survivors

The Kryssitid Gaze will be free on Kindle from April 6th through April 10th (again, my limited allowance of free days from KU). It's also included with your KU subscription if you have one.

Amazon

It's another Sci-Fi folktale retelling in the Escape Velocity universe, this one based on the legend of Medusa. It's more R-rated and darkly comedic than Acid Test, revolving around an alien woman's efforts to survive when her planet is overtaken by a violent, dogmatic cult. Tonally, I'd describe it as Deadpool meets Ginger Snaps.

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When an aspiring teenage actress is given the chance to participate in human trials for a revolutionary new beauty supplement, she sees her one chance for a camera-ready body and a real career. But what the treatment turns her into may be even more monstrous and cutthroat than her professional world.

Some Side Effects May Occur will be marked down from $2.99 to $1.20, both as part of the Smashwords sale and on Amazon, from now through April 20th.

Amazon
Smashwords

It's YA Horror/Sci-Fi set in the not-too-distant future, during a beauty arms race.

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When the ghost of a handsome young man named Joshua Thorne appears to a lonely bookworm named Angela, begging her to help him solve his own murder, she follows him eagerly into the hidden world of jumbled memory and fantasy he calls the Pocket. The truth of his story is hidden there somewhere, but it might not be the story either of them is hoping for.

Out of the Pocket is also going to be marked down from $2.99 to $1.20 from now through April 20th, both in the Smashwords sale and on Amazon.

Amazon
Smashwords

​This is the YA Fantasy that won me my Feminist Book of the Month author cred :) It's a satirical, trope-subverting take on Paranormal Romance, and it's intensely claustrophobic.

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Fifteen-year-old Cassie Fremont and her tiny band of teenage survivors take a road trip across the zombie-infested U.S. to rescue their stranded friend, and no amount of blood and guts along the way will quell their sense of snark. Now, if only they knew how to drive.

My first-ever published novel, Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know Of), will be free on Smashwords only, from now until April 20th.

Smashwords

It's a YA Horror-Comedy that I don't usually do promotions on, because I'm quite frankly a little embarrassed. It's easily my roughest, most juvenile published work, but it's also been one of my more popular, and I figure, maybe some silly zombie-smashing action is exactly what's needed. So, I'm tossing it out there for all who could use it right now.

That's all for now, although there's a chance I'll be announcing a new indie release as well before all this is even close to over.

Stay safe, and happy reading.

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Book Review: Who's Afraid of Amy Sinclair?

9/2/2019

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Book Review:
 
Hopefuls #2: Who’s Afraid of Amy Sinclair?
 
Jenn Gott
 
2019
 
Grade: A

(Also check out my review of Hopefuls #1: The Private Life of Jane Maxwell)
 

The Basics:
 
After dying in a car wreck in her ordinary home universe, Amy Sinclair (“Clair” to her friends) has been resurrected in the body of her comic book universe doppelganger and reunited with her wife, Jane. Now she’s a mind-reading superhero on a team that Jane runs, and the two of them are surrounded by versions of people and places that are almost like the ones they remember, but not quite.
 
It’s all a lot better than being dead, but as Clair works to reconcile two sets of memories, as well as adjust to her invasive new superpowers, she begins having visions of her alternate self and wonders just how “back” her real self actually is.
 
Meanwhile, the team’s traitorous ex-member, Cal, has resurfaced as a political candidate running on an anti-superhero platform, and Clair’s erased doppleganger’s supervillainous ex-lover is back in force and bent on revenge.
 
The Downside:
 
Before delving into nitty-gritty analysis, I want to stress how much I continue to love this series, including the amount of analysis it invites. Unfortunately, this is the seemingly obligatory installment in a superhero series where the necessity, ethics, and legalities of superheroes are called into question, and as usual, the internal logic of the universe suffers for it.
 
Given how thoughtfully and incisively Gott handles Jane and Clair’s romance, and the challenges they face simply being themselves in the world, I think it’s a safe bet that her intentions are very different from those behind the best-known stories about the debatable need for superheroes, like Civil War (a vehicle for an anti-gun control message in its original comics form) or The Incredibles (a Randian rant against accountability for the rich and powerful). In fact, one of the oft-repeated messages of Who’s Afraid of Amy Sinclair? is one of responsibility and nonviolence. Killing isn’t the answer. Never escalate. Find another way. Yet one of the key scenes that ought to drive this point home only leaves the reader (or at least this reader) distractedly wondering how one of these no-kill superheroes made it this far in her career with a pair of twin pistols as her signature weapons in the first place, without ever having to grapple with the moral and emotional ramifications of pulling the trigger before this one defining moment.
 
Everything to do with the election plotline and its vigilante controversies feels adrift in this twilight zone of being too connected and yet not connected enough with reality, with rule-of-cool comic book concepts buckling under real world weights they aren’t cut out to bear. As a character, Cal’s portrayal is so spectacularly, uncomfortably realistic, particularly in his methods of exerting social control, that it’s hard not to look for timely parallels in everything remotely connected with him, yet his anti-superhero agenda seems to be a simple betrayal of his friends, our heroes, rather than any kind of cohesive metaphor.
 
Bottom line, it’s just really, really hard to craft a story around this theoretical comics-universe issue without getting bogged down in the reality that — as much as we may love fantasizing about having awesome abilities that would allow us to help people and solve problems single-handedly without having to deal with slow, flawed, official systems — superheroes do wield ridiculous amounts of power with no qualifications, often irresponsibly, and bystanders in their worlds have fair reason to be nervous. It’s a big ask, and I’ve yet to see any version of this story that 100% works.
 
The Upside:
 
This installment is, first and foremost, the story of Clair's rebirth, and in that respect, it's a complete and resounding success.
 
Like Jane in the first book, Clair has been dropped into a world where her life turned out very differently for the version of her who grew up there. Unlike Jane, if Clair digs deep enough, she has access to the memories and feelings that will allow her to piece together how exactly that happened. But does she even want to understand her alternate self? The Amy Sinclair of this world is a much darker and more complicated figure than the glimpse Jane got of her in book one. The thought that Clair could just as easily have been this other woman, that this other woman in fact has a stronger claim on her life than she does herself, is terrifying. Yet as painful as it is, Clair is compelled to look, to acknowledge her dark potential and all the strokes of luck that gave her the life she knows.
 
This is also the obligatory sequel to a romantic series opener in which the couple are required to fight a lot, but their conflict is much better realized than many. While some of the instigating moments that push Jane and Clair apart don’t feel quite as well motivated as they could be, once the distance begins to grow between them, Gott does an achingly fantastic job of capturing the snowballing misery of two people who love each other, but whose lines of communication have failed. That distance doesn’t feel like drama for the sake of drama either, clumsily extending a courtship story that’s already finished. It’s an integral part of Clair’s war with, and struggle to understand, herself.
 
The points of divergence between Clair and her counterpart are closely linked with the different versions of Jane each one had in her life, and how they made her sexual orientation and identity easier or harder to embrace. Alternate Jane, aside from being a supervillain, is cold, closed-off, and mired in deep denial about herself that manifests as callous homophobia. Instead of coming out alongside her version of Amy Sinclair in high school, alternate Jane pushed her away, deeper into the closet, and ultimately into the arms of emotionally unavailable women she could more easily keep separate from her “real” life.
 
Even the different names of the two versions of Amy Sinclair are emblematic of the crucial departure between them. Clair, our heroine, renamed herself early in life by shortening her last name, because she didn’t click with her given name. Amy, her erased comics universe doppelganger, tried to do the same but was eventually browbeaten into calling herself Amy again, cramming herself into the confining box she’d been assigned to, after those around her (led by Jane) refused to accept her gesture of self-definition.
 
Under all the masks and car chases and superpowered punch fights (which are still great fun and as awesomely cinematic as ever), this is a story about conquering everything from gender expectations to moral crises to imposter syndrome, in order to truly know yourself. It’s a worthy continuation of the Hopefuls series, and I look forward to seeing where these heroes are headed next.



Want more Fiona J.R. Titchenell? Subscribe here for personalized updates on new books, discounts, giveaways, and more. You can also join me on Facebook and Twitter, or (best of all) become a patron to gain access to exclusive extras!
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Book Review: The Private Life of Jane Maxwell

8/11/2019

0 Comments

 
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Book Review:
 
Hopefuls #1: The Private Life of Jane Maxwell
 
Jenn Gott
 
2017
 
Grade: A+
 
The Basics:
 
Jane Maxwell, a comics artist and writer recently fired from her job in the wake of a social media firestorm kicked up by bigoted fans, finds herself dragged into a parallel universe where her hit superhero series is reality. Mostly. This world’s alternate versions of her high school friends really are the superheroes she based on them for her comics, with one exception. Instead of the male headliner Jane’s publisher demanded, the real heroes’ leader is Jane’s own counterpart. And she’s missing.
 
The team needs Jane to pose as her alternate self to draw out a diabolical new villain who’s wreaking havoc on their city. Jane wants to refuse, much more comfortable living on the safer side of the page, but there’s one other important difference in this alternate reality: Jane’s late wife, Clair, is still alive.
 
The Downside:
 
There are a few little errors and some awkward transitions between past and present tense. About half of the superhero team is pretty undeveloped, but that’s okay. Having a full team is necessary to the concept and setting, and they take an understandable back seat to the main characters’ story.
 
There’s also some slight muddying of the themes, in the nature of Clair’s superpowers and place on the team. Jane has often had misgivings about giving Clair’s character something as passive as empathy, which keeps her out of most of the action, but then finds out it’s because that’s just the way she is in the alternate universe — the same alternate universe where the sexism of her publisher generally doesn’t apply. That said, Clair’s powers are pretty essential to the plot, and she’s much more interesting than the average mind-powered love interest (*coughJeanGreycough*).
 
The Upside:
 
The Private Life of Jane Maxwell is an absolute must for any prose-reading comics fan, written with evident understanding and love for both media. Thoughtful internal monologue, too detailed to be contained in little square text boxes, is interspersed with visual descriptions so bright and vivid they’re like having the lovingly composed pages of a comic book beamed directly into your mind, all wrapped around a story that embraces both the colorful, silly melodrama and the complex emotional speculation that comics universes are capable of.
 
For all the lush, immersive description, not a word is wasted without pulling the reader deeper into the story and the hopes and fears of its characters. Within a few short chapters of being introduced to Jane, seeing her thrown into a room with her dead wife’s doppelganger has the kind of impact so many superhero TV shows can only dream of pulling off with the help of five or six seasons of familiarity and context.
 
This is a story that contains flamboyant costumes, evil twins, and a guy called Doctor Demolition. It’s also a story that delves deeply into what it would feel like to learn that your life is just one possible version of itself, and to meet another version of your lost love, who isn’t lost and was never your love, at least not yet. Where so many writers would only get as far as recognizing that this is awkward and painful, Gott pushes through to what comes after that, what the strange nature of their relationship is, and how that shakes their understanding not only of relationships but of their own identities.
 
The result is a unique adventure and love story, plus an introduction to a compelling new superhero title with the potential to be as iconic as the best of them.



Want more Fiona J.R. Titchenell? Subscribe here for personalized updates on new books, discounts, giveaways, and more. You can also join me on Facebook and Twitter, or (best of all) become a patron to gain access to exclusive extras!
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Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir — Now Available!!!

8/14/2018

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It's here, it's here, it's here...

Matt and I are pleased and proud to announce that our latest dark sci-fi adventure, Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir, is now available from Talos Press!

If you've already read Matt's Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel, you might notice that Pinnacle City takes place in the same universe, but the characters and story are entirely new. If you haven't read Almost Infamous, don't worry. You don't need any special knowledge going into this one.

What do you need to know about Pinnacle City? Read on.

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What It's About:


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.

What People Are Saying:


“In this skillfully constructed secondary-world noir novel, having superpowers isn’t always so super, and everyone has something to hide. . . . By allowing everyone to be a little morally grey, Carter and Titchenell spin a superhero story with staying power.”
 
—Publishers Weekly (starred review) 
 
“A rollicking take on the all-American superhero tale. It’s Stan Lee meets Dashiell Hammett, with just a little Clive Barker thrown in for good measure.”
 
—Scott Kenemore, author of The Grand Hotel and Zombie, Ohio 
 
“Lively and endearing, funny and hip, Pinnacle City puts gumshoe to cape and in a fantastic adult alternate history throbbing with modern pop-cultural conflict and absurdities.”
 
—Johnny Worthen, award-winning author of The Finger Trap

Where can you get a copy? We're glad you asked...


Just about anywhere you'd like:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Kobo

Google Play

Indigo

Books-a-Million

Indiebound


Or if you want to be especially retro-awesome, request it at your local bricks & mortar bookstore.

Happy reading!

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Out of the Pocket Is F-BOM's Summer Reading Pick!

7/1/2018

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Guys, I've been literally counting down the days to this announcement, and it's finally here.

My very own Out of the Pocket has been selected as F-BOM's summer read!

I'm so incredibly proud and honored to be included among authors like Intisar Khanani, LJ Cohen, and the club's amazing co-founder, Cecelia Isaac.

What's F-BOM, you ask?

It stands for Feminist Book of the Month. Basically, it's a tri-monthly book club featuring independent female sci-fi and fantasy authors. They particularly specialize in books that challenge the typical, gendered narratives you see over and over again.

In their own words, "The Feminist Book of the Month is more than just a book club. For as little as $5.00 a month members will be actively investing in the future of women in science fiction and fantasy."

So what does this mean, exactly?

It means that if you become an F-BOM member this summer, you'll get the F-BOM special edition of Out of the Pocket. It has an exclusive preface, in which I rant rather spectacularly (if I do say so myself) about the various sexist things publishers have said to me.

You'll also be able to order previous F-BOM special editions at a discount, and I can personally vouch for there being some delicious sci-fi and fantasy titles to choose from.

If you're not up for subscribing, you can just get a free membership to the forums, meet some cool people, and watch me answer questions about writing, gender, and genre tropes all summer long. I promise to bring my signature blend of awkward scintillation!

Can you tell I'm a teensy bit excited about this whole thing?

Hoping to see you there!

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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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Out of the Pocket Cover Reveal + Patreon Unveiling

2/11/2018

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So many exciting things going on right now! I'm honestly having trouble keeping up. Let's start with two exciting things in particular:

Exciting thing #1: I'm releasing a new book on April 24th, 2018, called Out of the Pocket.

It's a YA Paranormal story with -- like many of my books -- a darkly meta twist and a lot of toying with genre assumptions.

Are you torn between laughing and gagging every time you hear someone call the Fifty Shades series "romantic," or see one of those bus posters for its Valentine's Day release, not because of its frankly underwhelming kink, but because of literally everything else about the relationship it glamorizes?

Yeah, me too. Out of the Pocket is for people like us.

Do you find yourself loving obscure stories that no one else seems to know or get, because they explore weird, cerebral, genre-defying concepts that confuse people with very specific expectations?

Ditto again. And good news: publishers hated Out of the Pocket.

Oh, they liked the writing style fine, but the fact that it looks like another neatly quantifiable paranormal romance and isn't? No one knew how to market that. And the way it actually digs at some of the roots of social gender inequality and the assumptions that feed those roots, instead of paving them over and pretending they don't exist, well, apparently that approach is embarrassingly passé in the traditional publishing world at the moment.

...But I digress. Anyway, if you want to be the hipster-est hipster in your book club, take a leap through this thoroughly un-mainstream meta-paranormal rabbit hole today.

Wait, today? Didn't I say it wouldn't be released until April 24th?

That leads us to the other exciting thing.

Exciting thing #2: Matt and I are launching our very own Patreon account!

What's a Patreon account? I'm glad you asked.

A Patreon account allows fans to subscribe on a monthly basis to support an artist's work, in return for exclusive bonus content. Our patrons, even at the bare minimum $1 level, will get early access to all indie titles by me, Matt, or both of us, as soon as they're on preorder.

Right now, that means you get Out of the Pocket instantly. Patrons can unsubscribe at any time, so if you wanted to, you could pay just $1 to download Out of the Pocket early -- instead of $3 to get it on release day -- and then unsubscribe and be on your merry way, but we hope you'll stick around. We're going to have a very healthy lineup of pre-releases coming up for you this year, especially if you like post-apocalyptic dieselpunk full of badass ladies!

At slightly higher patronage levels, you'll also get behind-the-scenes content, like snippets of works in progress. You'll be the first to know about the status of the fourth Prospero book as the situation evolves (yes, that's still happening).

Oh, and I'm considering inventing the novel audio commentary. Have you ever listened to an audio commentary for a novel? I haven't, but I think they'd be cool. With enough patrons on board, we'll all get to find out :)

So, seriously, if you love our work, and you'd like to help us spend more time making more of it -- or if you'd just like to peer into the crazy that goes on during the process -- it'd mean the world to us if you'd become one of our very first patrons.

Of course, if you'd rather pre-order Out of the Pocket the old fashioned way, I've got links for that too, right after this gorgeous cover...

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For over a century, the town of Green Beach has frightened its children with the tragic legend of Joshua Thorne. He’s the reason it not only locks its doors at night but nails its windows shut. Steeped in romance and revenge, his is the kind of story Angela Ironwright lives for.
 
When the specter of Joshua appears to her, insisting she’s the only one who can help him piece together the fragments of his own murder, she follows him without a second thought into a place he calls the Pocket, a beautiful hidden world of jumbled memory and imagination. But the Pocket holds more than magic and mystery. Before long, its other reclusive inhabitants begin to call out to Angela, warning her not to trust Joshua and begging for her help to escape his dark power.
 
Angela’s sure there must be some misunderstanding, and she’s determined to set it straight. Otherwise, finding justice will mean betraying the only boy who’s ever liked her.
 
Smart and genre-savvy, Out of the Pocket is a dark, honest, subversive take on the modern paranormal love story.

Coming April 24th, 2018

Preorder links:

Amazon (Kindle)

Barnes & Noble (Nook)

iBooks

Kobo

Google Play

Smashwords

Indigo

(More options coming soon)

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Book Review: Fangirl

6/24/2017

0 Comments

 
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Book Review:

Fangirl

Rainbow Rowell

St. Martin's Press, 2013

A+
​
The Basics:
 
Cath is a fanfic writer beginning her freshman year of college. She's absolutely terrified to be away from home for the first time, especially after her twin sister and best friend, Wren, refuses be her roommate, sticking her with a stranger, Reagan, and Reagan’s perennial hanger-on, Levi. The only place Cath feels at home is in the world of her favorite author, Gemma T. Leslie, spinning new stories for her pre-made characters. She’s not sure she’ll ever be ready to create new characters out of her own deeply private thoughts, let alone open herself up to the uncertainty of feeling something for someone new who doesn’t live inside her head.
 
The Downside:
 
Levi can be condescending in ways I found slightly too easily brushed off at points, and the excerpts of Cath’s fanfic can run a bit longer than they need to be in order to complement her story and give insight into her mind, yet not quite long enough to have the chance to suck in the reader in their own right. The book also seems to run out of pages just before the story ends, something I can appreciate in an intentionally ambiguous ending, like Eleanor & Park, but in a story this wholeheartedly hopeful, I could have gone for a bit more closure.
 
The Upside:
 
Enough griping.
 
Fangirl might be the most stunningly accurate depiction of social anxiety I’ve ever encountered in any medium. Cath’s mental patterns, defense mechanisms, and fear of unfamiliar people and situations are presented in a level of vivid yet unembellished detail that anyone who struggles with social anxiety -- or who has ever struggled to understand someone who struggles with social anxiety -- should read.
 
Cath’s relationship with her father is a major highlight, brimming with mutual love, respect, and support, complicated by the fear that Cath may be inheriting her father’s mental health challenges along with his intensity and wit.
 
The subjects of fiction writing and fan culture are handled with great care as well, presenting both defenses and criticisms of the concept of fanfiction while discussing the great and worthy challenges of originality. The irreplaceable necessity of connecting with other thinking, feeling people outside the safety of fictional fantasy is a major theme of Cath’s story, yet it coexists harmoniously with a celebration of the positive power of fiction, to inspire, communicate, and even bring people together.
 
And of course, every one of the many themes Fangirl touches on, from family to first love to creativity to learning styles and the unpredictable uniqueness of each human mind, can be found woven through poignant yet laugh-out-loud blocks of sparklingly quotable dialogue.



​Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!
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Book Review: Mockingbird, Vol. 1: I Can Explain

5/22/2017

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Book Review:
​
Mockingbird Vol. 1: I Can Explain

​Chelsea Cain, Kate Niemczyk, Ibrahim Moustafa
 
Marvel, 2016
 
Grade: A+

The Basics:
 
Bobbi Morse, A.K.A Mockingbird, is a superhero. Not that her bosses at S.H.I.E.L.D or her former idols on the camera-facing core lineup of the Avengers tend to notice much, but she is a scientist and martial artist who helps people for a living. She particularly excels at talking down mutant twelve-year-old girls who can’t get anyone else to explain what’s happening to their bodies, and bailing out Hawkeye, who’s totally not her boyfriend.
 
The Downside:
 
While I find it works well enough, the non-linear presentation of these five issues may frustrate many readers and doesn’t add exceptionally much.
 
The Upside:
 
Bobbi exemplifies the best possible version of the terms “attitude” and “snark,” in potently concentrated doses. She’s the angry, undervalued female superhero who knows exactly what she has to be angry about and how to point it out in a few sharply chosen words at exactly the right moments, before continuing to get the job done.
 
The sarcastic sense of humor here is constant without ever feeling forced, and toys with Marvel conventions, not only about gender, but about such tropes as hordes of faceless non-human enemies (allowing heroes to show off their fighting skills without looking like jerks) and the dubious morality of S.H.I.E.L.D’s shadowy government status.
 
The dysfunctional relationship between Bobbi and Hawkeye is the real treat of this volume, and detracts nothing from her character. Quite the opposite. This is where things gets complicated, and we get to see, as cool as she is, why Bobbi Morse is not someone you want to be. Or be anywhere near.
 
Bobbi is a bad significant other. Really bad. Almost as bad as the average male superhero, but unlike those guys, her story doesn’t pretend otherwise. She’s that aloof, dishonest, emotionally abusive partner who will nevertheless show up to save you whenever you need it, the one you can’t help liking in those rare moments when things are going well.
 
In other words, she’s an action hero with a love interest.
 
Depending on how much patience you have for the abundance of bad male partners in fiction, Bobbi can be viewed either as a welcome reversal, giving the woman a chance to be the layered jerk for a change, or as a commentary on why this archetype is so readily accepted the other way around in the first place.
 
Altogether, this is a series I’ll definitely be following for as long as it- What? It’s already been cancelled?
 
Typical. Right, Bobbi?


​

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Book Review: Carry On

8/15/2016

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Book Review:

Carry On

By Rainbow Rowell
 
St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015
 
A+

The Basics:
 
Simon Snow is the Chosen One, destined to save the World of Mages from the Insidious Humdrum and the brewing war between the elitist old families and the Mage who runs Watford school. If only Simon could get his explosive level of power under control. And maybe figure out how to make his girlfriend happy. And uncover what's up with Baz, his vampire roommate, the rival with whom he’s been nursing an obsessive mutual enmity since they were eleven.
 
The Downside:
 
The world of Carry On started as the subject of fanfiction in another Rainbow Rowell book, Fangirl, and the vestigially fanfic-y quality of the setup makes the characters a little difficult to connect with in their own right at first (what's with Harry Potter analogue characters always being named Simon, anyway?). Rowling doesn’t have a monopoly on stories about learning magic, of course, but some of the details here are distractingly specific.
 
The Upside:
 
Both the characters and world do eventually assert their uniqueness, and it's a beautiful thing when they do. Every conflict, personal or political, is explored on all sides with extraordinary finesse. The status-quo of the World of Mages is prejudicial and wrong, yet the loudest and therefore most influential revolutionary is half-mad and quick to jump to tactics that do more harm than good. There are good people and good intentions to be found on all sides of the fence, including in the camp that simply wants to run far away.
 
We get to hear what it’s like to be a chosen one waiting to die, trying to minimize the collateral damage, and yet privately clinging to the hope of a happily ever after he can’t even think about starting to build yet. We hear from the love interest who’d rather be at home away from magic and looming war, living her own story in the now, rather than continuing to be used in evil plot after evil plot as hostage or incentive for the Chosen One, on the promise of a chance to be his happy ending, if he ever gets there. And yet, she cares for him. We hear from the brilliant sidekick who throws herself into every adventure and never looks back. We hear from the generation past, who thought they were doing the right thing. We hear from the guy born into the elitist old money culture who knows that he’s growing into more than one thing his family hates, but the love of family remains, sweet and complicated and unresolvable.
 
Wrap all of that in a sincerely believable, Rainbow Rowell-grade forbidden romance, and Carry On is a masterpiece both as genre commentary and as a story to stand alone, in equal measure.




Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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