Guest post: Teaching Writing, or Expressing the Inexpressible

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Guest post by Joseph Asphahani

I conducted perhaps the grandest of my life’s grand experiments about three weeks into the new school year in 2007. The students—a rowdy bunch of snot-nosed punks about a decade deep in the crumbling school system that was failing them. Me—an over-caffeinated snot-nosed punk about a day past my college graduation and the start of my first real job. The place—a rickety third-floor classroom in Chicago’s Gage Park High School. The task, which ultimately became the experiment, was to teach these kids how to write.

Joseph Asphahani.JPG

Joseph Asphahani

Teaching Writing, or Expressing the Inexpressible

...Or, to be more specific, how to write creatively.

That’s right: High School Creative Writing Class. I’m willing to bet that at least two-thirds of you reading this at one point in time thought to yourselves that you liked reading cool stuff so much that maybe you’d take a turn at writing some of it yourself. That enthusiasm was my reaction, too, when the school programmer told me on my first day, “You got two sophomore American Lit, two freshman Survey Lit, oh and a freshman Creative Writing? That can’t be right…” But, yep, it was right.

And three weeks in, it was going utterly nowhere.

I’d started the class like I’d started all my classes that year (remember, this was my very first deer-in-the-headlights year as a teacher). I’d run a bunch of gettin’-ta-know-ya type icebreaker stuff. I’d taken a couple of paper airplanes to the back, all in good humor. I’d managed to keep my smile up somehow. But eventually I had to actually start teaching things: storytelling, how to write creatively.

One experiment involved a track by the Icelandic band Sigur Rós (who, if you don’t know, perform in a language known only to the band!). The idea was to close your eyes and listen to this entirely unfathomable song and let the sound and the singing kind of carry you away to the fog-veiled realm of your own imagination, and then the dawn would break, and the light would burn the fog away and reveal a story of some kind. I wrote an example, which I read enthusiastically after the track was over. And then, the educator’s most overused line: “And now you guys try!”

That early experiment yielded mixed results. Some of my students got into it. Some of them tried. Some others gave it a half-hearted attempt, but I could tell there was something in them we could work with. But the majority of the class blew it off. They vocalized—at that moment and throughout the coming weeks—their confusion as to how in the world they even wound up in this class.

I tried a couple more experiments: surveys, interest-inventories, and questionnaires, all designed to excavate their personal interests and assemble them into poetry. In the next unit, we read some really juicy short stories and imagined beyond the cliffhanger endings. There were more units after that, but nothing ever yielded truly positive results.

I fell into a bit of a dark place. I asked myself if I was part of the system that was failing them. I asked myself what they had really been asking me all along: what difference is creative writing going to make in my life?

The grandest of my life’s grand experiments was to justify the importance—the quintessential, nuclear-significance—of creative expression. To clarify how it helps. Like all teachers, it was something I felt in my soul, that doing what I was doing had purpose—that learning was really the only way out.

So one day, about three weeks into the school year, I gave it my best shot. I told them that there would come a day when they really needed to tell somebody something. When they would no longer be able to hold in whatever they were feeling, when they’d have to let it out. And at that time, I told them, simple words would fail them. I told them there are some things in this life that just cannot be expressed through literal language. There are ideas and feelings that can only be expressed through stories. And that there would come a day when they would have something important to say. And would they be ready to say it? Would they be capable of making it make a difference?

Looking back on it now, maybe I was suffering from a bit of that snot-nosed, fresh-out-of-college, over-caffeinated energy. Maybe it was all balderdash.

But when I was standing up there, the grandest of my life’s grand experiments yielded an unexpected result: a buzzing in my own head. It wasn’t just them I’d been challenged to convince. It was me, too. It was my own existence I was justifying.

It was this epiphany that defined me from that point on as a writer and storyteller. There were—there still are—things I want to say, things I have to say, about our world and who we really are inside, but simple words fail me. Dear reader, I worry every day that we may just be beasts, so I wrote The Animal in Man to ask what you think about it. I don’t think I would have been able to ask if I hadn’t at one moment in my life justified why writing anything really matters.

You probably want to know how the class turned out after that. Well, I honestly don’t remember the rest. We wrote some stories (this time without soundtracks). We filled out some more surveys and tried a few more poems. Actually, as I write this, I suddenly recall that the confounded school programmer finally figured out a fix for his mistake, shuttered the class, and rolled the roster into some other graduation requirement. That’s probably why I can’t remember: because it’s not a story with a real ending.

But maybe it ends right here, in writing this.

The purpose of the experiment was to see if I could teach some students how to write, to figure out how one could possibly accomplish such a thing. I know some of those snot-nosed freshmen, more than a decade later, and they’ve grown into fine adults who have gone on to use their imaginations to great effect in their careers. I’ve seen them tell their stories on social media, expressing the inexpressible, and I kind of like to think that maybe I played a part in showing them they could.

Joseph Asphahani is an avid video-gamer, effective high school teacher, and enthusiastic candidate for whatever sort of cybernetic limb enhancement your megacorp is planning for the inexorable dystopian future. When he’s not getting hopelessly lost in simulated worlds, he’s often dreaming up worlds of his own. The Animal in Man: Violent Mind is his first novel. He resides in Chicago with his wife and two children.

S&L Podcast - #294 - Live at BayCon with Whiskey!

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We are excited about the winner of this year's Nebula, the finalists in the Locus awards, and so many TV shows coming from our favorite books. Plus, why Neil Gaiman will read a Cheesecake Factory Menu on stage. 

Download directly here.

WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?

Veronica and Tom (Thanks to Robert!): Michter's Limited Release Toasted Barrell Finish Bourbon

QUICK BURNS

Louie: The Nebula Award winners announced. Congrats to Charlie Jane Anders on winning the Best Novel award for All the Birds in the Sky.

Rob: Locus Finalists Announced

terpkristin: So, apparently GRRM has said that the HBO GoT spin-offs will NOT include Robert's Rebellion nor Dunk & Egg. I'm perplexed but intrigued as to what they will be.

Trike & Rob wrote: Recent S&L pick and popular video game series The Witcher is being made into a TV show by Netflix: With Andrzej Sapkowski as a consultant.

David: Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff is coming to HBO, with Jordan Peele & JJ Abrams as executive producers. Magic and racism in '50s America (despite the name, it's not really a Lovecraftian novel). I think the book had some potential issues, but Peele's studio involvement makes me beyond excited.

Alex: Neil Gaiman agreed to read entire Cheesecake Factory menu, with a catch if $500,000 has been raised for a charity of his choice, which happens to be the United Nations Refugee Agency.

BARE YOUR SWORD

I'm on the literature division for Worldcon 75, held in Helsinki this year, and a huge fan of Sword and Laser. I wanted to let you know that I will be hosting book club meetups for Sword and Laser and Vaginal Fantasy as part of the Worldcon program. The meetups will be open to anyone attending the con and will be discussing the August picks for each club. I can't wait to meet all the fellow genre book fans from around the world! We haven't finalized the schedule yet so I can't tell you the days for the meetups but the con is from August 9th to 13th and it's going to be a fantastic lineup.

Kind regards
Liz Loikkanen

Live Audience questions!

BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION

June Book

The Hum and the Shiver: A Novel of the Tufa by Alex Bledsoe

May Book Wrap Up

The Long Way to A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Colin: Discussion seems to have dried up quite early for this book. Is that because so many of you had read it before this month?

Drew: I'm almost done (I have about 15% left) and I think I have figured out what has been bugging me.

ADDENDUMS

Our show is currently entirely funded by our patrons. Thank you to all the folks who back our show and if you would like to support the show that way head to patreon.com/swordandlaser.

Welcome to Larry Lein, Sean Sandulak, Gloria Renna.

You can also support the show by buying books through our links! Find links to the books we talk about and some of our favorites at swordandlaser.com/picks

S&L Podcast - #279 - Myke Cole, Man Hunter

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Person hunter, really! He's an equal-opportunity ass-kicker. Author and fighter of crimes, Myke Cole, tells us how he got involved in the new CBS show Hunted! And, what Sam Sykes has to do with any of it. 

This episode was recorded before the Sunday, Jan 22nd premiere, but new episodes are out on Wednesday nights at 8/7c!

Download directly here!

GUEST POST: Ragnarok; It all begins with the end of the world

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Guest post by W H H Baker

Norse mythology is unusual among the well-known sets of legends from antiquity in that it doesn’t have life carrying on as usual until the end of time. Instead, the world ends in a truly epic battle where the gods will descend from their lofty thrones and ultimately lose a bloody encounter with all the dark creatures which inhabit the world. The legend says that the world is then ravaged by natural disasters and reshaped.

Although a touch bleak, I found myself wondering what it would have been like to be left behind, after an event like that. I should probably explain why my mind was travelling in this direction. After university I spent a year in Beijing learning Mandarin. Through that time I could see photos of all of my friends moving forward with life on the other side of the world, which left me, perhaps understandably, feeling a little left behind myself. Given that the most significant characters meet famously bloody ends during Ragnarok, I decided that it would make more sense for the survivor to be someone a little lower down the divine scale.

Fortunately for me, Norse mythology has the Valkyries, shield-maidens who bring the souls of worthy warriors slain in battle to serve in Odin’s host. I imagined a battle hardened character cast adrift in an unfamiliar world, a cold and bitter heroine with unending ages ahead of her. The more I thought about it, the more I fell in love with the character; so much so that I was convinced that she needed her own suitably epic tale, a true Viking saga. That was how Skjarla was born.

Inspiration strikes in the strangest ways sometimes. I was listening to my music, when the KT Tunstall song ‘Invisible Empire’ shuffled on and sparked everything going. Within the song are the lines ‘I wear a rusting crown, and I know this dynasty is falling’. I imagined the lost heir to a long since shattered kingdom, bound by fate to resurrect the forgotten dynasty. Every piece needs a villain, so I borrowed from another of the Norse myths, that of the hero Sigurd and the dragon Fafnir, Sigurd’s bloodline also gave me the dynasty I was looking for.

One of my favourite things about writing fantasy is that you start with a completely blank slate; whatever you want in there in terms of cultures, magic or monsters is fair game. I have found that one of the best things to do when writing fantasy is to start with a map, no matter how crude the artwork. For me it has two main impacts: 

  • Firstly, as I lay out the world or region, it helps me to think what cultures live where and how they interact. In the Rusted Crown, I have borrowed liberally from various periods of history, sometime directly, sometimes more as a starting point for a more fantastical version of reality. I was particularly happy with Romans who I based on the ninth legion who famously disappeared into the mists of Britain, and emerged from the spell which had bound them there when it was shattered by the remaking of the world.
     
  • Secondly, I find that it helps hugely with the flow of the narrative, knowing where your characters are and where they are trying to get to. I find that it helps me think more logically from their point of view, rather than just having them go as the crow flies.

Before I started writing, I realised that there could be an inconsistency between Skjarla’s character and the nature of the quest I was about to send her on. Skjarla wouldn’t just end up helping some penniless heir out of the goodness of her heart, there needed to be more to it. I ended up circling back to Fafnir, the dragon slain by Sigurd. A dead dragon on its own is not much good as a villain, so his servants would be trying to recover the teeth taken as trophies from when the dragon fell. With the dragon reassembled it could be resurrected, with suitably unpleasant consequences for the world. I didn’t think it would unreasonable for Sigurd’s heir to have one of the Fangs, and for Skjarla to want to protect it.

One side effect of dragons having a fairly substantial number of teeth, and those teeth being scattered around the world, was that Skjarla and her companions were suddenly going to be doing a lot of travelling, trying to prevent the dragon from being resurrected. As I plotted out the skeleton of how the tale would unfold, I realised that with all of the plot threads it meant that there were almost five tales within the overarching story. So I made the decision to devote separate books to each, rather than having the climax of each section lost within the book. Fortunately I have read a fair few fantasy series, so I hope that I have got the right balance between leaving enough left unsaid to make it compelling to read the second book, without it being so much of a cliff-hanger as to be downright infuriating. I leave it to you to judge if I have been successful.

About W H H Baker

William grew up in Hong Kong and the UK, before studying Natural Sciences at Durham University. He currently lives in London with his fiancé, Emily, and is training to be an auditor. William is also mad about rugby and spends much of his time with his head buried in a book.

About The Ragnarok Saga: The Rusted Crown

Ragnarok. The Norse world is ending. The Valkyrie, Skjarla, is cursed to survive the remaking of the world by the Dark goddess Hel. For centuries Skjarla wanders Midgard: monster slayer and mercenary, buried in grief and rage.

Four hundred years later, Skjarla finds herself in the small town of Lonely Barrow. There, hidden in the northern forests at the edge of the Haemocracy, she takes on a contract which proves more complicated than she could possibly have imagined.

Joined by the exiled heir to the New Roman Empire, a crusading Loptalfar and mercenaries running from their pasts. The Ragnarok Saga is a captivating journey which will test the very limits of love, endurance and courage.

For more information about the book please visit: http://www.austinmacauley.com/book/ragnarok-saga-rusted-crown 

March Madness has ended in a TIE!

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Four rounds, thousands of votes, and it came down to two: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin and A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab.

And then they tied. 

Supreme Laser explains:
There appears to be white smoke emanating from the chamber.... wait no I see black smoke too... and pink... and what is that? Violet? And fuschia? Oh that is definitely ultramarine. And now some russet... and hmm how did they nail burnt sienna smoke. Well it is burnt. I suppose that was easy. And forest green. Beautiful. OK so it's basically a unicorn farting a rainbow.

I'm consulting the great book of Empressal Emanations and Statistical Manual V and it says here......Both.

I guess we're doing both.

Veronica and I will start reading A Darker Shade of Magic since we've never done a book from Ms. Schwab before. And The Fifth Season will be the ALT read and our second Ms. Jemisin pick! We'll both make our best effort to read it as well and it will have its own discussion section for those who'd like to make it their primary book.

So there you go. Who could have predicted???

Thanks everybody for participating. This was a lot of fun and I'm glad most of you had fun with us. We'll definitely do it again! 

Thanks for playing, everyone! 

GUEST POST: From dark matter to Dark Matters -- Wandering to a Not-So-Distant Future

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By Michael Dow

In early 2016, I released my debut novel, Dark Matters, a science fiction/thriller set in the not-so-distant future of 2075. The story line for the book had simmered in the recesses of my mind for more than a decade, as I toiled from the bowels to the board rooms of corporate America. When I finally broke free, and began writing in earnest, I soon realized that those frayed tendrils of a story–unraveling the mystery of dark matter, and the implications for humanity–were going to require serious scientific research. 

So I dug in, trying (often with limited success) to better understand the science of dark matter, dark energy, multi-verses, and quantum theory. And that’s when things got interesting. As it turns out, I liked the research. An article on dark matter is just a click away from stories about cosmic rays, which then leads to cosmological inflation, the big bang theory, and a host of other fascinating sitcoms. 

But I digress…

In the end, what I discovered was not just the science of dark matter, but the foundation for future world where this discovery could take place. I wanted the story to take place in a future near enough to be easily recognizable, but far enough that I could take some creative license with the current state of affairs on Earth. This led me to a timeframe that was fifty to sixty years in the future, where futurist “experts” predict several interesting events will converge:

  • A world population of ten billion;
  • Computers more powerful than the human brain, at a fraction of today’s cost;
  • Full-scale space exploration, to include a moon base, space hotels, and asteroid mining;
  • The availability of fusion power; and,
  • The world’s first trillionaire.

Just to name a few.

It was this last one that caught my eye – a trillion dollars. Like they say in Congress, now we’re talking real money. What could a trillion dollars buy you? And not today–but fifty years from now, when technology is several orders of magnitude less expensive? That kind of money, with that level of technology… it sent chills down my spine. And it was hard to read about that kind of wealth, without plunging into the current debate surrounding income inequality, and the widening wealth gap. It was an intriguing hook for a book. Before I knew it, my story about dark matter had become a story about Dark Matters–a handful of trillionaires, playing benevolent dictator in a world where income inequality had truly run amok.

This was an area where my background and experience could be put to good use. During my time as a management consultant and CEO, I’ve seen some of the best–and unfortunately, some of the worst–that corporate America has to offer. And through my research, I discovered that the world’s 1,500+ billionaires are growing their wealth much faster than the richest one percent; they are doing to the one percent, what the one percent is doing to the ninety-nine percent. On top of that, over the past several years, 95% of all new wealth has gone to the richest one percent. If we stay on this path for fifty more years, a handful of the über-elite, in the right positions, and with the latest technology, really could have an iron grip on world events. I had stumbled onto an ideal combination–the story of a world-changing scientific discovery, set in a world where a few of the elite could very well prevent that kind of change.

Before I knew it, I had a finished manuscript. Or at least, I thought I did. My editor gave me one final task. He saw the dystopian world of 2075 as a leading character in the story, and critical to conveying the magnitude of the dark matter discovery. He asked me to do more research–and to identify fifty additional “fascinating facts” about the world of 2075. Then, he challenged me to insert them into the story–in as few words as possible. It was a remarkable exercise, to see how much world-building, character development, and storytelling could be done in just a few words. And it led to some of my favorite moments in the book–for instance, when the female lead comments, “It’s an oxymoron, like Glacier National Park.” Or when a couple of teenage girls prank their mother with a dead rat, created from dad’s nano-technology printer. I didn’t quite manage to insert all fifty (there are only forty-five chapters, after all), but the attentive reader should find dozens, addressing topics from climate change to robotics, space exploration, and the future of the Internet.

Did it all come together, in the end? That’s for the reader to decide, I suppose. But it worked for me–not just in writing the story, but in the process that got me there. Now I let myself wander (a little…) when I’m doing research, and I don’t carry (as much…) guilt when I do. And though I’m still a neophyte at this whole writing thing, I know I’ve found a great tool for my own arsenal.

Back to my research; I hear they’re now blaming dark matter for wiping out the dinosaurs. Thanks for listening!

ABOUT MICHAEL DOW

Michael Dow spent 25+ years in corporate America, in roles running the gamut from management consultant to CEO. He has worked at companies ranging in size from start-up to over one billion dollars in revenue, and in locations across the globe, from Washington DC to Saudi Arabia. Dark Matters is his first work of fiction (though his competitors have accused him of writing fiction for decades). Mike lives in Traverse City, Michigan, with his wife and two teenage daughters.

ABOUT DARK MATTERS

Rudolph "Rudy" Dersch is the newly minted CEO of the world's largest, multi-trillion-dollar corporate conglomerate. But the job comes with an unexpected twist–an invitation to join the Consortium, a small, secretive group of global elites who effectively decide what's best for the rest of humanity. How does Rudy's struggle to reconcile business and family impact the world's future? And who, if anyone, can break the Consortium's iron grip on the status quo?

The answer may lie with a renegade physicist, close to unraveling one of the universe's greatest mysteries. And a headstrong art curator, driven to find the meaning behind her increasingly compelling visions. From a life-changing moment in a crowded Singapore marketplace, to the business end of an assassin's gun, they face a power beyond any the world has ever seen. To survive, they'll have to decipher the truth about dark matter–before the Consortium can achieve its ruinous end game.

S&L Podcast - #237 - Charles E. Gannon and Big Idea Books

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Author Chuck Gannon joins us on the show this week to talk about his most recent work in the Caine Riordan series (Raising Caine), as well as helping the government figure out the future as part of SIGMA. This is one busy guy, let me tell you.

Download direct link here and subscribe in iTunes!

The Sword & Laser Collection Contest: The Sequel

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The rumors are true! (Were there rumors? There may have been rumors). Along with Inkshares, we're running another Collection Contest to find the next great science fiction and fantasy novels. We are so thrilled with our current (in-production) collection, and we can't wait to see what else is out there!

Head over to Inkshares to get the whole scoop, and to learn how you can submit your idea!

"An Unattractive Vampire" joins the S&L Inkshares Collection!

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Back when we launched the S&L Inkshares Collection, we were thrilled with the quantity and quality of the entries we received. For that first contest, we decided to pick two books that epitomized the concepts of "sword" and "laser" to us, and The Life Engineered and Asteroid Made of Dragons were those selections.

All the while, another book was flying up the contest charts, and capturing our hearts (and blood). An Unattractive Vampire by Jim McDoniel:

After three centuries trapped underground, Yulric Bile—the Curséd One, the Devil’s Apprentice, the Thousand Year Old Vampyr—has risen only to find that no one in this time believes he is a vampire. Werewolf, they call him. Zombie. Mummy. Lich. Vampires, he discovers, have become very pretty, very weak, and most disturbing of all, very good. He resolves to correct this disgusting turn of events, or at the very least, murder the person responsible. Aided by a vampire wannabe, the eight-year-old reincarnation of his greatest foe, and a host of ancient horrors as far from sexy as it is possible to be, Yulric journeys from lost subterranean cities to pink suburban houses, battling undead TV stars and his fear of cars, for the right to determine, once and for all, what it truly means to be a vampire.

I'm very happy to announce that An Unattractive Vampire is officially joining the S&L Collection on Inkshares! Jim is also a S&L listener, so we're extra excited to welcome him to the family. 

S&L Podcast Rewind: 'The Martian Influx' Redux

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With the huge success of the film adaptation this month, we thought it would be fun to travel back in time to our interview with The Martian author Andy Weir and Influx author Daniel Suarez. 

If you're interested in picking up where that episode left off, you can follow this link to the Soundcloud page (audio should start at the 45:05 mark).

As noted, Patrons will receive this episode at no charge. Enjoy!

Download episode directly here.

FEATURED REVIEW: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

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Welcome to our Featured Reviews! In this series, we'll be highlighting book reviews by the S&L audience. If you want to submit a review, please check out the guidelines here! -Veronica

Review by Bryan S. Glosemeyer, original on Goodreads here.

"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason."

The opening line of Neal Stephenson's new 'hard SF' thriller, Seveneves, is bound to go down as one of the great opening lines in science fiction. I'm sure it will soon be mentioned in the same breath as William Gibson's opening line to Neuromancer. "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

So as you can see, the very first sentence packs quite a punch and the punches keep on coming. The clock is ticking till the sky itself burns for five thousand years. Will science and reason save humanity in the harshness of space? Or will politics and greed be our final undoing? Well, I won't spoil it for you, but if you are familiar at all with Stephenson's books, you'll expect very smart and very brave people try to save the world with their smarts and bravery.

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The premise is exciting and fun and the tension keeps ratcheting up and up. While this is most definitely 'speculative' fiction, he keeps the science grounded, yet fascinating. No artificial gravity, no warp drives, no energy shields. As usual, Stephenson does a great job of helping to make sense of the science for the average reader. But to do so means he does a lot of 'infodumps.' His books have always been high on the infodump quotient, Seveneves is even more so.

The book is divided into three parts, and I have to say I found the second act the most compelling, fast paced, edge of your seat reading. While there are smart people being heroic throughout the book, this is by far the most adventurous and heroic section.

I do have a few criticisms, and most of that has to do with character. Stephenson has never been one to dive too deep into his characters's inner worlds, but even so he could craft fleshed out, compelling and fun characters like Raz, Hiro, Jack Shaftoe. To be honest, I have to say that most of the characters fell pretty flat for me in Seveneves. I understand that the majority of them are scientists and engineers and they're not going to be the type to fall apart int an emotional mess when the shit hits the fan. But this is some pretty goddamn apocalyptic shit hitting the fan and I would expect even the coolest, logical engineer to have their emotions get hotter and go deeper than what we get here.

One character standout, though still lacking in the emotional depth I just mentioned, is the African American scientist/celebrity Doc Dubois. Any fan of Neil Degrasse Tyson won't be able to help but picture Dubois as Tyson. Even the speech cadences are there.

Again, without going into spoiler territory, the third act of this book was very reminiscent of Raz's quest in Anathem.

All criticisms taken into account, this is still a damn fun and exciting read. Fans of hard sci fi and doomsday thrillers are going to dig this a lot, I think.

Also, when I was reading it, I kept envisioning it not as a movie, but as a miniseries. With the right budget and enough hours to tell the story (5-6 hours I'd say) this would be awesome to see come to life on the screen.

BTW, I also made an online mixtape inspired by the book, especially parts one and two. You can check it out here!

FEATURED REVIEW: The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley

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Welcome to our Featured Reviews! In this series, we'll be highlighting book reviews by the S&L audience. If you want to submit a review, please check out the guidelines here! -Veronica

Review by Emily Carlson

The Low-Down:    

In a multiverse where magic is the product of the rise and fall of three celestial bodies, things can get a little complicated. Characters’ power waxes and wanes with the movement of these satellites, but the world seems to have reached a balance. However, that balance is shattered when the fourth, dark satellite – Oma – begins ascending. Oma, the Worldbreaker. Last time Oma rose, continents were literally torn in half by its power, and it seems that this generation will be no different. 

The Mirror Empire follows Lilia, a girl from a dying universe with an amber sky, as she is hurled into a new and thriving universe in escape from the dark forces gathering in her amber world. But Lilia is far from safe in her new blue-skied universe because the armies she fled haven’t given up the chase.


Key Themes:

Genocide, multiverses, TRULY NOXIOUS WEEDS, gender and sexuality, mystical orphans, THE DOPPLEGANGER, celestial bodies (wink, wink), BLOOD


What’s Good:

Hurley has bitten off an awful lot with her ambitious Mirror Empire. And for those of us who are bored with a linear and predictable narrative, this is a very good thing. Hurley seems determined to supplant nearly every fantasy troupe, even down to her five-gendered social structure with group marriage and funerary cannibalism. These bold rejections of what we take for granted in our own society are illuminating in Hurley’s hands. 

Take for example the thirty-something, war-hardened general returning home from her tour abroad to her teenaged, undereducated, ornamental husband. On one hand, this seems very familiar to fantasy fans (Drogo and Daenerys, anyone?). But on the other, it is completely unexpected and frankly, appalling. Readers might swoon at the scenes of Drogo and Dany together, might even excuse the some of the harsh treatment that Dany receives from Drogo. However, when the general dominates her husband and when we see how isolated he truly is, it’s harder to wear those same rose-colored glasses. 

The result is a novel that is challenging, though inducing, and at times shocking. But very much worth the time of any fantasy reader ready for something different. 

What’s Less Than Good:

Hurley has bitten off an awful lot with her ambitious Mirror Empire. What is this novel’s greatest strength can be its most frustrating weakness. Switching characters, universes, and social structures can be very confusing. Hurley pulls it off with a surprising amount of ease, but readers can still get lost easily. 

Furthermore, although Hurley is making wonderful strides towards fulfilling the potential of the unique world she created, only time (and more novels) will tell if Hurley is able to pull this off with the finesse demanded when an author deviates this much from reality. In my mind, the farther an author strays from reality, the heavier the burden is to make all of that mental strain worth our while.  


The Final Verdict: 

Maintain focus. If you can do that, The Mirror Empire is definitely worth the read. But for those of us who don’t want to leave a book with a pounding headache (I mean… not really, but you get it) this may not be the novel for you. The world Hurley creates is rich, engaging, and completely surprising. It is worth the effort the novel will require from you, but know that this is not a mindless read. So much of the world in this book is utterly new that it is bound to leave most people feeling a little star-struck. 

The world Hurley builds takes on a personality of itself, much like another character you are getting to know. It would be easy for the human characters to fade into the background of the novel and let the newness of the world stun readers. However, the characters in the novel are utterly profound. They are likable and revolting in turn, but in a way which reminds us of our own little green planet with a blue sky. The true wonder of this book is not the differences Hurley creates between her worlds and ours, but the similarities. Somehow, Hurley has managed to create a story where even with a radically different reality to ours, we are able to relate to and care about her characters. 

If you’re willing to go the extra literary mile, Hurley promises to deliver even more mind-blowing confusion in the upcoming Empire Ascendant dropping in October 2015. 

FEATURED REVIEW: Nemesis Games (Expanse #5) by James S.A. Corey

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Welcome to our Featured Reviews! In this series, we'll be highlighting book reviews by the S&L audience. If you want to submit a review, please check out the guidelines here! -Veronica

Review by Robert Zak
Ed note: Review is mostly spoiler free, but reader beware!

Executive Summary: Best one yet! I've always enjoyed this series, but I really loved this book. My only complaint would I don't have more to read! I can't wait for book 6.

Audiobook: Jefferson Mays is back! Huzzah! Don't get me wrong, he's not one of my favorite narrators or anything, but he is good. And the guy they got to replace him for book 4 was not. I was considering switching to text for this book if that narrator was used again. Thankfully I didn't have to. 

His accents for Avasarala and Alex are excellent as always. Everyone else isn't really anything special. He has good inflection and reads in a nice and clear voice. Hopefully they'll be able to get him for all the future books.

Full Review
The Expanse books have been a lot of fun since I finally picked them up last year. However I was starting to feel like maybe it was running out of steam.

I liked Leviathan Wakes and thought Caliban's War was even better. However I felt Abaddon's Gate and especially Cibola Burn weren't as good.

I've grown tired of the rotating POV's with new characters to follow around. Part of the problem is that Avasarala and Bobbie were so great in Caliban's War, everyone that followed was a disappointment.

Not only that, but they didn't really feature in books 3 and 4 and I think that's a waste. Thankfully that's been remedied in this book. While they aren't POV characters again, they do feature fairly heavily in the plot, albeit Bobbie moreso than Avasarala.

The other problem was I always found at least 1 or 2 of the POV to be less interesting than the others. The best part is that instead of forcing the readers to deal with some new characters they won't like as much, they chose to make the other 3 POVs the remaining members of the Rocinante. Not only do we finally get in the heads of characters I've come to love in the last 4 books, but we get more of their backstories as well, especially Naomi and Amos. 

In fact if you haven't read The Churn previously, I'd highly recommend doing so before this novel. I think you'll get a lot more out of Amos's storyline if you do. I'm hard pressed to pick a favorite plotline. They were all just so good.

So apart from excellent choice for POVs what really makes this book so great is the focus of the story. The stuff with the protomolecule in the last four books has been interesting, but this book mostly takes a break from that.

The tensions have long been bubbling between the three human factions of Earth, Mars and The Belt/OPA have finally come to a head. And just when I thought I was enjoying this book, BAM! It somehow got even better.

This is a very different story than last four. That may upset some fans, but for me it breathed new life into a series that seemed in danger of losing its way.

Some characters in this book made me so mad! Others made me scared or nervous. Just seeing Bobbie and Avasarala made me happy. I hated having to stop listening each day, and I couldn't wait to start listening again. 

To me that's the sort of thing that pushes something from a 4-star rating into the vary rare company of a 5-star rating. It also put it solidly on my favorites shelf. I will definitely be listening to this one again.

If I had one complaint it's that it's over! I can't wait for book 6! If you found yourself not as happy with the last book or two, I highly recommend giving this one a shot, I really think it's best one yet!