I have mixed feelings about A Song of Ice and Fire (the overall series). My biggest problem is that I can make a pretty sizable list of things I don’t like: about the writing, about the characters (specifically how death is handled), about the sexism and sex and overall yuck factor, and…well you get the idea. On the other hand, I’m still reading it. None of these factors were enough to not bother with the current book, nor have they been enough to make me put the current book down. The story is still interesting enough, I guess. But see that’s just it. I can’t put my finger on why I haven’t had the urge to quit reading, and I can’t figure out why such a vague “like” factor should overrule that whole list of “don’t likes”.

If I had to rank in terms of overall enjoyment in the genre of epic fantasy, this is how my list would go: Mistborn, Wheel of Time, Name of the Wind, Dragonlance, Sword of Truth, Assassins/Liveships/Tawny Man, Deathgate Cycle, Belgariad/Mallorean, Song of Ice and Fire, Winds of the Forelands.

(That’s not counting any YA series, ’cause I feel like that’s a different beast. It’s also not counting The Way of Kings, because there’s only the one book so far. I have a suspicion it will shoot to the top pretty fast).

(Also, that list is not representative of how I feel about the writing of said series…for instance I think Sword of Truth is too heavy-handed and the Belgariad and Mallorean repetitive….but just how eager I was to finish the books and how much I enjoyed reading them. Honestly, Name of the Wind and Wheel of Time could trade places, but…WoT has seniority

So see, Ice and Fire is down there. It’s good enough to keep me into it, but barely. (Winds of the Forelands I had to force myself to finish. Because geez, warwarwar almost everyone dies. Meh.) I’m not going to be too upset if the final book never materializes (like this one almost didn’t…as a reader, I’m all “THAT’S ANNOYING!!1″, but as a writer, I can totally understand that slogging inch by inch through a manuscript and then glancing up going “Where the HELL has the year gone??”)

Interestingly, the things I don’t like about Ice and Fire: some have gotten better in A Dance With Dragons. The rash of people dying in stupid pointless ways has slowed to a trickle. There haven’t been nearly as many deaths all around, which is nice. It’s starting to look like at least some of the bad characters might possibly have a shot of seeing some comeuppance, you know, eventually. Hope? Not quite, but more like a lessening of utter despair.

Other things have gotten a lot worse. First of all, I absolutely cannot abide how this author treats women in this series. It’s like, yeah I know this is supposed to be a gritty, harsh world and all…but after a point, I begin to wonder how much of the blatant disgusting misogyny was put there on purpose, and how much is due to the unconscious worldview of the author. Women in A Song of Ice and Fire seem to exist for exactly one purpose: to be fucked by men. There are only two types of women in Martin’s epic: whores and not-yet-whores. A woman’s consent is irrelevant to the question of whether a man will stick his member in her…it only answers the question of whether or not it might be considered “rape” afterward. And nobody really cares whether it was rape or not. Women have no sexual agency whatsoever; it is the men who decide where, when, and how often a women will spread her legs. After all, that’s what women are FOR.

Even the women think this way in this world, which I find both abhorrent and utterly baffling. There was one scene where a female protagonist was assaulted by a male character intent on raping her. She fights him, he overpowers her…and then they have wild passionate sex which she absolutely enjoys. Only later do we find out she’s had this man as a lover for some time and is very attracted to him, wanted him, etc. I just…no. That is not how women think. There was nothing playful or coy about her telling him to bugger off (she drew a knife on him!). There is absolutely no reason to write a scene where a woman WANTS to be raped, even if she knows and has had sex with the guy before. It was disgusting. It confused me so bad that I had to flip forward and back several times to make sure I hadn’t MISSED some vital piece of information that would make that scene make any kind of sense. It threw me out of the story.

Also, I don’t remember nearly so many references to genitals that start with “c” in the other books. (Maybe my brain just sort of mentally tuned them out before). Have I mentioned that I hate, hate, hate those particular words? And sex with body parts. And fluids. And screaming. I just…ew. I know, I know, joyless world, crass characters, yadda yadda yadda…I don’t like it. Especially since I don’t know how much of it the author is deliberately channeling to create a certain mood or mindset…and how much of it is really how he sees things. Usually, when you write a book in which you must include morally offensive ideas…you present it well and realistically, yes, but at some point I feel like you’ve got to make it clear to your readers that the behavior in question is not okay. I haven’t gotten that vibe yet. The vibe I get is: it doesn’t matter whether something’s right or wrong…it’s how the world is, so deal with it. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Some point.

That actually takes me into…the yuck factor. I can deal with blood. You read fantasy, you’re going to see a lot of blood doing all sorts of things you’d just as soon not see: spraying, splattering, oozing, leaking, splashing, you get the idea. I can deal with body parts in written fantasy (movies…eh, not so much. Not a lot of it). Brains and entrails are common.

I cannot deal with human waste. And I’m really not exaggerating when I say that A Dance with Dragons is full of shit. Human shit, horse shit, pig shit, sick shit. There are many times where characters are described going to the bathroom (which I feel is generally unnecessary unless they get bit by a snake or something, you know, significant happens), in rather more detail than I felt necessary. I assume male characters take a piss from time to time. I might even assume they wake up with erections sometimes and you know, deal with that. You don’t have to tell me about it. Seriously. You don’t have to tell me about it. You’re going to make me think you’re obsessed with body parts or something. And honestly, the way you treat women in the story…

Ah but well. You’re probably by now wondering why I mentioned chamber pots.

Most traditional epic fantasy is based in a somewhat Medieval-ish setting with some magic or something thrown in. That means Medieval technology, which means you get around by some variety of horse (no self-powered vehicles), communicate by some variety of bird (no communication technology), defend yourself with swords, bows, and armor, or magic (no guns), pay taxes to a king or lord (no democracies), warm and light your house with fire (no electricity), eat from wooden, metal, ceramic, or glass flatware (no plastic), sew your own clothes and build your own furniture (no assembly-line produced goods), heal your wounds with raw herbs or magic (no advanced medicine), bathe by hauling buckets up to your room (no indoor plumbing), and sleep at the end of the day on a hay or feather mattress (no polyester or such).

And you do your business in a chamber pot in your room.

Now let’s be honest. The Medieval Age is not one in which most modern people would want to live, not if they’ve actually studied what it was like for a common shmuck back then. Life was harsh, unfair, hard, brutally short, and you stank through most of it.  So…why this institutionalized nostalgia as presented in fantasy literature? Well, to be fair, the Medieval period did produce some really kick-ass swords. And cathedrals. And there were knights, of course, which have a legacy that’s almost fantasy-ish in of itself. But I think the biggest reason is because of the magic. It is theorized that, if people had regular access to some source of supernatural power, humanity would have no particular reason to advance beyond the technological level of the late Medieval period. Magic would fill in the gap of technology, would provide all the advantages and conveniences that were, in real history, provided by science and technology.

My question is: if magic is supposed to fill in those gaps, why is there no indoor plumbing? Why does the widespread use of chamber pots persist in fantasy fiction??

It’s not like they can’t build pipes. Heck, you don’t even need magic for it…weren’t there some really ancient cities that had plumbing? This strange reliance on chamber pots and buckets of water just really doesn’t make sense. Why preserve THAT particular bit of Medieval reality, when so much of the rest is discarded? (Hot spring baths? How many people had access to those?) Peeing in one’s room is gross. It stinks. It attracts disease. You have to clean the pot. Did I mention it stinks?

If you’re lucky, an author might mention a random chamber pot once. Most don’t talk about the character’s bathroom arrangements at all, which is nice…although if you’re filling bathtubs with buckets, you’re probably peeing in pots. If that author is George R. R. Martin, you’ll get to read in rather graphic detail exactly how pervasive chamber pots are, and how often they are used, and even what happens when a character uses his bed or something else besides a chamber pot….yeah. Most authors leave the chamber pots offstage.

But they’re there, more often than not.

Why?

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What it did well:

The series made me care about every single character. I really couldn’t pick a favorite. Now I know that sounds like a “duh”, but honestly? That’s rare. That’s really, really rare. Anytime you have an epic with a huge cast of characters, there’s almost always going to be characters whose chapters you look forward to reading, and other characters whose stories you don’t care so much about, except that you’ve got to slog through them to get to your favorite POV again. It’s hard enough to create one character that everybody likes. Creating a whole cast of characters that everyone likes? In the Sword of Truth, I only really cared about Richard, Kahlan, and oddly, Nathan Rahl…reading about anyone else was work. In the Way of Kings, I liked Kaladin so much that it would take me a good two or three pages to get “into” anyone else’s story. Even the Wheel of Time couldn’t pull it off, though WoT manages to periodically bring various storylines to the forefront of my interest. I used to slog through Mat’s chapters because he just wasn’t as interesting to me. Now, with the introduction of Tuon, his is among my favorite storylines, and I find myself slogging through Elayne’s and the Forsaken’s chapters. Heck, there was a point around Book 8 where I was slogging through Rand’s storyline to get elsewhere.

In Winds of the Forelands, however, what would happen was I’d reach the beginning of a chapter with a new POV, figure out whose it was, and think something like, “Oh, yeah, them. I’d almost forgotten. There were having such and such problems, and this was going on…” and I was quite happy to keep reading. Those books were probably among the most balanced I’ve read, as far as juggling POVs and keeping interest up. The villains were as interesting and complex as the protagonists (a must for me, if I’m reading), and at various times I found myself honestly conflicted in who I was rooting for. This is something I really want to emulate in my Tindaari series…as every storyline is essential and I don’t want readers glazing over some to get to others.

The downside of this, however, is that while I cared about every character, there wasn’t one who really stood out to me. As I said, I couldn’t pick a favorite. Nobody really got to me, you know? The closest was Cadel the assassin, oddly enough, and he was killed off at the end of the third book. I really don’t think I was supposed to like him as much as I did…and it created in me an odd resentment towards one of the protagonists, Tavis. I’m supposed to be rooting for Tavis, and I did, but there was always this part of me going, “I wish I could like you more, but you killed Cadel. Yeah, I know he assassinated your fiance and framed you for it, and you’re going to be screwed until you get that sorted…but Cadel was awesome! I miss Cadel.”

Another aspect that bothered me about the series is that although the main storyline was tied off at the end, there were a whole slew of smaller subplots that I felt didn’t get finished. You sort of get the impression that all the smaller stuff will work itself out, but since I’d come to care about all these smaller situations, I didn’t like not knowing for sure. It felt like the smaller plotlines existed solely to propel one particular character, or a few characters, towards the final big battle at the end…and if we knew the fate of those characters, it would be enough. And I mean, I guess that is enough, ’cause there’s only so much wrapping up one can do before it gets boring. It just didn’t…feel like enough. Not for me.

But really, I can nitpick anything. Winds of the Forelands was a surprisingly good series, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes the genre and is tired of WoT and LoTR knockoffs.

I realized that my vague dissatisfaction with the series has less to do with the quality of the books themselves, but in the fact that it was a war story. Most epic fantasy is about war. Most epic fantasy concerns itself with nations and kingdoms and armies and warriors and borders and conquest and preventing conquest. Lord of the Rings. The Wheel of Time. Dragonlance. The Belgariad. Even Harry Potter has got one set of sorcerers trying to conquer and destroy the other set. The Sword of Truth and The Way of Kings have enough else going on that it pulls the spotlight off the battles, but still, there are battles. There’s always a war going on, or a war about to start. I noticed it in Winds of the Forelands, I think, because the entire story hinges on one particular war, and concerns all the smaller wars that lead into the big one. It’s not just a story taking place during a war…it’s a story about a war.

I don’t like war. Fighting battles, moving troops, swords and arrows and armor, thinking about how many men it will take to defeat a particular army…none of that crud interests me. I hate watching spear-carriers in stories get killed off in huge swathes in order to “up the stakes” for the good guys. It may be necessary but I don’t like it. It’s not what draws me to epic fantasy and I’ll be honest, it’s my least favorite part of it.

And this got me thinking, why is epic fantasy always about war? Well, for one thing, it’s big. It involves all kinds of people from various places. It forces people to move around a lot. It forces people to ally with enemies, and estrange themselves from allies. It’s exciting. It permanently changes the geographical and political landscape. No one walks away unscathed. Very few things are as epic as a war. It’s conflict writ large.

I never pictured Tindaari as a war story. I had vague plans of a war between the new priesthood and the magic users, but it was never anything definite because it wasn’t a part of the story I enjoyed planning. I was putting a war into the story because…well, that’s what you do in epic fantasy. You need all-encompassing, world-changing, epic battles between really awesome magic users and warriors with really awesome swords. So I’ve put myself in a position of writing a story in a genre that requires me to include something I don’t really want to write about.

That won’t do.

So I started brainstorming. After all, I don’t have to write about war. I don’t care if it’s the easiest way to make an epic…I don’t have to do it that way. I just need to think of something else, something equally as epic…but something that interests me. What sort of event brings people together on as massive a scale as a war, but isn’t a war?

Natural disaster comes to mind pretty quick. But really, that’s just replacing people against people with people against nature. Plague, famine, the sudden appearance of superpowers or curses among the population…which usually leads to some sort of armed conflict between supes and non-supes.

The only other kind of epic fantasy I can think of are what I’ll call coming-of-age stories. They concentrate on one single person’s life…though that person is usually some kind of hero or king, or is well caught up in the doings of heroes and kings. Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles is such a story, as is Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, as is Robin Hobb’s Assassins trilogy. (The Belgariad is a sort of hybrid, but honestly I think it’s the tongue-in-cheek humor that really carries that series for me.) Instead of creating an epic feel by spreading the focus wide, among a huge cast of characters…one narrows the focus down to a single individual, but takes that life in such detail that it becomes epic.

I just started The Wise Man’s Fear, second book in Rothfuss’ series…and I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I’m enjoying the reading so much more than Winds of the Forelands. I think it’s simply because I happen to like life-epics better than war-epics. For one things, life-epics tend to unfold at a slower, more relaxed pace than war-epics. I can get comfortable with the character and the world before the really big stuff starts to happen, and I’m not as tempted to read ahead to ease tension. Tindaari is very well set up to be a life-epic…it is, after all, the story of Ravana and Linus growing up, growing into their powers and into the world.

This is, perhaps, where Tindaari could really be something unique in the epic fantasy genre, because it’s really the story of several characters coming of age and meeting each other. You get to know all of them from childhood, or at least young-adulthood. It would be a life-epic in structure, but still keep the multi-character focus and breadth of a war-epic. I think taking the time to follow these characters as they grow up will help alleviate that “really like some characters, bored with others” problem that crops up in epics.

And best of all, if armed conflict does happen within the story (and it probably will), at least I can feel like I don’t have to focus on that aspect of it.

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So a month or two ago, there was this author that had been recommended to me, and I kept telling myself I should check her out. Then, at the Cassandra Claire and Holly Black event in Vero, that same author was recommended yet again, by those two no less. I said to myself, “I really do need to look into that.”

Then, of course, I completely forgot the author’s name. I knew she had two books, and that the second one was called Fire. Let me tell you, there are a whole stinking lot of books on the market with “fire” in the title…which makes searching in the library almost impossible. Especially without an author. So…I gave up, in the hopes of eventually running across the name again and remembering it.

In a completely unrelated series of events, I ended up checking out a book called Graceling from the library. (Are you laughing yet?) It was one of those few books I pick up, not because I know anything about them, but because the back cover sounds interesting. Most of those are disappointments. This one was not.

It was imaginative, and exciting, and unpretentious. I would have built up the world a little more, if I’d been writing it, but the story didn’t suffer for lack of detail. Reading the inside flap, I was surprised to discover that the author lives in Jacksonville, FL. Yay, fellow Floridian! I enjoyed Graceling enough that I went online to see if the author had a blog or something. I started on Amazon, where I was excited to discover that there is apparently another book in the series.

Can you guess what that second book is called? Yep.

Fire.

Proving that yes, apparently I really should have checked Kristin Cashore out when I still remembered her name, because her first book was interesting enough for me to pick up AT RANDOM. Craziness.

In other news, I’m about halfway through the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. Those are the books that apparently inspired the TrueBlood series on TV, which I know nothing about. But I’ve discovered that if a book spawns a movie or TV series, the book is at least worth checking out. (With the possible exception of Vampire Diaries. I tried to read those and it was like reading Twilight all over again. It was just…meh.) Anyway, I’m quite enjoying the Sookie books. They have a nice balance of mystery, sensuality, solid worldbuilding, and fun, and I really like the protagonist. She’s one of those perky southern women who don’t have a lot of “book larning”, but has a good head on her shoulders nonetheless.

I really need to update my to-read list, as I’ve finished a lot of what’s on it, and have added some stuff. I’ll probably do that in a different post.

The Shades rewrite is going very well. First person works a lot better than third ever did, I’m discovering. Much easier to introspect. But really, I think the best thing I did was starting at the fight scene. It just makes everyone’s motivations and conflicts so much clearer, and make so much more sense. Saeli, instead of starting things off with a dubious and rather stupid plan to meet with a Cowl, is immediately thrown into a conflict with one through no deliberate fault of her own. Yes, she ends up in a mess because of her decisions, but one could argue that there was little else she could do in those circumstances.

No, she didn’t have to sneak into the Temple to get a better look at a Cowl. But her doubts drove her there. No, she didn’t have to jump out to defend the High Priestess against Raphel, but her good heart wouldn’t let her do otherwise. It’s actually the only thing she does all night that a real White Mantle would also do.

She didn’t have to get into a conversation with Raphel, but her own doubts and curiosities, and Raphel’s strange manner, made it inevitable. This is where Saeli’s sense of what’s right departs from White Mantle philosophy. A Mantle would attack, and never give the enemy a chance to speak…no matter the circumstance, no matter how different or fascinating the enemy was. If Raphel had attacked her the second she appeared, that’s probably the course she would have taken, because it’s what she’s been taught. But Raphel tried to talk her away first, and that was enough to shock her out of reacting. Saeli’s own doubts compel her to try and find out why this Cowl is different.

She certainly didn’t have to take Raphel up on his compromise, and let him go when he asked…but it was the only thing she could do to save herself and the High Priestess’ life, given what she knows. (If she had known how much Raphel would risk to keep a gray her age alive, she might have been in a better position to bargain…but as far as she knows, Raphel’s going to kill her unless she does what he asks). She chooses saving lives over the morals she’s been taught, and that is significant. She’s willing to take circumstance into account. She follows her own inner sense of what’s right. This is what makes her so vulnerable to Raphel, but it’s also what will ultimately allow her to break free from him.

Raphel, instead of for-some-mysterious-reason deciding to meet an unknown student just because she asks, is thrown into a conflict with Saeli because of where he was and what he was trying to do. He spares her initially because he’s just killed Denys and is not happy about it, and he really doesn’t want to do it again. And before you start thinking that Raphel isn’t really such a bad guy after all, as Saeli does, know that Raphel objects to killing bystanders not out of the goodness of his heart, but as a matter of pride. He’s an assassin, and normally he’s good enough to get in and out of a place without having killed anyone other than his target. He’s more annoyed with himself at this point, because having to kill a student is embarrassing. Killing two would be unbearable, not to his conscience, but to his pride.

When she follows him up to the tower, he admires her for her tenacity. Mind you, he’s still going to kill her…perhaps even more so at this point, as it’s obvious she’s not going to leave him alone. But he’s curious enough about this Mantle who is acting so un-Mantle-like that he’s willing to hold back for a few minutes and see what she does. It’s when he figures out that she’s gray that the stakes change for him.

He realizes that he has a golden opportunity in Saeli to realize a plan that he’s been concocting for years. But, of course, now he can’t kill her. Hell, he can’t even hurt her in any significant way, as that would destroy any future trust she might have in him. But if he kills the HP, he knows he’ll have to fight Saeli, and thus probably hurt or kill her. However, if he doesn’t kill the HP, he’s going to face hell from his cabal, who are counting on him to take down the Mantle leader. And if he doesn’t choose quickly, he’s liable to get caught anyway. Saeli’s presence in this scene actually puts Raphel in a very difficult position, although of course, Saeli won’t know any of this.

He chooses Saeli, because even a faint hope of taking down the gods is worth the risk for him.

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Both of them read selections from their new books (Cassandra’s isn’t out yet, Black’s is), and then they did a Q&A. Some of the questions were more interesting than others…heh heh. Kind of makes me think about how they must have to answer the same questions over and over again, and that if my books gain enough of a following that I get to do a tour, how I’d have to do the same thing. Although, having people that interested in what I write would be awesome, in the long run.

I took my stele along, of course, being the ridiculous fan girl that I am. While I was there, I decided to give it to Cassandra Claire, since hey, she invented them, right? She said no one had ever given her one before, so that was kind of neat. I gave her a business card, too.

Let’s see, what else. I ran into a gal I had met at the writer’s conference, and we got to catch up. She’s a fellow fan of Susan Hubbard, and we seem to like the same sorts of books and movies. I had a lot of fun with her at the conference, so it was good to see her again.

But I think the crowning moment of the night was the earth-shattering burp that emanated from the balcony about halfway through the Q&A. Seriously, even the two authors paused long enough to acknowledge it.

Yeah, that was Eli.

Now, I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that my four-year-old son managed to belch loud enough for the entire building to hear…or the fact that I recognized his burp. I remember turning to M and saying “That sounded an awful lot like my son…”

Yeah…the hubby confirmed it later.

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I think I’m going to skip the chapter that got eaten, and go ahead and write the next one. If by the time I get to the end of the story we haven’t rescued that chapter, then I’ll rewrite it. However, I am going to outline how the chapter goes, while it’s still fresh in my mind. I’d just go ahead and rewrite the damn thing, except the thought of doing that makes me so irritated that I just don’t think I can, right now.

Hmm, what is it, Friday? Been doing some reading this week, especially in the wake of Nevermore’s Wednesday digital disaster. (Nevermore is my computer’s name. Bleached Nevermore, actually, is her full name). I finished The Gathering Storm…all 800 something pages of it. I’d say it’s possibly the best one since Crown of Swords, or at least the most enjoyable. The problem with the Wheel of Time series is that it takes so long to set up some of these major events…and thus, you have books like Path of Daggers, where you get all the way to the end and realize that although pawns, knights, rooks, bishops, queens, and kings have all been moved about on the chessboard, nothing of major significance has happened. So when you get an installment like The Gathering Storm, where several elaborate sets of dominoes all come toppling down at the same time, you get a really exciting book.

The prose is all still very Robert Jordan…Sanderson did a good job with blending his voice into the established one. He’s all but invisible most of the time. However, and maybe I noticed this because I had just finished Warbreaker…but there were a couple of passages and exchanges by the characters that I would stop and think, “That was Sanderson humor. Jordan probably would have written that differently.” This is not a bad thing, by any means. I can’t recall any other Wheel of Time books that actually made me snort out loud in amusement over something a character says. Jordan’s humor has more to do with stereotypes, and the misunderstandings these cause…which are sometimes very, very funny…but in a shake-your-head-in-pity sort of funny, not lol funny. But I think Mat, in particular, could have done all along with a little more of the snarky, sardonic type of humor Sanderson is injecting into his character in this book.

Rand’s character got a whole lot darker than I expected in this book. He’s been getting more dark and distant for about four books now, and I thought they’d pushed that about as far as it could go. And I was actually beginning to be annoyed that they stretched the transformation out for so long. Thankfully, finally, that subplot got started on its resolution at the end of this book.

Egwene has turned out to be an awesome character. She really impressed me in Knife of Dreams, and she has impressed me further in this book. Perrin didn’t get much screen time this time around, which was disappointing in the sense that, now that he’s rescued his wife, he desperately needs a direction, a focus, a reason to remain in the story. He really didn’t get one…they were still tying up the Faile abduction subplot that was already pretty much over with. Perrin’s presence felt a little purposeless this time around. I hope that gets fixed. I really don’t think he came all this way just to end up as someone who stands beside Rand in the Last Battle and calls in the wolves.

I loved the part where Cadsuane starts seeing herself in Semirhage; she needed that. I wished they hadn’t killed off Semirhage the way they did…seemed a little abrupt, and anti-climactic. I actually kind of liked Semirhage, as far as villains go…of all the female Forsaken, she reminds me the most of Nasira (Raphel’s ras, from the prequel I’m planning). The way Graendal was taken care of also felt contrived, as though the author really didn’t know what to do with her and decided to just get rid of her. She really hasn’t done anything (that I can recall off the top of my head.) (Granted, we’re not absolutely sure she’s dead, and Forsaken have this knack for reappearing when they are most unexpected. But, balefire…?)

What else. I finished Elantris today, and wow. That was his debut?? I liked it better than Warbreaker. I may have to procure a copy of my own, simply to have a really good reference on how to pace a fantasy novel. And how to make each POV character and his/her entourage interesting enough that you actually want to follow all the subplots (and not just slog through them in order to get back to the interesting storyline). Sanderson also appears to construct magical systems the same way I do…less mystical, more scientific in nature. I tend to like those better, as part of the fun is figuring out how the whole system works together.

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Honestly, it wasn’t the most impressive or enthralling piece of fiction I’ve ever read, but it was good. I never had the urge to put it down and go do something else. The magic premise, BioChroma, was fascinating, and one I’m tempted to steal from. And he managed to successfully fool me into thinking the good guys were the bad guys and vice versa, which I enjoyed. I’ve seen funnier snark…but not much funnier, and not in the adult genre. YA tends to have more snark, and characters who snip at each other. Sanderson’s snark is sophisticated (which you won’t really find in YA), and I like that.

I picked up his debut, Elantris, from the library the other day, and also I finally got my hands on a copy of The Gathering Storm, which is the next Wheel of Time book. I’ll be reading those over the next couple of days.

Shades is coming along…slowly. Last night I went through the whole second draft, formatting it to send to my critique group. Well, of course, I can’t go through my writing without editing, and thus it took a lot longer than it should have. But I made some good changes…mostly tightening scenes, making them as clear as I can. I’ve been a little stuck at my current spot because I’m about to introduce Scisaxar as a character for the first time, and I really don’t know him very well.

The problem is, I haven’t found a way to relate Scisaxar directly to Raphel, or even to Saeli. He’s still drifting around on the periphery of my main characters, and is thus distant to me. Yuril is much easier to write now because she’s had some stage time, and she’s in love with Raphel. I don’t know how Scisaxar feels about Raphel, or Saeli, or any of the main characters. I’m going to drop him into the scene just after Yuril breaks Raphel’s fingers, and I know that Scisaxar is going to be pissed that Yuril has been blasting holes in his Temple. We’ll start with that, and see where he takes it.

Another thing that I’ve been pondering, and something that might help me with Scisaxar’s character, is that I’ve been trying to determine what the “inciting incident” between the two gods was. Why do they hate each other? What started the war in the first place?

Things I know: 1) On a much deeper level, the war has to do with Yuril’s and Scisaxar’s frustration over the Oath. They pit their followers against each other when in truth, both of them would prefer a direct confrontation. It frustrates them to have to work through mortals, and thus each blames the other even more for forcing them to sacrifice followers. This leads them both to be cruel and distant with their peoples. Cruel, because they don’t understand the source of their anger, and thus they take it out on their people. Distant, because they cannot afford to get emotionally attached to people they are sending out to die for them.

2) Both gods helped curse the Midplains. Raphel is right about that. What Raphel doesn’t know is that they did it as a desperate measure, to stop a certain secret society of people. These were the original gray mages, who knew how to build inter-world portals, who could summon both light and dark angelics, and who were delving into angelic and spirit lore that would have been better left alone. These experiments actually drew the attention of the Keeper of the Oath, who paid a short visit to Verre just before the Cursing. Well, that scared the you-know-what out of Yuril and Scisaxar. The Cursing was both a desperate measure and a panic reaction, and was perhaps overdone.

Now, I have a choice to make. Was the Cursing itself the two gods’ inciting incident, leading them to go to war for more than a hundred years…or did the disagreement start before that, and the gods temporarily put it aside for the Cursing?

If the Cursing was the inciting incident, then the resulting war is genuine. Both gods think that the other handled their part of the Cursing badly, or they blame the other for having to do such a thing, or whatever. They have a legitimate, relatively recent grievance against one another. However, if the gods put aside their conflict temporarily for the Cursing, then the resulting war would have to be a farce. In fact, it’s even possible that the gods were never truly at war in the first place, and their “hatred” is a cover-up to keep the world from discovering the truth.

I honestly like the second option better, because it makes the ending to Shades more plausible. Having Saeli single-handedly convince two gods who genuinely hate each other to stop a war they’ve been at for over a hundred years seems unlikely. But if their conflict isn’t real, her job is much easier. However, it dangerously reduces any empathy one might have for these gods…because that means they’ve been sacrificing their followers for a lie. It makes it look like Raphel was right about them, which will make it difficult for the readers to empathize with them towards the end. It works for the overall story of Verre, because the gods really were preventing something that would be ultimately worse than a hundred year war. But Raphel doesn’t know that, and Saeli doesn’t know that, and so the gods are, to them, going to look like monsters. And the only way I can prove that they aren’t monsters is to reveal a whole lot of information and backstory that I don’t want to cover in this trilogy. That’s what the sequel is for.

Perhaps the war began as a farce, but then got personal for the gods. Scisaxar is winning, after all, when the story opens. Maybe he started to press his military advantage and broke the unspoken understanding between him and Yuril. But why would he do that? I have to pull this back to the Cursing somehow. He would have to have some sort of grudge, if not against Yuril herself, then against her followers. Several possibilities present themselves. The most obvious is that Yuril attracts more followers and Scisaxar is jealous. Or he honestly feels that her followers are degenerates, and despises/feels sorry for them. Or they did something that got a lot of his people killed. No, that’s too general. They did something that got one certain person that Scisaxar really cared about killed. That would be a very strong motivation for wanting to win a farcical war.

Ah, an idea. Scisaxar loved a pre-Cursing gray mage, one of the ones in the thick of the angel experiments. The gods decided, together, that the order of gray mages had to be destroyed and the knowledge buried. They devised the Curse between them and set it loose on the Midplains. Afraid for his love, Scisaxar pursued her and pursued her, and finally brought her around to his point of view. He made her a White Mantle, and thus thought she’d be protected. Then, while the Curse was still spreading, she and a whole mess of her cohorts got caught by Cowls. Both gods’ followers had orders to kill or convert any gray mage. Scisaxar’s love refused to become a Cowl, so they killed her. Scisaxar demanded retribution, but Yuril refused, saying that even though the girl had repented of what she’d done, she still had the knowledge. The knowledge had to die. Scisaxar’s grief leaked into the still-spreading Curse, and it devoured the land as well. Once they contained it, followers from both sides were shocked and confused over why the gods would do such a thing. Yuril suggested that they stage a war, and let each side blame the other. The true reason for the Cursing would surely be buried. Scisaxar, afraid of losing all his followers, agreed. The war began, both as a farce and as revenge, on the white god’s part.

That’s very vague, and I can probably tweak it. But it could have a number of ramifications. One, Scisaxar is going to hold a severe grudge against Cowls, and against Yuril for letting them do what they did. It’s not really her fault; Yuril probably wouldn’t have sanctioned killing the girl, but the Cowls didn’t ask beforehand. Scisaxar is going to make sure his own people follow a strict hierarchy that leads directly to him, and he’s going to make sure they never act outside of his jurisdiction. He’s going to be jealous that Yuril manages to attract more followers, but at the same time, he’s not going to take any pains to make himself likable. Something like how a grieving widower would feel about a sibling who gets a lot of attention…jealous, but unwilling to compete. That jealousy is going to be manifested specifically in how he feels about the Raphel problem…because he can see that Yuril loves Raphel the way he loved ____. But Scisaxar’s also the one who will be suffering the most remorse over the Cursing, because he essentially screwed it up. He’ll possibly be the one who is more willing to listen to Saeli in the end.

So the war is both a farce, and personal, but more personal on Scisaxar’s end. Scisaxar’s pain amuses Yuril, but she doesn’t allow herself to think about it too deeply…lest she be reminded of how she really feels about Raphel. And worse, Raphel is exactly the kind of Cowl the white god hates, because he’s a wild card. He does what he wants, and the gods can go screw themselves. It was those kind of Cowls who killed Scisaxar’s love. He’ll hate Raphel, and hate that a Cowl managed to steal yet another follower away from him (first Kaladan, then Saeli), and he’ll hate Yuril for wanting to spare Raphel, and he’ll hate that were the tides turned, he would do exactly the same thing as his sister. No wonder the gods have to abandon the scene…neither of them can act. Their hands are tied by their pasts, and by the Oath. And we’re back to the Oath again.

I think I have a handle on the white god now. Enough to start writing him, anyway.

Wow. Scisaxar is walking into this conflict with some seriously complicated crap in his past.

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However, I thought I’d provide links, for those who are interested, to a series of NaNoWriMo tips that a couple of YA authors have been posting on their own blogs, and will continue to do so throughout the month.

Scott Westerfeld’s blog : Just keep clicking the top right link to read them all so far. He is tag-teaming with Justine Larbalestier. Their tips alternate days. They are very good. Scott Westerfeld is one of my favorite YA authors (just finished his Midnighters series).

And for Buffy fans, here’s an interesting essay Westerfeld wrote about the Buffy universe: http://www.smartpopbooks.com/essay/full/51

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