Jenny Saqua

Among Others by Jo Walton. Well, I was wrong, but I did think Among Others had a chance. Fortunately, I didn’t bet money on the Nebulas ...

Although I wonder if there's a book in Las Vegas that will allow you to place bets on the Hugo Awards. Anyone know?

Some time tonight, the Nebula for Best Novel will be awarded to Embassytown by China Miéville … or maybe Among Others by Jo Walton. But probably Embassytown. I’d like to decry the selection, but it’s fine. It’s understandable.

I haven’t yet read all six nominees — I’ve read five, and I’m about a quarter of the way through The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin. Too bad I didn’t quite make it through all six by the deadline, but it’s better than my record for the 2010 Nebulas. I finished reading those nominees just before the 2011 nominations came out.

I can’t say where Kingdom of Gods will rank, but I scored the other five, according to my highly (un)scientific criteria, like this:

1. God’s War by Kameron Hurley (20 of 30)
2. Embassytown (15 of 30)
3. Firebird by Jack McDevitt (13 of 30)
4. Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine (11 of 30)
5. Among Others (10 of 30)
(Links are to my comments on the books.)

This list is not intended to be predictive — obviously, since I didn’t say God’s War was going to win the award. Neither is it a ranking of the books’ quality or enjoyableness. The rankings are of my perception of the books’ suitability for a major speculative fiction award and nothing else. But if you’re interested in which books were the most fun for me to read, here’s that list:

1. God’s War
2. Among Others
3. Firebird
4. Mechanique
5. Embassytown

I’ll post an update to these lists when I finish Kingdom of the Gods, which should be in a week or so. My write-ups for the remaining Hugo nominees — Deadline by Mira Grant, Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, and A Dance with Dragons by George R.R.R.R.R.R.R. Martin join Among Others and Embassytown as nominees — should begin in July and hopefully be finished long before the awards are given out at the beginning of September.

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work last year, so I thought I would try it again for 2012.

The fifth nominee for the Nebula for Best Novel is God's War by Kameron Hurley:

Plot: Holy war — with magic and gene pirates! Nyx is a bel dame, a government bounty hunter who kills or captures the deserters, spies, and other troublemakers who prevent Nasheen from winning its intrafaith war vs. Chenja. But when she takes on illegal side work, her cohorts throw her in prison; seven years after her release, she is a mere freelance bounty hunter who is unexpectedly given an important commission that puts her in conflict with her former bel dame and mercenary comrades.

The Amazon blurb calls God’s War “slow starting,” but I don’t think that’s true. The problem is that Hurley, having learned well the admonition not to inundate the reader with exposition while world building, deprives the reader of explanation as well. The beginning is quite action packed, but the lack of information makes it hard to get into. Once past that, the plot is quite engaging.

God’s War, as sci-fi noir, is more rough and tumble than a modern detective story can be; for example, I lost track of the number of beheadings Nyx and her crew perform. But Nyx is a lost soul, trying to find solace in flesh, drugs, and alcohol, while she survives in a largely amoral world — just like any other noir story. Unsurprisingly, she finds herself in over her head after she takes the queen’s commission, unraveling hidden motivations and conspiracies, and the body count keeps getting higher. 4 of 5

Protagonists: There are two. Nyx, as described above, is a hard-living, violent woman whose moral core has been hollowed out by what she has seen during her service as a soldier and bel dame during the generations-long war. She’s trying to regain the status she lost after she was thrown into prison.

The second is Rhys, a member of Nyx’s mercenary team. He’s a Chenjan who fled his native country and tried to develop his talent as a magician in Nasheen. Rhys, who is dark-skinned like the rest of his countrymen, faces constant discrimination. He is also a mediocre magician at best; as is occasionally pointed out, Nyx could do better for her team. I find Rhys’s mere competence more interesting than racial adversity; lots of protagonists in literature are discriminated against for things they can’t change about themselves, but incredibly few are allowed to not show flashes of brilliance. The reason Nyx keeps Rhys around is the unconsummated attraction between the two. There are sparks there, but Nyx finds Rhys too uptight and religious, and Rhys sees Nyx as immoral and too forward, like the rest of her countrywomen. It reeks of frustration and repulsion, and as such, it’s quite believable.

Hurley tries to get readers interested in Khos, a shapeshifter member of Nyx’s crew, by slipping into his head a few times later in the book, but screw that noise. Two viewpoint characters is pushing it already. 4 of 5

Villains: This is noir; virtually everyone is a villain, and most of them tend to be pretty competent. Some of them, such as bel dame shapeshifter Rasheeda, are pretty creepy. Few of the others, however, stand out. I also don’t believe using a minor character from Part 1 as a major villain at the end of the book was a wise choice, and one crew of villains get punked pretty hard. Overall, though, they keep the heroes in near-constant danger. That’s what you want out of antagonists, after all. 3 of 5

Innnovation: There are a lot of smaller ideas combining to make up the larger speculative fiction landscape of God’s War. The book and its characters are shaped by a holy war between two nations populated by space Muslims. The light-skinned Nasheenians have tossed some of the everyday restrictions of their religion, while the dark-skinned Chenjans have remained more restrictive. Beyond the pleasure of seeing Islam being used as a baseline religion rather than as a contrast to something else, I’m happy to see Hurley avoid a straightforward Sunni / Shiite split in favor of a more modern traditionalist vs. secular Muslim war.

That leads into another interesting aspect of the war and religion — the role of women. Chenjans try to hold on to their male-dominated traditions while still throwing generation after generation of males at the front. Nasheen, on the other hand, has allowed women to take over everywhere — women enforce the laws as bel dames, serve as internal security, and even rule the country. Chenja has a skeleton crew of men in charge; Nasheen has decided the only place for Nasheenian men is fighting Chenja, which causes some alteration to normal breeding patterns. In Chenja, heads of households can take many wives to replenish the population, but Nasheenians implant willing women with multiple pregnancies at special facilities. It’s an interesting look at how two similar cultures adapt traditions under the extraordinary strain of war. And, of course, it allows Hurley to write a lot of women who kick ass.

The magic system in God’s War involves insects; magicians can control swarms of bugs, many of which are genetically tailored for certain tasks. Hurley is a little unclear on what a magician can do with ordinary bugs, which is a little frustrating. On the other hand, it’s magic, and the only practitioner readers see much of isn’t that good, so the lack of explanation makes sense.

None of these ideas are earth shattering, but put together they feel like something quite a bit different than the average speculative fiction idea. And there are other interesting details, such as shapeshifters being unique to this planet; most of these are presumably followed up in the sequel, Infidel. I’m not wild about the idea of villainous outer space Christian gene pirates, but that’s a minor complaint. 6 of 10

Fun: This is a grim story of murderous people — murderous people with bad habits. On the other hand, there’s no shortage of action and characters who are willing to do something, something in short supply in this year’s Nebula crop. 3 of 5

Total: 20 of 30. Holy crap — that’s the highest score from either this year or last. If you had told me God’s War would have scored so highly after the first 30 pages, I would have called you a liar, then shoved you, because Part 1 was so frustrating it made me a little bellicose. But other than those first 30-40 pages, there isn’t a lot to complain about in this exciting, gritty book.

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work last year, so I thought I would try it again for 2012.

The fourth nominee for the Nebula for Best Novel and the second nominee for the Hugo for Best Novel is Among Others by Jo Walton:

Plot: English boarding school bildungsroman — with fairies! Morwenna “Mori” Phelps (or Morwenna Markova, when she’s in England rather than Wales) and her twin sister helped fairies saved the world from their crazy, evil witch of a mother. In doing so, though, her leg was seriously injured by a car, and her sister was killed.

But that was before Among Others starts. As the book begins, Mori been given to her estranged father and his family, who promptly shipped her off to an English boarding school, where she navigates the social minefield as well as a Welsh girl taught the social graces by sci-fi authors like Robert A. Heinlein can. The fairies don’t do much; Mori’s mother and dead sister fade from plot points to metaphors; and we’re left to wonder whether Mori’s obsession with magic and fairies is something real or only madness. (Madness, I think, but there’s no definitive answer.) Mori wants to fit in, to find a group of people like her, and unusually, she learns she doesn’t have to change — it’s the world that’s not right for her.

So basically a book-length “It gets better.” 2 of 5

Protagonist: Mori is a plucky fish out of water who reads a lot. A LOT. Her bum leg excuses her from physical activity at the school, giving her plenty of time to read all the post-war SF and fantasy she can get her hands on. If you’ve not willing to hear Mori’s (and presumably Walton’s) opinions on the speculative fiction corpus circa 1980, then this book is not for you.

We feel kinship for young protagonists who don’t fit in, and Mori is no different. But her injury keeps her from being active, and she lives almost entirely within her own mind. Mori is extremely level headed, which is good for her but bad for the book, as she seems to realize the futility of changing the world (trying before did kill her sister and handicap her, after all). Usually, we expect those young protagonists to struggle more, and Mori isn't into that sort of struggle. She feels … passive, and that’s not good. 2 of 5

Villains: Her mother doesn’t appear to do much. Her aunts try to be kind, but their Englishness prevents them from actually doing so. And despite Mori’s hatred for Arlinghurst, the boarding school doesn’t seem that bad, really. So fortunately for the passive Mori, her opponents aren’t trying that hard to stop her.

Or it could be that the villain is adolescence, or being an adolescent SF fan. In which case, no. 0 of 5

Inventiveness: The fantasy elements are light, and the idea that Mori’s fascination with fantasy and her mother’s evil might be in their heads is only lightly touched upon. I’m not sure a SF / fantasy book about finding fandom has ever been done before, though.

This should appeal to me. I grew up in a rural area, where speculative fiction (and enjoying reading, to a degree) was considered weird. I found others liked that sort of thing at a residential school when I was about Mori’s age. But I had other interests, and even I could make friends without having such a large part of my life in common with others. It feels like Mori can’t compromise with the world, which must concede to her — a novel message for Young Adult fiction, perhaps, but not in adult SF / fantasy, which has a history of being dogmatic. 3 of 10

Fun: Not much happens, but Mori gives a great deal of book recommendations, so if you want 30-year-old suggestions on what to read, Among Others is the book for you. Mori’s voice is pleasant, though, and this is a cheery contrast to a Judy Blume book. 3 of 5

Total: 10 of 30. I am shocked — shocked! — Among Others didn’t score higher. I breezed through the book, and Walton’s style made it an agreeable read. But I kept wondering when the story would start, even when there were only 30 pages to go. The genre elements were underplayed (which is relevant only for speculative fiction awards) in favor of a survey of speculative fiction circa 1980. Mori is inflexible, passive, and static — she doesn’t change, nor does she attempt to alter her environment.

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work last year, so I thought I would try it again for 2012.

The third nominee for the Nebula for Best Novel is Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine:

Plot: Steampunk with magic! In a world torn apart by an endless war (more a long series of skirmishes between militias), Boss is the ringmaster and leader of the Circus Tresaulti. The circus is made up of normal circus performers and those who have been “given the bones” — altered in some way by Boss, usually by giving them hollow copper bones. Jugglers and dancing girls are part of the act, but they come and go, and to the circus folk, only those who have been transformed by Boss really matter. Boss isn’t a master surgeon or some Frankenstein-like mad doctor; she slices men and women open, but her surgical success rate is based on some undefined, magical ability to control life and death.

That’s the setup, though, and by the Clockwork Jesus, there is a lot of setup. The actual action — Boss and one of the performers are hauled away by “a government man” who has established a haven of order among the chaos — takes up only the final third of the book. The various asides, exposition, character pieces, and other bits of background about the Circus Tresaulti give the book the feeling of a padded novella; it’s as Valentine expanded a shorter piece of fiction by including all her character notes rather than by adding plot and complications. It’s a shame, because Mechanique has an intriguing kernel at its center. 2 of 5

Protagonists: Valentine spends time on a lot of protagonists: Elena is the cold-hearted head of the trapeze artists; Boss is the ringmaster who must be obeyed; Stenos and Bird are forced to perform together while each waits for Boss to bestow a pair of wings upon him or her; Little George is a tagalong adopted by Boss but not transformed yet, so he isn’t fully part of the circus. The sheer amount of backstory Valentine includes allows her to develop the characters more than if she had, say, been burdened with a strong plot. The many short incidents included allow her to give a surprising amount of depth to Elena, a character who could easily have been a caricature. On the other hand, “person who is surly to mask how much she cares” is a bit of a cliché.

Mechanique strikes me as a textbook example of the dangers of the multiple viewpoint novel: by not concentrating on one or two characters, I have little investment in any of the characters by the time the book ends, and Valentine has little need to advance the plot to add more story. Little George is occasionally the first-person narrator, so ostensibly this is his story. But his narration takes up only a fraction of the book, and his story, like the actual plot of the book, seems to make up only a novella- / novelette-length tale. Unfortunately, Little George’s story — the strongest of any of the characters — doesn’t overlap with the actual plot. 2 of 5

Villains: There is only one villain: the government man. He wants Boss to make him an army of indestructible soldiers, like the ones who populate her circus. Or if she could show him how to make them himself, without having to keep her around, that would be even better. This is not a surprising type of antagonist, and although Valentine tries to invest the government man with a slow-burning menace, it doesn’t quite work. In the end, he still comes across as a kidnapper with a private army. The good he does — establishing order, restoring a community and normality — doesn’t really enter into his characterization or the protagonists’ thoughts. 1 of 5

Inventiveness: Your mileage may vary on this one, but I haven’t read that much steampunk, and combining that subgenre with a circus in a more modern milieu is interesting. This isn’t, strictly speaking, steampunk; not really. It is lumped in with that category because it deals with the idea of combining man and machine in a non-sci fi, non-robotics sense. But Valentine refuses to explain the mechanism by which Boss works her life magic — one of the few things of any importance that she doesn’t explain — and I think that works better than grounding the tale in gears and springs.

It’s the inclusion of the circus that’s the masterstroke. A circus is a perfect place for outsiders, the outré, the freakish. Its mobility mitigates the danger the circus folk feel from locals — although it’s not like those who have taken the bones have much to fear. The sense of wonder attributed to the circus fits the wonder that steampunk / literature of the imagination should make its readers feel. 6 of 10

Fun: Although Valentine goes to great length to tell us how crowds are entertained by the Circus Tresaulti, their personal stories and the lack of action in the book lead me to believe the circus is the first that could induce mass suicide in its audience without the use of clowns or mimes. 1 of 5

Style: I know I haven’t written about the style of any of last year’s or this year’s nominees, but Mechanique is a very stylized novel, and it deserves to be discussed. Valentine’s style is … overall, it’s somewhere around but not quite reaching “literary.” By that, I mean it could be seen as pretentious — hence the literary — but it’s not quite high-flown enough to merit that, and I don’t think it’s what Valentine is aiming at. It’s just her voice, I think, and there is a restraint in it that isn’t present in some other sci-fi writers’ — more Jeff Vandermeer than Cherie Priest in terms of accessibility.

But while her narration is reserved, Valentine does not restrict herself at all in the novel’s structure. Valentine does what she wants without concern for the limits that give a narrative strength. Narration veers from second person to first person to third person in the early chapters, and it switches between first- and third-person for most of the book (although second-person narration pops back up occasionally). Who is being referred to when the narration is second person? Someone who has seen the circus, but I’m not sure why that isn’t told in third person. I resent being told what I feel, so I think the brief forays into second person are distractions. As I mentioned above, the shifts between first- and third-person narration blur the book’s focus.

More distracting are the constant asides. Every page or two, there is a parenthetical aside about what is going on. The parentheses deprecate the text inside, showing it is something less than what is outside of it. Why is that? Are the words supposed to be heard at a lower volume, gossip that is whispered to the reader? That would make the most sense, but it’s a book; no one will overhear what the narrator is saying, and the parentheses disturb the flow of the narration. Are the contents of the parentheses merely less important? If so, then why include it at all?

Switching the point of view and the asides break the readers’ momentum and makes it harder to get absorbed by the story. It draws attention to itself, and that’s infuriating. -1

Total: 11 of 30. Well, it wasn’t a slog to get through, at least — not an easy read, but unlike Embassytown, it managed to keep my interest, for all that it irritated me.

So Lightspeed managed to give me a rejection in a little more than 48 hours, slipping me a rejection at 2 a.m. on a Sunday. Now that is service, friends. And I didn’t have to pay them a doggone dime.

After waiting on the weekly Duotrope newsletter to see if there were any new markets I should submit “How to Win a Bar Fight” to (there weren’t), I decided to take a glance at the fiction market at Ralan’s Webstravaganza. There, I found two possible markets: Daily Science Fiction and Lore. Neither of these turned up in my search of professional fantasy markets at Duotrope; I’m not sure why, since both markets are listed with Duotrope. Probably a mistake on my end.

So I sent “How to Win a Bar Fight” to Daily Science Fiction yesterday, and Lore will be after that. As for the previous markets, I probably won’t be submitting to Shock Totem; on their actual submissions page (rather than their writers’ guidelines page), they make clear that “dark fantasy” means “horror.” While my story might be dark, it certainly isn’t horror.

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work last year, so I thought I would try it again for 2012.

This year’s second contender for the Nebula for Best Novel and the first contender for the Hugo for Best Novel is Embassytown by China Miéville:

Plot: Space colony! The colony of Embassytown is located on a planet controlled by the Hosts, a dual-mouthed race who can speak only the truth. Humans can communicate with the hosts only when the Hosts’ language is spoken by a pair of humans, called Ambassadors, who are bred to be identical and manipulated each night so that their daily differences are wiped away. Embassytown’s Ambassadors unofficially rule the colony, but when their colonial masters introduce their own Ambassador — one in which the pair looks nothing like the other — everything goes to hell.

The plot is slow moving. Until that moment of crisis with the new Ambassador — about a quarter of the way through the book — it’s all setup. And then the next fifty pages is split between backstory and that crisis, followed by twenty more pages of backstory. It isn’t until halfway through the novel that things start moving, and even then there are digressions that seem to serve little point. Miéville throws a lot of complication into the protagonists’ paths, promising that there’s no easy solution … until Avice, the protagonist, comes up with the relatively easy solution. The resolution comes suddenly; the semantic revolution that allows the Hosts to survive takes seems to take the same amount of time as it takes for a meme to become popular across the Internet. 2 of 5

Protagonists: Avice Benner Cho is a simile, which means the Hosts forced her to do something so that they could use what she did as part of their language. Avice is an immerser, which means she can remain conscious and healthy in the immer, the medium through which interstellar flight is possible. Avice is someone who knows everyone of importance in Embassytown. What Avice is not, though, is a dynamic character who takes charge or solves problems. She is a chronicler, someone who, by connections or by observation, lays out the history of a dramatic time in the history of an odd colony. Such a character can be an interesting protagonist — John Watson comes to mind — but I can’t say that’s true for Avice. Her voice is a Miéville voice, brash and knowing and jaded, but it’s not a distinctive voice. I have trouble fathoming her motivations occasionally. Why did she love her husband, Scile? What does spousal love mean when it is divorced from carnal considerations, as Scile and Avice’s was? Why does she start an affair — which isn’t much of an affair, since Scile doesn’t care? Why doesn’t she try occasionally? In the end, Avice feels like a vessel for the story more than a character. 1 of 5

Villains: Who isn’t a villain? Pretty much everyone, in their petty little way, gets in the way of actually solving problems. These human stumbling blocks range from secret cabals, lone nutjobs, officious committees (oh God the committees), the power mad, the dissolute, those with old grudges, the martyrs … No one villain stands out, but I suppose that’s Miéville’s point, that in a semi-natural disaster, there are many contributing to the problem. On the other hand, for such a horrible disaster, there’s little exploration of the suffering of the common people. That’s more down to Avice, though, who seems to drift past her fellow citizens on her way to the latest committee meeting.

The Hosts become villains, not because they want to, but because of an accident. Yet I didn’t fully understand why their change was so dangerous until chapters after the change became evident. Christopher Priest — the British author of The Prestige, not the American comic book writer of Black Panther — pointed out that “for a writer who makes so much of ambience, China Miéville’s fiction lacks a sense of place.” This was something I had noticed but didn’t have the confidence to express before Priest said it. It took me quite a while to understand the Hosts, these non-lying, jolly yet alien creatures, were serious threats because Priest does not emphasize how completely they controlled their bio-engineered environment or integrate descriptions of that environment into the story. It was the connection between the Hosts and their bioengineered world that made their madness so dangerous — their madness would be transmitted to the creatures they had created, which made the entire infrastructure of the city begin to fail — yet it takes a great deal of time for Priest to make that connection for the reader or, more importantly, have a character express that fear.

(Priest’s comments are true in a larger sense as well. I never got a picture of Embassytown or its locales in my head. Priest says Miéville’s works “lacks a sense of place … a way of using a physical environment as something the characters notice, respond to, feel themselves to be a part of, so that the reader can also sense and respond to it.” I don’t necessarily agree about that comment for Miéville’s work in general, but it’s certainly true for Embassytown. There’s nothing alien or even distinctive about much of the book’s settings; given the number of committee meetings that take place, I imagine the entire city as a series of streamlined and sterile conference rooms.)

That’s a little off topic, but it is something I needed to get off my chest. 2 of 5

Inventiveness: Miéville is always inventive, and Embassytown is no exception. I can’t remember reading or seeing any aliens that are anything like the Hosts, and Miéville tosses throwaway details about other extraterrestrial races that other authors would have used as main ideas. The Ambassadors, the notation of how the Hosts speak, the examinations of words and semantics and what all that means are all remarkably new and rare for fiction, even for science fiction, the fiction of ideas. It is appropriate that Miéville uses science fiction to explore the effects the words of EzRa and EzCal have on the Hosts; the literature of ideas is an excellent place to show how tightly ideas and the physical world can interact. 9 of 10

Fun: The learning curve on the jargon and unfamiliar situations in Embassytown is steep, and even after I caught up, I found it a bit of a slog. (Priest also pointed out words like “shiftparents,” “vespcams,” “altoysterman,” and “voidcraft” in his essay, calling them “SF nonce-words.”) Avice’s inability to affect her environment until the final 50 or so pages also made the book a trial at times. The only thing I can remember that was fun was “floaking” — an immerer term for getting by with the least amount of effort. It has a Vancian feel to it, and I liked it. 1 of 5

Total: 15 of 30. Although I rated this book higher than Firebird, I would read that book three times in a row before picking Embassytown up again. I also think Embassytown is more likely to win than this score I have given it indicates.

Because editing “How to Win a Bar Fight” took longer than I expected — mainly because words stopped making sense about 3 a.m. on Wednesday night — it took until yesterday for me to submit the story to Lightspeed. The turnaround period is, according to most reports, around two or three days. On one hand, man, that’s fast. On the other hand, what do I expect? It doesn’t take long to read 3,000 words.

(Yes, yes, I know — they make up for it in volume, because they get quite a few submissions. I’m kidding.)

So I should have an update some time next week. Shock Totem will be the next in line, unless some new market pops up on Duotrope next week.

Wednesday I received a rejection from Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show for “How to Win a Bar Fight.” It took OSCIMS a month to reject the story, rather longer than some other magazines — a considered rejection, then.

Where to send the story now? Good question. I’m getting close to exhausting the professional markets for short (but not flash) fantasy prose for adults. From what I can see, the best bets are:

• Beneath Ceaseless Skies — Is my story literary enough? (Probably not. My style has never been called “literary,” at least not in my hearing.)
  
• Clarkesworld Magazine — This is one of the toughest markets to break into, so I’ll hold it back until the end.
  
• Fantasy-Faction Anthology — This accepts only six stories, and only three get paid. But the exposure! The entry period ends in about two months, so I have time to submit the story elsewhere and have it rejected before trying this.
  
• Lightspeed — I don’t know that I’ve ever submitted to Lightspeed. It’s looking like the best bet at the moment, although it’s about as challenging as Clarkesworld. The response time is extremely short, though, so it’s worth a shot.
  
• Shock Totem — is my story dark enough to be considered “dark fantasy”? Well, it does involve burning a town to the ground to make a point. A maybe; the submission period ends at the end of May.
  
• Sword and Sorceress — is the story feminist enough? (Probably not, although the plot revolves around putting an empress back on her throne.)

Some time this week I’ll give the story another going over, see if there’s anything I can trim to improve the story’s overall health. I have some ideas. I’ll post an update when I’ve submitted again.

Three things about the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting by Ed Greenwood, Skip Williams, Sean K. Reynolds, and Rob Heinsoo:

1. There is a limit to my admiration: One of the things I really like about 3rd edition is the covers and the interior page style. Make no mistake, I have a fondness for the old 1st editions covers, which range from charming simplicity to familiar polished fantasy art. The first round of 2nd edition books mainly fell into the latter category; Jeff Easley’s cover for the Dungeon Master’s Guide, with a dragon and wizard in magical combat with bubbles and sparks around them, is fantastic.
   
   But I liked the idea of the main books for 3rd edition looking like, well, books and artifacts — things that were made for the worlds they described. Forgotten Realms follows the pattern set by the core rulebooks, with a cover that looks like it is made of leather, with leather bindings and strings to hold the book closed. Inside, the pages are deeply yellowed around the edges, and the rest of the pages are slightly colored with flyspecks and small discolorations randomly spread on the page. Unfortunately, this presents a problem: those little specks combine with commas to create semicolons and periods to create colons or just fall in the right place to look like a comma or period. It is deeply frustrating to try to puzzle out a strangely punctuated sentence only to realize you’ve been wasting the last five minutes on a wayward bit of verisimilitude.
   
   
2. I have the power! (and so does everyone else): Those who are familiar with the Forgotten Realms know that it is a high-power, high-level magic world. So if you don’t particularly want to run into 30th level NPCs (or if you dislike them more than you like the opportunity to make your PC 30th level), stay away from the Realms.
   
   It will save you the embarrassment of being beaten up by a random bartender who has six level of fighter or wizard.
   
   
3. I hope you paid attention, class: The only other campaign setting I had read is the 1st edition Dragonlance Adventures, which set my expectations for the FRCS: nearly equal sections on organizations, gods, races, creatures, history, and prominent NPCs, with magic items and spells mixed in. There would probably be prestige classes, I thought, since that’s new to 3rd edition. All that is present in the FRCS, but the book is dominated by 130 pages on the geography of the campaign.
   
   More than 130 pages. Out of 320. The next largest section is deities, which runs about 30 pages.
   
   The geography section lays out the cities, geographical features, and campaign hooks for most of the countries on the map, although for those unfamiliar with the Realms, it’s a bit difficult to see how they decided to order the section. I had to keep referring back to the map on pg. 100-1 (I had that memorized by the end) to figure out where the country they were talking about fit into the world. Not to mention that “countries” are not just countries — sometimes they’re entire regions, and sometimes they’re divisions of regions, with size being only usually the deciding factor.
   
   Unfamiliarity with the Realms is a big problem with reading the FRCS. Names are thrown around carelessly, leaving the reader to try to figure out whether the name belongs to a city, country, god, or important NPC and what significance that particular city, country, god, or NPC has. There had to be a better way to lay out the book to minimize this confusion — but every time I tried to figure it out, I ran into the problem that something has to be in front of what I wanted to put first to make everything clear. Perhaps a glossary or quick reference guide at the beginning of the book would have been the best solution.
   
   I think they could have cleared the page space from the geography section.

Another rejection for “How to Win a Bar Fight.” Strange Horizons took only a week to say no, which is impressively quick, but it makes me wonder if magazines are competing to see how quickly they can reject my stories. (Penumbra is the high mark at themoment, taking only four days, although, to be fair, Fantasy & Science Fiction was hampered by the speed of the US Mail.)

So, next is the oddly and ostentatiously named Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. Will I have any luck there? Or will I get a record turnaround rejection? Tough to say — but I’m guessing “no” is the answer to both.

The UConn / Iowa State game is this year’s example of the worst thing about the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament: an 8 / 9 game between two major conference teams. There’s no excitement to watching two mediocre teams slog it out, yet every year we get these two “power” conference teams who manage to pip at-large bids from small-conference teams mainly because they spend a lot of money. Drexel, which went 17-1 in the regular season in the Colonial Athletic Conference, might have been exciting — what will it do vs. tougher competition? But we’ve seen what UConn and Iowa State do against better competition, and it isn't impressive.

Still, the tournament selection committee knows these teams can beat good (?) teams. UConn split a home and home with Notre Dame and beat West Virginia twice; neither team was ranked, but they did finish ahead of UConn in the Big East. The Huskies won at South Florida, which was a better Big East team as well. They beat Florida State … in November. They beat Harvard … in December. On the other hand, UConn went 8-10 in their conference and finished in the bottom half of the 16-member conference. Iowa State beat Baylor once in two tries; Kansas, the same. They swept Kansas State, which went 10-8 in the Big 12 and was also seeded #8. But Iowa State, via the head-to-head games that is the greatest thing about Iowa basketball, proved itself the third-best team in the state (losing to both Northern Iowa and Drake).

It’s appropriate this is the late game (9:20 EDT start); even if it’s close, this is going to be a snoozer.

It took a little more than two months for Apex Magazine to reject my story “How to Win a Bar Fight.” Penumbra, on the other hand, took only four days. I have to admit I’m impressed with the turnaround from Penumbra. On the other hand, a rejection’s a rejection.

Oh, well. Next up for the short story is Strange Horizons, home to a much copied list of stories the magazine sees too often, which is often presented as an unattributed list of bad stories or story clichés.

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work last year, so I thought I would try it again for 2012.

This year, I’ll start the 2011 Nebula Best Novel nominees with the only one my local libraries had, Firebird by Jack McDevitt:

Plot: As with last year’s Echo, it’s a mystery investigation — in space! Antiques dealer Alex Benedict is contracted to sell the effects of a physicist who poked into weird science and disappeared suddenly. But while investigating the scientist’s past, he runs across scientific inquiries that could have personal implications for him and his assistant, Chase Kolpath, and gets involved in all manner of controversies. I appreciate that McDevitt doesn’t try for any forced, understated jeopardy for the characters, and when there’s mortal danger, the narration conveys the tension extremely well. But Firebird has so many plot threads — the rescue of AIs from an abandoned planet, the rescue of passengers from doomed ships, the mystery of what happened to physicist Christopher Robin (no, really) — that the importance of each is watered down. The resolution of only one thread felt like it had any finality or heft. 2 of 5

Protagonists: As with the previous book in the series, Firebird is narrated by Chase, a pilot who is Alex’s assistant. Chase is still likeable and engaging, although her personal life is explored much less than in Echo. (Her beliefs are brought up more, though.) She provides a counterpoint to the secretive Alex, and she expresses views that are independent from her more idealistic boss. I’m beginning to have my doubts about Alex, though. Last book he found an alien civilization; this book he wins a major award for that, unravels an obscure mystery of starship physics, becomes the focal point of a movement for AI rights, and founds an organization to rescue victims of a specific type of accident. Alex is a polymath, a savant in the Sherlock Holmes style, with Chase as his narrating Watson. When I made that comparison last year in my evaluation of Echo, I didn’t realize how apt that comparison was. Holmes was a Victorian superman, a genius in an age when the depth of knowledge in a scientific field wasn’t an insuperable barrier for amateurs. Today, the number of subjects that can be said about is small — astronomy, maybe a few others. But in 10,000 years …? I have trouble believing that the mysteries of the universe that far in the future can be solved by connecting various data points, which is what Alex does. Don’t they have grad students in the future? 3 of 5

Villains: None, really. Or society, if you want to think that way, as AIs have been around for thousands of years, yet are still considered just machines. The authorities don’t align their priorities with Alex’s, perhaps ignoring the ultimate implications of their duties … and that’s as villainous as it gets. 1 of 5

Inventiveness: As I mentioned with Echo, this is a series book (Firebird is #6 in the Benedict series), so some of the inventiveness of the setting has to have worn off. And this year, I have to admit I was struck by how much Alex and Chase’s future is like the 21st century … with spaceships and computers that can control their homes and vehicles. Houses and living arrangements are similar to today. Religions have shifted toward more liberal stances, but there aren’t any new religions. They haven’t even confronted the question of whether AIs are sentient, for crying out loud. To his credit, McDevitt isn’t preachy on the issue of AI rights, but every time it came up, I kept asking myself, “If it takes several millennia before AI rights come to a head, then homosexuals are extremely lucky it has taken only two or three before they started to make headway.”

On the other hand, Benedict repurposes another mystery trope — the mysterious disappearance — into a sci-fi story, and I appreciate that. 2 of 10

Fun: McDevitt is a good mystery writer, and following Chase and Alex as they run down clues can be enjoyable, regardless of whether they are red herrings or relevant. Firebird’s missing person / missing spaceships mysteries are much more intriguing than Echo’s hoax-or-not investigation. Chase’s narration is frequently amusing, and the ending — the desperate attempt to rescue people from a doomed spaceship — is nerve-racking. 5 of 5

Total: 13 of 30. That is without deducting anything for naming the missing physicist “Christopher Robin.” Firebird scores one point below its predecessor, although I did enjoy Firebird more.

Thirteen is a respectable total, but it’s not going to be enough to win.

A few things about the Hero Builder's Guidebook by Ryan Dancey, David Noonan, and John Rateliff:

• Tediousness: The authors try to point out benefits, drawbacks, and potential role-playing hooks for every possible race / class combo. They don’t do it in a min / maxing way; some of the ideas are genuinely clever, and being reminded that, for example, a gnome’s strength penalty is going to be a hindrance in certain situations is welcome.
  
  On the other hand, it’s every race / class combo. Every class looked at six different times: for humans, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Half-Orcs, and Halflings. (Half-Elves, for the purposes of this section, are virtually indistinguishable from humans and get only a brief summary.) Every race subdivided into the same eleven different classes. By Odin’s missing eye, that’s dull. Even though I couldn’t, I feel I could read half a monster manual in the time it took me to get through this section.
  
  
• Character is what you are in the dark: This race / class section makes up almost half of the book’s 64 pages. That’s not a good use of available resources, in my opinion. Yes, I know race and class are the main choices a player makes for a character, but still … I would have much preferred more information on role-playing, or working with the DM to create a background of your character, or … I don’t know, surprise me.
  
  One thing that didn’t surprise me is the book’s inability to say, outright, “This is a bad idea.” There are some combinations that, because of ability penalties, are a bad choice — Dwarven bards or Half-Orc bards or Gnomish … anything fighter-y. But this book goes no farther than warning players that these characters are challenges. That goes well with the third-edition mantra of permissiveness, which was its hallmark; it contrasted strongly with the previous editions’ rigid class / race restrictions. But I think the book is underselling how difficult these combinations are.
  
  
• That being said …: One of the best lines in the book is, “There is no advantage in being a half-orc wizard.” Yes, that’s because the race / class rubric includes “Racial Advantages” and “Racial Disadvantages,” but I still like the way that’s phrased.
  
  
• And another thing: The other good line is, “Ask your DM for information about the orc community.” In context — on a random table, where a roll of 86-100 indicates a Half-Orc has grown up among Orcs — it makes perfect sense. Out of context, it sounds like an advertisement for a retirement home. “Is it time? Think about placing our loved ones in Blood-Arrow Castle. Ask your retirement counselor for information about the orc community.”
  
  
• Cosmo quiz: Is your half-elf thinking of straying?: After 30 pages of races and classes, the book moves on to personal history: tables about a character’s background (ten pages) and an alignment quiz (four pages). Are these topics important, something that can help make a collection of statistics into a well-rounded character? Yes. Are they something that belonged in a Dragon article, not a $15 book? Oh, yes.
  
  
• Wait, what?: Yes, that was $15. For a 64-page book. A 64-page, black-and-white book. Money, please!
  
  
• And the rest: There’s nine pages about various career paths and what a player can do to make a, say, archer or prizefighter or necromancer more effective, which is important and necessary, especially since this came out in the first few months of 3rd edition. And the book ends with four pages on names, which gives long lists of racial names and three dos and three don’ts. One of them warns against humorous character names, and although I generally agree that they are a bad idea, I am so naming my next wizard / sorcerer “Medium Rary.”

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! I know Blackout / All Clear has already won both the Hugo and the Nebula, but I started this thing, so I’m going to see it through to the bloody end. This year, I thought I’d add a little order to the process. I’m going to grade the Hugo and Nebula nominees in five categories: plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun, with inventiveness being the most important.

Our sixth and final Nebula nominee is Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor:

Plot: A female Messiah of color arises in the future. Onyesonwu is a child of rape in Africa, where the dark-skinned Okeke are oppressed, enslaved, and occasionally slaughtered by the ruling Nuru; as it is today in violent parts of Africa and other regions of the world, rape and female circumcision are used as weapons against women. In Who Fears Death, when Nuru rape Okeke, it produces Ewu children, who resemble their Nuru fathers enough to stigmatize them for life. The holy book of the Nuru and Okeke institutionalize the inferiority of the Okeke and the rightness of their suffering, which doesn’t help matters. Onyesonwu steps into this conflict after discovering she has the power to transform herself into birds and has an affinity for power beyond the sorcery she has been taught. And then there’s a prophecy — of course there’s a prophecy — that an Ewu will rewrite the world. How? I don’t know exactly. It’ll just happen. 2 of 5

Protagonists: Onyesonwu is always the underdog, and it’s hard to dislike someone who is so blindly hated for no good reason. On the other hand, Onyesonwu is frequently unlikeable in the way that many religious leaders can be; they do things for reasons that are obscure and won’t explain why, and they (and their narratives) are always convinced they are correct. They may be right, but they still look like raging pricks (or clitorises) a lot of the time. And for the love of Baldur, would it kill them to apologize sometimes?

Onyesonwu is accompanied by her lover, Mwita, and her three school friends. Mwita is a healer who was frustrated in his magical ambitions; he loves Onyesonwu, but his male pride still gets in the way, especially when he is reminded that Onyesonwu far outstrips him in magical ability. I really enjoyed Luyu, one of Onyesonwu’s friends. She’s the kind of friend every noncomformist leader needs: promiscuous, fun-loving, full of humor, and unconcerned with what others think of her. In Who Fears Death, those characteristics make her unique. 4 of 5

Villains: On one hand, the villain, Daib, is about as bad as you can get: his bright ideas involve genocide and using rape as a military weapon (a military mounted on scooters!). He looms over parts of the novel — part goal, part malign influence — but his direct effects are not often seen. More often, the villains are the Okeke around Onyesonwu, with their blind prejudice and internalization of a racist narrative set forth by the Nuru. “Humanity” as the villain is a bit clichéd, but that doesn’t make it less true. Although it does make the book a more difficult read. 3 of 5.

Inventiveness: I am torn on this one. Is making Who Fears Death resemble the real world make the book more or less inventive? “Ripped from the headlines” (the depressing, depressing headlines) without changing the context or the types of actors might make a great story, but it doesn’t blaze trails in literature of the imagination. I can see both sides. On one hand, a future that has gone through some change but still fosters such evil as genocide, female circumcision, and rape gangs (rape militaries?) is making a definitive statement about us as human beings; on the other hand, it’s saying that in a future that isn’t quite transformative, some things will remain with us, which is hardly revelatory. It has a female protagonist of color, who wants to lead a religious revolution, but it is 2012 — is it that novel that a female protagonist reminds us that many of the world’s religions are doctrinally out of step with modern life at best and hate documents at best? It’s set in Africa … actually, I don’t have a counterpoint to that. That’s unusual. 6 of 10

Fun: In Who Fears Death, fun has been outlawed. And it is damn lucky it has not been summarily executed. 0 of 5

Total: 15 of 30.

So my final rankings of the 2010 Nebula awards nominees:

• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (18)
  
• Native Star (16)
  
• Who Fears Death (15)
  
• Echo (14)
  
• Shades of Milk and Honey (10)
  
• Blackout / All Clear (7)

I just wanted to reiterate that the least deserving of the nominees won this year’s award. Yay.

The day after I finally finished reading all of last year’s Nebula Award nominees for Best Novel, the 2011 nominees have been announced. Just like the last two years, I’ll be reading all of the nominees, although I’m not promising when I’ll read them. The nominees are:

• God’s War by Kameron Hurley
  
• The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin
  
• Firebird by Jack McDevitt
  
• Embassytown by China Miéville
  
• Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine
  
• Among Others by Jo Walton

The presence of China Miéville is no surprise; it’s more of a shock nowadays when he’s not nominated. Firebird is the sixth book in McDevitt’s Alex Bledsoe Benedict series; last year’s Nebula nominee Echo was the fifth. The Kingdom of Gods is the final book in Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, which started with last year’s nominee, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. I felt Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was the best of the Nebula nominees, but what do I know?

I haven’t read anything by Hurley, Walton, or Valentine, but I look forward to reading their works. (Note: This is a lie.) Walton was nominated for a Nebula for 2006’s Farthing and has won other awards. God’s War appears to be Hurley’s first novel, as does Mechanique for Valentine. A bit of a repeat from last year, when Jemisin and M.K. Hobson had their debut novels nominated.

Because mad scientists always seem to need advice, Lore Sjöberg presents 23 important rules, as set forth by the World Health Organization.

Oh, excuse me: “World Health Organization.” Sorry.

An few things about the Manual of the Planes by Jeff Grubb, Bruce R. Cordell, and David Noonan:

• Carryover: Writer Jeff Grubb also wrote the Manual of the Planes for first-edition AD&D. This continuity from first to third edition (there was no second edition Manual) may make this volume unique among the 3.0 canon.
  
  For those of you who remember the first-edition book, the structure of the planes is vaguely similar for third edition. The plane of shadows is added to the ethereal and astral planes as ways to get around the planar cosmology, but otherwise, it’s much the same. The structure of the elemental / energy inner planes and the aligned outer planes is broadly similar, but the para-elemental and quasi-elemental planes are essentially eliminated (although the inhabitants of the para-elemental planes, the paraelementals, are described in the monster section). Still, I can’t get worked up over losing those — I never had much interest in the planes that mix two elemental planes (para-elemental) or that mix elemental planes with the positive and negative energy planes (quasi-elemental). It’s your right to be upset the para-elemental plane of ooze is gone, but I’m not going to have much sympathy for your position.
  
  The third edition of the book is a definite improvement. It’s longer, of course, like all the 3.0 books were compared to their first-edition versions; Manual of the Planes is almost 100 pages longer than the first edition book. Like all of the 3.0 books, it has a variety of information types that can be added to almost any campaign: feats, prestige classes, spells, magic items, and monsters. I also liked the chapter on demiplanes and the example planes (and alternate cosmologies) in the appendices. Yes, the spells are a little specialized, and the information on the planes can go to tedious lengths, but that’s better than the alternatives.
  
  About all I can find to recommend the first-edition version is the typography and layout; the wide, white margins are much more pleasing to the eye than the dark brown / red borders of the third edition book, and the first-edition’s Helvetica font is just so much easier to read than third-edition’s Celestia Antiqua Medium. And the mechanical diaper (or whatever it is) on the third-edition cover is just not in the same league as Jeff Easley’s astral dreadnought (although it’s great we finally get stats for that beast).
  
  
• Don’t be coy: Well, that’s not all that I could complain about. In the third-edition book, the entry on Pandemonium mentions Winter’s Hall, a region on the first layer, is inhabited by frost giants and winter wolves who serve “a particularly cruel entity called many names but most often venerated as the Trickster.” Those who remember the Pandemonium entry in the first-edition book (or have a passing familiarity with Norse mythology) will realize this is a sidelong reference to Loki, who in the first-edition book had his Hidden Realm on the first layer. Why not just mention Loki’s name? Is Wizards of the Coast afraid Marvel Comics’s lawyers will sue if Wizards don’t specifically relate “Loki” to the mythical, public-domain deity? Or did they just want to leave it open to any trickster god (who likes the cold)?
  
  
• Series of interlocking parts: I’ve read through most of the 3.0 books by now, and I don’t know that I’ve seen one that references or touches upon so many other volumes in the 3.0 set. What’s even stranger is that Planes came out in September 2001, which is about the middle of 3.0’s run.
  
  Obviously there’s a lot of overlap between Planes and Deities & Demigods, which came out a half year after Planes; since the gods live on the outer planes, there’s a good bit of discussion in both books about what a deity can do on his / her plane. Mercanes, a race of interplanar traders, get a few mentions in here, but they have a much larger role in the Epic Level Handbook, which came out almost a year later. Planes also shares the githzerai and githyanki with the Psionics Handbook, which came out half a year before Planes. And a book that came out a year later, Book of Vile Darkness, is essential for all of those demon lords and archfiends from the Lower Planes.
  
  
• Aw, isn’t that cute — a horror dimension!: In the Appendix, one of the entries is a plane with the deceptively unassuming name of “Far Realm.” It is, broadly speaking, a plane of Lovecraftian horror: pseudonatural creatures that only slightly resemble animals, subtly askew geometry, a tendency to drive mortals mad, etc. It’s a good idea, but it’s too big of an idea for only two pages in the back of the book.
  
  
• Spelljam this up your phlogiston: This would have been a perfect place to make a third edition conversion of the Spelljammer setting; for all its flaws, fourth edition did this. I want space hamsters and giffs, dammit! I mean, giffs aren’t as cool as Moks, but militant bipedal hippopotami are close.
  
  
• The names have been changed to protect the godly: Some of the outer planes have had their names changed. The switch from “the Happy Hunting Grounds” to “the Beastlands” is a welcome change, I admit, because “Happy Hunting Grounds” is borderline racist. Similarly, changing “Nirvana” to “Mechanus” is best for all concerned. And I can see switching “Olympus” to “Arborea” and “Asgard” to, well, “Ysgard” — those planes aren’t specifically for gods of those pantheons. But “Twin Paradises” is a much better name that the obfuscatory “Bytopia,” and “Seven Heavens,” while belonging to an earlier, simpler era, just sounds better than “Celestia.” “Carceri” has none of the menace “Tartarus” projected, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to call the Nine Hells “Baator.” That’s just stupid.

An unordered list of things about Ghostwalk by Monte Cook and Sean K. Reynolds:

• Where do I get off …: Reynolds and Cook are veterans of the industry; in particular, Cook is working on 5th edition D&D, and I … well, to be charitable, I am not. But the idea of a campaign in which players can play as ghosts, even somewhat redefined conceptions of ghosts, struck me as … dumb. And nothing I read in the rulebook convinced me otherwise.
  
  This might be the limitation of my views or of my mind to accept new ideas. It probably is. I know I prefer campaign settings in which the familiar D&D concepts and races are combined and recombined in new in different ways rather than settings in which the rules are rewritten. Part of me — a significant part of me — sees nothing wrong in a campaign setting that is set in a city in which ghosts make up a significant part of the population and “life,” for lack of a better word. But playing as a ghost? I don’t even like playing as a non-Player’s Handbook race.
  
  In any event, D&D (and really, all art) has consistently portrayed those who stick around after their own deaths as boors at best and evil at worst. It’s hard to shake that sort of prejudice; additionally, I prefer not to know (or have defined for me) what’s beyond death. What’s worse, the authors suggest players can explore the True Afterlife as the ultimate adventure … and then the book goes on to explain, over fourteen pages, what the afterlife is exactly like. If I were running a Ghostwalk campaign (which I obviously won’t be), I would want to decide that for myself.
  
  
• Integration: Compared with length of the section of the True Afterlife, there is only a sidebar on how to use the Ghostwalk setting with existing campaigns. I can probably figure out how to drop Ghostwalk into my campaign if I wanted to, but I think integration is a bigger concern than the True Afterlife, which turns out to be much like life, except no one gains levels and there are three factions with MacGuffins that, when combined, can return people to life with memories of the True Afterlife. Whee.
  
  
• Dead confused: Interestingly, despite the two veteran writers, the organization of the book is lacking. Well, on one hand, it’s organized exactly like every other D&D book, but Ghostwalk is still re-explaining some of its core concepts almost halfway through the book. Perhaps that’s because it’s a new idea, and readers need help to get things ideas into their heads. But for those of us reading straight through the book, it’s annoying.
  
  
• Give the demon his due: The worshipers of the demon prince Orcus are one of the main forces of evil in Ghostworld (along with other necromancers and yuan-ti). But it’s good to have an old school villain front and center in a 3rd edition product.
  
  There are no statistics for Orcus, and obviously PCs are never expected to fight him. Still, it’s nice to reach back to the original Gygaxian designs to inspire villains in a new product.
  
  
• Collation: This book has several spells, feats, and magic items that originally showed up in a Forgotten Realms book (either Magic of Faerûn or the Campaign Setting) or a splatbook. At first, I thought this was in preparation for Edition 3.5, which came out the month after this book was published. But according to Reynolds, Ghostwalk was written in 2001, not 2003. And looking through my 3.5 Player’s Handbook, it seems very few of these duplicated rules made it through to the new edition. Reynolds and Cook must have wanted to use those spells, feats, and items because they fit in with the themes of Ghostwalk, not because they were showing the way for the new way of thinking.
  
  Which is fair enough. It’s a good reminder that the material is useful generally, which is important — getting more than one use out of a supplement is important if you’re expected to drop $35 on it. Not forcing your customers to be completists is also a good idea, especially for a book that Wizards of the Coast seemingly had so little faith in. In any event, the best and most relevant material should go in the book, and to Reynolds’s and Cook’s minds, those feats, spells, and items were what was needed.
  
  
• A conspiracy of cartographers: Despite the book spending more than 20 pages on the nations of the campaign setting — 10 percent of the book — there is no map. There are maps of the True Afterlife, the campaign’s main city of Manifest, and even the demiplane the yuan-ti call home. But there’s nothing on the world the setting is supposed to take place in, and the only indication there was even supposed to be a map is in the description of one of the cities in the geography section — it has a bracketed notation that says “Not on map.”
  
  According to Reynolds, the map was dropped when Wizards finally decided to publish the setting, probably because it was supposed to be a poster map, which could easily be clipped out before publication. The map can be downloaded as part of the Ghostwalk Web enhancement, which is mostly a conversion to Edition 3.5.
  
  In other cartographic miscues, the numbered map of Manifest (on p. 92) has little order to the numbering. If you’re going to have a map of keyed locations, there should be an order to either the numbering on the map or to the listing of keyed locations. But there is neither, which can make finding locations difficult.
  
  
• City of statues: The description of Manifest mentions the prevalence of statues throughout the city: “Wherever you go in Manifest, you are likely to find dozens upon dozens of statues seemingly staring at you.” Several site descriptions mention how they are integrated into the architecture. But no illustrations show any statues — a bit of bas relief, maybe, but it’s not quite the same thing.
  
  
• Monster mush: Not much to say about the fourteen monsters in Ghostwalk. I like the bonesinger, a template that allows DMs to make creepy undead bards, but it’s the only one I can imagine using. (Well, maybe the spectral steed, an undead mount, but that’s a second banana creature.) The undead martyr is amusing: an undead helper that floats behind another undead and heals it. And if you (or your players) have a thing about pyromania, the fire spectre will set their world on fire. But you’re not going to get much from the ghost template, ghosteater or ectoplasmic vermin if you don’t actually buy into the Ghostwalk concept, and the spirit tree is essentially a variant treant.
  
  In a brazen move, the monstrous vampire template entry contains no actual game rules and could be summarized in a couple of sentences: “Monsters can be vampires now. Instead of being bonded to a coffin, they must return to a large stone, called a tombstone, at their grave site.” There: now you too know everything you need to know about monstrous vampires.
  
  
• Go do something: The end of Ghostwalk features several adventures and encounters, and these are easily adaptable to almost any campaign; rather than living ghosts, these adventures have more to do with battling undead and yuan-ti.
  
  There are three full adventures (first, fourth, and sixth levels) and four encounters (for fifth, seventh, ninth, and twelfth levels). Not only should it be easy to plug these into a campaign world, the carry-on effects of the adventures (gaining allies and enemies, a civic leader assassinated, etc.) should be easy to add in as well. “The Devil’s Cellar,” a sixth-level adventure in which the PCs attack a yuan-ti lair, is probably the best, but “For Absent Friends” (for fourth-level characters) has a remarkable amount of ways to introduce the characters to the action.
  
  A couple of encounters have disfigured monsters, which is an interesting feature. The PCs will expect the manticore to fly and the medusa to petrify her enemies, but their injuries mean they’ve found other ways to fight — it actually gives the monsters an advantage the DM is forced to use. On the other hand, the PCs might laugh if they hear the medusa is actually named Saag Paneer, which is an Indian dish of cheese (paneer cheese) and spinach. It’s also called palak paneer, but “saag paneer” literally means “spinach and paneer cheese.” At least her partner in crime, Chownag, doesn’t have a culinary name … that I know of.

For those interested, there’s a lot of commentary and information about Ghostwalk on Reynolds’s site.