2015/2016 Debut Authors

[Darth Richard II]

50 minutes ago, Mars447 said:

The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M H Boroson is a debut novel that came out late last year and is pretty great.

But then our tastes might differ considerably, if some of you guys hated Traitor but saw Sebastien de Castell as anything but thoroughly mediocre.

Thems fighting words!

[Mars447]

18 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Thems fighting words!

I've got my eye on you.

Seriously though, Girl with Ghost Eyes was good, and I didn't find anything particularly memorable (or good) about Greatcoats.

[Darth Richard II]

[Contrarius+]

6 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Sebastien de Castell is really good and fairly new(2014?).

I'm interested in reading him, but his books aren't in audio -- and I do most of my sff "reading" that way. But I may get around to him eventually!

[Darth Richard II]

Ben Peek's The Godless was also pretty awesome. 2014 I think again?

[Maester Llama]

The DeCastell stuff's not in audio? That's too bad. I think it would translate to audio quite well. Lots of verbal wit and energetic dialogue and punchy swashbuckling. I've read the first two and am torn on them, but very much leaning positive. The first one's kinda episodic and sometimes the things that happen feel like they're out of touch with the tone of the rest in one way or another [and there's one incredibly stupid scene in the middle that has no business in the book at all], but for the most part DeCastell balances the dramatic shifts between humourous swashbuckling and quite dark stuff very successfully. The second one only improves and feels more coherent. There are a couple of fairly important characters who don't work for me at all, but the books are always, always entertaining and sometimes quite unpredictable. [And yep, first one's from 2014.]

 

I've been about a quarter of the way through Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant for several months now. I don't agree that it's crap, at least not so far. There is, to my mind, some knockout gorgeous writing in the first section when the protagonist's on her home island living through the colonization, perhaps most noticeably in her interactions with her parents. Really poignant stuff. On the other hand ... well, I haven't finished it yet, so clearly it hasn't precisely gripped me. It often feels like it's operating at a clinical remove that's probably intentional but can make emotional investment tough at times.

 

Liu's The Grace of Kings I liked a lot, but it does a lot of things we're not used to: the larger-than-life characters that flow back and forth in terms of how they're depicted between close psychological realism and mythic caricature depending on how the book feels that day, the squabbles among the gods as they comment on the action, the coverage of long military campaigns in extended summaries rather than full scenes, the frequent introduction of new characters, the poetry. All of this feels much more literally "epic," as in the literary genre that Homer falls into, than we're used to in epic fantasy. I dug it a lot, but I'd be lying if I claimed it never dragged, sometimes a fair bit. Great book that's doing epic fantasy really inventively, but I get the criticisms.

 

I also got along very well with Fran Wilde's Updraft from last year. Great world-building in what I'd call the spirit of Star Wars Episode IV since I'm feeling lazy, by which I mean that it throws out a very cool collection of stuff and only hints at the broader possibilities, preferring to barrel forward and entertain while we unpack and wonder about the world for ourselves. Airborne society that lives in constantly-growing bone towers far above the clouds. Strong angstie teenager alert, however.

 

Not liking Sorcerer to the Crown should be viewed as substantive evidence that someone is an alien lifeform walking among us faking human feeling.

[Darth Richard II]

Someone described Updraft as the novel equivalent of a Ghibli film. Granted I have not read it, but that's what I've heard it described as.

A lot of my issues with teh traitor have to do with the 'evil empire' in the book and how they are so obviously an insert for, um, social conservatives shall we say. Just beat me over the head with it already.

 

 

[Maester Llama]

Re TBC: Yeah, there is certainly that. It is not precisely subtle. I suppose the reason I can live with it -- beyond socially left-leaning bias, which I'm sure informs how I evaluate whether stuff that's loaded like this is done "well" in fiction even though I try to make sure it doesn't -- is that real-world imperialist nations did historically police sexuality. Not as part of their colonial policies, at least not so far as I'm aware, but this "there's a right way to live" mindset is implicit enough in colonialist practice that I'm fine with an amped-up version of it being presented as social critique. England had homophobic policies enshrined in law during the roughly analogous period of real history. Of course, there's also the argument that this extreme heteronormativity and sexual violence perpetrated against those who won't conform is a cheap exploitative way to code the evil people evil, and I haven't read enough of the book to decide where I personally find it falls on that one.

 

Yeah, I'd say the Updraft-as-Ghibli-film-in-novel-form comparison has some strength to it. Particularly in terms of the preoccupation with flying and wings. Lots of pissy teenage business, and some rough patches early on before I got the laws and strictures of this secondary world figured out and it felt like people were just being dicks for the sake of being dicks, but I think it gets to a really good place eventually.

 

Wake of Vultures by Lila Bowen isn't technically a debut, because Bowen is a pseudonym, but it's the author's first novel under this name, and it's big fun. Lots of gorey monster-huntin' and coming-of-age in a complicated identity in the weird old west. I personally preferred it to the year's other big fantasy western I've read, Gilman's Silver on the Road, though this isn't a fair comparison, as they're very different books -- Silver on the Road is a slower burn, more meditative and gradual in its plotting and its worldbuilding.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh I'm super left leaning, which is why it irks me so much I think, it's so obvious and unsubtle it almost feels like a parody.

Is silver on the road a debut? I thought she wrote something else.

[HexMachina]

On The Traitor

, just wait for the ending too. That's generally where it goes from 'meh' to WTF have I just done with life to waste it reading this?

[Maia]

Eh, I was disappointed by "Traitor" and thought that it didn't deserve all the pre-emptive accolades, but, I guess, for different reasons than most of you? I also didn't hate it and think that the author has definite promise - some of the scenes are very poignantly written, IMHO. Anyway:

Spoiler

 

I thought that Baru's intention to betray the rebellion from the beginning and planning it all as a set-up was very well foreshadowed. I never  doubted that this was the case. For me,  the question was whether she'd be able to go through with it in  the end, as she began to sympathise and empathise more and more with the Duchies folk. That provided satisfying tension, IMHO.

I also liked that the protagonist never became an action heroine, even though there were fake-outs in that direction. So few genre authors manage to stick with a cerebral main character, who can't resort to physical violence effectively - even Tyrion implausibly performs amazing feats of  arms in a pinch.

There are also some historical precedents of outsiders being able to seize leadership when all highly placed individuals of a polity/movement are too involved in conflicts with each other to agree on internal candidate, so this didn't faze me either.

 

However, other things made it all fall apart for me, namely:

Empire of the Masks eugenics makes zero sense, and it is completely unbelievable that they'd be able to even modestly succeed with it. Namely, they have a system that allows and even encourages women to work professionally, is supposed to ensure that highly-performing individuals breed, yet simultaneously forbids extra-marital sex and discounts extended families for the purposes of child-rearing. WTF?! It also doesn't help that none of the dignitaries/officers of the Empire that we see actually have any offspring, even though they are exactly the type of individuals that should be pressured/forced to reproduce by Masquerade's ideology. Incrastic laws are obviously a very awkward and WSOD-exploding strawman and villain identifier, rather than a genuine piece of worldbuilding. And since they are so intrinsic to the plot, well...

The Duchies worldbuilding isn't any better, as it veers wildly between somewhat patriarchal and dismissive of women and polyandry, where a Duchess having children by several of her neighbours somehow increases her power, rather than being a recipe for outside meddling and inheritance squabbles. Etc. It is as if the author wanted to have his cake and eat it. 

I also don't see how Baru depreciating the Empire paper money in the Duchies wouldn't have negatively affected their financial system as a whole? When your MC is supposed to be an accountant, this is kinda huge oversight, no?

Finally, even if we accept the premise of ruling Cabal balanced by mutually assured destruction via blackmail, shouldn't Baru's refusal to give them a hostage have resulted in her immediate elimination? This seemed really stupid to me, frankly. Granted, they may have her parents in reserve as hostages, but still. 

 

   

I did hate "Updraft", though. The protagonist is sooo very dumb and completely lacking anything resembling impulse control. And so is the plot, which ties itself in knots to accomodate her every stupidity and turn it to her advantage. And that nonsensical ending! Argh. Worldbuilding seemed interesting to begin with, but then Butcher's new book had something very similar, so I guess that the idea of city-spires and dangerous planet (post-apocalyptic Earth?) surface below seems to be in the air (heh), currently.

 

 

[David Selig]

I don't see Ken Liu and others like him who have been publishing high quality short fiction and winning awards for it for years as "debut authors" just because they published their first novel recently.

Speaking of short fiction, I think that's the best way to discover new authors.

[Contrarius+]

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The DeCastell stuff's not in audio? That's too bad.

Yup, made me sad. (And Douglas Hulick's Sworn in Steel is also not in audio, which REALLY annoys me.)

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I've been about a quarter of the way through Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant for several months now. I don't agree that it's crap, at least not so far.

Yeah, you're only 1/4 of the way through. Give it time. I agree that some of the stuff at the beginning was nice.

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Not liking Sorcerer to the Crown should be viewed as substantive evidence that someone is an alien lifeform walking among us faking human feeling.

Just call me Gort. ;-)

But I didn't hate the whole thing. Mostly just REALLY didn't like the female MC.