H: How To Ditch Your Fairy & Hounded

This may say more about my reading habits than about what’s actually available, but today’s books have concepts I haven’t seen some version of a million times…

How To Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

Genre: MG/YA fantasy

Charlie (short for Charlotte) goes to a sports high school, and has a personal fairy, like most people she knows. Unlike Freedom's good-skin fairy, or Rochelle's clothes-shopping fairy (the perfect outfit's always on sale), fourteen-year-old Charlie has a parking fairy. Page 17 quote:

I'm always being borrowed by Mom, or one of her sisters, or her best friend, or Jan, or Nana and Papa, or just about everyone in our neighborhood, whenever they're going to the doctor's, or grocery shopping, or anywhere that parking might be a problem. Every single day of my life someone asks me to get in their doxhead car. I hate cars. I hate drivers. I hate their little squeals of joy when they find a parking spot. But mostly I hate my benighted parking fairy.

Each chapter begins with stats: how many days since she's been in a car, the number of demerits she's racked up for being late now that she's trying to walk everywhere, the public service hours she's done to work off her demerits, how many times she's spoken to Steffan (the hot new guy with a get-away-with-anything fairy). But when Charlie teams up with Fiorenze (every-boy-will-like-you fairy) who is also on a quest to get rid of her fairy, she finds herself in far more trouble than before.

I like this lighthearted book. It's out-of-the-box, but still within range of why-didn’t-I-think-of-that. I love that it’s set in our current world, but on a continent that doesn’t currently exist. Frankly, I’m surprised there isn’t tons of fantasy like this. After all, we have alternate histories. We have portal stories. We’ve told stories about Atlantis for at least a couple thousand years. I’d love to see more fantasy set in current times, but not having to fit itself into the way currently-existing places have actually developed.

Hounded by Kevin Hearne

Genre: urban fantasy

I usually write my own summaries because too often whatever the publisher decides to put on the back cover seems to have little to do with the actual plot. But in this case, I think the publishers came up with the best possible description of the book, so I’ll quote it:

“Atticus O’Sullivan, last of the Druids, lives peacefully in Arizona, running an occult bookshop and shape-shifting in his spare time to hunt with his Irish wolfhound. His neighbors and customers think that this handsome, tattooed Irish dude is about twenty-one years old—when in actuality, he’s twenty-one centuries old. Not to mention: He draws his power from the earth, possesses a sharp wit, and wields an even sharper magical sword known as Fragarach, the Answerer.

Unfortunately, a very angry Celtic god wants that sword, and he’s hounded Atticus for centuries. Now the determined deity has tracked him down, and Atticus will need all his power—plus the help of a seductive goddess of death, his vampire and werewolf team of attorneys, a sexy bartender possessed by a Hindu witch, and some good old-fashioned luck of the Irish—to kick some Celtic arse and deliver himself from evil.”

This is probably the first story I’ve read where the protagonist is pretty much perfect and invincible (he’s witty, he’s cute, women of all ages fall for him, he wins most fights, he adores his dog, etc) and it actually makes sense. Usually irresistible, all-powerful fictional men who can do no wrong make me roll my eyes. But in this case, with twenty one centuries of experience behind him, as a druid who draws his power from the earth, it would just be silly not to make him pretty close to unbeatable, and it makes his weak moments that much more powerful. I think the author handled that extremely well. And it’s funny. Good stuff all round.

F: The False Prince, Firefly and Freakonomics

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen
Genre: fantasy

I actually bought this in hardback while browsing through a store last week. I don’t remember the last time I bought fiction that way (I still buy print books, but usually nonfiction for research, sometimes from Bookins (a book swap website), but I loved the concept of The False Prince so much I was afraid I would get home and find out it wasn’t available on kindle.

First the General premise: The royal family has been murdered, and soon the nobles will no longer be able to keep it a secret. To avert a civil war, a nobleman named Conner finds four orphans who look like the younger prince (who disappeared many years before, believed to have been ambushed and killed by pirates). Connor’s plan is to train all four to impersonate the prince. Whoever does it best will gain the throne and a life far beyond what a child from an orphanage can imagine. The others won’t live long enough betray the plot.

Jennifer Nielsen didn’t disappoint, y’all. She handled her plot (and her plot twists) deftly, and the book is imbued with all the fast-paced freshness one expects of young YA. YA has gotten really dark lately. That’s fine, but that makes books like this so much more special. I highly recommend it.

And then there’s

Firefly created by Joss Whedon
Genre: Television SF

Joss Whedon is, of course, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Dollhouse. He also wrote and directed the movie adaptation of The Avengers, coming out later this year.

Firefly is the greatest television show ever, so amazing that even after it was canceled, overwhelming fan support led to Serenity, a movie based on the show. According to Wikipedia (the only place I could find all the awards listed together), “Serenity won film of the year awards from Film 2005 and FilmFocus. It also won IGN Film's Best Sci-Fi, Best Story and Best Trailer awards and was runner up for the Overall Best Movie. It also won the Nebula Award for Best Script for 2005, the 7th annual "User Tomato Awards" for best Sci-Fi movie of 2005 at Rotten Tomatoes, the 2006 viewers choice Spacey Award for favorite movie, the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form and the 2006 Prometheus Special Award.“

And, IMO, Serenity wasn’t even as good as the TV show it was based on (or maybe I’m just mad at Joss Whedon for killing off my favorite character in the movie).

I would say more, but thinking about the fate of Firefly, which was canceled before its first season even ended, depresses me (for comparison, the reality TV show Jersey Shore is entering its sixth season. Sixth. Words fail me).

Besides, the very fact that Firefly couldn’t be reduced to a pithy sentence or two was the beginning of its marketing problems. So I’ll just post a picture of The Official Companion, Volume One (it has the scripts, which I reread when I’m looking for something with great dialogue) and give it a tearful moment of silence…

Yes, that's Nathan Fillion, currently starring in Castle

…There.

One more F book!

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
Genre: nonfiction (economics/psychology)

Written by an economist and a journalist, it was getting lots of press when I read it a few years back. What I liked most about it was the authors’ way of looking at the same scenarios as everyone else, but seeing them from a completely different perspective. It wasn’t necessarily the conclusions they drew (which were always unconventional) but the process they went through to arrive at those conclusions that fascinated me.

Some of the questions they addressed: Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime?

And that's it for F!

And the prize for Best Magic System goes to...

The Black Prism by Brent Weeks


Okay, you might quibble with the best magic system label. Hard to make that claim when I've barely made a dent in the available fantasy fiction. A quick search for fantasy on Amazon returned 62,806 results. Still. My blog, my space to use superlatives. Next time it'll be exclamation points.

First the basics…

Genre Fantasy

How it starts Fifteen year-old Kip is breaking the rules to scavenge on a battlefield when he stumbles over a dead soldier chained to a still-living prisoner. Before he dies, the prisoner warns Kip about a coming attack.

Page 6 quote

“Have you ever wondered why you were stuck in such a small life? Have you ever gotten the feeling, Kip, that you’re special?”

Kip said nothing. Yes, and yes.

“Do you know why you feel destined for something greater?”

“Why?” Kip asked, quiet, hopeful.

“Because you’re an arrogant little shit.”

General premise Kip’s village is attacked, and just before his mother dies, she gives him an exquisite dagger and tells him to avenge her. On the other side of the world, Gavin Guile, the most powerful drafter (or color magician) in the world, learns he has a son, and swoops in to save Kip from certain death. Now Gavin has to protect his new-found son from political enemies, placate his irate fiancé, keep his other secret from coming out, and stop the lands from falling back into a world war. Kip has his own decision to make: obey his mother’s wishes and kill the father who abandoned them, or help his father save the lands from destruction.

Magic System

I could spend all day listing the things this book does well. Political and familial intrigue. Multiple points of view with well-defined voices and opposing goals. Fantasy world-building not of the typical pseudo-medieval-European bent (um, not that there’s anything wrong with that). Female characters who actually read like individuals and live in a world where their biggest problem is something other than fighting a male-dominated system. Characters you can sympathize with (or at least understand), whether or not you like them personally.

But the magic system's intricacy and its seamlessness with the world Brent Weeks created is just stunning. I read somewhere that he spent months coming up with his magic system and trying it out on his blog. I can certainly believe it. Weeks explains it best:

It makes sense to us that colors also bring along with them some emotional content. You simply feel different in a sterile white hospital room than you do in a red and yellow McDonald’s or in a totally pitch-black alley. Those things – instantly appealing to senses and categories that readers understand – drew me to the color magic.

When discussing how much magic in the fantasy genre has changed, Weeks had this to say about the magic system in The Lord of the Rings:

Consider J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings was about one super powerful ring whose power was to… make one person invisible. And with this power, Sauron was going to take over all of Middle Earth! Wait, what? But opposing him, there were elves and wizards who also had rings that gave them the ability to… light up their staves in dark places. Wait, what? We were told constantly that these characters were really, really powerful. And almost never saw it. However, Gandalf did have the power of falling really far.

Of course, he followed this up with a disclaimer about how much he loved LoTR so he wouldn’t get flamed, but I digress. Brent Weeks is funny and does brilliant world-building, and now I’m off to read his other books.

Before I go, two more books with great magic systems:

Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn

Genre: fantasy

Prince Rohan wants to be a peaceful, scholarly ruler. But he has just inherited the throne from his militaristic father, and with all the princedoms around him on the brink of war, he's considered the easy target. His new bride, Sioned, will go to any lengths to protect her husband, even doing the unthinkable and using her sunrunner powers as a weapon.






How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier
Genre: magical realism? MG? no idea
Charlie (short for Charlotte) goes to a sports high school, and has a personal fairy, like most people she knows. Unlike Freedom's good-skin fairy, or Rochelle's clothes-shopping fairy (the perfect outfit's always on sale), fourteen-year-old Charlie has a parking fairy.

 I'm always being borrowed by Mom, or one of her sisters, or her best friend, or Jan, or Nana and Papa, or just about everyone in our neighborhood, whenever they're going to the doctor's, or grocery shopping, or anywhere that parking might be a problem. Every single day of my life someone asks me to get in their doxhead car. I hate cars. I hate drivers. I hate their little squeals of joy when they find a parking spot. But mostly I hate my benighted parking fairy.

Each chapter begins with stats: how many days since she's been in a car, the number of demerits she's racked up for being late now that she's trying to walk everywhere, the public service hours she's done to work off her demerits, how many times she's spoken to Steffan (the hot new guy with a get-away-with-anything fairy). But when Charlie teams up with Fiorenze (every-boy-will-like-you fairy) who is also on a quest to get rid of her fairy, she finds herself in far more trouble than before.

Other books with brilliant magic systems?