Restructuring the Ruins for a New Year

This year I watched as several friends and colleagues either pulled back from their review commitments, or closed their book blogs altogether. In almost every case, burnout was cited as a primary reason, with the heavy burden of review obligations getting in the way of their reading pleasures.

As much as I've taken steps to lessen my own feeling of being burdened, I know I still took on more books than I should have this past year. There were too many books I raced through in pursuit of a looming release date, and too few that I took the time to enjoy. In addition, for every shiny new must-review title that caught my eye, another want-to-read title gathered a bit more dust on the shelves.

I can certainly see how some bloggers begin to feel like it's a job (and an unpaid one, at that). It's very easy to get sucked into the hype around new releases, to buy into the very same excitement we work so hard to generate ourselves. At the same time, it can be tough to turn authors away, to quash their hopes and decline to generate the same excitement around their latest releases.

So, for 2016, I'm going to take some preemptive measures to read less and enjoy more:

1. Be far more selective in stacking the shelves, only requesting/accepting those titles that I would have eagerly purchased for myself before I began blogging.
2. Strive for a better balance between those shiny new releases begging for reviews and those dusty shelves of books that I want to read for my own entertainment.
3. Offer more opportunities for guest posts or interviews to those authors with review requests I don't have time to read, but who have me excited enough to host and share.
4. Embrace my inner weirdness, engage my fellow freaks, and really let loose with my WTF Friday theme of twisted, bizarre, or otherwise odd reads.
5. Share more news of my own writing, and use the blog as a means of holding myself accountable for making progress and moving from hoarding those pages to actually submitting them.

Reviews of new releases will continue to appear on release date Tuesdays; I'll keep featuring upcoming releases on Waiting on Wednesday; and the weirdness will once again lurk on WTF Fridays. Beyond that, I'm leaving things wide open for whatever catches my eye and excites me enough to share.

Hardly earth-shattering news, I know, but if I set expectations and put my thoughts out there, I can hopefully keep myself on track and look back this time next year on a successful 12 months. :)

I've had the great pleasure of guesting over at SF Signal again today - thanks to Rob H. Bedford for the invite - talking about our favorite "new to us" authors of 2015.

Also taking part this morning are fellow bloggers Kristen Bell (editor of Fantasy Café), Mieneke van der Salm (A Fantastical Librarian), Kallen Kentner (Geeky Library), Stefan Raets (Far Beyond Reality), Kat Hooper (managing editor at Fantasy Literature), and Sarah Chorn (Bookworm Blues).

Stop by and check it out . . .

MIND MELD: Our Favorite “New to Us” Authors We Read in 2015

Steampunk Review: Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper by David Barnett

Despite relying on the tired old trope of the amnesiac hero, David Barnett manages to concoct an entirely satisfying and thoroughly entertaining third adventure for our titular hero with Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper.

The legend of Jack the Ripper is something Barnett has been teasing since the first book, so it's nice to finally come back to it and find out what it's all about. It's not the identity of the Ripper that's most intriguing however, but how he fits into the lives of Gideon, Maria, Aloysius, Rowena, and the rest. There are layers upon layers of mystery here, with each revelation casting larger shadows on the others, and the final reveal a legitimately shocking twist.

Overall, this is a very different story than the first two books, almost more laid back and traditional - if any story featuring Jack the Ripper, an clockwork girl, and a T-rex in the sewers can be considered traditional. It's not nearly as over-the-top, doesn't add anything to the steampunk aspect, and remains firmly rooted in the streets of London. Having said all that, it's an incredibly tense tale, one that has Gideon Smith missing, Rowena Fanshawe on trial for murder, and Inspector Lestrade dealing with a prostitute strike on top of the Ripper's murders.

What we do get here is a great deal of character development, most of it revolving around questions of identity. Maria's search for humanity is a driving force of the story, fueled by her love for Gideon, and given surprising direction by Inspector Lestrade's secret love, who has identity issues of her own. Gideon's amnesia, of course, offers up another search for identity, both as a man and as Hero of the Empire, while the situation with Jack the Ripper forces Aloysius Bent to confront some aspects of his own identity. Most importantly, though, her arrest, trial, and resulting revelations about her past cause Rowena Fanshawe to completely redefine her identity, even if that's not necessarily good news for the empire.

As intriguing and mysterious as either of the first two adventures, what Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper lacks in adventurous fun, it makes up for in its character development. We don't get a true cliffhanger this time around, but a wide open ending that leaves a lot of possibilities for Barnett to explore in future volumes.

Paperback, 384 pages
Published October 13th 2015 by Tor Books

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher in exchange for review consideration.This does not in any way affect the honesty or sincerity of my honest review.

From the Shelf to the Page: This Week in the Ruins

In case you missed any of it, here's what happened in the Ruins this week . . .

WTF Friday review of Sacrificing Virgins by John Everson Fantasy Review of Damned Children of Naor by Justyna Plichta-Jendzio Fantasy Review of The Shards of Heaven by Michael Livingston Fantasy Review of The Winter Garden by Kara Jorgensen

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Stacking The Shelves and Mailbox Monday are a pair of weekly memes that are about sharing the books that came your way over the past week, and which you've added to your shelves - whether they be physical or virtual, borrowed or bought, or for pleasure or review.

For Review:

Road Brothers : Tales from the Broken Empire by Mark Lawrence
10 short stories from the lives of Jorg and his Road Brothers. Contains spoilers for the Broken Empire trilogy. 5 of the stories have previously been published in anthologies, Contains the short story 'Sleeping Beauty' that is also sold separately. A total of 43.000 words or just over half the length of Prince of Thorns.

Miasma (Star Trek: The Original Series) by Greg Cox
The Enterprise-A is transporting a party of diplomats when it picks up a mysterious alien signal emanating from a nearby world. The planet’s dense, impenetrable atmosphere makes it unclear if the beacon is a distress signal, an invitation—or a warning to stay away.

Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard  by Lawrence M. Schoen
An historian who speaks with the dead is ensnared by the past. A child who feels no pain and who should not exist sees the future. Between them are truths that will shake worlds. In a distant future, no remnants of human beings remain, but their successors thrive throughout the galaxy.

Nebula Awards Showcase 2015 edited by Greg Bear
This anthology includes the winners of the Andre Norton, Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars Awards, as well as the Nebula Award winners, and features Ann Leckie, Nalo Hopkinson, Rachel Swirsky, Aliette de Bodard, and Vylar Kaftan, with additional articles and poems by authors such as Robin Wayne Bailey, Samuel R. Delany, Terry A. Garey, Deborah P Kolodji, and Andrew Robert Sutton

Kindle Freebies:

Ethereal Lust and The Crystal Phallus by Richard Pendragon
Business is lousy, and Charley Wolf, P.I., is about to close up shop. But on his final day in his office, a high voltage beauty named Ethereal Lust walks in the door, seizes his heart and plops a fat wad of cash in his hand. Ethereal’s father is an exiled Tibetan Lama, master illusionist and member of a secret Tantric sect; her mum is a star acrobat, trapeze-artist and mud-wrestler in an erotic circus; and she wants Charley to find an ancient relic that may be older than the earth itself - The Crystal Phallus. 

A BigBoobenstein Family Christmas by Jeff O'Brien
Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, a family of undeads were reveling in the holiday spirit, getting wasted, stripping, and watching porn. But when they heard footsteps on the roof, it wasn't Santa.

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It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is another weekly meme, this time focused on what books are spending the most time in your hands and in your head, as opposed to what's been added to your shelf.

I'm caught up on my release date reviews for 2015, so I'm diving into the finalists of Mark Lawrence's Great Self-Published Fantasy Blog-off. I'll be posting the reviews as I go, so here's hoping I can celebrate some awesome reads over the coming weeks.

What's topping your shelves this week?

WTF Friday: Sacrificing Virgins by John Everson

Every once in a while, as the mood strikes me, I like to indulge in those titles that are a bit odd . . . a bit different . . . a bit bizarre . . . and a bit freaky. These are books that don't always get a lot of press, and which rarely benefit from any prominent retail shelf space.



They're often an underground of sort of literature, best shared through guilty whispers, and often with embarrassed grins. These are our WTF Friday reads!

Despite having purchased several of John Everson's novels, Sacrificing Virgins actually proved to be my first taste of his work. Having finished it last night, I must say that it left me with one very important question - what the hell I was waiting for?

This is a collection that absolutely sucked me in, devoured my soul, and left me an undead husk, eager to be used and abused some more. The short stories here are wildly imaginative, darkly atmospheric, and seriously depraved. Alternately erotic and sadistic, they are sometimes full of the blackest humor, and other times completely barren of hope.

“She Found Spring” is a beautiful, yet sadly haunting sort of tale, a classic ghost story centered around the turning of the seasons. "Bad Day” is a terrifying, apocalyptic sort of tale that starts out with a bit of morbid humor, but which descends into hopeless terror as the plague of Luna Roaches begin breeding inside human skulls.

“Nailed” marks the first appearance of erotic horror in the collection, introducing us to a lonely woman and the stone sex toy she steals from a long-dead corpse beneath her garden, while "The Eyes" marks the first appearance of extreme horror in the collection, with a sadistic serial killer who has a fetish for eyes . . .

“Sacrificing Virgins” is where Everson completely won me over, putting a necrophiliac twist on the classic 'deal with the devil' story. This is one of those stories that repeatedly seems to reach a new depth of disgust, only to keep finding even deeper levels of debauchery. Somehow, “Whatever You Want” actually manages to push the envelope even further, with a slow-burning tale of erotic mutilation that just keeps getting darker and more perverse.

“Eardrum Buzz” merges elements of earlier stories, mixing music and bug in a blackly humorous story about the 'buzz' of a new band, the 'buzz' of a concert the day after, and the 'buzz' of something else. “Field of Flesh” is a companion piece to his erotic horror novel NightWhere (which I need to read next), involving a supernaturally kinky sex club, an all-too-eager detective, and the very dangerous temptations of sexual voyeurism.

“The Pumpkin Man” and “The Tapping” are stories where you know what's going on, and can guess the ending from the start, but they're so well told that you're content to enjoy the read. Both are distinguished by the uniqueness of their narrators, the creepiness of the atmosphere, and the ghost-story chills of the plot. “The White House” is a similar sort of tale where you can guess at the ending from page one, but it's the slow build of the tension, and the gradual reveal of the house's sins that make it so powerful.

“Star on the Beach” is another darkly erotic tale of 'harmless' necrophilia on a beach, while “Fish Bait” is a darkly humorous tale of a night in a redneck bar, but both are brutal reminders of the power of seemingly superstitious rituals of appeasement. “To Earn His Love” is another piece of erotic horror that touches on familiar themes, this time involving inappropriate student-teacher relations, guilty voyeurism, and poorly considered deals with the devil.

"The Hole To China” is a perfect closer to the collection, as beautiful and sadly haunting as the story that opened it. A tale of escape from the all-too-real horrors of domestic abuse, it relates the simple story of a boy digging his way to China, and the kindly woman next door who offers him a special shovel, along with some increasingly unsettling observations.

Make no mistake, Sacrificing Virgins is not for everyone, but that's precisely why I enjoyed it so much. I have barely scratched at the surface here, but this is a book that had me covering my eyes, turning my head aside, and reading almost tentatively at times. Some of it is beautiful, and some of it is shocking, but it's all powerful.


ebook, 440 pages
Published December 1st 2015 by Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

Fantasy Review: Damned Children of Naor by Justyna Plichta-Jendzio

If you haven't yet had the chance to discover the world of Naor by Justyna Plichta-Jendzio, then you need to get reading. I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I can promise you these stories are as bad-ass awesome as that cover suggests. This is a series that is full of both dark and light, magic and monsters. There are definitely elements of both classic and pulp fantasy to it, but they are flavored by a darker, more mature outlook.

Damned Children of Naor can be read as a standalone novel, so don't feel as if you need to catch up to enjoy it, but the series definitely gets better the more you read of it. There is a lot of world building and mythology here, with different aspects revealed and explored in each book.

The first story here, Time of Storms, is easily the strongest of the three. Here we have an Arabic style and setting, with a young merchant's daughter chosen by the goddess of fate to join the royal harem of Prince Tarragon. Mists of Midalvan trades the darkness of slavery for that of vampirism, further developing the rather deep monstrous mythology of the first three books. The final tale, Spark of Truth, changes things up again, introducing us to a female mercenary and a young woman accused of being a fire demon.

While Justyna's writing has remained strong throughout the series, and the depth of her imagination astounds me with each new revelation, I think this may be her strongest book in terms of characterization. I can't put my finger on what it was about them, but the women here all came alive, demanding their place at the heart of the narrative, and driving the story forward. They represent a nice blend of traditional fantasy subject (they all reject the victim label) and more progressive fantasy heroine. These are strong, complex characters around whom the mythology takes shape.

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay to these stories is that I always come away wanting more. That's not so say they're lacking in any way, or that there's something missing, I just literally want more - more stories, more mythology, and more world building. A part of me does wonder if there's a larger end-game lurking, a wider narrative framework that she is still waiting to reveal, but that takes nothing away from the stories themselves. The three stories of Damned Children of Naor are fantastic on their own, even stronger for being collected together, and something approaching majestic within the context of the series.


ebook, 261 pages
Published June 15th 2015 by Devine Destinies