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As you can see from the cover, this ALICE is not from Lewis Carroll. We first meet Christina Henry’s Alice in a horrid madhouse—the kind where you sleep on the floor, kept docile by powders with your meals. Object, and the sleep-inducing powders become injections that leave you drooling.

All this Alice has are her conversations with a man named Hatcher; conversations that take place through a mouse hole.

But the Jabberwock lives under the madhouse, and when the place catches fire, the Jabberwock escapes. So do Hatcher and Alice.

Hatcher takes Alice to his grandmother, who tells them that only the two of them can kill the Jabberwock, because all the Magicians are gone. And off they go. To find their way, they must visit Mr. Cheshire. Then they must deal with criminal lords named Mr. Carpenter, Mr. Walrus, and the Rabbit. Alice learns why she and Hatcher were in the madhouse, and grows from a scared girl to a tough woman.

Alice’s Wonderland was never like this.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice tales can be oddly creepy, but they’ve got nothing on this dark and bloody story. I’m not usually one for dark and bloody, but Alice and Hatcher are such strong, interesting characters, and the parallels with the original so much fun, that I enjoyed every page.

I finished this novel just in time for the sequel to be published. But I appreciate that ALICE ended completely, with a sense of more to come, but not a cliffhanger that insists that you purchase the next one. As an obstinate sort, I often just stay hanging on that cliff, rather than give in.

This time, however, I look forward to RED QUEEN. www.christinahenry.net

p.s. I prefer the original Tenniel drawings to the Disney Version.

Written in 1926 and re-released in 1999 with an introduction by Alison Lurie, the book has now made its way to Kindle, where I found it.

But if you don’t like Jane Austen, where some people feel that nothing happens, you won’t like this. If you want a book made up of Important Events or and Exciting Narrative, you won’t like this.

I loved it.

Laura Willowes grows up on the family estate, where she roams around the countryside, learns to distill herbs into useful potions, is companion to her father, and does not marry. As a result, when her father dies, she must, of course, go to live with her brother’s family in London, where she becomes Aunt Lolly, or Miss Willowes. Laura disappears, subsumed in the life of a useful spinster. For twenty years.

That covers almost half of the novel. But before she, and we, are half asleep, Laura decides to go live by herself in Great Mop, Buckinghamshire. There, she wanders the woodlands, happily alone. There she meets the Loving Huntsman of the title (who is Satan, although he isn’t very evil), and learns that she’s a witch.

But witches have to do good, or evil, and she just wants to be left alone.

The prose is meandering, evocative, and unlike anything I’ve ever read. Although it’s a new discovery for me, it’s been through 93 editions, from London, New York, Paris, Leipzig, and Milan. In France it was shortlisted for the Prix Femina. It was the very first Book Of The Month in the U.S.. In 2014, Robert McCrum chose it as one of the 100 Best Novels in English.

I hope that students now read this as a matter of course. In my day, we didn’t.

As Alison Lurie writes in her introduction to the 1999 re-release of this astonishing novel:

“Three years later, Virginia Woolf was to make the same point , saying that if a woman wants to be more than a household appliance, if she is to have a life of her own . . . she must have freedom and privacy and “a room of one’s own.” She spoke, as we now know, for thousands of women then and in years to some.But Sylvia Townsend Warner spoke for them first.”

 

My cousin Bill just pointed out that an anti-Trump meme I posted on Facebook was mostly clickbait. I took the challenge. You’ll note that I put in the full URLS instead of making links. That’s because I want everyone to see where and who is saying things.

This time I did my homework direct. I read what Trump says about his positions, at https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions

I absolutely disagree with:

• The notion of building a 2,000 mile wall between the US and Mexico.
• The idea that everyone should have easy access to guns.
• His sexism and racism.
• The fact that he lies. A lot. More than Hilary.  http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/lists/people/comparing-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-truth-o-met/

First, the wall., He still plans to make Mexico pay for a wall between our countries. He explains how he plans to do that, and I have no way to refute that. I just think that it’s a really odd, not to say crazy, idea. The border is 1,989 miles, according to https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/578/~/border-in-miles. That’s a major engineering project. There has to be a smarter way to stop illegal immigration from Mexico.

Second, he interprets the Second Amendment as permitting everyone in the U.S to own a gun. This, in my opinion, does not deal with the problems that entails. Without strong background checks and mandatory training, people use guns irresponsibly. The police agree. http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=2859&issue_id=22013

As part of that section, Trump says: “We need to get serious about prosecuting violent criminals. The Obama administration’s record on that is abysmal. Violent crime in cities like Baltimore, Chicago and many others is out of control. “

The FBI statistics note that violent crime has been dropping in the last 20 years. It also describes how their statistics have to take into account the higher crime rates in places with a lot of poverty—like Chicago and Baltimore.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-1/table_1_crime_in_the_united_states_by_volume_and_rate_per_100000_inhabitants_1995-2014.xls

So Trump does not agree with either the opinion of police chiefs, or the FBI’s statistics. To me, that means he does not care about actual facts.

Third. I find Trump’s racism and sexism a deal killer. This is 2016. Of course, the changes of the past 20 years have upset a lot of people, who find women and black people in positions of power to be scary and wrong. But those things are here to stay. Also, it will take a lot of time and money to keep every single Muslim out of the US. And it’s racist, as in all Muslims are evil.

Here are some facts about his racism and sexism. Forbes is not exactly a leftist magazine. http://fortune.com/2016/06/07/donald-trump-racism-quotes/

Okay, most European countries, except Russia, don’t like Trump, but can anyone prove he didn’t say these things? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/donald-trump-sexism-tracker-every-offensive-comment-in-one-place/

Fourth, his tax plan. Essentially, he slightly lowers the rate on lower income people, which is now between 10 and 15%, to 12%. So those folks will do the math and decide they come out ahead.

Then he sets a 33% rate on everyone making over $225K.

That includes the CEO who makes $18 billion per year. (https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/24/epipen-mylan-bresch/)

Is lowering the tax rate on the 1% going to “trickle down” and create jobs? There are a lot of arguments against the trickle-down theory?

–It has created painful income inequality. https://www.thebalance.com/the-big-squeeze-3306203

–Money groups oppose it, such as the IMF and Forbes.

https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/is-the-imf-dismantling-trickle-down-economics/

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?/sites/georgeleef/2013/12/06/trickle-down-economics-the-most-destructive-phrase-of-all-time/&toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2013/12/06/trickle-down-economics-the-most-destructive-phrase-of-all-time/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/#

Here’s a “pro” trickle-down argument, but I find it kind of weak. As in, just wait longer, youse guys. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-calls-it-fairy-dust-trickle-down-does-work-economist-art-laffer-says

Finally, the economy. I do somewhat agree with Trump that the NAFTA and TPP agreements have had a bad effect on middle and lower class jobs. However, that, I think, is because companies have discovered that moving their jobs overseas is cheaper.

But. He says that “Our trade deficit in goods is almost $800 billion on an annual basis.” I wanted to check that fact, because places like Snopes and FactCheck regularly report that Trump lies a lot.

The U.S. Census site is hard to follow. So I found http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade  And read about them. It’s clear to me that they want to provide accurate data for businesses all over the world. They say:

“The trade gap in the United States declined to USD 39.47 billion in July of 2016 from an upwardly revised USD 44.66 billion deficit in the previous month and below market expectations of a USD 42.7 billion shortfall.”

Okay, economics is not my strong point. But $800 billion isn’t even close to $40 billion. Let me know if he’s using some other data model. Otherwise, we’ll go back to Trump lies too much for me.

 

 

In my own work, fantasy always appears—in my plays, my stories, and on my burgeoning reading list. I read, and enjoy, everything from Catherynne Valente  to Sarah Addison Allen and from China Mieville to Jim Butcher.

As a result, my sense of the perfect reader for my books—or any book—is not strong.

Besides, as one who is addicted to reading, I have discovered that some books are not for me, however great and well-written they are. Other books are for me, even though I can tell that they are escapist dreck. I mean, some people love artichokes, some don’t.

However, I just read a review on GoodReads that clarified my thoughts. Discussing one of my favorite books, someone wrote “This will be a 5-star book for a certain reader. This reader likes a lot of descriptions and doesn’t mind a very slow story.”

Well, I do like a slow story with lots of descriptions. I do not like books where a fast-moving, one-damn-thing-after-another plot takes precedence over character and description. So I love Robin McKinley, and dislike Veronica Roth’s Divergent series.

And, while I re-read Georgette Heyer romances every time the going gets too tough for me, the addition of steamy romance into every fantasy book leaves me cold—at least when it takes the place of the kind of character development that draws me in.

So I write books that I want to read.

Then there’s the whole YA thing. Some of Ursula LeGuin’s best books are called YA, leaving us OAs (old adults) right out of it. Good thing I’ve been reading YA well into my OA years.

Speaking of OAs, I’ve been reading fantasy and sci-fi for a long time; ever since I left college and gave up reading Thomas Hardy and Gunter Grass for Heinlein, Clarke, et al. Now that I write fantasy myself, I read it even more constantly. Some of it I love, some I hate.

I don’t much like artichokes, either.

This week, I have seen two plays about Jews and the Holocaust.

The first was Indecent, a new play by Paula Vogel, in a reading that was very well acted and directed. Complex, full of imagery, song, and dance, the show blew me away. After I finished blowing my nose—not because of some easily sentimental claptrap, but because the play is beautifully painful—I felt wonderful, because I’d seen something so inspiring.

Vogel is still rewriting, getting ready for a full production.

The second was Stella Dreams of Trains, by Joanna Rosenberg. Several roles were extremely well done. But I left the theatre in a royal rage.

This play was selected from 100 submissions to the Gloria Ann Barnell Peter Playwright Competition of Aurora, New York, probably because it dealt with the Holocaust. The show would make a lovely film, but as a piece of theatre, it had some problems.

This 90-minute play required six locations. In none of the scenes did anyone say anything indicating where they were, you know, like Shakespeare’s “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank.” Standard playwright technique—let ‘em know where and when you are without being obvious. So we had to have sets for all six scenes. On a stage about as big as my coffee table.

See, in film you can jump cut between scenes because you have a full set. Not so much in theatre, unless you want to sit around waiting for sets to change. Which I do not. I’m not sure this writer had seen many plays.

Then there were the “confrontations.” Dialogue went something like this.

• Please tell me
• No.
• You have to.
• I’m leaving. (but she doesn’t leave, and we have no idea why she doesn’t, because she is not Waiting for Godot..)

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Finally, there were the connections among the characters. The writer set up an interesting, Dickensian group of characters who were all linked. And never gave us the payoff. Either they find out, or they definitely do not find out, about their links. But this show was as daintily unfinished as one of those French or Japanese films everybody but me loves.

In film, you have popcorn, darkness, lovely editing, delicate visuals.

In theatre, you have only darkness. If the story doesn’t grab you, there’s nothing else to do except climb over all your friends and leave, noisily. Because the acting was so good, I didn’t want to insult the performers.

But I am enraged. Aurora may seem the back of beyond to you city folk, but it’s close to Ithaca, which is absolutely crammed with theatre, and only 4 hours from the Big Apple. And this competition proved to me, as if I needed it, that all those competitions where we send our plays may or may not have any idea what makes a good one.

I think I’m going to set myself up as a judge of new music, with a competition. I don’t listen to much of it, and wouldn’t bother to learn much about it, because as long as it’s about something Important, with a Strong Message, I’ll go for it.

Fantasy novels Part 2.

Once again, I’m not part of the zeitgeist.

I did not love The Girl with Ghost Eyes, M. H. Boroson’s debut fantasy novel.

Plot, no spoilers:  In San Francisco’s Chinatown, in the late 19^th century, Xian Li-lin battles ghosts and monsters, even though she must remain a dutiful daughter. Boroson has studied Chinese mythology and martial arts, clearly seen Hayao Miyazaki’s brilliant film Spirited Away (pictured), and loves Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Along with his brilliant premise, what’s not to like?

The endless fighting, punctuated with Li-lin announcing that she’s terrified, causes the interesting relationship between a traditional Chinese father and his ferocious daughter disappears in the melee. That’s not to like. In a novel, I want character development, if nothing else.

But hey, David Gemmell’s debut novel Legend has been called “one long fight scene,’ which didn’t hurt his sales, or reputation, at all.

That’s what I mean about not being part of the zeitgeist. If I want to experience endless fight scenes, I watch martial arts movies. Not just Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, either; I even enjoy the ones where the culture is so alien to me, so Chinese, Japanese, or Thai, that the plot makes no sense and I can concentrate on the fighting.

In a novel, along with character development, I like good writing and amazing ideas. Boroson almost delivers on the amazing ideas, but again, the background of Daoism and Chinese lore disappeared in the kung fu. And his writing is functional, but repetitive.

My takeaway: Today’s zeitgeist loves endless fight scenes. I don’t. No zeitgeist for me.

When get tired of the complexities of Game of Thrones #88 and life in general, I head for YA fantasy.

My most recent guilty pleasure was reading Patricia C. Wrede’s Mairelon the Magician and its sequel, The Magician’s Nephew (1991). In them, I saw a more than passing resemblance to the romance novels of Georgette Heyer—another guilty pleasure.

And I was pleased to note that Google confirmed my diagnosis, both in an article by Mari Ness on Tor, and in Wrede’s blog.

Okay, I have now blown what few academic credentials I still possess by admitting that I read Georgette Heyer. But Mari Ness points out that Heyer started the whole Regency Romance trope, which should count for something among popular culture PhDs. Ness also notes that many fantasy writers have followed in Georgette’s footsteps.

Wrede is one of them. The two books about Mairelon borrow liberally from Heyer’s diction, and the finale of Mairelon the Magician is a lunatic scramble that goes way beyond the diving-into-the-cupboard ending of Heyer’s Cotillion. Almost too far—I soon began to lose count of the participants

Wrede also has collaborated with Caroline Stevermer to create a collection of Regency fantasies, Sorcery and Cecelia, The Grand Tour, and The Mislaid Magician. These are a little too cute and lightweight for even my degraded tastes—that is, I don’t re-read them.

But I do re-read Caroline Stevermer, especially her A College of Magics (1994). Stevermer’s other  solo novels–A Scholar of Magics, Magic Below Stairs, When the King Comes Home, and River Rats–are good, but A College of Magics stands out from the pack. Although Amazon calls it a book for the 10 to 14 set, the complexity of the characters and the strange ending to the queen-commoner romance might daunt fans of the silly sweetness of Sorcery and Cecelia.

I have no guilt when re-reading A College of Magics.

Child of a Rainless Year

I love this book. It’s magical realism, a favorite style with me. And it’s a story of a middle-aged woman who has lived an ordinary life, but now must come to terms with her strange inheritance and unusual gifts. In so many fantasies, the hero is young, perhaps because publishers think that only young people read fantasy. I’ve been reading it all my life, and am happy when the heroine is someone more like me.

The book is also about a house, a house with history and opinions, although both of those emerge slowly, as in a good mystery. And it’s about finding love late in life–both romantic love, and a sense of one’s own purpose.

I’ve also read the first two of Lindskold’s Firekeeper series, now at number 6. It’s straight fantasy, about a woman raised as a wolf, who has to learn to be human and manage the politics and wars of humans. But book series are like television series—there’s a point where I give up. Sometimes the premise wears out; that is, the idea is only good for so many books or shows. Sometimes the author wears out, repeating the same tropes and images. And sometimes I wear out—a few are fun, then I want something new.

I wondered where Child of a Rainless Year came from, because it’s so different from Lindskold’s other work. Here’s what she has to say about it:

“I have always loved in between places – alleys, dry stream beds, median strips – all those places that are neither here nor there. . . . Child of a Rainless Year is a novel about those spaces in between. It is about the dichotomy between expectation and reality, about past and present, about parents and children, mothers and daughters, loving and the fear of love. Color weaves through these contradictions, not so much pulling them together as highlighting differences and similarities. Historical events prove to be as important as current events, and even a house has opinions on how things should be done.”

I’m one of those people who re-reads books that I love. I’ve now read Child of a Rainless Year several times. It doesn’t wear out.

Here, I begin to review fantasy novels.

What I usually don’t like: epic fantasy full of strange beings. Except, of course, Tolkein, who rules them all.

What I really like: magical realism, such as the work of Sarah Addison Allen,  or Diane Setterfield.

But I’m omnivorous, especially with Kindle and Scribd, where I don’t have to purchase a print book to squash into my overloaded shelves

I read fantasy for fun. And I watch fantasy on TV and in movies for fun. For serious, I go to a lot of theatre, and read theatre history, such as Brian Seibert’s What The Eye Hears: a History of Tap.

Credentials: Years of reading. Degrees in theatre. Playwright. And I’ve written two fantasy novels…well, one of them is refusing to settle down, but the other, The Dry, can be found on Amazon.

Watch this space to learn about some great reads!