Recommended Reading by Professionals with Dru Pagliassotti

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Dru Pagliassotti, whose first novel, Clockwork Heart, won the Romantic Times Book Reviews’ Best Small Press Contemporary Futuristic Novel award for 2008. Book two, Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind was released in March of this year and book three, Clockwork Secrets: Heavy Fire is out this September. She’s written numerous short stories, a horror novel (An Agreement with Hell), and edited several works, including a scholarly book on Japanese yaoi, or boy’s love manga.

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Self-publishing has taken off over the last few years, but there are so many self-published books available, of such wildly varying quality, that it’s difficult to figure out what’s worth the effort and what isn’t. Here are a few self-published novels I’ve enjoyed recently — each contains romantic elements, so I’ve tried to provide a little something for everyone.

1. Lindsay Buroker: In the steampunkish fantasy Emperor’s Edge series, Imperial law enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon is ordered to hunt down the infamous assassin Sicarius. However, common political enemies and goals soon throw them together to create a band of misfit vigilantes dedicated to saving the empire. The Emperor’s Edge novels combine politics, humor, m/f romantic tension, and high adventure in a consistently engaging manner. (Emperor’s Edge [this book can be downloaded for free], Dark Currents, Deadly Games, Conspiracy, Blood and Betrayal, Beneath the Surface, Forged in Blood I & II, plus misc. short stories).
   
2. Catherine M. Wilson: When Women Were Warriors is a Bronze-Age-themed fantasy trilogy and coming-of-age story that follows young Tamras as she leaves her mother’s household to enter the local ruling matriarch’s, where she will train to become a warrior. Along the way, she heals the shunned warrior Maara, who becomes her mentor and counselor. The novels are a thoughtfully written, woman-centered contemplation on the nature of responsibility, maturity, love, and courage. I found the series’ f/f romance and world of mutually respectful gender equality to be a quietly refreshing change from the fantasy-fiction norm. (The Warrior’s Path [this book can be downloaded for free], A Journey of the Heart, A Hero’s Tale).
   
3. Jordan L. Hawk: The Whyborne & Griffin series offers a combination of steamy m/m romance and unearthly Lovecraftian horror. While I doubt HPL would have approved of the relationship between the scholarly linguist Percival Endicott Whyborne and the haunted ex-Pinkerton Griffin Flaherty, I expect he would have appreciated the damnable tomes, deadly labyrinthine caverns, and unsavory ancient artifacts that pepper this occult-mystery series set in the late 19th century. (Widdershins, Threshold, Stormhaven, Necropolis).

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Due to time constraints and other factors this will be my last Recommended Reading post.  Kristin from My Bookish Ways will be taking over the column for SF Signal. So if you'd like to see more recommendations by professionals posts, you'll have to head over there.

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Leah Bobet

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Leah Bobet. Leah Bobet's first novel, Above, was nominated for the 2012 Andre Norton Award and the 2013 Aurora Award, and her short fiction has appeared in several Year's Best anthologies and as part of online serial Shadow Unit.  She lives in Toronto, Ontario, where she edits Ideomancer Speculative Fiction, picks urban apple trees, does civic engagement activism, and works as a bookseller at Bakka-Phoenix Books, Canada's oldest science fiction bookstore.  Leah's second novel, On Roadstead Farm—a literary dustbowl fantasy where stuff blows up—will appear from Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2015.

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Recommending books is a bit of a tricky business: No book's all good or all bad, just good or bad for that reader and what they enjoy in a story. That said, as a reader who loves character-driven, literary SFF which displays an author's sheer skill, here are a few books I think deserve much, much more love:

1. Desideria by Nicole Kornher-Stace
   
   Nicole Kornher-Stace's first novel flew way too far under the radar when it came out in 2008, and deserves to be handed to any fan of Caitlin R. Kiernan, China Miéville, Catherynne M. Valente, or Gemma Files. Set in a created city that's not-quite-French, not-quite-Renaissance, Desideria plunges us into the mystery of how its protagonist, amnesiac actress Ange St. Loup, ended up in a madhouse accused of arson and murder—and tells the story of her theatre company's last, fateful play. Where the sheer, impressive ambition comes in is in the third strand of the story: The text of the play itself, written in its own voice, with its own flair and style, tying both Ange's fate, the theatre's, and the company's together. If you're not a structural reader, it's daunting. If you are? It's brilliant. Kornher-Stace's rich, lyrical prose bolsters and ornaments that structure, in the most literal sense of the word: wordcraft to enhance what's already there, which is stylistically gorgeous on a sentence-by-sentence level and transparent enough to not get between the reader and the story.
   
   The one drawback is the pace: Desideria starts slow, and demands patience in the first quarter before it starts to roll full-speed. I'd personally recommend giving it that patience. I found the results ultimately worthwhile.
   
   
2. Finder by Carla Speed McNeil
   
   Finder has been quietly drawn and written and published since 1996—sometimes in colour, sometimes in black and white—and it is some of the best science fiction work I've ever read: a far-future Earth replete with nomads and domed city-states, massive corporate culture, and an overwhelming sense of socially aware, intelligent wonder. It's been celebrated to the moon and back in comics, and I'm barely sure anyone in SFF has read it.It's also, quietly, one of the most diverse works of science fiction I've ever read: described by its creator as "aboriginal science fiction," its regular cast includes a half-aboriginal protagonist, a South Asian polyamorous academic, a genderfluid teenager, and whole piles of very different assumptions on how people do being people. It's not quite Samuel Delaney, not quite Ursula Le Guin, not quite a lot of things while it tells some incredibly moving stories on the backdrop of this world: The fourth installment, Talisman, is one of the most moving love letters to reading, writing, and books I've ever read.
   
   Start at the beginning: While Finder doesn't need to be read in order, I find it helps.
   
   
3. Resurrection Man by Sean Stewart
   
   Sean Stewart's work is largely hard to find these days: Sean Stewart has moved onto games writing, and with the exception of a few titles reprinted by Small Beer Press and the award-winning Galveston, his novels are mostly out of print.
   
   Which is too bad, because this book is my heart.
   
   Resurrection Man deals with some of the perennial Stewart topics: families, and the shattering
   and mending thereof; what to do when you discover you’re really a rather bad and selfish man;
   getting your balance in a world that’s broken; putting the broken right. On a holiday home, Dante Ratkay—scientist, sibling, with the power to see secrets and omens in a world where magic's leaking slowly through the streets—finds his own corpse laid out in the boathouse, and what it spills are the secrets, needs, and tensions in his large and loving family. The outcome is glorious. And tragic. And right.
   
   Stewart's prose is utterly beautiful: It is a musical instrument, delicate and restrained until it's slicing open your belly. He never shies away from acknowledging the complexity of other human beings, and of our own messy selves. The world he builds here, and in companion novels Galveston and The Night Watch, is doom-tinged with subtle magic that takes your breath away.
   
   
   If I could bribe any author to write just one more book, it would be him.

Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Mark L. Van Name

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Mark L. Van Name. The CEO of a marketing and technology assessment firm, Mark L. Van Name has written five Jon & Lobo SF novels (One Jump Ahead, Slanted Jack, Overthrowing Heaven, Children No More and No Going Back), numerous short stories, and edited three anthologies. He’s also a spoken word artist.

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I debated for some time whether to use this opportunity to try to highlight forgotten gems or focus on new writers deserving of your time, but in the end I surrendered to my feelings and decided to highlight three writers whose work I am passionate about.

1. Though he’s a New York Times bestselling writer whose works have won a slew of mystery awards, James Lee Burke is still not only underappreciated, but also underappreciated as a fantasist. His Dave Robicheaux series stands as one of the greatest achievements in series fiction and indeed in all of fiction. Though the books sit in the mystery sections of bookstores, Robicheaux’s views of the world and of time itself carry a distinctly fantastic tone, with the dead and the living sharing our existence, only the sheerest of curtains separating them. The books’ settings, particularly those in Louisiana, are at once both perfectly realized renderings of our very real world and landscapes as alien to most of us as the surface of any distant planet. His prose is a joy to read and lyrical beyond the abilities of all but the very best of us. You cannot go wrong reading any of these novels, though as you might expect I recommend starting with the first, The Neon Rain.
2. Alfred Bester is a giant in our field, a man whose influence is hard to overstate and whose best works in the 1950s set a standard that few have surpassed. Ignore his comeback fiction and focus on his output from the fifties, and you will see a body of work that is stunning in its intensity and range—and that still holds up superbly, though much fiction from that period does not. His two major SF novels, The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination, are amazing works that repay repeated re-reading. His short pieces from that decade are also consistently strong and often amazing. I’m not one of those people who believe there is anything we all must do to claim to be SF fans; if you think you are, you are. I do, though, feel that if you consider yourself any sort of fantasy or SF fan, there’s a good chance you’ll be glad you gave Bester your time.
3. My understanding is that his works sell far better in the UK than in the US, and I admit to having no idea how well he does in Canada, but even if he’s topping the bestseller lists everywhere and lighting cigars with hundred-pound notes, Nick Harkaway deserves more success. His two novels, The Gone-Away World and Angelmaker, are amazing achievements, singular books unlike each other and distinctly different from anything else you’re likely to have read. I won’t try to summarize them, because no summary will do justice to either; I simply encourage you to give them a go. I will warn that for some readers I know, Harkaway’s work took a while to stick, but I believe you’ll find they are worth that initial investment. (I did not have that problem with either book; each charmed me right from the get-go.) Spend some time in one of Harkaway’s worlds, and our own reality will, when you return to it, vibrate with just that little bit of oddness that is part of the hangover we experience when we return from the very best fantasies.

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Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Michael Rowe

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Michael Rowe. Michael Rowe is an award-winning journalist and literary nonfiction writer. He created and edited the critically acclaimed horror anthologies Queer Fear and Queer Fear 2, has written numerous short stories, and published two horror novels: Enter, Night and the recently released Wild Fell.
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If you’re like me, when you find a magnificent horror novel, you tend to keep it around. My shelves are groaning with the books I’ve read over the years that have stayed with me. Unlike most long ago loves, however, the books are always there, waiting for you with open arms when you find yourself wistfully reminiscing, especially on a stormy night when the power goes out and the house is lit with candlelight and shadows. Among the books I’ve loved are two particular favourites, one old and one new, shared here.

1. Bernard Taylor’s Sweetheart Sweetheart is a classic English ghost story I read when it first came out in 1977, and a book that I have reread several times in the interim between then and now, and which has influenced my aesthetic as horror writer and as a reader. In many ways it’s a classic haunted house story set in the English countryside. It concerns problematic homecomings and the inexorable, deadly power of the past to assert itself into the present in order to settle old scores through supernatural agency. The vengeful ghost at the heart of Sweetheart Sweetheart is one of the most finely wrought examples of female supernatural malevolence in 20th century horror fiction, and I imagine that Rosa Blackmore, the ghost in my novel Wild Fell, owes more than a passing nod to Taylor’s influence. There’s a reason why the late Charles L. Grant, himself a master of “quiet horror,” picked Sweetheart Sweetheart as one of the 100 greatest horror novels.
2. My favourite horror novel of 2013 was, hands down, The Heavens Rise by Christopher Rice. The author of five New York Times bestselling thrillers, Rice made his supernatural debut this year with a southern gothic tale which, among other things, is about the potential effect of the annihilating rage of thwarted love. In Marshall Ferriot, the novel’s handsome, sociopathic antagonist, who acquires the power to completely and utterly take over the minds of his victims to devastating effect when he becomes infected by a mysterious parasite deep in the Louisiana bayou country, Rice has created the most terrifying sort of monster possible—the kind whose darkness is entirely hidden from view until things—and people—start to die around him. True to literary roots, Rice flavors The Heavens Rise with the mysterious disappearance of an entire family and the hunt for answers, as well as with a dash of social commentary on race, class, and gender. But make no mistake, The Heavens Rise is a ne plus ultra horror novel, a beautifully written one I’m not ashamed to say gave me a nightmare or two.

Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with David Lomax

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by David Lomax. David Lomax is an English teacher who's dreamed of writing since he was eight. His first novel, Backward Glass, has just come out from Flux books.

Recommended Reading by Professionals With... James Knapp

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by James Knapp. James Knapp's first novel, State of Decay was a Philip K. Dick award nominee, and won the 2010 Compton Crook Award. He's since completed the Revivors trilogy and written the first novel of a new series, Burn Zone, under the pseudonym James K. Decker.

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1. First up is T.C. McCarthy, author of the Subterrene War trilogy which includes Germline, Exogene, and Chimera (Germline won the 2012 Compton Crook Award).  He weaves stories of very broken people in very dangerous environments, and he does it all with a poetic flair that really stuck with me.  It’s much more than just futuristic war.   A struggle over rare earth elements has come to a head under the mountains of Kazakhstan, where soldiers sealed in suits of armor fight in tunnels under tons of rock.  In Germline, an embedded reporter quickly is forced to turn soldier, and the way it changes him so completely makes for compelling reading.  McCarthy explores the human psyche, what we're willing to do in order to survive, and the effects that the horrors of war can inflict on us.  He introduces genetically engineered soldiers, but explores the ethics of that (or lack thereof), and the mindset such soldiers might have, or be forced to have.  He wraps it all in a great series of novels, and he does it all believably and memorably.  His short story "Somewhere it Snows" proves that he's equally good at exploring other worlds, too, and I sincerely hope that he does.  Writers like him are the type that we want to stick around, and so I'm recommending him to anyone who likes hard science fiction - even if military fiction isn't usually your thing, give him a try.
2. Next is Alex Hughes, author of the Mindspace series, which so far includes Clean, and Sharp.  I'm a big fan of science fiction and also noir, and her work has strong elements of both.  I likened Clean to a fun blend of Blade Runner and Chinatown, but that doesn't truly do it justice.  Her vision of a future Atlanta feels real, a hot, steamy place where a talented but damaged telepath named Adam uses his abilities to help track down criminals.  The handling of 'mindspace', the sort of psychic residue left behind by people, is something I'd like to see a lot more of.  Telepaths are able to perceive it, almost like an additional sense, and can use it to sort of look into the past.  Adam struggles with an addiction that Hughes handles perfectly, a fight that occurs day to day, minute to minute.  I'm really hoping this series turns into a long running thing.
3. Lastly, although I don't read a lot of fantasy, I want to give a shout out to fantasy author Myke Cole whose work I was introduced to at Balticon (his debut novel Control Point won the 2013 Compton Crook Award, and the second novel in the series, Fortress Frontier, is out now) - he writes Military Fantasy so it’s a mixture of bullets and spell slinging.  His real-life military experience brings a lot to the table, and really pushes his work from just guns and explosions into a much broader examination of what it means to be in the armed forces.  You'll learn a lot of military jargon, and my fantasy-loving friends assure me that his magic system is top notch.

I realize that two of the authors on this list have won awards for their work.  Have they been recognized?  Yes.  Have they gotten the recognition they deserve?  Not in my book - not yet.  I'd like to see all three on the best sellers list, so give them all a read.  You won't be sorry.

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Stay tuned for the next post where we learn who literary agent Joshua Bilmes thinks we should be reading more of!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... With Jim C. Hines

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend two or three authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve. Today's recommendations are by Jim C. Hines.

Mr. Hines is the author of the Jig the Goblin series, the Princess series and several short story collections.  Libriomancer, the first book of his urban fantasy Magic ex Libris series, has just been released in mass market, and the second book, Codex Born is now out in hardcover.  He won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer due to his awesome blog.

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1. Marie Brennan is a fantasy author who writes flat-out gorgeous books. Her latest book is A Natural History of Dragons, which is a memoir-style novel about Lady Trent, who eventually went on to become the world’s greatest dragon naturalist. She’s like Jacques Cousteau of the fire-breathers. Brennan’s Onyx Court series is richly researched historical fantasy, exploring the London-based fairy court’s history over the centuries. The only downside to reading Brennan’s work is I always walk away feeling jealous of how smart she is...
2. Kelly McCullough’s books are just plain fun. I devoured his WebMage books, which blend magic and mythology and computer hacking. And there’s a goblin who’s also a laptop. I was skeptical when I picked them up – a magical system based on computer software? – but McCullough makes it work. Oh, and Kelly sometimes dressed up like a faun and tromps around in Neil Gaiman’s backyard, so there’s that too.

Stay tuned for the next post where we learn who James Knapp thinks we should be reading more of!

Recommended Reading by Professionals With... Brandon Sanderson

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Brandon Sanderson! Best known as the man who finished Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, Sanderson has written a number of books including Elantris, the Mistborn trilogy, The Alloy of Law, Warbreaker and The Way of Kings. He's also written several books for younger readers, including his newest novels, The Rithmatist and the forthcoming Steelheart. Along with several other authors he hosts the Parsec Award winning and Hugo Award nominated podcast, Writing Excuses.

[Note: this message was transcribed from a recording by Mr. Sanderson specifically for this post.]

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People often ask me to recommend books I feel deserve more attention than they're getting. This is hard to do for two reasons. First, I have trouble deciding whether I should recommend the old standbys I've been recommending forever, or if I should recommend the new voices. And two, I just don't know which books the everyday readers are chatting about. Before I was a writer, I was more in tune with what my friends would talk about. Nowadays, most of my friends are industry professionals, so I know what the industry professionals are talking about, but not what the average fan is reading. With that preamble in mind, here are a few book recommendations, though perhaps people are talking about these books, and I just don't realize it.

1. I really do feel that Guy Gavriel Kay — his new work and his old — still doesn't get enough recognition. He's one of the great writers of the genre, and he's amazing. His writing is beautiful, interesting, fun and exciting, but also lyrical. He has a series out right now. The first one is called Under Heaven, and the second one, River of Stars, just came out. If you've never read Guy Gavriel Kay, his classic Tigana is one I often recommend.
2. I think N.K. Jemisin is doing some very fascinating things in fantasy right now. She's a great storyteller. I do know that people in industry are talking about her a lot. I don't know if your everyday fans are noticing her books enough, but certainly if you haven't heard of her, look up The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. It is a fantastic novel. I will put a slight content warning on both Tigana and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, for those who are concerned about those sorts of issues.
3. And one more recommendation. For a long time, my standby was Daniel Abraham, but I think everybody's reading him now because he's got these cool series coming out that everyone loves, so I'd like to point out a new author, Brian McClellan. He's a former student of mine, who just had the first in a series come out with Orbit. The book's called Promise of Blood, and it's quite good. It's a flintlock fantasy, where people are using magic mixed with gunpowder in really cool ways.

Stay tuned for the next post where we learn which authors Jim C. Hines thinks we should be reading more books by!