Liavek!

Yesterday I made my first trek over to Uncle Hugo’s bookstore, which, like any good bookstore, is wall to wall filled with books. Ahh, but Uncle Hugos is a SFF bookstore, so it is wall to wall with nothing but SFF. New and Used. It is a delightful place to which I am definitely going to return.

As soon as I walked in past the back issues of Asimov’s and F&SF I knew I was in one of the local branches of heaven. I wanted to look for a copy of Elizabeth Bear’s Carnival and the fifth Wild Cards volume. I was in the store for ten minutes before I remembered what I wanted to look for. I never did remember Wild Cards, but I saw the Bear and decided not to pick it up this time. Almost picked up Caine Black Knife and Fast Forward 2, but I kept browsing, kept remembering stuff.

And then I saw it. Liavek.

It’s nothing I was ever looking for, but as soon as I saw it I knew I had to get it. Liavek is a shared universe anthology created and edited by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull and was published back in 1985. I know nothing about the world, except that it is from Shetterly and Bull. Including tax, it only cost me $2.15, so you can’t beat that!

Here’s the contributor list:
Emma Bull
Gene Wolfe
Patricia C. Wrede
Nancy Kress
Steven Brust
Jane Yolen
Kara Dalky
Pamela Dean
Megan Lindholm (later known as Robin Hobb)
Will Shetterly
Barry B. Longyear

Not bad. There’s a couple of writers I’ve never heard of, and some I have heard of but haven’t read, but given that Bull only had one previous publication credit (a short story – she was two years away from publishing War for the Oaks), and Shetterly’s first novel Cats Have No Lord came out that same year, it’s a solid lineup of writers who would go on to have successful careers. According to Wikipedia, six of the contributers were part of the same Minnesota writers group, the Scribblies (Bull, Wrede, Brust, Dalky, Dean, Shetterly)

World Fantasy Award Nominee: The Gospel and the Knife

The Gospel and the Knife
Will Shetterly
Nominated for the 2008 World Fantasy Award: Novel

According to Will Shetterly, The Gospel and the Knife is not his best work and he suggests that new readers don't start with this one, because "Elsewhere and Dogland are better". Perhaps, but since The Gospel of the Knife is my first exposure to Shetterly's novel length fiction I'll just have to let the book stand on its own with no comparison to his earlier novels.

The Gospel of the Knife is two thirds of an interesting story, two thirds of a book that was almost excellent, that grasped for something it could not quite reach. This is, I understand, something of a follow-up to Dogland though it requires absolutely no knowledge of the events of Dogland.

Written in second person perspective, The Gospel of the Knife is a coming-of-age story of fourteen year old Christopher Nix at its center. Set in 1960's Florida the opening of the novel paints a picture of who Chris is, a sometimes angry young white man (like any 14 year old, to be honest), an artist, something of a counter-culture rebel with long hair in a crew-cut community, and a boy who doesn't yet know who and what he is. Chris rebels against his parents, runs away from home, meets up with a black girl a year younger than he, gets into some trouble and then the first shoe drops.

Ralph Fitzgerald shows up at the front door of the Nix family with an offer. Mr. Fitzgerald represents Mr. Jay Dumont, a man who fought in World War I and had his life saved by Christopher's grandfather and even though Grandpa is dead, still wishes to repay the debt. The method of repayment was to enroll Christopher in an elite school known only as The Academy. This is a school which produces future leaders and important men. It is a rare opportunity. Of course Christopher goes.

What follows is a weird combination of what feels like a version of Skull and Bones and kitchen-boy fantasy told in a prep-school setting. This may not be the most appealing description I could give, but it does cover the entire second section of the novel. Christopher, you see, is heir to a special power and through this school and Jay Dumont will help him master this power. Sort of. Simply having the power puts Christopher into an elite society that makes him an elite among the elite, except this is all so new to Chris. Remember, just days ago he spent his life as a normal kid. He adapts remarkably well. Perhaps too well for believability given that the world in which Chris lives is not at all supernatural (no matter what may have happened in Dogland, which I haven't read).

Christopher plays the traditional role in epic fantasy where he is the young man who grows up without knowing anything of his destiny or power but will soon learn to use it and do something beyond his years. This is the kitchen-boy fantasy aspect (see the Memory, Sorrow, Thorn series or The Belgariad for more "traditional" examples of this).

At times the perfectness of this new life grates a little. Sure, Chris hides what he is, and occasionally he pines for the C.C. (the young black girl from early in the book), but overall he is a little too smart and a little too quick to adapt. Things are too easy for him. What Will Shetterly excels at, though, is telling the story. If things are a bit too pat, Shetterly's skill at storytelling and easing the reader through the story makes up for the patness and his easy delivery hints at greater things to come in the novel, the possibility that the conclusion will blow my socks off. It's a hell of a set-up.

Then we get to page 219 and Book Three and The Gospel of the Knife runs off its rails and loses focus. Yes, this was clearly a deliberate decision to include a 69 page retelling of the Christ story in a style / manner which fits the story Shetterly is telling but that decision grinds the narrative to a screeching halt. These 69 pages (ending on page 288 of a 319 page novel) absolutely destroy any momentum Shetterly had built in the first 219 pages of the novel.

The conclusion itself feels a bit forced, but this may be because I was yanked out of the story two thirds of the way through. Getting back to the Chris / power stuff was difficult because not only did Shetterly mess with the narrative flow of The Gospel of the Knife, he telegraphed part of what he intended to do with the conclusion in Book Three. It isn't exactly deus ex machina, but it points in that general direction.

So, The Gospel of the Knife had some potential and Shetterly clearly tried to do something interesting in the end, but he was not as successful as perhaps he hoped to be. Shetterly is a good writer, this is obvious from how smoothly he puts together the story up through the rising action but just as he's about to hit the climax to the story it all slips away.

I have a good deal of fondness for The Gospel of the Knife and even writing about it I want to like it more than it perhaps fully deserves. The novel is enough to make me want to seek out Shetterly's earlier, "better" work to see how they compare. The Gospel of the Knife, however, falls short of being as good as it could be and perhaps short of being as good as it should have been.

Shadow Unit: The Complete First Season

Elizabeth Bear and Emma Bull wrapped up the first season of Shadow Unit with their short novel Refining Fire.

Shadow Unit is a blend of The X-Files, Criminal Minds, and probably a half dozen other police procedural / supernatural type programs. Rather than being broadcast on television, the collective minds of Bear, Bull, Sarah Monette, Will Shetterly, and Amanda Downum have delivered over the course of seven short stories and one novel a full season story arc that most television shows would kill for. Except that Shadow Unit would never be broadcast, except maybe on HBO or Showtime.

The teaser description of Shadow Unit from the website:

The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit hunts humanity's nightmares. But there are nightmares humanity doesn't dream are real.

The Behavioral Analysis Unit sends those cases down the hall.

Welcome to Shadow Unit.

They had me from hello.

Shadow Unit is a division of the FBI much along the lines of The X-Files where the Anomalous Crimes Task Force works on cases involving what has come to be called The Anomaly. The Anomaly is *something* that can take over a normal person, give that person some extra power and strength, and tends to push that person to do some really bad things. Local police and regular FBI can’t handle these sorts of cases, they don’t know what to look for or how to respond to it. Shadow Unit, colloquially called the WTF (yes, it means what you think), does.

Our Creators have written a series of stories with an exceptionally strong and well defined character list. With each episode the reader learns more about the characters. Some episodes will focus more on one or two characters not featured in a previous episode, but the strength of the series is that we are given a core group of characters to follow and fall for, and feel for. They make mistakes, but they are quite competent at their jobs. They are all at various stages of their careers and understanding of the Anomaly. They all have their backstories and over the course of this first season, we get a good look into the backstories of several of the characters, or at least enough of a look to feel like we know who they are.

I could not be more impressed and more thrilled with the Shadow Unit stories.

Shadow Unit is fairly interactive, with 8 stories, character livejournals (they respond!), various teasers, artwork, a message board frequented by three of the four primary authors (Sarah Monette doesn’t come round much, if at all).

Season Two should begin sometime next year, and I have heard it suggested there are plans for five seasons. One can only hope.

One comment I want to make about Refining Fire. Damn, it was good! Bear and Bull split up the finale into five parts, released over five days and each day I was left wanting more. By the end of the story, I was short of breath. Seriously. I had fear for Chaz, fear for the other agents, a bit of disgust at Reyes (and yet, I’m sympathetic towards him and I don’t know his backstory), and chills at the storytelling. If this isn’t nominated for awards next year, I just won’t understand.

The whole season is available to read for free online. If you like what you see, perhaps shoot a couple of dollars in the direction of the creators via the links on the website. This is professional level work provided gratis from professional writers. A couple bucks wouldn’t hurt, eh?


Episodes:
1. "Breathe" by Emma Bull
2. "Knock on Coffins" by Elizabeth Bear
3. "Dexterity" by Sarah Monette
4. "A Handful of Dust" by Will Shetterly
5. "Ballistic" by Sarah Monette, Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, and Amanda Downum
6. "Endgames" by Emma Bull
7. "Overkill" by Elizabeth Bear
8. Refining Fire by Elizabeth Bear and Emma Bull

Teasers and Deleted Scenes

Artwork

Playlists

Character Livejournals

Emma Bull’s essay on the origin of Shadow Unit

Message Board

There is more than a little bit to do and see here. I loved every moment of Shadow Unit's debut season, and am now eagerly awaiting Season Two. They should really get paid for this, and paid well. It's damn fine work.

Taken He Cannot Be

“Taken He Cannot Be” by Will Shetterly features Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and a hunt for a unicorn mixed together with the hunt for Johnny Ringo. Yeah, you read that right. A unicorn. The movies Tombstone and Wyatt Earp both seem to have missed this detail. Normally this is the sort of thing I would skip if I didn’t know who the author was, but Shetterly belongs to the Shadow Unit clan, and that’s street cred enough for me.

“Taken He Cannot Be” is a tight little western with good interplay between Doc and Wyatt, some humor, some violence, and all in all, it’s a good short story.

The story was available for free on one of Shetterly's blogs, but it was accidentally deleted. According to the blog, it will be back up sometime. When it is, it's well worth reading.

A Handful of Dust!

Shadow Unit: Episode Four is live: "A Handful of Dust", written by Will Shetterly.

For the record, Shetterly claims that the story is

4/5 by me, 1/5 by Emma Bull, with help from Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, and Amanda Downum.

As one can expect with anything Shadow Unit, I'm excited. I've never read a single thing by Will Shetterly and what better place to start than with his debut Shadow Unit piece?

I never talked about "Dexterity", the Sarah Monette episode. Ya know...it was good because it was Shadow Unit and because it had the characters I've come to appreciate (dare I say love?) over the first two episodes and the myriad of teasers, but it felt lacking in depth, like everything came too easy to the characters in "Dexterity". Emma Bull's story "Breathe" and Elizabeth Bear's "Knock on Coffins" were much, much stronger.

For me.

Tomorrow, I read "A Handful of Dust".

From The Coyote Road

This weekend I had the opportunity to read the two novelettes from The Coyote Road, an anthology of “trickster” stories (plus the Will Shetterly story but that’s just because I wanted to read his story before his first Shadow Unit entry came up).

First up was “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche” by Delia Sherman. As a trickster story we did have a couple of interesting and nearly rigged bets (as the trickster is looking only for a good trick to benefit himself), but I felt nothing during the story. I know that I’m not necessarily supposed to feel empathy for the characters, but I didn’t care, either, about anything in the story. I don’t think I would have even nominated this one.

Next was Kij Johnson’s "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs Of North Park After the Change". Heartbreaking. So much of reading is as much what the reader brings to the book as what the writer brings to the reader. I am a dog owner. Kij Johnson’s story of dogs abandoned after “The Change” just kills because the dogs’ basic nature hasn’t changed, just the fact that they can now speak. From the very start this was a moving story and Johnson did not let up. Stories are more than concepts, though, there has to be execution and I think that Kij Johnson nailed this one. The format has several different stories being told, some by the dogs, others of the main storyline of a woman visiting North Park to see the dogs and help them out as she can.

As for the Will Shetterly story. I liked it. I much prefer Kij Johnson’s story, but Shetterly’s was better than the nominated Delia Sherman story.

The whole “Trickster” tale concept isn’t one that really appeals to me as a reader, so despite a Kelly Link and Jeffrey Ford story still unread in the anthology, I’m sending The Coyote Road back to the library with only three stories read. They were the three I really wanted to read.

Shadow Unit

From the collective minds of Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, Emma Bull, and Will Shetterly comes an online collaborative work called Shadow Unit.

From Bear’s posting:

The brainchild of the amazing coffeeem (Emma Bull), Shadow Unit is, more or less, the website for a serial drama in internet form. Or possibly it's a fan site for a TV show that doesn't exist.

Over the next couple of months, the site will be updated on a weekly or biweekly basis with new information, vignettes, character sketches, character bios, a community message board, and other exciting things.

And starting in mid-February, there will be a series of novellas and novellettes, and one complete novel. Approximately one story every two weeks for sixteen weeks (though we are still tweaking the schedule), comprising the first season (of hopefully many) of a television show that doesn't exist.

Some of the content will be free. Some will be by subscription. (Subscriptions will be extremely reasonable.) There will be DVD extras, deleted scenes, background information, character-based digressions, and I dunno what all else.

(I hope it is okay I copied this much from Bear's livejournal)

I had to chance to read the opening posting on Shadow Unit and I'm very intrigued. Considering the collective talent involved, I am very excited for this. Not sure how much the very reasonable subscription fee will be for the extra content, but right now I'm on board.

I’ve been aware of this project for a while now, but Shadow Unit’s homepage was pretty well blank for a while and I wasn’t sure what this all meant other than Bear calling it “secrit project” and seeing it linked from time to time.

Should be interesting.