Review: Cold Magic, by Kate Elliott

When one hears a book described as "Afro-Celtic icepunk fantasy," it is imperative that one reads said book at some point in time, especially if the description came right out of the authoress' mouth into one's ears directly. And thanks to a kind soul who responded to my Amazon Book Wish List, I have this lovely book in my physical hands. Thank you, book buyer! This review is for you!

Table of Contents for THE SEA IS OURS: TALES OF STEAMPUNK SOUTHEAST ASIA

It's been a while! What with grading and assisting teaching and writing my dissertation proposal and going to conventions and whatnot! 

But! The manuscript of THE SEA IS OURS is done and handed to my publisher, and I am pretty confident that nothing else will be changed, so here is the table of contents!

On The Consequence of Sound - Timothy Dimacali

Chasing Volcanoes - Marilag Angway

Ordained - L. L. Hill

The Last Aswang - Alessa Hinlo

Life Under Glass - Nghi Vo

Between Severed Souls - Paolo Chikiamco

The Unmaking of the Cuadro Amoroso - Kate Osias

Working Woman - Olivia Ho

Spider Here - Robert Liow

The Chamber of Souls - Z. M. Quynh

Petrified - Ivanna Mendels

The Insects and Women Sing Together - Pear Nuallak

We have have first-timers and some more established writers, and all except one writer are of SEAsian descent, which I'm very proud of. Some of them you may know from the Philippine Spec Fic Annuals which is rather difficult to get outside of the Philippines, so I'm pleased to be able to have them here. They are all really talented, and I'm 100% certain that this anthology will have a particular voice that no other steampunk anthology (or anthology using the word "steampunk" in its title) has. You will have to read it to decide whether you agree with me.  

We are finalizing the AMAZING cover and I will announce that soon too! It is very similar to the postcard that Khor Shing Yin made for us to promote ourselves a while back.

The Steampunk Postcolonialist at Clockwork Couture's Steampunk Extravaganza!

I'm very excited to announce (and probably should have done it earlier but I don't really know how many of my readers are actually in Southern California) that I'll be at a book signing at Clockwork Couture, an Extravaganza of Comics and Literature!

Here is the wonderful lineup I'm honoured to be a part of:

Dru Pagliassotti - The Clockwork Heart Series 

Elizabeth Watasin - The Dark Victorian Series and Charm School Graphic Novels 

Jaymee Goh - Steampunk World (that's me!)

Madeleine Holly-Rosing - Boston Metaphysical Society Comic and Novellas 

and Patrick Scullin with his debut family-friendly Steampunk Graphic Novel, Pandamonium 

Clockwork Couture is at 707 South Main Street, Burbank, CA 91506 (Between Alameda and Verdugo), and the event run from 2pm - 6pm.

If you are on the Facebooks, because apparently I am also now on the Facebooks, you can announce your attendance at the Facebook event here.

Have a pretty picture, and tell all your friends! See you there!

Steampunk: Revolution is now out!

So if you haven't heard the news, which I'm sure you have, the third Steampunk anthology from Tachyon Publications, edited by Ann Vandermeer, titled and themed Revolution, came out December 1st!

There are some big names and small names and new names and old names in this anthology. I'm pleased to have a non-fiction essay sandwiched in between Amal El-Mohtar and Magpie Killjoy. You can find the full TOC here. To buy this illustrious book, check out Tachyon Publications' website. If you are an Amazon sucker, it's available there too, and even Barnes & Noble! Ay-Leen the Peacemaker wrote us a very nice review over at Tor, and I am given to understand that reviewer copies are still available if you are a book reviewer. 

I hope you enjoy my offering, entitled "From Airships of Imagination to Feet on the Ground." I'm also incredibly excited that Paolo Chikiamco's "On Wooden Wings" made it in as well! The Southeast Asian representation in this anthology is stronger than it was in Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories, and that is just as well! 

Link: Review of Jay Kristoff's Stormdancer

A year ago I started seeing a bit of hype for Jay Kristoff's Stormdancer, which purported to be a "Japanese steampunk novel". I even read a vomit-inducing post from the author himself babbling about how awesome multiculturalism is for steampunk and how he was inspired by James Ng's art to write his novel ('cept, um, hello? China is not Japan?).

After my experiences reading the Windup Girl and the Peshawar Lancers, I'm pretty fuckin' burnt out on white authors writing non-white stories unless they've been critically vetted by people I trust.

So, instead of slogging through what promises to be a steaming pile o' shit masquerading as actual hot steam that makes the world go 'round, I shall instead link to someone else who intrepidly read the book and said everything I pretty much would have said if I had been the one to read it:

I'll admit, I was a little leery of Stormdancer from the start - Japanese steampunk sounds cool, but coming from a white western author, the chances of problematic weeaboo fuckery are high. Exoticization. Romanticization. Plain old appropriation. Yet for some reason, I didn't really peg Stormdancer as a weeaboo outing. I don't know why. There was no good reason, and yet, I expected Kristoff to be a scholar of some sort, or at least, to do some very in-depth, scholarly research, borne of a deep interest in, and respect for, Japanese culture. And while even that could have also potentially yielded something problematic, at least it would have been sincere. What I thoroughly did NOT expect to get was a book informed by fucking Wikipedia and anime, set in Japan for the sake of novelty. That came as a genuine shock. And a dramatic rise in blood pressure. WHAT THE FUCKITY FUCK? 

The thing is, that Wikipedia part? You can kinda tell. I mean, the first hundred pages or so of Stormdancer, basically until the airship crashes, are a chore to wade through, mostly because of the Wikipedia-esque info dumps. It takes almost exactly half of those pages to make any progress on the plot. The first fifty are just about showing off the world and detailing every little aspect of it, which is why it takes like twelve paragraphs for Yukiko and her father to walk down a street: we have to hear about the architecture, detail the clothing being worn (because we're using Japanese terms here, and not many readers will know offhand what a fucking hakama looks like), and explain the exact geographical setting, right down to which rivers cross where, and the ~exotic smells~ in the air, even though none of it is actually relevant to anything that's going on at the moment. I understand wanting to set the scene and acquaint readers with the world, but Jesus Herbet Christ, get on with it already. Work this stuff in to the action. Make me not want to put the book down out of sheer boredom. I mean, I haven't even gotten the chance to get angry yet.

Aside from the obvious appropriativeness of the text, it also sounds like Eurocentrism got married to Straight Dude Sexism and had a baby in the form of incompetent writing.

I don't care if you're writing a secondary world or an alternate history. If you can't manage basics right, you probably shouldn't be writing this story at all. Maybe I shouldn't blame Jay Kristoff too much; maybe being a weaboo who cannot tell when he is being a racist is an easy trap to fall into. But I will come down hard on his agent and editors who thought this racist dreck was worth publishing, because these people are supposed to be a bit more discerning (but time and again, it's been proven that many privileged folks are not very discerning when it comes to issues of justice, so....).

As for bloggers who helped this guy promote, a couple of whom are people I like, I hope you will be more discriminating in the future.

h/t to Requires Hate for the link!

The Implications of Less Devastated Empires

So let's talk about Scott Westerfeld's Goliath, ya'll. Did you like it? I liked it, just like I liked Leviathan, and I liked Behemoth, and I thought Goliath was very well done indeed. The slow dawning realization of Aleks that his best friend is, after all, a girl and the OMG AWKWARD chapters afterwards and the EVEN MORE AWKWARD chapters when he realizes Deryn is in love with him was indeed super-awkward and I enjoyed that, possibly to an unwholesome degree.

I was a bit iffy with the visit to Japan, but ehh, it's Japan, weird shit happens there all the time, I guess, and I thought it was nice that we took a trip down to Mexico and met General Francisco Villa. The little rivalry between the journalists was fun, and I, too, wished to punch Eddie Malone when he also discovers Deryn's secret and gets to writing all about it. And I love how Aleks puts himself out there to protect Deryn, because you know, that is what best friends do! 

And yes, I laughed out loud at that middle-of-the-book chapter where Aleks is really really really realizing that Deryn is, indeed! for realsies! a girl! And then Deryn takes advantage of it! And I was like, yea Deryn, you go for it girl, life's too short to spend it not kissing boys. Also, Dr. Barlow / Count Volger -- I WILL GO DOWN WITH THIS SHIP, understand? 

And Lilit! My revolutionary anti-patriarchy homegirl! I knew in Behemoth that she was going to get sent away. If possible, get your hands on Marilyn French's From Eve to Dawn series; it's a history of women from as much recorded history as possible, and is French's ten-year opus. In it, French points to how so many times, women become involved in movements that will help everyone, and they get with them specifically because they see potential, and are told, all the time, "wait your turn, let us get rights for the men first" and when the men get the rights they want, they set the women aside, telling them, "you're asking for too much." Women constantly contribute to political movements led by men only to get shafted as soon as the men's goals have been achieved, and women's needs are ignored in due course. I was sad to see this happen to Lilit, but it still made sense to me, and isn't it sad that it made sense to me that this was the logical way her patriarchal movement would play out?

Fine, yeah, okay, Deryn isn't a princess by the end of it, and Aleks goes into obscurity instead of taking up the throne, that's cool (although I sometimes have misgivings about this; I'd rather thought Aleks had proven himself as a good leader and could've found some way of returning to his people while still abdicating, but, whatever, I'm the kind of person who still believes in huge honking scapegoats ultimate martyrs vain and useless things symbolic functions of royalty.

And of course Westerfeld, whenever we exchange tweets, is a cool dude, and it's nice to have him out at #steampunkchat, and I teethgnash at having missed meeting him earlier this year in New York City (where he ruined his feet walking at BEA and thus missed the Steampunk Bible signing as a result), bla bla obligatory this-white-dude-is-cool-by-me disclaimer bla-di-bla.

Now that that's out of the way, I can move on to talking about what I really want to talk about. Also, spoilers.

Review: Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell

I'd been excited to read Tobias Buckell's Crystal Rain for a while, for several reasons: 1) It's got a pretty bitchin' cover, with a dark-skinned man with a hook for a left hand and a flying ship; 2) it's a POC-centric novel, and I was curious to see how it worked out; 3) Tobias Buckell identifies strongly as POC, as Caribbean, despite passing as a generic white American dude.

I did not get around to reading Crystal Rain for several reasons: 1) grad school; 2) I somehow couldn't find a way to get my mitts on it on Amazon (Buckell's store only offers a hardcover); and 3) grad school (seriously, moving to a new city and getting used to grad school sucks up your time. Things nobody tells you). Also, priorities and all that meant that I had to pick other texts to read that more strongly coded as steampunk, and I wasn't sure whether Crystal Rain did.

Well, it kinda does and doesn't.

Mummies & Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate

Something that crossed my mind today, while contemplating a paper on biopolitics in steampunk (because why WOULDN'T you want to think about biopolitics in steampunk, what with the mechanization of society leading to further exploitation of marginalized bodies and questions of who profits off / pays for the progress of the 19th century?) and which texts I'd tackle the idea with (toss-up between Priest, Lowachee and Carriger, but Gail's series is the only one which looks to have an ending at this point) when I found myself thinking about the mummies in Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate books. 

I fucking love these books to death -- they're a light read, they're engaging, they're funny, and they have some serious issues going on which are quite thoughtfully engaged with. What with the glorification of mad science in steampunk, I love how this is a text in which it is openly acknowledged that science is every bit a tool of power and oppression and harm as religion is, where you know what? mad science isn't all that because sometimes it's wielded by fucking assholes and I don't think this is ever explored enough. Carriger's books manage to have this dark undercurrent even while being a funny comedy of manners  on top. 

But (as there always is in these things) one thing does bother me, and it's the plot device surrounding mummies from Egypt, introduced in Changeless. 

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!

Transcript: “Scarcely English, but British, of Course, by Descent”: Eurocentrism and Orientalism in SM Stirling’s Peshawar Lancers

I presented this over at SPWF recently for the academic track. Here's the transcript I was reading off, in all its unpolished glory. It needs more tweaking (thanks, Martha, for your helpful comments to give more background on the novel at the beginning!) but I think I hit my major spots with this one for now.

Briefly, Stirling's Peshawar Lancers

I'm writing up a brief thing for SPWF on this book, but I just wanted to say, as fun as it is in being a direct tribute to old pulp fiction and adventure stories, and as interesting as the construction of English identity is, this was a terrible book. I literally cringed at more passages in the novel than I should have been. It's alienating because it was just so clearly written for a straight, white, male audience and just glossed over so many problematic racist and sexist tropes, accepting them as part of the setting without truly interrogating them. If you wanted fluff, if you wanted a light read (and you can deal with a fuckton of problematic colonialism), then sure, this is the book for you, but I do expect more from my entertainment. So while I'm getting a lot out of this book in terms Shit To Get Angry About and Analyse To fuckin' Death, I think the world would be better off without books like this that perpetuate racist discourse in the guise of entertainment. 

Review: Behemoth, by Scott Westerfeld

Okay, so there is no way to go about reviewing Behemoth if nothing is said about Leviathan, even if both books stand on their own well enough. Except if you read Behemoth first, you’d want to go right back out and get Leviathan anyway, to make sure you got the full experience.

Leviathan is set at the beginning of World War I, with the death of Archduke Ferdinand by Serbs. As such, we can’t exactly pin it down to the era of steam technology, so it’s more fittingly dieselpunk. Nonetheless, the historicity and scale of tech retrofitted into the past fit nicely into steampunk conventions.

Within this history, it’s obvious that Westerfeld has done his homework, down to little details that add a delicious accuracy to enhance certain scenes, while being very clear where he has strayed. As such, there isn’t one break-off point between this story and recorded history, but a blend of both.

The two major factions within the new geopolitical landscape are very reasonably set: in the bits of Europe that is Catholic, the predominant tech is mechanical, with hulking machines that are deeply reminiscent of HG Wells’ land ironclads. The British, by contrast, are Darwinists, with the conceit that Darwin discovered DNA and developed the technology to harness it, to the point that the British fabricate their own biological ecosystems in a fashion that serves their purposes.

This is how we get Leviathan, which is, to put it bluntly, a flying whale.

Yes, a flying whale, and you can read the rest at Tor.com!

Review: Clockwork Heart, by Dru Pagliassotti

I just loaned out my copy of Clockwork Heart to my younger cousin, who's herself a voracious reader, so I can't dive in-depth with page numbers and exacting names as I would ordinarily have liked to, but it's memorable enough for me to be able to comment on some larger issues.

But firstly, you should know that I liked it.

Not A Review: Dream of Perpetual Motion, by Dexter Palmer

I bought this for the shiny cover. Yes, I should be ashamed of myself for judging a book by its cover. But whatever, I picked it up a few times, and it didn't really do anything for me, until I was flying home to Malaysia and decided to read it for real since I was going to be on an airplane for forever anyway (13 hours flying is nothing to sneeze at, ya'll).

Peoplez, I cannot even begin to dissect how much this book pisses me off on a deeper level. I tweeted, early on, "Dear Post Modernism, this is the era of "from margin to center", not "from warbling subconsciousness to drunken lips". I also said to Mike Perschon, "I kinda shut my brain off at 'This is a magical stalk of celery' in Harry's dream sequence and am predicting a really, really hard time getting through this book. Maybe because I'm still in genre fic mode, not litfic mode." I was coming offa Boneshaker and Perdido Street Station, fyi, this is how long it took for me to get started on talking about this book.

You want an actual non-rage-y engagement with this? Here is Mike's.

So, I was going to write this review and be all serious and analytical about it, but ended up with incoherent rage about it, and proceeded to write fanfic instead. Because this story? Is all about fucked up people fucking each other up in order to fuck themselves up even more. There. I said it. Quote at will. And while telling Ay-Leen all about my fanfic, I degenerated instead into ranting about the book. Because I still cannot process this book in a mature, professional manner, you will have to satisfy for my rage, copied-pasted from my chat, typos included.

Under the cut so you can skip it if you don't want to read it. Spoilers ahoy.

Review: Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest

This post was originally written for Tor.com, but GD Falksen was given the job so it means I get to post it here instead! Proper analysis forthcoming.

Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker is currently considered a sort of keynote in the steampunk movement – Mike Perschon, in his “Steampunk Tribes” article, names steampunks new to the subculture “Boneshakers” as a hat tip to this novel. Most steampunks have at least heard of Boneshaker, if not read it yet. On the cover, Scott Westerfeld describes it as a “steampunk-zombie-airship adventure,” and we all know that anything is improved with zombies.

China Mièville's Perdido Street Station

 PSS's description on the back does nothing to really describe the convoluted events of the book, which is more than "Issac is given a job to help a garuda; ominous statement made as to the fate of an entire city". The writing is, as expected, tremendously well-written, and it's certainly a literary highlight. The concepts are also deeply abstract and high-flown as well, ambitiously penetrating different dimensions in ways regular human beings can't hope to understand.

But this isn't a review, it's an analysis, and Steampunk Scholar Mike Perschon told me the other day, "You like to rip shit up." Which I do, so let's get to it. Spoilers ahoy, under the cut!

Themes of Gaslight Dogs

 My review of Karin Lowachee's Gaslight Dogs is up at Tor.com, and that one's fairly spoiler-free, so now here is the TOTALLY spoiler-y version consisting of my initial thoughts upon reading this fantastic book!

Jay Lake's Mainspring

I just finished Jay Lake's Mainspring. Here's my initial impression: I am thoroughly annoyed. This may change when I re-read it further down the line, but right now, colour me really annoyed.

Spoilers to follow. This is just a record for me, so I don't mind if you think it's tl;dr. It's not really a review, but my thoughts upon reading. This post is For The Herd, if I may say so.

Stephen Hunt's Court of the Air

Yes, I know there should be an essay on A:TLA here in place of this, but I also recently finished Stephen Hunt's Court of the Air and I wanted to note down before I forget and have to get the book all over again (which I probably will have to) some salient things I noticed about it. And there are spoilers here. It's not a review per se, but a condensation of some of the many thoughts I had while reading it.