So, the weekend… part of it was spent looking for a crockery dresser, not entirely successfully (the H loved the place we dropped by first, but the prices are about 75% above what we’d be ready to pay for such a piece of furniture). Part of it was spent sorting out papers, using ye old method of “trash most of them, they’re not useful anymore”. I hadn’t realised until I got rid of stuff from my old workplace how liberating the entire process was (I loved my old workplace–it had a great atmosphere–; but moving on did me a world of good).

And part of it was spent revising a short story that I wrote over a year ago, “Starsong”. I think I’m done now, though I managed to crash Scrivener rather badly and had to reinstall from scratch. Currently brainstorming for a new project I pitched to my agent–urban fantasy set in Paris, but which has a gaping hole where the words “magic system” should be.

Oh, and we also got a headstart on Xmas shopping–ordered present for 3 people (out of the 7 we have to deal with), checked out stuff for a fourth, and I made my mind about a fifth (the H).

Recent reads: working my way through David Gemmell. I read those when I was a teenager in London, and I was rather afraid that they would not hold up to another reading. But actually, they’re pretty good. I’m really glad that although they feature strong stereotyping (Chiatze=China, Gothir=Persia, Drenai=Greece or somewhere thereabouts, Nadir=Mongols), the author never takes swipes at the various nations: people come in all colours and alignments, and we have as many Nadir madmen as Drenai ones. Also, they’re fairly gender-typed (though there are a few women fighters), but Gemmell never denigrates what women do, and indeed his fighters often find themselves envying women, knowing that the greater courage is on their side. And his heroes are just impressive and memorable, and he never hides that they have terrible flaws, but can rise above them (it’s been rather a lot of years, but I can remember Tenaka and Druss and Ananais quite clearly). All in all, very entertaining and satisfying, and I’m glad I had those around when I was ~16. I’m really sorry I never got to meet Gemmell in person, and tell him how much his books meant to me when I was growing up.

-Elizabeth Bear, New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, and The White City. A series of linked short stories and a novella, all set in an alternate history where the English Crown still has the colonies, and where magic works. It’s very effective urban fantasy, both drawing on the stereotype of the vampire as the ultimate seducer (vampires have groupies who only live for the pleasure of providing the ecstatic gift of blood, and are drawn into various relationships with humans–that run the gamut from patrons to abusers, from friends to walking pints of blood), and it just hits so many small details in a fashion that had me nodding along: for instance, at one point, one of the (rather long-lived) main characters reflects that churches are becoming unfriendly places because religion has changed beyond all recognition, compared to what he remembers from his childhood, and this is SO true. And it has Bear’s usual pretty writing, which flows along effortlessly (even though I’m sure the actual process of couching it onto paper involved blood and sweat); and wonderful and deep characters that refuse to become established stereotypes, and feel very much like real human beings with their flaws and frailties, but also their wonderful capacity for quiet heroism. I’m very much looking forward to the last book, Ad Aeternum.

-Steam-Powered 2, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft (review copy). I’m probably not in the target audience for this, because I’m not particularly fond of romance in general, and a lot of steampunk leaves me cold (the “mad adventure and costume” side doesn’t appeal overmuch to me). And, indeed, the main problem I had with this anthology was that I could predict a lot of the endings: if a story only has two women on stage, and it’s in a book of lesbian steampunk, well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what will happen… On balance, I thought that the best stories in the book were those that moved away from the stereotype of two women falling in love, and dealt with other aspects of the relationship: either further along in time, like Nisi Shawl’s “The Return of Cherie”, or by questioning its power dynamics and putting it into a colonial framework (such as Stephanie Lai’s “One Last Interruption Before We Begin”); or by eschewing the mad adventure steampunk altogether and focusing on much smaller-scale events (Alex Dally MacFarlane’s awesome “Selin that Has Grown in the Desert”, by far and above my favourite story in the book). I also enjoyed those stories with a very different setting and mindset: “In the Heart of Yellow Mountain” by Jaymee Goh is reminiscient of Chinese fairytales and adventures stories, and has a very unique vibe; “Not the Moon but the Stars” by Shveta Thakrar is set in a wonderfully recreated India that brims with lovely cultural details; and Zen Cho’s “The Terracotta Bride” takes Chinese Hell as its setting, deftly dealing with issues of power between the haves and have-nots (your status in Hell being, very appropriately, determined by how many children you had, and whether they’re still burning funeral offerings for you). Overall, even though I didn’t enjoy everything, the book as a whole is definitely worth reading. (and I suppose it says something about me that the stories I enjoyed most didn’t follow the brief of “independence, romance and adventure”, and tended to be written by people outside of the US, or by US POCs *sigh* I’ll go hide away now, promise).

Over at Speculate!, Brad Beaulieu and Gregory A Wilson are running a three-week special on Harbinger of the Storm: this week is the review of the book; next week will be an interview with me, and the following week will focus on writing techniques used within Harbinger.

Many thanks to Brad and Greg for the opportunity–not only did they read and dissect the book from cover to cover, they also arranged a three-way chat on Skype across three different time zones on a weekday, which is nothing short of heroic.

The podcast has featured authors such as K.J. Anderson, Patrick Rothfuss and N.K. Jemisin, and Brad and Greg have a palpable and infectious enthusiasm for all things genre. Go listen here, and check out past episodes, too!

In other shameless news, I opened my copy of Interzone 234 to discover that “The Shipmaker” had taken 4th place in the Readers’ Poll (behind Nina Allan’s “Flying in the Face of God” and two neat Jason Sanford stories), and that the illustration by Richard Wagner had tied for 1st place. Wow…

So, the H and I finally got to see Inception.

OK, so I can see what the fuss is all about. It’s a neat idea, and a great cast to assemble around it (props for Watanabe, whom I love, and Cillian Murphy who for once wasn’t stuck playing a psycho). And the movie tries so hard to be clever and to go beyond the ol’ Hollywood action thriller.

But but but…

It makes no sense.

Or, rather, to be more accurate: it sets up rules in its first half or so that it then spends most of the time ignoring.

For instance: a “kick” is supposed to wake up whoever is in a dream, as long as they’re not nestled in a deeper dream. So why did the very first “kick” (the van going over the bridge, which is explicitly referred to as a kick by Cobb) fail to wake up Arthur, who wasn’t under at the time?

Why does Fischer Junior not recognise Saito? Again, it’s clear that you can remember real life during the dreams, and yet Fischer Junior (the man who has been coached to take control of his father’s empire) doesn’t recognise the competitor who is their main target?

Why does no one (Arthur or Yussuf) bother to shape the dreams they’re in more strongly? The reason that was invoked at the start is that if you make too many modifications, projections will converge on you to kill you. Er… How is that different from what is happening in those dreams? (especially Arthur, who already has the entire hotel after him).

Or how about totems–they’re brought up, and then seem to serve no purpose, other than presage the “shocking” ending.

About that ending. For me, it’s pretty clear that Cobb is still dreaming. It’s strongly implied he’s been on the run from the police for a number of years, and yet his children have not aged a day when he does come back–worse, they’re in the exact same position they have been in flashbacks during the entire movie.

Unfortunately, I was too busy going “uh?” at the movie during the last half-hour or so that the “cleverness” of the ending entirely bypassed me…

The movie had so many great parts, but in the end, it didn’t gel for me. I kept expecting there would be some kind of a better twist there (in particular, Fischer Junior felt way too naïve for who he was supposed to be, and I kept expecting he’d turn the tables on the team. But no, he was exactly as foolish as he appeared all along), but honestly, I could see what twists there were coming a mile off.

Sigh. I might be becoming too jaded for this.

This is an odd movie. I came to it knowing Detective/Judge Dee from Robert Van Gulik’s Judge Dee series (and his translated Dee Gong An), and I confess I was expecting less wuxia and more, er, detecting?

The story is set in Tang China, in the days just before the coronation of Empress Wu (the only woman in China who ruled as Empress in her own right, and not as a consort or dowager). Wu is a ruhtless woman who rose to power with the magical help of the Chaplain Lu Li (a spirit who takes on both human and deer form, and helped her clean the court of those nobles and officials which opposed her); for her own coronation, she has commissioned a huge statue of the Buddha to be completed in time for the ceremonies. All is going according to plan–except that court officials involved with the Buddha’s construction spontaneously start catching fire. Empress Wu, frightened by this plot against her, calls back Detective Dee–a respected judge who spoke against her and was imprisoned for state treason.

Let’s start with the good points: the cast. Tsui Hark has got together the cream of the cream of Hong Kong cinema, and the cast list is a fan’s wet dream. The setting is also (for the most part) marvelous, bringing to life Luoyang in its heyday, as well as more exotic locations such as the Phantom Mart, a city beneath the city, and a weird monastery that might or might not be the theater for black magic… The set pieces are also very good: the actions scenes are fantastically choregraphed (and this from someone who doesn’t care much for action).

The bad… Remember that summary? That’s pretty much the extent of the plot. Well, OK, there’s slightly more, but overall it’s the most disappointing bit of the movie: for all its cool ideas and cool characters (and awesome actors), it does end up feeling a little light. All the set pieces seem to be put there mostly to keep the spectators from getting bored: as soon as the action lags a bit, we get ninjas and martial arts randomly thrown in. Also, I did expect that it wasn’t going to make sense in the scientific fashion of the world (ie, the explanation for the murders was probably not going to hold water by Western forensic standards), but internal coherence would have been nice. For instance, an explanation why and how the bad guys could hire so many ninjas–and other fine points of the plot such as the Chaplain’s role in events…

Overall, it’s a decent movie for an evening; but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again, and it did leave me feeling a little disappointed. A bit like Curse of the Golden Flower (which also had the ninjas randomly thrown in). As historical wuxia movies go, I much preferred Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; as far as purely historical movies go, Red Cliffs (which takes liberties with Three Kingdoms, but still).

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Also, I’m a history geek, and I kept complaining about “but, but, Luoyang doesn’t have a sea with three-masted ships, it’s by a river!”, and “why does the giant Buddha look like Guanyin before Guanyin actually existed?” This is why you shouldn’t watch a movie with me…
(I might, of course, be wrong about all of this–being hampered by my inability to understand Chinese)

So, I finally got a chance to read J. Damask’s Wolf at the Door (published by Lyrical Press)–and really, really liked it. It’s a urban fantasy set in Singapore: Jan Xu is part of the lang, the Chinese werewolves: her pack is her family, and the thing around which her world revolves. She has married and settled down with her partner Ming, who isn’t a werewolf; and she has two small girls, whom she raises half like humans, half like wolves.

Then Marianne comes back. Marianne is Jan Xu’s sister, but there’s a catch: raised like all werewolves, Marianne failed to shape-shift when she hit puberty. Though considered a member of the family, Marianne has always chafed at what she saw as second-class membership of the pack, and left Singapore after quarrelling with Jan Xu. But now she’s back, boyfriend in tow–and she seems to have ideas of her own about where to take the pack…

This is original on several levels: the most obvious is the setting, which shows us not only Singapore seen through the view of an insider, with no exoticisation or over-description of familiar items and locations. It’s very casual about everyday life, but nevertheless effectively manages to convey not only Jan Xu’s life and her excursions to all ends of the city (including a hunting reserve in Malaysia), but also to effectively base its mythology on its setting, making the most of Singapore as a crossroads, teeming with immigrants who each bring their own folklore (I loved the bar which had vampires mingling with nagas). I also liked the way Damask ties her werewolves to Chinese folklore, rather than to European myths; it’s very nicely done.

The second thing is the emphasis on family. A lot of urban fantasy is focused on the single girl (who might have children of her own, but who is still secretly looking for The One); and while those are definitely strong stories, it was really nice to see a book which focused on, well, what happens after the wedding and the childbirths. Marianne’s returns has repercussions on Jan Xu’s family life, and her relationship with her husband and her two girls: some of my favorite scenes take place in the quiet times at the flat, when the emphasis is on how she and Ming can deal with the consequences of what happened, and how to best shield the girls from it all. Jan Xu also has strong ties to her extended family, which nicely dovetail into the pack mentality of werewolves.

It’s not perfect. There is a set of flashbacks to Jan Xu’s past as a teen vigilante (sort of The Famous Five, except with dragons and other supernatural creatures), which feel a bit out of place: I love the background and the fact that they place Jan Xu’s friends as strong individuals (and I would really love to see those expanded into a YA novel), but the way they’re scattered throughout the story feels a little haphazard, and I felt those sections could have greatly benefitted from tidying up. But, all in all, it was a very nice and interesting read, and definitely worth a look if you’re tired of urban fantasies set in the US.

J. Damask should swing by at some point for a guest post–look out for it soon!

So….

Books read: Steven Brust’s Phoenix Guards, Five Hundred Years after, Viscount of Adrilhanka. Basically, a fantasy version of The Three Musketeers (and sequels), set in the same universe as the Vlad Taltos books, except a lot earlier. It’s faithful to the point of adopting a faux 19th-Century narrative voice, which I find awesome (but which irritated a lot of people, if one judges by the Amazon reviews). It’s really fun to see characters from the Taltos books making an appearance (Morrolan and Aliera remain favourites, though Mario isn’t bad either), and the retelling keeps the spirit of Dumas while having enough twists and turns to make this thoroughly entertaining. I’m thankful that the last book, Viscount, didn’t turn out as unrelentingly grim as The Vicomte de Bragelonne (I love the musketeers, but what Dumas put them through in the last book is painful for me–I know old age and decay and death are part of life, but I’d rather not have it all paraded before me at such an unrelenting pace). Slightly disappointed by Aerich, who lost a bit of panache compared to Athos (mostly by not having a connection to the adversary of the second book, unlike Athos who was tied to Mordaunt via Milady), but Tazendra as Porthos was awesome (female, and a sorcerer to boot. I’m in love). And Pel is more than a match for Aramis.

And I finally got my copy of Irene Kuo’s Key to Chinese Cooking, a thick volume on how to cook Chinese food–I saw good recs on it as a book that focused on techniques and on the reasoning behind said techniques (rather than a collection of recipes which tell you nothing about the cooking principles); and the book certainly looks very good in that regard. It’s got everything from chicken stock to dumplings and desserts, and it looks like the Chinese answer to Ginette Mathiot’s Je Sais Cuisiner (I Know How to Cook , another thick classic, this time on French food. BTW, if you don’t have it, I highly recommend it as the Bible of French cooking–an English translation apparently just came out–it’s the kind of old-fashioned book that has no illustrations, but that thoroughly dissects every single basic concept of cooking, and has recipes for basically anything under the sun).

Movies watched: I finally got around to watching Day of the Moon (the followup to the Doctor Who episode I’d seen at Eastercon), and had enough closure on the plot to wait for the DVDs of season 6 (I don’t think the show is shown in France, at least not anymore, as it flopped pretty badly when they attempted to show it. It’s very British, and I can understand why it wouldn’t work over here). Anyway, it was a pleasing if sometimes overblown episode, as a lot of Doctor Who episodes are. Mostly redeemed by that awesome moment between the Doctor and River Song at the end (I’m not a fan of the plot point, but I do love Matt Smith’s behaviour during that bit); and of course by that final teaser, which I don’t expect to be resolved before the end of the season. I did confirm that I liked Matt Smith way better than I did David Tennant.
Rewatched the pilot episode of Firefly, and fell in love all over again with the characters. Darn, does Joss Whedon know how to write an ensemble cast.

Writing done: er, not that much. I have the skeleton of a plot for the space station story, and am currently attempting to find a subplot. The characters keep multiplying (in true Dreams of Red Mansions fashion), and I’m not entirely sure I can afford to keep them all…

Cooking: express bún chà giỏ yesterday, to finish off some of the salad. Today, attempting cari bò, Vietnamese beef curry (well, sort of. A cross between cari bò and ratatouille, which should be interesting once I’ve worked out the proportions). Next week, I’m taking part in my office’s cake baking competition, with a theme of “red”, so I’ve been researching recipes, and I think I know what to cook (another improvisation. I’m not telling what, since it’s a secret until Wednesday).

Misc.: got a bit grumpy at yet another story purportedly set in France which failed to get the basics right, but decided it wasn’t worth getting angry for long.

(somewhat rambling, as we’re still in the midst of watching it).

A while ago, I bought a set of the first four seasons of Doctor Who (the reboot, not the older series), for a couple reasons: first and foremost was our overdose on American TV shows, which have an amazing tendency to sound the same and display the same set of clichés (seriously, if there’s one more attempt to depict Mexico as a lawless place held by cartels, I’ll scream). Second was, well, the embarrassing feeling we might be missing out on something, and that rather more embarrassing feeling of being completely at sea when a group of fans (and there are many of those) started to debate the merits of the various doctors and companions. Third, we’d got a season of Torchwoood as a gift, watched it, and kind of liked it (well, OK. Most of the plots sucked, but who doesn’t love Captain Jack? And there were a few gems there, even though really well-hidden).

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when we finally cracked those open and started watching them. So…

Well, for starters, it *is* a rather nice change to US TV. It’s got a very camp side, a sense that it’s not entirely taking itself seriously (much like the Doctor). I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not, but having what I presume are old enemies from the show appear again gives it a retro style that contributes to the overall campiness. I’m not necessarily using that in a bad way, but it’s honestly very hard to take seriously an episode such as “Bad Wolf”, which features parodies of all major reality TV shows (Anne-Droid, anyone?), and also hard to be genuinely frightened by the Daleks. Or the one with werewolf Queen Victoria and the kungfu monks…

I don’t know if this is just me getting better as a writer, but this time around I can very clearly see the difference between the various scriptwriters and their episodes–unlike US TV shows, where I can seldom remember who wrote what, and the quality of an episode seems less linked to who wrote it. I don’t know if US shows have a more unified scriptwriting policy? In any case, another major difference to most US shows is that the variance in quality is also striking: there are episodes which really, really suck, and episodes which are really great (“Girl in the Fireplace”, for instance. Like many people, I’m a Moffat fan). It’s interesting to see. Russell Davies, for instance, has a greater liking for the overblown drama, which sits ill with me; I tend to prefer more restraint.

Unlike the H, I already had some idea of the basic principles; and while the show does a great job of explaining things as they come along, the regeneration thing was rather difficult for him to swalllow. Overall, mind you, I’m not entirely sure that we got over it: it’s rather a shock to have got used a particular actor and then see him vanish, and Christopher Eccleston was just plain great. Now I understand where all those intense discussions about the Doctor’s incarnations come from.

It’s still rather desperately all-White (there is Mickey, but so far he hasn’t been a major character), though I do appreciate the variety of social classes on display, and the fact that the show doesn’t restrict itself to London (yay for Cardiff and its temporal rift). At times, it also felt like “companion waits for Doctor to save her”, which I can sort of understand given the show’s setup, but still… still, it’s a woman waiting for a humanoid-shaped man to save the day, which did get annoying after a while. I don’t know if things get better after that (we’re at “Girl in the Fireplace”).

It’s also, well, not profound–purely entertaining, which it does very well, but hardly in the league of shows that ask hard questions (your mileage may vary, but I tend to put shows such as Trigun or Battlestar Galactica here, at least in their first few eps. Stargate, for instance, is also pure entertainment, with awful assumptions made about aliens, Earth and the good old US of A).

So, anyway, that’s how we feel so far. Still two seasons and a half to go (plus the specials, and season 5). We’ll see how it goes.

So, in the series of “cookbooks I use all the time”, this:

As the name indicates, it’s a list of ingredients vs. possible substitutions if say, you absolutely need rice wine but don’t have an Asian shop ready. It also lists cooking method substitutions: what to do if you don’t have a claypot or a barbecue grill. It’s not exhaustive (for instance, I couldn’t find an entry for potato starch), but it’s making a freakingly good attempt at being so: the list of ingredients includes various obscure French cheeses, panko, and a lot of the Asian ingredients I often find that I have to replace at the last minute (dropping an ingredient from a Vietnamese recipe is usually a bad idea, since they rely so much on the layering of flavours to achieve their effect–remove one, and the dish kind of lacks oomph). The substitutions are pretty smart, too (even though some of them seem a bit off to me at times). But mostly, they’re smart.

The thing I use it for most, though? It’s not the substitution list: it’s the little header besides each ingredient, which lists corresponding volume and weight equivalence (ie, 1 shallot=1 tablespoon chopped shallot=15 to 30g). Pretty much a lifesaver for all those recipes which call for ingredients by weight, whereas you tend to buy vegetables by units (well, I do, at any rate).

There’s also tables listing common ingredients such as apples, potatoes, vinegars and explaining their properties. It’s less useful for me, because they’re US varieties, and for instance, the apples list has about 20-30% varieties in common with the apples I can find here. If you live in the US, I’d imagine that section would be way, way more practical.
(and I do wish there was a section on the different starches and thickeners and their uses, but fortunately Cook’s Thesaurus has a great one).

So, over Tuesday evening, the H and I finished up Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. Having watched both animes, and read the manga, I thought it would be fun to post some thoughts on the various versions. Insofar as I can remember, the FMA:B anime follows the manga pretty closely (if there are divergences I haven’t spotted, feel free to yell at me in the comments).
(spoilers below the cut. You have been warned)
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