Very short post before I go to bed take a shower and catch up on very very overdue email.

It was awesome. We crawled our way through scrumptious food, hung around with relatives, and I got to show off some (very limited) Vietnamese skills; and we visited Huế, which is so totally worth the trip! The H looks fine (I was worried he’d be a little frightened off by all the strange stuff); and he liked the trip I also have a few gripes about clueless guidebooks and clueless tourists, but I’ll get to those when I’m fully rested.

We’re also the proud owners of: 1kg of chả lụa, 2 grapefuits, and four green mangoes, one Vietnamese-English/English-Vietnamese dictionary, one cookbook (this one, chosen at random off the shelves, and which is an encyclopedia of dishes from A to X [1]), and one book of fairytales (this one, which had the merit of having tales I could recognise, and illustrations, always a handy thing for linguistically-challenged people like me). And a couple other things like 15 chopsticks rests with a lotus shape–from this shop, which basically had me go “oh…” all the while we were in there–their designs are a smart cross of East meets West (with a purely Vietnamese aesthetic): they have both a Western-style table ie plates and forks, and an Eastern style one ie rice bowls and porcelain spoons, and all of it is so pretty! Moments like those, I wish we didn’t already have a complete set of plates and rice bowls at home… But alas, the cupboards are bulging with stuff, so we stuck to the chopsticks rests, which should be put to the double use of chopsticks rest and knife rests, depending on what the meal’s like…

[1] Vietnamese has no Z, and very few words that start with Y.

“Có công mài sắt, có ngày nên kim”: “If you work hard enough at sharpening iron, one day you’ll have a needle” (literally “Put effort [into] sharpen[ing] iron, have one day in the end [a] needle”). Basically, insofar as I can tell, the closest equivalent would be that nothing is obtained without hard work. Again, I’m pretty sure of my translation, a lot less sure about my reading of the proverb.

Progress continues apace; I’m turning to vocabulary words that might actually be useful out there, namely: “nhà băng” (bank), “thông hành” (passport), and “khách sạn” (hotel). My vocabulary continues to be overwhelmingly focused on food, though: at the very least, menu-reading isn’t going to be a problem (nor is ordering, at least if they don’t answer back…).

Had last lesson before leaving; if nothing else, it confirmed that boy, I need to work on my neutral and short-descending accent (and my diphtongs and my “th”, and so on, and so forth). Should be fun…

That’s it from me. Don’t know how much internet I’m going to have over there (it’s not that there isn’t any, but rather that we might be busy). See you in two weeks?

And a last one before I leave on holidays…

The longlist for France’s Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire has been released, and, er, D’Obsidienne et de Sang on there a great number of times–the novel’s longlisted for Best Foreign Novel, my wonderful translator Laurent Philibert-Caillat is longlisted for Best Translator for his translations of my book and Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City, and my cover for the French edition (produced by Larry Rostant) is also longlisted for Best Work of Art.

Er, wow?

Many congrats to Lauren Beukes for doing a similar triptych, to Lionel Davoust for being longlisted for Best French Novel, and to ezine Angle Mort for making the list!

(shortlist is due out at the end of March, winners announced in May)

-E. Sedia on copyright law and intellectual property. Seriously stuff worth reading and mulling on.

-Edroxy (Roxanne) has a series on French Female Writers Through the Centuries: her latest review is of Marie NDiaye’s Three Strong Women, here. Whole series is worth reading, but this has some interesthing thoughts about NDiaye herself, and her sense of identity, or “truncated mixity” as she calls it, and handling what people expect her to write vs what she actually writes.

-Nancy Fulda on Readers, Feedback and Good Stories. One of the hardest lessons I learnt as a beginning writer is that you can’t please everyone (probably because by temperament and by upbringing, I tend to be nice to everyone)

–Range of Ghosts, by Elizabeth Bear (ARC provided by author): set in a fantasy version of the Silk Road Empires (their cultures spanning the gamut between pseudo-Muslim, pseudo-Mongol and pseudo-Chinese), Range of Ghosts. Temur was left for dead by his uncle in a power struggle–his brother slain, his true name lost, and with a horde of ghosts hunting after him. Meanwhile, Samarkar, who was once a princess, sacrifices her body to become a wizard, away from the petty squabbles of her family. But when an entire city is laid waste by sorcery and hungry ghosts, both Temur and Samarkar find themselves drawn into a fight that could change their entire world…
It’s hard to talk about this book without gushing, because it’s so good. It has Bear’s gorgeous prose and complex characters, as well as intricate worldbuilding that recalls the cultures of the Silk Road–a rarity in a field where non-Western fantasy is still the odd thing out rather than the norm. And the plot zips along from gorgeous set-piece to set-piece (Samarkar’s exploration of the ruined city is wonderful in this regard, conveying both the richness of what has been lost and a growing sense of danger). The one thing I regretted was not having a map (though, as this was an ARC, it might well be that there’s a map in the final edition); and the other was that I was going to have to wait an entire year to get the sequel to this, Steles of the Sky. *want*
Oh, and did I mention the horse? Temur’s mare, Bansh (aka Dumpling) deserves a book of her own. Seriously. She’s so much smarter than any of the characters, and darn if she doesn’t know it, too. I’m not a horse-lover, but I definitely could love this horse to bits. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens to her in the next book.

–Obsidian Moon, Obsidian Eye: werewolf Jan Xu is now leader of her pack–and, following the events of Wolf at the Door, hopes to raise her children in peace, and enjoy the company of her pack and her friends in peace. But sinister things are afoot in Singapore’s supernatural world, with the resurgence of a darkness Jan Xu thought banished long ago. At the centre of it all are the Drakes–the Western dragons and fire-breathes, aggressive and eager to make their mark on the city–and Gabriel, a half-drake half-Chinese dragon who seems to be hiding much more than a mixed parentage. When Jan Xu’s friends begin to disappear, she finds herself confronted with an unexpected enemy–and the consequences of something she put behind a long time ago…
I liked Wolf at the Door a great deal, and this is more of the excellent same–except with more polished writing, better structure, and stronger characters. Damask’s Singapore–multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and a crossroads for different cultures–continues to be impressively portrayed, and I just loved seeing the drakes square off against the Asian dragons. I did have one niggle about the fact that Gabriel ended up choosing “sides” (but that’s just my personal belief that mixed-bloods shouldn’t necessarily have to pick one side of the family above the other). But I’m definitely looking forward to more of those characters, and more of that awesome setting.

-Two Dudes in an Attic reviews Harbinger of the Storm–with snarks, but without harming any owls
-Blue Tyson’s capsule review of Master of the House of Darts
-Martin McGrath on “Why does SF hate Ordinary People?”. Fair point about the elitism of SF, though I wonder how much of it is already present in literature (I can’t remember who, but someone pointed out that recent literature, especially the source literature of SF, was the province of the bourgeoisie; while the older texts were the province of nobility)

In other news, busy weekend ahead: friends coming over on Saturday, and we’re probably headed into the 13e Sunday to see the New Year’s procession.

-My friend Cécile is having a poll on her LJ for readers of SFF–if some of you feel like dropping by and answering, it would be awesome. She’s doing this for her PhD, and she needs enough data before she can work on the results. The poll is here.

-The SFF translation awards is looking for donations and/or prizes: this is a prize for best translated SFF (split equally between the writer and the translator), both for long form and short form. It is solely financed by grants and by generous sponsors, so naturally seeks enough money to award a decent prize.
In a field which is over-focused on Western Anglophone works (I’ve rehashed this to death, so I won’t add anything), this is a most welcome breath of fresh air. Plus, awesome works on that list!. I’ve offered up a signed copy of Master of the House of Darts as a donation prize, and there is plenty more cool stuff on that list (and more to come!). So, if you feel like helping a worthy cause…

Chúc Mừng Năm Mới! Tôi chúc các bạn mạnh khỏe và nhiều niềm vui.

(normally, it should say something like “Happy New Year. I wish you all good health and many joys”, but since I basically cobbled the sentence together with a dictionary, I’m sceptical about the actual meaning…)

Hope it’s a great Year of the Dragon for everyone!

(ETA: yes, I’m aware it’s still Friday by 30 minutes… I screwed up with my posting system, and I don’t feel like undoing the automatic twitter and FB notifications)

So, a very quick update, because 15+ people are showing up tonight tomorrow night at my house, in order to see off the Lunar Year in style (ok, I lie, nothing to do with that. We’re housewarming with a bad sense of timing).

–D’Obsidienne et de Sang, the French translation of Servant of the Underworld, would appear to be a finalist for the Prix Masterton, a French literary award for SFF and horror (mainly geared towards horror and dark fantasy if the list of past winners is to be believed). The shortlist includes China Miéville’s The City and the City, and Gail Carriger’s Soulless (opening novel of a series which, amusingly, I’m reading right now) Er, wow? (and yes, the irony of being listed under “Fiction translated into French” has not escaped me).
-Couple Obsidian and Blood spottings: Cynthia Ward mentions both Servant and Harbinger in her end-of-year recap for Acqueduct Press, Harbinger gets noted by Duncan Lawie in his end-of-year review for Strange Horizons; Jacob at Drying Ink (who did this amazing interview with me a while back) ponders why you should read Historical Fantasy in front of a rather fetching cover of Master of the House of Darts
-hum, did I mention “The Bleeding Man” was going to be in Ian Whates’ Dark Currents, an anthology debuting at Eastercon which includes Adrian Tchaikovsky, Adam Nevill, Tricia Sullivan, Rod Rees, Nina Allan, Andrew Hook, Finn Clarke, Lavie Tidhar, Jan Edwards, Emma Coleman, Rebecca J Payne, Sophia McDougall, Una McCormack, Neil Williamson, V.C. Linde? No, I don’t think I did (I’ve known for a bit, but it wasn’t public).

I’m working on an SF story involving probabilities, and finally got in my nominations for the BSFA (short fiction, since I didn’t actually read any 2011 novels except for the aforementioned Gail Carriger (Heartless, which technically I haven’t started, having just downloaded it to my ereader).

Actual content to come, including mini-reviews of Elizabeth Bear’s Range of Ghosts (short version: you have to pre-order this book now), and David Gemmell’s Troy.

-More “Scattered Along the River of Heaven” linkage: Two Dudes in an Attic (in an analysis that is not only gushing but starting to rival the story in length, wow), Jonathan Crowe, and Marina
-Warpcore SF reviews Master of the House of Darts
-Jim Hines tries to duplicate female poses on genre covers, and posts pictures. Hilarious. (even though, yeah, women do move a little more easily at the hips than men, it’s true that none of those poses look exactly comfortable for men). genreviews does the same thing comparing male and female poses on covers.
-Related: Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits, or why boob plates are the most impractical idea ever.