Dream with Our Eyes Open

These are the first two volumes of the planned Daevabad Trilogy. City of Brass landed the author on the short list for what is now known as the Astounding Award for Best New Writer (formerly the Campbell Award).

The story is fantasy based on Middle Eastern mythology, history, and religion. Nahri, a young con artist of 18th-century Cairo, Egypt, ekes out a modest living by running various scams, including exorcisms. One night, the seeming nonsense she is chanting to drive a demon from an unfortunate girl has a shockingly real effect: the demon-possessed victim follows Nahri after the ceremony is over and starts to attack her. Out of nowhere, a warrior appears to defend her. Eventually, Nahri and her new protector escape on a flying carpet.

Her protector, nicknamed Dara, calls himself a Daeva, a type of being that we would consider a djinn. Nahri seems to be the descendant of a race of magical healers revered by the djinni, which explains how she can usually heal herself and sometimes other people. Dara insists on bringing her to Daevabad, center of the Daeva world, a mighty city hidden by magic from human eyes and populated not only by Daevas but also by the racially similar but culturally different Djinni.

Perhaps I ought to add that the Daevas are Zoroastrians, while their Djinni fellows are quite devout Muslims.

Daevabad is also, not too surprisingly (I mean, it's clearly that sort of fantasy), a hotbed of evil politics, religious schisms, feuds, and oppression of the shafit, people of mixed human and Daeva blood (like ... Nahri). Nahri soon becomes a fiercely contested pawn, albeit a willful one, in the power games of the city's ruler and his enemies.

The story gains another narrator in Prince Alizayd (Ali), the ruler's younger son, a fiercely loyal and devout warrior who is meant to become the city's military leader. He and Nahri develop a sort-of friendship. And then things start to go very, very badly.

It's pretty much impossible to discuss The Kingdom of Copper without spoilers for the first book, except to say that it is very much not a happy book (although it is a page-turner, like the first one) and ends violently and quite surprisingly.

I enjoyed these but I didn't love them. Some of the themes discussed are quite serious, and I have seen a number of discussions online about whether the author handles them well. I've read that she's a convert to Islam, and some readers don't think she has an "Own Voices" viewpoint on the religious and cultural aspects of the story.

Nahri could easily be Smurfette (TV Tropes link), but Chakraborthy has actually provided a number of female characters to interact with our heroine and with Ali and Dara. None of them are leads/viewpoint characters, but some of them are engaging and all are pretty interesting. Nahri also shows a lot of growth as the story progresses.

Ali has Lots of Issues, and Dara, as has been mentioned elsewhere, is a Hot Mess (and hah, thats somewhat of a bad joke, but I will let it stand).

I certainly intend to read The Empire of Gold, the third volume, which should come out next year.

The author of this book is a finalist for for the "not-a-Hugo" Campbell Award, give to "the best new writer whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the two previous calendar years."

Fang Runin ("Rin") is an orphan, adopted mainly to do housework for a family with no daughter. Faced with a marriage to a suitor whose main qualification is the wealth he'll bring to her foster family, Rin takes one of the few avenues available: she studies herself nearly blind and demented and manages to snag a position at her nation's elite military academy, Sinegard.

Unfortunately, rather than being impressed with her determination and hard work, most of the faculty and students at Sinegard despise Rin for being a peasant. Some actively want her to fail out. Her situation becomes better in some ways and rather worse in others when she pledges herself to the eccentric Lore Master Jiang rather than one of the more respected masters. Jiang detects and encourages Rin's hidden potential for shamanic magic—"lore." She begins to think she may have found a place.

Meanwhile, the Empire is threatened by a powerful invader, the Federation of Mugen. When the Federation makes its move, Rin and the other Sinegard cadets have an all-too-real practical example of the benefits and limits of their military education. As many have noted, this is where the story takes a very dark turn. Kuang uses the accounts of real-world atrocities such as the Nanking Massacre as the basis for a series of horrifying scenes in which Rin and her new comrades, a band of intriguing misfits with unusual powers, do their best to stem the tide. One of the effects of all this is that Rin is finally able to tap the core of her powers.

The result is not pleasant. Raised with little if any sense of compassion or ethics, accustomed to having to push herself to the utmost for results, and lacking any superiors whom she respects, Rin starts to become a monster.

I will probably want to continue this series if only tp find out whether Rin ever comes back across the moral event horizon. But this is not a light-hearted read.

I have not been to the movies for ages. Nothing recently has been impressing me enough to persuade my husband to go. But our grad student daughter is home for winter break, and my sister-in-law and our college student nephew were in town this weekend, and they wanted to go, so we all packed up and went together.

I enjoyed the hell out of this, It was funny and intellectually engaging in a lightweight way, with a rhythmic and humorous use of classic tropes to introduce each Spider-being avatar as they showed up. It was also touching and emotionally honest and made me cry, both at happy parts (which is typical for me) but also at sad parts (which I usually weather dry-eyed). I think I needed the catharsis.

It's visually busy but rather enthralling in that way as well. Because the show was close to sold out, we were sitting closer to the screen than I prefer (assigned seating: unusual!), but the Regal Majestic Silver Spring has put in the new reclining seats, so this wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as it might have been.

And the Stan Lee cameo was cute and touching.

Highly recommended for anyone who likes comics at all.

Hey, long time no post, and this one will be short, but I've got to start getting back to posting somehow.

So I just started what looks like a delightful new-to-me manga series. It comes with an impeccable pedigree for being delightful: it's by Ouran High School Host Club's Bisco Hatori.

Behind the Scenes!! stars awkward, terribly introverted Ranmaru Kurisu, who was the odd one out in his family of hearty, hardy fisherfolk. Now at university, he's been creeping around trying not to draw attention to himself. One day, he encounters an apparent Zombie Apocalypse and is so shocked that he passes out. When he wakes from his faint, he discovers that it was a movie scene and that he has been rescued by the eccentric, creative members of the Art Squad, who provide costumes, makeup, sets, and special effects for the university's three film-making clubs.

Can Ranmaru find himself with this bunch? The answer is, of course, yes, and it's as much fun for us as it is for him.

There are two more volumes so far (I only have vol. 1 currently), and I will be picking them up ASAP. It's a good (if temporary) antidote to the current sociopolitical horror show.

Hugo Award Nominee

Maia Drazhar is the youngest son of the emperor of the Elflands, but his mother was a goblin princess whom his father married for diplomatic reasons. He has spent all of his eighteen years in exile, first with his mother but most recently alone except for his guardian, an embittered drunkard. But then Emperor Varenechibel IV and Maia's three older half-brothers all die in the same airship accident, and the unwanted boy wakes up to find that he has become the emperor.

The outline of the story is a classic fantasy trope, but Maia never obtains a magic sword nor leads a troop in battle. He finds the imperial palace to be every bit as lonely as the dreary manor house of his exile, at first, and his deprived upbringing has left him ill-prepared for the task of ruling a large, complex empire on the verge of an industrial revolution. And that airship accident? Wasn't an accident … .

On the basis of my own reading and the writeups I've seen from others, your enjoyment of this book will depend a lot on whether you can deal with a lot of (fairly well done) antiquated formal language in your dialogue and whether you would like something that "fulfills … wishes about nerdy, bullied people achieving great things through peaceful means" (to quote writer/editor Nick Mamatas, who did not find the book to be his sort of thing at all). I enjoyed it enough that it's already become a comfort read.

( Cut for more, including some spoilers )

Note: Katherine Addison is a pseudonym of Sarah Monette, a/k/a truepenny.

Brilliant and determined young Tara Abernathy has overreached herself in an attempt to make use of her training in the Craft and seems likely to pay with her life. Fortunately, fate intervenes in the form of Elayne Kevarian, a senior adept with the necromantic firm of Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao, who makes Tara a job offer she can't and in fact doesn't want to refuse. Soon they are deeply enmeshed in the affairs of the great city of Alt Coulomb, which has been until recently ruled by the benign god Kos Everburning … who turned up dead recently during the regular post-midnight watch of the young cleric Abelard, whose cigarette addiction is an act of devotion to Kos' fiery nature.

The might of Kos will linger until the next dark of the moon, powering the trains and furnaces of his city, but Tara and Ms. Kevarian are running out of time to solve the mystery of the deity's death and arrange for his resurrection to keep Alt Coulomb from falling. There are plenty of other mysteries to be solved as well, which may or may not have to do with the death of Kos. For instance, who killed Judge Cabot in such a spectacularly grisly fashion? With Abelard in tow, Tara runs errands and does research for her boss in a city filled with unlikely wonders, and when the advocate for Kos' creditors shows up, both Tara and her boss come face to face with pasts they'd sooner forget.

Blogger-critic James Nicoll said of these books: "I am very annoyed at the people who have been selecting my reading material for the last 13 years for not having ever sent me a Max Gladstone book and with Gladstone for not having more books in print now that I have discovered them." I feel much the same way. Magical technology, technological magic, women who are badass mage-lawyers, female mentor-apprentice relationships, men and women who are old buddies but not lovers, dead and resurrected deities, vampire pirate captains, cities with jammin' nightclubs and living gargoyles, and so much more: this is one of the most exciting new fantasies I've read in decades.

One other really great thing to note. See this cover for Three Parts Dead? It's accurate in its portrayal of Tara, who is described at one point as "Dark skin, five seven, curly black hair, curvy, freckles. Last seen surrounded by a halo of flame …." Oh yes, Gladstone has no trouble at all with presenting a very diverse cast of characters.

So this what happens when the Mr.and cho have a date night: we go see a cartoon!  Actually, it was a lot of fun, and I cried continuously for the last 20 minutes or so because it made me so happy.

Best buddies Maria, Joaquin, and Manolo have a lot of fun getting into trouble together in their small Mexican town, until Maria's father decides to send her away to Spain to be educated to be a lady. Joaquin and Manolo, under the tutelage of their grandfather and father (respectively), train as a soldier and a toreador (also respectively) -- except that Manolo really wants to be a musician.  Unbeknownst to the kids, however, the underworld deities La Muerte (lovely queen of the remembered dead) and the sinister trickster Xibalba (lord of the grim land of the forgotten dead) have placed a bet as to which boy will wed Maria when the kids grow up.

If you want a movie where the good guys win for the right reasons (with the help of their families) and the man and woman kick tremendous ass together, you should enjoy this.  Also, some of the big animated spectacles are amazing.

In modern-day Italy, a shadowy but seemingly benevolent organization takes in young girls whose futures are hopeless: Henrietta, the only surviving member of a family that was slaughtered; Rico, who was born without limbs and whose parents were increasingly unable to care for her; Triela, a child of mixed race from Tunisia who had been kidnapped and spoiler and squick/trigger warning used as a victim in a snuff film; and so on.

In truth, the Agency for Social Welfare (excellent choice of name: so bland and boring, no?) "treats" these girls by surgically altering them and brainwashing them to forget their former lives, turning them into near-unstoppable assassins that the agency calls cyborgs. This process also shortens their overall lifespan considerably, although because the program is still pretty much experimental, good data on the life of a cyborg is not really available.

Each girl is paired with an adult male "handler." Given that this is manga, this set-up could have been skeevy as hell, but although the sexual element is not totally ignored (Triela, who seems to be around 13, is definitely grappling with romantic feelings toward her handler), it's mostly a very minor element in the relationships. The pairings are called "fratellos" – that is, basically, a set of siblings.

There's an ongoing plot involving a terrorist group, which provides opportunities for the agency to use the girls' powers (although they are also involved in some very cold-hearted murders for general political expediency). We are shown the terrorists' interactions with each other, during which they discuss their political philosophies, so that they are not just faceless targets. Personalities and relationships, in fact, are the focus of the series: the girls' relationships not only with their handlers, but with each other. We get lots of scenes of their training and their down time in their dorm, when they talk about life in general as well as what they have been doing.

Despite a persistent feeling that this is all going to end in tears, I'm fascinated by this series and am enjoying it. The attitude of the trainers toward their doomed charges makes me think a bit of CLAMP's Clover, while the brainwashing and training of the girls recalls similar scenes in the childhoods of the azi (programmed clones) Catlin II and Florian II in C.J. Cherryh's Cyteen, who are destined for security work.

The artwork is more utilitarian than striking, but it gets the work done. It's very detailed and provides a lot of gun porn: wikis detailing what weapons each girls uses can be found easily online. There's a certain amount of male gaze – this is a shounen series – but it's not quite voyeuristic. We see girls changing their clothes, stretching (in spandex exercise gear), and in hospital gowns for procedures, but the treatment of these scenes mostly seemed to me more expository than exploitative. (And I was surprised to find that this was not a seinen series. The relationships between the girls and their handlers seems like prime moe.)

( Read more ... with spoilers! )

The review of the Peruvian place will have to wait, because right now I want to talk about the awesome Chinese meal we had last night.

Washingtonian magazine does two big sets of restaurant listings every year: 100 Best and Cheap Eats. The 100 Best just came out, One of the places they mentioned was Sichuan Jin River (formerly called Sichuan Pavilion). Szechuan is not generally our favorite (neither the Mr. nor I care for really spicy food, and I simply can't eat bell peppers), but the review this time was so enticing (and we usually agree about 85% of the time with these writeups) that we decided to give it a try.

Really, the only problem that we had was that the review's recommendations weren't necessarily easy to match up with items on the menu once we got there. But with the things that did match up, the waitress' advice about the specials, and smillaraaq's suggestions, we did really well.

We started off with lotus root salad. I had been wanting to try lotus roots for a while. The salad was light, tangy, and slightly spicy; the slices of lotus root are crunchy and a bit crisper than water chestnuts. There were some bell peppers (red and green) in it, but they were easy for me to avoid. Then we had a scallion pancake, something we also get at A&J: this one was even better, a little lighter and with more scallions.

The first main dish was flounder with black bean sauce, one of the specials. It came in a huge, shallow dish, with scallions, some minced fresh hot peppers, and the black beans scattered on top. The fish was excellent, bits of fillet that were very fresh in flavor, with a great texture, and not at all overcooked. The sauce was spicy but not too hot for me and the Mr. As we started to work our way through it, we discovered a treasure trove of beautifully cooked vegetables underneath the fish: snow peas, fresh bamboo shoots, and carrots. Then we had a beef hotpot with young taro: tender, moist, lightly flavored with five-spice and soy. I didn't know what to expect from the young taro chunks, but they were like fluffy mashed potato balls. Our vegetable dish was snow pea leaves with garlic: one of my favorites anytime and very well made here. It was tender, flavorful, and a beautiful bright green.

We packed up most of it (we had overordered, of course, with all those tempting dishes on the menu), and then we had dessert! They actually have a range of desserts: eight choices. We had hot sweet tofu in rice wine and then eight-treasure rice: molded steamed sticky rice with red bean jam filling, jujube chunks scattered throughout, and hot rosewater-scented syrup with sesame seeds poured over it. This was a complete sugar overload, obviously, but we loved it (and took home more leftovers).

We're going to have to go back with more people sometime soon, and we may also try using Sichuan Jin River as the carryout for dinner at our next tabletop RPG session.

We had some errands to run in Rockville, so we took the opportunity to visit A & J. We've eaten here several times, but this time we brought smillaraaq along too.

A & J, which has one location in Maryland and one in Virginia, is a northern Chinese dim sum restaurant with minimal decor and piles of awesome, inexpensive food. (Inexpensive for DC, anyway.) The selection of small plates is decidedly different from the Cantonese or Hong Kong-style dim sum restaurants that are typical in the DC area.

Today we started with shredded bean curd with carrot and celery salad (light and savory), pickled cabbage (very crunchy, strongly flavored, and not at all sweet), and bean curd roll with mushrooms. Then we had a massive bowl of dan dan mian (spicy peanut noodles, which smilla said tasted much more like the real thing than usual, and which used A & J's wonderful homemade noodles), moist and tasty pan-fried pork dumplings (which come stuck together in a two-layer, four-wide block), and a solid but flavorful scallion pancake. We finished up with delicious tea-smoked chicken (sliced right through the bone, which I've heard is the traditional way), a big pickled radish bun (odd to my taste, but the Mr. likes it), shredded beef on sesame biscuits (meh, a little dry), and a lovely bowl of more home-made noodles in chicken broth with baby bok choy.

This mountain of food set us back $42 before tip. It wouldn't be good for me to eat at A & J every day, but wow, is it worth it every so often.