I wish I had more time to read. Isn't that the writer's lament? We spend all our time writing (or cleaning the kitchen to avoid writing,) and hear over and over again that 'if you write, you have to read.' A good friend of mine had something of an argument against that old trope you can read here.

Still, I actually like reading, and so I still wish I had more time to read. It recharges batteries when its good and when its bad, well, honestly I fling it across the room and vent about it to my husband for a day and a half. After that, I'm rededicated to write something awesome to make up for the bit of crap I've just read. (I imagine this is a grand cycle, all the world over, writers are reading each others work, hating it, and writing out of spite so that their work can be hated and the cycle goes on unbroken.)

So anyway, I make myself time to read from time to time. Especially when I get a book from the wonderful Laura Ann Gillman with a request for review. And so, on to The Betrayal by Pati Nagle.

How Did I Find this Book: Well, as stated earlier, I got this book in the mail. (Yay free books right to my house!) I did a little further recon after I got it, checking out the writer's site and so on. I like to have a background idea of what I'm getting into when I start something new. Ms. Nagle's page for this book is pretty neat. There's a calendar, detailed outline of the clans and other aspects of world building. I gotta say, I was pretty impressed with the amount of 'off scene' detail went into the background of this book. I'm usually luke warm about the idea of heaps of world building going into a fantasy novel since it seems like it gets in the way of just sitting down to write the thing. Since The Betrayal is sitting on my bookshelf now, I can say Ms. Nagle didn't fall into that trap, and her world building worked out nicely.

The Good: So here's where I give a disclaimer. This time is no exception. I don't read fantasy, I rarely like fantasy, and so I don't usually feel like I'm a fair audience for a fantasy novel. There's nothing wrong with the genre, it's simply a matter of personal taste. That said, I read this book with an open mind and I don't regret the time at all. (Hint: I did not throw this across the room.) It's a story with elves and vampire elves and magic and just enough sex to interest me without getting smutty. What really impressed me was that Ms. Nagle managed to create badguys who made sense. The villainous evil vamprie elves seemed reasonable, actually, even their mysterious and bloody leader, a cold blooded monster woman, came across with just the right pathos to be interesting. I cared about her and her story as much as the heroines story, and that's a hell of a thing to do while keeping the bad guys bad. For a fantasy novel, the writing wasn't over the top and purple. If it didn't have some shades of violet in it, it wouldn't have read like fantasy, but it didn't hit a point where I wanted to put on a monocle and drink Earl Gray while reading. The sex was just as it should be. Pretty real, a little hot, and seemed to exist to either forward the plot or deepen the characters which is just what I want out of sex.

The Bad: Flowery language, romance all over the place, monsters and a bit of renaming real world things to make them more... fantasyish... I can't say any part of that was awful, but I'm sure some sticklers might not be able to get past that sort of thing to enjoy the book on what makes it unique. Well, boo for them. I bet they hate Santa too.

Who Will Like this Book: Fantasy fans who like their stuff a bit romantic. Romance fans who think elves are interesting. Writers who want to see villains done sympathetically. People who like vampires, sparkely or not. Me when I get around to reading it a second time.

Who Won't Like this Book: I mean, if you're a non fantasy reader and don't otherwise appreciate the genre, (coughD&Dcough) I don't know how you'd get into this. It fits nicely into its genre without being stale, but I didn't feel like it did a lot to reach out of the genre. It doesn't have too, not every book out there needs to break boundaries. It's okay, I'll read it twice for the sake of both of us.

Up Next: DEL TORO'S THE STRAIN!!! WOOO!!! I'll admit, I started this already on vacation. I couldn't resist. Boys and girls, you are in for a treat if you're headed into this book anytime soon. More later.

So let me start off by saying, it’s about three hours after my bedtime, but I couldn’t go to sleep without telling you about Patricia Wrede’s Thirteenth Child. I’d actually planned to post this sometime later today, on release day and all, but I can’t wait. I'm writing this in a bit of fit of passion, so you'll forgive me for that. (My class tomorrow might not, but they'll just have to learn around my snoring.)

I’d picked it up again earlier today to reread the second half because I wanted to give it a far shake before reviewing it, and ended up reading the entire thing in more or less one sitting. (Much to my understanding husband’s dismay. I think he remembers what my eye color looks like.) Okay, okay, without further distraction, the review.

How I Found This Book: This was actually an ARC sent to me by the lovely Laura Anne Gilman. She was looking for, as she put it, galley slaves to read galleys and ARC copies, I posted on her LJ I was interested, and I got free books out of the deal. The internet is a beautiful place. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I signed up, because frankly I would have been mad at myself for the rest of my life if I’d never read this book. I cannot wait to see more in the Frontier Magic series, YA or not YA, good writing is good writing.

The Good: So the good, where to start really? Strong but still believable and sympathetic female lead? Check! Beautiful World Building full of neat touches I hadn’t seen before and ideas I’d wished I’d dreamed up? Check! A vast and believable alternate history that unfurled before me without ever feeling like info dump? Double Check! Characters with language all their own? Check and check. Without giving anything away, this is, simply put, the best coming of age western steampunk fantasy adventure I’ve ever read, and I’m a big fan of Weird West. Wrede does an amazing job of giving the reader the feeling that Eff, the first person narrator speaks with a dialect from the times, without it ever getting in the way of the reading. Beyond that, her pacing is just brilliant. As I commented to my husband while reading, “Ten years just flew by for this little girl, more or less, and I don’t feel like it was rushed, that I missed anything, or that it wandered around like I so often do with time spanning fantasy.” He said something like, “yes dear,” and let me get back to my studious reading. As a mother with a daughter myself, I couldn’t be more excited to know I’ll be able to hand this book to my budding frontiers’ woman some day and know that the main character Eff is someone she can look up too without me worrying about it. At a pivotal moment in the book, when Eff decides what she wants to do with her life, making a huge step in her development, I felt this motherly swell of pride as if Eff were my awkward teenage girl, and now, she’d grown up and made a good choice, so I didn’t have to worry about her anymore. What a great feeling to get out of a book. Ms. Wrede, seriously, when do I get more of this story?

The Bad: In the interests of fairness, I’d have to say there was a time or two when Eff’s worrying and fretting got to be a little nerve racking. Sometimes it seemed it was just an endless cycle of her worrying over nothing, being reassured by someone she respected, but then going back to worrying a few pages later. Of course, just as soon as that feeling flared up, I remember back to when I was an awkward teenage girl, how I worried about everything and was just so sure I would ‘just turn out wrong’ and Eff’s worries seemed less silly. I’d say that’s about the only thing that stood out as why this book was YA instead of just fantasy. I still want to give props to Wrede, however, for remembering the sentiments of that age in a way I hadn’t even without been all that far removed from my teen years myself.

Who Will Like This Book: If you know a tween or teen girl who’s nervous but special, only she doesn’t know she’s special, get her a copy of this book immediately. If you know any youngin’ who likes Harry Potter but isn’t all that into the sheer Britishness of the Potter series, get them this book. Get this book for women you know with daughters, I’d be curious to see how many other moms got the same swell of pride I was hit with. And most importantly, if you like the Weird West, you ignore the YA category and go get this book for yourself. No, really. Go ahead. I’ll wait right here. 

Who Won’t Like This Book: Some of Eff’s more unreasonable girly traits and worries might turn off a young boy, but I think so much of the story is just so adventurous, it might not matter to them. Other than that, I can’t come up with any good examples. No really, read this book. 

Next Up: I’m going to try to finish up Mark Henry’s Roadtrip of the Living Dead, (best sex scene ever, I’m not even kidding,) we’ll see what happens from there.