Women in SF&F Month: Judy I. Lin
Apr
06
2022

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Today’s guest is Judy I. Lin! Her debut novel and the start of The Book of Tea duology, A Magic Steeped in Poison, features a tea-making competition, as making tea is a magical art in the world of this young adult fantasy series. Although the first of these two books was just published last week, the second half of the story will be out soon—A Venom Dark and Sweet is scheduled for release on August 23!

Cover of A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin Cover of A Venom Dark and Sweet by Judy I. Lin

On Developing a Non-Combat Focused Magic System and Addressing Issues of Inequality Through Storytelling

One of my favorite genres of movies to watch while I was growing up was the wuxia genre. I enjoyed these movies from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China because they usually featured fierce women and girls who are martial artists. They fought with swords and daggers and their bare hands, and oftentimes they had secret identities — where they had to travel through the world disguised as a man in order to not draw attention to themselves.

But when it came time to write my own stories, I knew I did not want to write about a swordswoman. Someone who was physically confident, who moved through the world with grace. Or even an assassin who was able to sneak around and use poison needles and relied on stealth rather than physical prowess. Even though I liked stories that interpreted what women warriors looked like in medieval Europe or ancient China, it wasn’t what I personally related to.

I grew up with astigmatism and near-sightedness, never played a sport, and my hand eye coordination was terrible. That was why I was drawn to the idea of a magic system based around tea. I was intrigued by the idea of a magic system that was not involved directly in combat, but had other uses in the day to day — healing, fortune telling, etc. In Taiwanese culture, tea is such an integral part of our daily lives. It involves a certain type of ceremony, and I was interested in exploring that type of ritual. What would the limitations of a magic that is tied intimately to ritual look like? What if a practitioner of such magic is found without her tools and ingredients, what would she do then?

The story in A Magic Steeped in Poison examines those challenges. I was still able to pay homage to the wuxia genre I love so much by incorporating Traditional Chinese Medicine into the magic system. Just like in many wuxia books and films, I played around with those familiar ingredients and gave them magical properties. I expanded upon the ritual that is present in the tea ceremony, and was able to include folklore inspired by the stories that I heard while I was growing up in Taiwan. I enjoyed exploring how utilization of supportive and healing magic is a different type of strength, and it can be advantageous for those who know how to use it as much as the ability to use a sword. I also wanted to tell a story where battles are conducted through cunning and knowledge — in navigating court intrigue, sparring with words, and solving puzzles in a magical competition.

Ning, the main character in A Magic Steeped in Poison, is an apprentice to this type of tea magic, but I wanted to make sure that she was surrounded by women who had different types of strength as well. I didn’t want to portray a narrow path of how a girl is supposed to achieve success in the world, because a world where women are only capable swordswomen or a world where women are all magical healers isn’t of interest to me either. Even though Ning does solve the puzzles that she encounters in the rounds of the magic competition, it was important to me that she does not do it alone. She meets people along the way who provide assistance through difficult times, many of them women in power.

Another element I wanted to make sure that I addressed in the book are issues of inequality that is not only related to misogyny and the expectations of women in this society, but issues of class and wealth distribution too. Ning experiences conflicts in the capital because of her commoner status. She is immediately an outsider because of the way she speaks. She is also looked down upon for her lack of knowledge in the way she is expected to behave, as someone who grew up outside of the capital. The competition reveals very quickly that certain competitors, due to their background, are given important advantages that allows them to advance through the rounds without challenges. Ning has to overcome her disadvantage in order to succeed, but without losing sight of why she is there in the first place.

Throughout the process of writing A Magic Steeped in Poison, I enjoyed the worldbuilding aspect the most. In reimagining the stories and traditions from my culture, I was able to connect with my heritage in new ways. I loved being able to tell stories about women with unique strengths and abilities existing in this realm, overcoming their personal challenges despite society’s expectations. I’m grateful I was able to tell a story that is deeply personal, even though it’s set in a world very different from our own.

Photo of Judy I. Lin
Photo Credit: Aaron Perkins		 Judy I. Lin was born in Taiwan and immigrated to Canada with her family at a young age. She grew up with her nose in a book and loved to escape to imaginary worlds. She now works as an occupational therapist, and still spends her nights dreaming up imaginary worlds of her own. She lives on the Canadian prairies with her husband and daughter. A Magic Steeped in Poison is her debut novel.
Women in SF&F Month: Deborah Falaye
Apr
05
2022

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Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is young adult author Deborah Falaye, whose debut novel was just published last month! Blood Scion, which is inspired by Yoruba-Nigerian mythology and research on child soldiers, follows a fifteen-year-old girl descended from gods who is forced to become a soldier by the people who colonized her own. You can read or listen to a sample on the publisher’s website, and you can find Deborah on Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok.

Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye - Book Cover

WE ARE ALL A LITTLE MORALLY GRAY

The first time I heard the term “morally gray” was on Absolute Write. I was a new writer back then, still in the middle of completing my very first manuscript. After a few recommendations from friends, I took the plunge and joined the online community to learn more about writing and all things publishing. One of the first forums I visited was already deep in a discussion about whether or not morally gray characters had a place in YA. I had no idea what morally gray meant at the time, but apparently this was such a hot topic. So safe to say I was intrigued.

I lingered on that forum for a while, rummaging through everyone’s responses until I had a clear understanding of what it meant for a character to be morally gray. To simply define it, these are characters whose morals are ambiguous, characters who are neither good nor bad, who aren’t quite the hero or the villain of the story, but rather, they straddle that gray line in-between. And this is where the divide in the forum came into play. Some loved these types of characters because they saw them as being far more complex, which made them feel more realistic. Others, however, argued that there should be a clear line drawn between the hero and the villain of a story, and the main character (who also happens to be the hero) shouldn’t have questionable morals. I disagreed heavily with this, especially when I started to notice the common thread in those responses: the main characters being critiqued were, more often than not, female.

“She (insert morally gray female character here) was too unlikeable for a main character.”
“She was too self-centered, too selfish, too cruel.”
“I tried, but I just couldn’t relate to her. I couldn’t sympathize with her.”
Her, her, her.

In fiction, we’ve witnessed the long-standing tradition where female characters (unsurprisingly written by men) were often depicted as nothing more than damsels in distress, weaklings who needed saving by the heroic men around them. These types of female characters weren’t allowed to have agency, couldn’t affect the world in a meaningful way. They were contrived caricatures, prettified props placed in a man-made box to be either good or bad. The good ones would be saved; the bad ones would be used and discarded. They were there, just there, for the glory of the heroic male. So what happens when you introduce a female character in fiction, and you not only hand her all of that well-deserved power, but you also give her agency, ambition, drive, a well-rounded backstory? A female character who has her own needs and desires, wants more than what the world tells her she can have? One who doesn’t exist within the constraints of your box, but outside of it? One who isn’t the “good girl” because she makes choices, both morally good and bad? A female character who is complex, so, so complex?

Well, you get criticisms. Especially at a time when morally gray girls didn’t really exist in YA. You get unsolicited opinions from those who think they know and understand the full complexities of what it means to be female. Yes, we can be both vulnerable and badass. We can have morals and still engage in some very questionable shit. We can most definitely be cruel and angry and vengeful. It’s called range, honey.

Sloane, the main character of my fantasy novel BLOOD SCION, is a fifteen-year-old child soldier who is fighting to reclaim everything the colonizers have stolen from her and her people. She is a deeply flawed character, and as you follow her journey, you see her make some really terrible decisions for the sake of survival. I’ve heard some readers call her one of the most morally gray girls in YA, and that pleases me because I intentionally wrote her to be just that. She’s a character whose lived experiences have shaped the way she navigates the world around her. She’s suffered some devastating horrors and unleashed a few of her own. She is angry and vengeful and wants nothing more than to burn down the world and build a new one from its ashes. And yet, like some of my beloved morally gray girls in YA (i.e., Adelina Amouteru, Jude Duarte, Karina Alahari, to name a few), I would argue all of that only makes her more real, more human.

And I think that is why I’m more drawn to these types of female characters, because they exist as a mirror of our own reality, of the gray spaces that we, as humans, often tread. We are all a little morally gray, and that’s okay.

Photo of Deborah Falaye by John Bregar
Photo Credit: John Bregar		 Deborah Falaye is a Nigerian-Canadian young adult author. She grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, where she spent her time devouring African literature, pestering her grandma for folktales, and tricking her grandfather into watching Passions every night. When she’s not writing about fierce Black girls with badass magic, she can be found obsessing over all things reality TV. Deborah currently lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband and their partner-in-crime yorkie, Major.
Women in SF&F Month: Traci Chee
Apr
04
2022

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Women in SF&F Month starts today with a guest post by New York Times bestselling young adult author Traci Chee! Her work includes the fantasy books in the Reader trilogy—The Reader, The Speaker, and The Storyteller—and the historical fiction novel We Are Not Free, a National Book Award finalist and Printz Honor Book. A Thousand Steps into Night, her delightful Japanese-influenced fantasy novel about a girl who starts turning into a demon, was just released last month.

A Thousand Steps into Night by Traci Chee - Book Cover

What Makes a Hero?
by Traci Chee

I’ve been thinking a lot about heroes lately. What does a hero look like? (Caped? Broad-shouldered? Fundamentally alone?) What makes them heroic? (Power? Perfection? Self-sufficiency?) In the United States, the way we talk about and conceive of heroes, at least in fiction and particularly in fantasy, is very much shaped by the hero’s journey, a mythic storytelling template popularized by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and explicated specifically for writers in Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey. In stories shaped by the hero’s journey, a hero (usually a young man) travels from the familiar-but-unstable Ordinary World into a Special World (often magical or somehow heightened), where he has adventures and overcomes obstacles, before returning to the Ordinary World again. For many of us, the stages of this journey are easily recognizable: The hero meets a mentor (usually an older man). He experiences some trials. He defeats a monster. He returns home with tools and/or experience that help him to restore stability to the Ordinary World.

Having grown up surrounded by books and movies that draw on the hero’s journey, I’m a huge fan of it as a storytelling structure. In fact, I’ve plotted all of my novels with it—including The Reader, with its multiple timelines, and We Are Not Free, a novel-in-stories with fourteen different protagonists—so it was my first instinct to plot my latest book, A Thousand Steps into Night, the same way. After all, it’s a story about a hero (this time a cisgender girl named Miuko) who is cursed to transform into a demon, which sends her on a literal journey from the Ordinary World of her small, isolated hometown into the Special World of the open road, where she hopes to find a way to remove her curse and restore her humanity. In keeping with the hero’s journey, she meets a mentor (a variety of them, in fact, from a shapeshifting magpie spirit to a testy demigod to an elderly nonbinary priest named Hikedo). On her journey, she also experiences some trials, which involve rapacious men, feral forest spirits, and a manipulative demon prince, and after all that, she returns home.

The further I got in drafting this book, however, the more I realized that the structure of the hero’s journey, while apt, was also incomplete. A Thousand Steps is set in an oppressive patriarchal society where women’s freedoms are severely limited—they are not allowed to own property, for example, or travel without the company of a male relative—so to have a hero who is a girl, on a road trip that forces her out of the cultural confines of her gender, fundamentally changes the nature of her journey. The movement of her story is outward, yes, as she confronts external obstacles and physical dangers, but it’s also inward. As she experiences more of the world, she begins to understand that the inequalities she’s been led to believe are fundamental and fixed are, in fact, neither—they are mere constructions of a flawed human society, which means they can also be deconstructed.

Rather than moving from instability to stability, as in the traditional hero’s journey, the arc of A Thousand Steps is toward flux, toward change, toward shaking things up, and it starts with Miuko herself. All her life, she’s been taught that she’s too loud for a woman, too clumsy, too opinionated, too plain, and she’s resigned herself to being inadequate and undesirable in the eyes of her society. On her adventures, however, she learns that the qualities she’s always believed were shortcomings can actually be advantages. Her clumsiness earns her the aid of a ruthless snake demon. Her loudness helps her escape from a serial killer. These are parts of herself she’s been taught to be ashamed of, but now she realizes they are attributes to be embraced.

Unlike the hero’s journey, which tends to be fairly linear, Miuko’s path toward self-acceptance isn’t a straight line. Throughout her journey, she vacillates between relishing her freedom and retreating behind the boundaries she’s known all her life. She wrestles with an ever-shifting set of possibilities: the person she wants to be, the person she could become, the person she’s told she should be, the person she knows she is.

This internal deconstruction is mirrored by the disarray Miuko always seems to leave in her wake. She upends a community that hides its daughters from monsters they’ve been allowing to live among them. She wreaks havoc on a spirit palace with floors literally stratified by class.

And she doesn’t do it alone.

A traditional hero gains allies that aid him on his journey, but I think that his story is primarily one of individualism—it’s about one man accomplishing a huge and impossible task. But Miuko’s story is, by design, a little different. As she transforms into a demon, she gains fancy new powers that allow her to see in the dark and drain the life from anything with a single touch, but her greatest strengths are the friends she makes along her journey. She helps them. They help her. They band together. Maybe at the very moment of crisis, it comes down to Miuko and a monster, but her strength here is not a solitary strength, and the greatest changes she can make, she cannot make on her own.

In this story, defeating a monster doesn’t restore balance to the Ordinary World—it merely helps to uproot it. The real work, the real unmaking of an unjust society, is still to come, and it will take more than a lone hero to do it. The end of A Thousand Steps is one of change: small and slow, a little community of people working together to improve the world where they can.

At a time when so many of our real-world problems seem too big for any single person, I wonder if we can start to reconsider the way we think about our heroes. Maybe they aren’t extraordinary. Maybe they’re plain or clumsy or fallible. Maybe our definition of heroism should no longer be confined to these huge, impossible acts but expanded to include the everyday connections and coalitions between regular people. Maybe heroism isn’t individualism but solidarity. Maybe it doesn’t have to be dramatic and quick but gradual and steady and even, at times, boring. As the traditions and institutions we have taken for granted are revealed to be unjust, I wonder if maybe our journey into the future is less about one male hero restoring an old way of life and more about many heroes, of many experiences, working together to make a new world, a more just one, and a better one for all of us.

Photo of Traci Chee by Topher Simon
Photo Credit: Topher Simon		 Traci Chee is a best-selling and award-winning author of books for young people, including the instant New York Times best seller and Kirkus Prize Finalist The Reader and Printz Honor Book, Walter Award Honoree, and National Book Award Finalist We Are Not Free. Her latest title is A Thousand Steps into Night, a Japanese-influenced young adult fantasy. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys hiking, egg painting, gardening, and hosting game nights for family and friends. She lives in California with her fast dog.
Introducing Women in SF&F Month 2022
Apr
03
2022

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It’s now April, and the eleventh annual Women in SF&F Month starts tomorrow! For the last decade, this month has been dedicated to highlighting some of the many women doing wonderful work in speculative fiction on this blog, and this site will be featuring guest posts by some of these writers on weekdays throughout April.

As usual, they will be discussing a variety of subjects—the ideas behind their worlds and stories, the tropes and dynamics they explore, the works and experiences that influenced their writing, the memory of those who came before, fairy tales and retellings, monstrous companions, and much more. I’m very excited to share their pieces with you throughout the month!

The Women in SF&F Month Origin Story

In case you are unfamiliar with how April came to be Women in SF&F Month here: It started way back in 2012, following some discussions about review coverage of books by women and the lack of women blogging about books being suggested for Hugo Awards in fan categories in March. Some of the responses to these—especially the claim that that women weren’t being reviewed and mentioned because there just weren’t that many women reading and writing SFF—made me want to spend a month highlighting women doing work in the genre to show that there are a lot of us, actually.

So I decided to see if I could pull together an April event focusing on women in science fiction and fantasy, and thanks to a great many authors and reviewers who wrote pieces for the event, it happened! I was—and continue to be—astounded by the fantastic guest posts that have been written for this series. And I am so, so grateful to everyone who has contributed to it.

This Week’s Schedule

I’m very excited about this year’s upcoming guest posts, which start tomorrow! This week’s schedule is as follows:

Women in SF&F Month 2022 Week One Graphic

April 4: Traci Chee (A Thousand Steps into Night, The Reader Trilogy)
April 5: Deborah Falaye (Blood Scion)
April 6: Judy I. Lin (A Magic Steeped in Poison, A Venom Dark and Sweet)
April 7: Tara Sim (The City of Dusk, Scavenge the Stars Duology)
April 8: S. A. Barnes (Dead Silence, Project Paper Doll Series)

The Leaning Pile of Books
Mar
27
2022

The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature in which I highlight books I got over the last week that sound like they may be interesting—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration. Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included, along with series information and the publisher’s book description. Cover images are affiliate links to Bookshop, and I earn from qualifying purchases.

I’m very excited about this week’s featured book—it’s one that appeared on my list of anticipated 2022 speculative fiction releases!

The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah - Book Cover

The Stardust Thief (The Sandsea Trilogy #1) by Chelsea Abdullah

Chelsea Abdullah’s debut novel is scheduled for release on May 17 (hardcover, ebook, audiobook).

I’ve been looking forward to this epic fantasy book ever since reading Orbit’s acquisition announcement, which includes this description:

Set in a world filled with dangerous jinn, magical artifacts, and shifting dunes, The Stardust Thief tells the story of a legendary smuggler and a cowardly prince who are forced to quest out across the desert in search of the long-lost city of the jinn and a magical lamp. Weaving together tales from One Thousand and One Nights, American-Kuwaiti author, Chelsea Abdullah has crafted an enchanting novel that feels both familiar and entirely new.

It had me on board after seeing it was a story about a smuggler and a cowardly prince inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, but it sounds even more fantastic from the official book description below. (She smuggles illegal magic! And it’s in “a world where story is reality and illusion is truth”!)

 

Inspired by stories from One Thousand and One Nights, The Stardust Thief weaves the gripping tale of a legendary smuggler, a cowardly prince, and a dangerous quest across the desert to find a legendary, magical lamp.

Neither here nor there, but long ago…

Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant: a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp that has the power to revive the barren land—at the cost of sacrificing all jinn.

With no choice but to obey or be executed, Loulie journeys with the sultan’s oldest son to find the artifact. Aided by her bodyguard, who has secrets of his own, they must survive ghoul attacks, outwit a vengeful jinn queen, and confront a malicious killer from Loulie’s past. And, in a world where story is reality and illusion is truth, Loulie will discover that everything—her enemy, her magic, even her own past—is not what it seems, and she must decide who she will become in this new reality.

The Leaning Pile of Books
Mar
20
2022

The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature in which I highlight books I got over the last week that sound like they may be interesting—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration. Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included, along with series information and the publisher’s book description. Cover images are affiliate links to Bookshop, and I earn from qualifying purchases.

For today’s feature, I have one book I ordered and one e-ARC that I recently downloaded (more than a week ago, but better late than never!). But first, here’s the latest review since the last one of these posts in case you missed it:

And now, the latest books!

A Thousand Steps into Night by Traci Chee - Book Cover

A Thousand Steps into Night by Traci Chee

This standalone young adult fantasy novel by New York Times bestselling author Traci Chee was just released early this month (hardcover, ebook, audiobook). The publisher’s website has an excerpt and audio sample from A Thousand Steps into Night, and Tor.com also has an excerpt.

A Thousand Steps Into Night is one of the books that appeared on my list of 30 Anticipated 2022 Speculative Fiction Releases. After the copy I ordered showed up, I read the opening:

LONG AGO, in the noble realm of Awara, where all creation, from the tallest peaks to the lowliest beetles, had forms both humble and divine, there lived an unremarkable girl named Otori Miuko. The daughter of the innkeeper at the only remaining guesthouse in the village of Nihaoi,1 Miuko was average by every conceivable standard—beauty, intelligence, the circumference of her hips—except for one.

She was uncommonly loud.

That was all it took to know I had to read it right away. I’m about halfway through it now, and it is delightful.

 

From New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Traci Chee comes a Japanese-influenced fantasy brimming with demons, adventure, and plans gone awry.

In the realm of Awara, where gods, monsters, and humans exist side by side, Miuko is an ordinary girl resigned to a safe, if uneventful, existence as an innkeeper’s daughter.

But when Miuko is cursed and begins to transform into a demon with a deadly touch, she embarks on a quest to reverse the curse and return to her normal life. Aided by a thieving magpie spirit and continuously thwarted by a demon prince, Miuko must outfox tricksters, escape demon hunters, and negotiate with feral gods if she wants to make it home again.

With her transformation comes power and freedom she never even dreamed of, and she’ll have to decide if saving her soul is worth trying to cram herself back into an ordinary life that no longer fits her… and perhaps never did.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Book Cover

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

New York Times bestselling author Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s next novel is scheduled for release on July 19 (hardcover, ebook, audiobook, large print paperback).

I very much enjoyed Gods of Jade and Shadow and Mexican Gothic, so I’m interested in taking a look at Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s upcoming book.

 

From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night comes a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico.

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—She Reads

Carlota Moreau: A young woman growing up on a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula. The only daughter of a researcher who is either a genius or a madman.

Montgomery Laughton: A melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol. An outcast who assists Dr. Moreau with his experiments, which are financed by the Lizaldes, owners of magnificent haciendas and plentiful coffers.

The hybrids: The fruits of the doctor’s labor, destined to blindly obey their creator and remain in the shadows. A motley group of part human, part animal monstrosities.

All of them live in a perfectly balanced and static world, which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the charming and careless son of Dr. Moreau’s patron, who will unwittingly begin a dangerous chain reaction.

For Moreau keeps secrets, Carlota has questions, and, in the sweltering heat of the jungle, passions may ignite.