Friday Flash: Blood

So . . . this idea came to me today. I didn’t even use an image prompt like usual. I am not entirely sure if it is a good idea, but I decided to go with it anyway.

Blood wreathed the mountain like morning fog.

He stood on his snow covered fields and watched. The lower peaks were still green and white. But he suspected the blood-path of the high mountain lords would engulf the whole mountain before spring.

He looked at the ground, pictured the winter seeds safe under their blanket of snow, and wondered if anything would survive to ripen in the summer.

He took a deep breath and shivered in a fierce gust of wind. The blood tang was sharp in the air. Blood and the musky fire smell of their dragon slaves. They were in the air.

He looked back; his household watched him. Some were wary, some with patience, some with contempt, but they watched him.

Time to go. And damn any who thought him a coward. No one could survive the upcoming war. No one.

H is for Hard Fantasy

I may be behind the times, but I never heard of hard fantasy before. In fact, I only discovered this sub-genre on a Goodreads discussion forum. (One of those where people try to figure out what the difference is between science fiction and fantasy.)

The person provided quite a few links, including a wiki article. Wikipedia says the Recluce Saga, a Song of Ice and Fire and Magic, Inc. are examples of hard fantasy. Looking through Goodreads and LibraryThing shelves, people have also tagged Lord of the Rings, the Farseer trilogy and The Family Trade as hard fantasy.

There is an article that was posted in 2008, but I’ve never heard of hard fantasy until now. Well, shows what I know, huh?

From what I understand, hard fantasy is the fantasy where magic has rules. Truthfully, I am stunned there is even a sub-genre for this.

Though, yeah, the magical rules of most fantasy don’t have scientific rigor. Some books do treat magic just like it was a science, have schools and everything. Though truthfully, of the books I’ve listed here, only the Recluce Saga comes close to doing that. The others? I don’t know.

I haven’t read a lot of hard science fiction. Maybe that’s where my own disconnect is coming from. But most science fiction don’t have a lot of a scientific rigor, either.

But since people have tagged them as hard fantasy, I don’t think I understand what makes a book hard fantasy at all.

Friday Flash: Without Me

This Friday flash is inspired by this image from Wiki Commons:

A soft, warm wind stirred his hair and he looked around, grateful anew for his luck. Lush green growth provided fresh food all year around. He would not leave it.

His brother cleared his throat and he turned toward the canal. His brother, poor sod, wore a fine woolen tunic. The boy was too proud to wear more appropriate clothing.

“The first summer caravan leaves in the morning. You’ll go with it.”

“Father said -”

“I don’t care what Father says. If you want to live, you won’t either.”

The boy shook his long, blond hair. Northern men didn’t cut their hair. Another tradition he’d broken.

“I won’t leave without you.” Stubborn conviction rang in his voice, as hard the mountains buried under mounds of snow ever year.

“Father is murdering, conniving coward. He killed our mother. I won’t ever serve him, brother.”

“Not him. The village, the reason our mother sacrificed herself. The omens -”

“-are wrong.”

No belief in the boy’s eyes. He only stared like a wolf with his prey in sight.

Shivering at the image, he turned and walked to the house. “You leave tomorrow. Without me.”

Teaser Tuesday: The Lightning Thief

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That’s a smaller matter.”

- The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

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Book Review: The Siren Depths by Martha Wells

The Siren Depths is the third in the series and I think it’s probably my favorite in the whole series. It might be confusing without reading the previous books.

The word is gorgeously described and very, very imaginative, just like in the first book. And it just keeps getting better. I love it.

I love the characters, too. The main character, Moon, finds the family that abandoned him when he was born. Apparently he’s the spitting image of his father.

Moon was born a consort in a winged, matriarchal race. Consorts are the only males that can breed with a Queen. There are rules to govern the behavior of Consort. But Moon, having grown up in the wild, never learned any of the rules. Indeed, he never knew the name of his race until half way into the first book.

Because of the rules governing the life of a consort, Moon is forced to go back to his family. The relationship rules are kind of complex, IMO. But explained because Moon is an outsider. (I think trying to explain the rules to the reader if the main character were not an outsider would very, very difficult.)

Because of the life Moon had (he has been wandering the world ever since he was a child, always hiding, always ready to move on) trust is difficult for Moon. Very, very difficult. There is lots of action, lots of drama, but Moon’s insecurity about his place always pops up. He even says something like that to his new-found mother: if the Fell treated me well and told me I belonged with them, I would have.

The Fell are the enemy, and very, very different from his own people. Any physical similarities are misleading. It highlights how Moon felt in the first book and though he has learned to trust a little, he still has a long way to go.

The one thing that is clear to me at the end of this book is that Moon will never, ever be like a normal consort of his people. He can pretend for a few hours maybe, but in the end, he will always do something no other consort would ever do.

His Queen accepts that, which is just as well.

I don’t know which is my favorite scene in this book. There are so many good ones, I just don’t know. Nothing stands out for me right now.

Definitely worth reading, but after the first two in the series. I am pretty sure I will re-read this again. I will figure out then which scene I like best.

Perfect Way to Describe Clothing

I am reading Archangel’s Storm by Nalini Singh. It takes place in India. What part of India, I am not sure. But somewhere in India, somewhere close to the desert.

I am overjoyed. Nalini Singh has Indian characters, but I don’t think she’s ever set almost all of one story in India before.

I particularly enjoyed this line describing the traditional salwar gurta:

Though styles varied, the pants sometimes loose and sometimes tight; the tunics high-necked scooped, flaring out in a full skirt or cut neatly to the body; and most often worn with long, gauzy scarf, it was attire he’d seen many a time in this land, as common on laborers and servants as it was on courtiers. The difference was in the fabrics, the cut, and the depth of embellishment. It wasn’t unusual to see one of the court butterflies in a piece hand beaded with tiny pearls or where the embroidery had been created using fine threads of pure silver and gold.

This describes the salwar kurta pretty perfectly. This description is clearly meant for non-Indians. See, I read this and thought: perfect way to describe ethnic clothing. It references fashion, while also mentioning similarities across fashion and differences in price. And it does all that in three sentences.  Personally, I think that’s fantastic.

One reason it works because the POV character is not Indian; the scarf description, well, yeah, that’s how you would describe it for non-Indians. But that’s okay. It’s short and clear and fairly accurate. Plus, considering the location of the book and the female main character, it was necessary.

It’s stuff to keep in mind when I am writing – or rewriting, as the case may be – my own descriptions of clothes. I mean, in the fantasy worlds I make up, odds are good the clothes don’t actually exist anywhere. I will be making it up out of whole cloth, unlike here, but still. Something to keep in mind.

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On Reading Character Descriptions

So I was reading a book today – Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines. Good book. Funny. Odd. Has a type of magic that sounds ideal for a reader such as myself. LOL

Anyway. One of the characters, a sexy, hot dryad bodyguard, is vaguely described. I pictured her like a sexy female warrior, you know? Like Xena, the warrior princess. Buffy. Lara Croft. Catwoman. Other characters like that.

But when she was finally described, she was described as a fat woman. Well, so not what I was picturing! Okay, okay, so when someone tells the character is a sexy female warrior, I am really not picturing anyone overweight. That may not be PC, but it’s just not.

But that’s not the weird part. No. Jim Hines described this character like that – by size, I mean, not by hair or eyes or weapons or clothes or something else – maybe three times. Always at the perfect moments, of course, when the main character would most notice it (i. e. when he was out of his head with magic and didn’t remember who or what he was. Or wondering what he was doing with a woman in love with someone else.)

It’s just that each time Jim Hines described her, I was a little surprised because I had somehow forgotten it between descriptions and then when she was described again, it screwed with my mental image of her. It happened about three times. This forgetfulness might have been helped by large gaps between each reading. Even so.

It’s odd. That she is over weight isn’t important in the story – it doesn’t bother her, it doesn’t get in the way of anything, it isn’t important, it just enhances her own sex appeal. There is no drama, which is why Jim Hines doesn’t refer to it all that often. Plus, that probably helps the reader form their own mental picture of the character.

That’s why I was doing, twice in direct contrast to how she was actually described. That bothers me. Makes me wonder how many other characters I have done that to and never noticed.

Also, has anyone else done that? Someone please tell me they have and that I am not alone in this.

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Friday Flash: Dust Rider Born

Part six in my Friday flash series experiment! Parts one, two, three, four and five here.

Gazelle woke slowly, delightfully warm and dry and comfortable. She kicked at the blanket, but the whole bed shook and whined. It sounded like a pup.

Her eyes flew open. The sky overhead was a bright, cloudless blue. She sat up and froze. She lay not in her bed or even a patch of grass, but on a gigantic web stretching across the branches of dozens of trees.

A dust devil lay curled up across her legs. No, in her legs. No –

“It’s part of you now,” someone said.

She looked up to see the dust rider who had come to take her. “Part of me?”

“It will you let you go eventually.” His lips curved into an amused smile. “Like a boy’s balls dropping.”

“Like what?” What was wrong with this man?

“Until than you are joined at the tail. So to speak.”

“What!”

He laughed. “Don’t kick your devil when he’s asleep. It bites.”

Joined at the tail? She eyed the baby devil and tried to move her legs. The wound-up dust devil uncurled a little and shifted; she moved forward on the web. And though she couldn’t see her legs, still the web felt rough and sticky under her.

The baby devil lifted its sleek, pointy head and yowled. It had a mouthful of sharp, white fangs.

“He’s probably hungry,” the dust rider said and pointed at the far edge of the web. “Take him over there.”

“How?” demanded Gazelle.

But the dust rider only smiled.

Gazelle took a deep breath and pretended her legs weren’t encased inside the dust devil. The baby devil responded, it’s head and body undulating under her. She grabbed on with both hands as it crawled forward to the other end of the web.

Large stripes of raw, bloody meat hung from thinner branches above them. The baby dust devil swallowed the carcass of a piglet whole. It turned than to look at her out of dark, unfathomable eyes and rubbed itself against her chest.

Gazelle gulped and touched its head. Only then did she realize her chest seemed to have gone flat. She frowned down at it. She even wore a flight suit, like the dust rider worn. But who -?

“It’s your skin now,” said the dust rider.

He had followed her across the web and now stood watching a few feet away.

“I – what?” Lord, but couldn’t she say anything else to him?

“Your skin,” he repeated. “We are not human anymore. Your breasts will come back when you give birth.”

She gaped. Not human.

“The stories are true. We really are gods. You are a very lucky girl, Gazelle, to be chosen.”

The End!

There might be people who want more. I know there could be more, that I could turn this into a much longer work. But, honestly, I am done. I want to get back to normal Friday flash fiction.

(Unless I turn this into a Tuesday serial. Still thinking about that.)

Friday Flash: Dust Rider Eaten

Part five in my Friday flash series experiment! Parts one, two, three and four here. Part six next week.

He freed Gazelle and she jumped down. The dirt was firm, undoubtedly tamped down from the passage hundreds of dust devils.

“That way.” The dust rider pointed at people clustered around the bonfire. “Go.”

She hoisted her bag over one shoulder and walked. She was stiff, achy and cold from the long ride. She hoped she could sleep soon.

She pushed as close to the fire as she dared; it felt good on her chilled skin.

“Careful!” A boy about her own age grabbed her elbow and yanked her back.

“What -”

“You almost stepped on them.” He pointed at the ground.

Gazelle looked down. Eggs. Large, sand-colored, vibrating eggs lay in a heap. They were so close to the fire it was a wonder they didn’t burn. Or cook. Maybe this was an odd dust rider cooking method. She thought longingly of scrambled eggs.

She didn’t know how she’d missed them before.

Even as she watched, a tiny crack appeared in the egg in front of her. A small bit of shell fell away and a slender brown tail slipped through. It waved wildly, banging itself against the shell, and the shell broke apart. A small, glistening wet dust devil cried into the night air.

Gazelle gaped. A dust devil hatching. Who would have guessed?

All around her, the other eggs hatched. Soon the air was filled with the shrill screeching of the new-born dust devils.

The one she was watching suddenly quieted, studied her with one blue eye and then leaped at her. She stumbled back and threw up an arm over her face.

Claws tore into her scalp and sharp teeth tore into her shoulder. Gazelle screamed. It thrust its strong, slender tail into her mouth.

Gazelle scrabbled at the creature. But her fingers slipped on the wet scales and she could not pull free.

She bit the creature’s tail and sharp pain bloomed on her shoulder. Her sight went dark and she knew she was dying.

They’ll tell Papa I died during training.  

The baby devil spit saliva on her shoulder. It rolled down her back, leaving only cool numbness behind.

Treacherous Rider.

Friday Flash: Dust Devils’ Lawn

the devil’s lawn

Part four in my Friday flash series experiment! Parts one and two and three here.

Gazelle handed the dust rider her single knapsack and watched him strap into the dust devil’s harness. She wore her heaviest canvas jacket and wondered how a dust rider could be so daft as to insist on something so heavy in summer. She was going to melt like a pat of butter.

The dust devil flicked long, curling ears at his rider. He smiled, patted its head and spoke to her. “Climb on up. I will strap you in first.”

Mud-colored spines ran along the sides of the devil. She put one foot on it and clambered up to the saddle. The dust rider showed her where to put her legs, then looped a harness over her shoulders and leashed her to the saddle. Like she was a cow or something, too stupid to know when to stay still.

She scowled at it. The leather trapped her as surely the gold paid for her.

The dust rider hoisted himself in front of her and strapped himself in. He did not, she noticed sourly, use the shoulder harness on himself.

He caressed the dust devil’s ears. “Fly!”

It reared up, roiling under her like a fishing boat caught in a storm. Gazelle fisted her hands, fingers digging into her own skin. She would not clutch at the dust rider. She wouldn’t.

Miles of long, sleek brown skin stretched out behind her. The wind from the dust devil’s launch rocked tree branches and blew her mother’s skirts up.

She watched her family farm become smaller and smaller until it was a mere spec on the ground. They flew above the clouds and she could see nothing but white fluff. Her ears froze and then burned. The devil was a comforting warmth under her.

Gazelle didn’t know how long they flew, but the sun set. The rider handed her some hard biscuits from somewhere.

It was still dark when they started descending. There was a gigantic grassy space, enclosed by wire fences and lit by dozens of torches. Many dust devils gathered on the ground. A small group of young people like her huddled in the middle, close to a big bonfire.

“The devils’ lawn!” the dust rider announced.

As a side note, I think this one might be least stand alone out of all them so far.