CM Magazine

The review is mainly a pretty complete synopsis, with a longish excerpt from the first chapter. It ends with:

Written clearly, and with an interesting version of the Arthurian legend, the tale portrays some common teenage problems through the eyes of the two main characters, while placing them in harrowing fantasy situations…The story will appear to those who enjoy fantasy and will not require a knowledge of the Arthurian tales to follow.

Recommended.

Nice!

The review, by author Robert J. Wiersema, almost gave me a heart attack with the first sentence, though. It begins:

Authors who incorporate, interpret, or subvert Arthurian legends in works of contemporary fantasy take a huge risk: the failure rate of such books is staggeringly high.

Gulp. Fortunately, he continues with:

Every so often, though, a writer is skilled enough to utilize the stories of King Arthur and Camelot to significant effect. Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry trilogy is definitely on the list. So, too, is Song of the Sword, the impressive new YA novel from Regina writer Edward Willett.

Whew! That’s all right, then. (Me, compared with Guy Kay? It is to blush. Although we both have a connection to Weyburn…he was born there, I lived there many years…so, who knows? Maybe it’s something in the water.)

Wiersema goes on to summarize the story (very well), and then adds:

It’s an audacious conceit and a daring subversion of the Arthurian mythos, and Willett backs it up with a taut, compelling narrative, well-drawn characters, and a keen sense of genuine peril and true wonder. It’s a powerful, fun, engaging read, and it’s the first of a series, so readers have much to look forward to.

His only caveat: he wonders if young readers may not be familiar enough with the Arthurian legend for my reworking to resonate as fully with them as I’d like, and worries that if this is the first time they run into the Arthurian cast of characters, my book could “skew” their initial reading of their legends.

I hate to sound heartless, but…I think I can live with that!

Willett’s usual moral tale style is in high gear here, with the logical next step of the question he posed in Marseguro, “What makes someone human?”  When the Selkies are forced to confront their prejudices not only of “normals”, but also of a race far more modified than their own, questions arise as to where to draw that line.  How the different characters answer the question ultimately decides their fate for them…

As with all of Willett’s science fiction, the science is well handled, from genetically modified humans and bioengineered viruses, to faster-than-light travel and molecular fabrication.  His light touch lets us know what the futuristic technology can do without bludgeoning us with technical details.  It’s believable enough in the universe that he has crafted.

The moral foundation for the book seems to be that who were are depends on how we react to the poor choices we’ve made – whether we take responsibility for setting them right, divorce ourselves from blame and lay it elsewhere, or detach ourselves from reality and claim that everything that’s happened, good and bad, is predestined and we are all just playing parts.  Willett’s heroes are the ones who step up and do the right thing, and those who refuse to do so get their comeuppance in the end.

Read the whole thing.

Here’s how it works. To enter, all you have to do is either (a) leave a comment below (with a valid e-mail address) telling me you’d like to enter or (b) email me at edward(at)edwardwillett.com to that effect (use “Terra Insegura” as the subject to be sure I don’t miss it).

This first week’s contest closes at midnight on Sunday, May 10, the second week on Sunday, May 17, the third week on Sunday, May 24, and the final week on Sunday, May 31. Each week, the first name drawn receives a copy of Terra Insegura. The second name drawn receives a copy of Marseguro. (Signed, of course.) I’ll contact the winners by email and only then ask for mailing information.

Of course, my nefarious purpose is to convince those who receive Terra Insegura to then go back and read Marseguro, if they haven’t already, while I hope those who receive Marseguro will be driven by insatiable need for more Willett words to rush out and purchase multiple copies of Terra Insegura. (A faint hope, but…)

If you don’t win one week, you’re welcome to enter again the following week, but you’ll need to send me a fresh email or leave a fresh comment.

From the author of Marseguro—The BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL returns to earth

Marseguro, a water world far from Earth, is home to a colony of humans and the Selkies, a water-dwelling race created from modified human DNA. For seventy years the colony has lived in peace. Then Earth discovers Marseguro, and a strike force is sent to eradicate this “abomination.” But Marseguro has created a genetically tailored plague to use against Earth’s Holy Warriors. With the enemy defeated, the people of Marseguro feel they are safe. But Chris Keating, the traitor who signaled Marseguro’s location to the Holy Warriors, has fled to Earth, unknowingly carrying the deadly plague within him. The people of Marseguro feel they must send a ship to Earth with a life-saving vaccine. Only time will tell what awaits them when they reach their destination.

The winner:

As the wail of the nearing sirens shook him awake, Todd rose from the charred remains of Rensfield Manor, wiped the ectoplasm from his brow and, stuffing the Amulet of Valtor inside his shirt, gazed ruefully at the venom-encrusted Sword of Darjan, realizing that this long night wasn’t over yet, because he still had a heck of a lot of explaining to do. (LuAnn Bishop, West Haven, Conn.)

My personal favorite, though, probably because I’m in the throes of revision of Terra Insegura:

He had only 75 words to go on his contractually required novel of 50,000 words. A guy could say a lot in 75 words, like “Pudding is best when it’s warm.” He wondered whether to count hyphenated words as two words. Strange thoughts come to a fellow at times like these. Should he have written “50,000″ as “fifty thousand”? He was close enough to count down: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. (Art Grinath)

Just for fun, here are the actual endings of my novels to date (I don’t think there’s much in the way of spoilers here):

Soulworm: She had explored a world and a life strange beyond imagining; it was time to explore her own.

The Dark Unicorn: A slow grin spread across her face, then she ran to join him.

Andy Nebula, Interstellar Rock Star: I sighed and closed my eyes again, this time in complete satisfaction. “Never heard of him. My name’s Kit.”

Spirit Singer: Kalar took her hand, his fingers warm and strong around hers. “Some of them,” he said, “have their good points.”

Lost in Translation: Kathryn cleared her throat. “Actually,” she said, “that’s what we want to talk to you about…”

Marseguro: On a mission of mercy, MSS Victor Hansen headed for Earth.

And, in a world premiere sneak peak:

Terra Insegura: “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

I won’t bother with a synopsis–you can get that from Amazon–but it’s got a hint of Roman Empire versus the “barbarians,” a bit of Tolkien, and some Napoleonic War-type technology and tactics. An entertaining mix, although the overall effect was not quite as fresh as I’d like. Maybe it was the elves. Did they have to be elves? Couldn’t they be something else? Elves are as generic as they come in fantasy after all these years post-Tolkien, and these elves–at least the Elves of the Long Watch–are VERY Tolkienish.

Still, I found myself racing through the battle scenes at the end, so Evans certainly entertained, and I’ll make a point of reading the next book in the series. The main characters are interesting and interestingly troubled, there’s a journalist with mysterious powers (how could I not like that?) and a dwarf who’s only a little bit Gimli-ish…

If I rated books on a five-star system, I’d give this one four. But I don’t, so I’ll just say I recommend it without raving about it.

Up next: Kenneth Oppel’s latest, Starclimber.

At first glance, Frankenstein seems like just another Gothic novel, full of dank castles, wandering spirits, mysterious, brooding characters, barren moors and strange doings by midnight.

But Gothic novels relied on superstition and magic, and Mary Shelley, a bright, thoroughly modern 18-year-old, had no time for such things. She saw vast changes being wrought in society through the revolutionary idea that the world could be understood as the product of natural forces, not supernatural ones, and that those forces could be harnessed and used. Mary became the first writer to use science as the springboard to a tale of imagination, and in so doing, not only launched the literary form known as science fiction, but also ignited a debate on science’s role in society that continues to this day.

Mary Shelley was born in England in 1797, the daughter of philosopher William Godwin and author and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. She met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814, and two months later, left England with her; he married her in 1816, after the death of his first wife; before that, she had a son by him, who died in infancy.

The year they married, Mary, Percy and another writer spent a rainy summer at Lord Byron’s house on Lake Geneva. They passed the time by reading ghost stories; Lord Byron suggested they each attempt to write one. Mary couldn’t come up with an idea; but then, one night, the conversation turned to the nature of life, and whether it might someday be possible to return life to dead creatures, possibly using electricity, which had been shown to make an amputated frog’s leg twitch.

That night, Mary dreamed: “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion…”

The next day she began writing Frankenstein. Published anonymously on March 11, 1818, it became a huge success, and hasn’t been out of the public consciousness since.

The story, in brief: a Captain Walton writes to his sister from his ship, on an expedition to the Arctic. The crew saw a monstrous creature driving a sledge across the ice; the next day they rescued a man, Victor Frankenstein. He tells Walton a terrible tale; of his successful quest to create life, and the horror he felt when he succeeded.

Within Victor’s narrative are several chapters from the viewpoint of the creature itself, describing how he was driven out and betrayed by his creator. Victor tells Walton he promised to create a bride for the monster, but couldn’t bring himself to fulfill his promise. In revenge, the creature killed several people dear to Victor, who has been pursuing the creature ever since.

Victor dies; the creature appears on the ice-bound ship and, torn by grief, remorse and self-loathing, swears he will kill himself. He disappears into the cold and darkness.

At the time Mary wrote, chemistry, physics and physiology were advancing rapidly; railroads were being built, gas lit factories and would soon light cities, a steamship would soon cross the Atlantic. In the dawn of the scientific age, anything seemed possible: as the chemistry professor Waldman says in Frankenstein, modern researchers “ascend into the heavens: they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air that we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its shadows.” By contrast, the magicians and alchemists of the past “promised impossibilities, and achieved nothing.”

But in Frankenstein, the promise of scientific advancement was balanced against its cost. Today, we do bring people back from the dead, shocking their fibrillating hearts with electricity. We alter life through genetic engineering. But in the century of the atomic bomb and global environmental devastation, we know that scientific advancement is a two-edged sword. Our creations can turn on us…just as Victor Frankenstein’s did.

Forget Boris Karloff with bolts attached to his neck, and read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The book and its author both deserve the attention.