Fantasy Book Club discussion

Post here if you're reading, or have read our February read/March GoodReads Author selection, The Master of Whitestorm by Janny Wurts.

I read Master of Whitestorm (my review) a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't stop reading it, I stayed up too late, I got up too early, I took long lunches ... all to finish this book. An awesome standalone fantasy novel!

I read it when it first came out in 1992. It was good

I read it last year. Wow!

I will read this one in the next week or two! Somehow I thought this discussion was for March, not February - if I'd known, I would have read it already.

Stefan, the discussion is indeed set for March. In this group we schedule the reading the month before discussions to give people time to get a copy and all. Then we jump into discussions on the first with it already read.

Oh, and I started last night. I read a little during lunch today. Very interesting so far.

I just finished this one on Sunday.

Anybody who wishes to preview the first chapter of Master of Whitestorm- I've posted the excerpt here:

http://www.paravia.com/JannyWurts/web...

I'm starting the novel today! Hopefully I'll be done by March 1st. This'll be the 5th novel by this author I've read in the last 6 months.

Yea! I just found my copy of it. I didn't think that I had one but I must have bought way back when I was reading the "Servant" series. I'll be starting it later today. Gotta love it when you find new/old gems stashed away!

I finished it the night before last.

My review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Definitely looking forward to the discussions.

Read it, twice now.

Clansman wrote: "Read it, twice now."

Did anything jump out at you in the reread? (May not have, this is a pretty straight shot sort of story.)

Just checking in to report that I finished reading the novel a few days ago, and am ready to jump into the discussion.

Stefan wrote: "Just checking in to report that I finished reading the novel a few days ago, and am ready to jump into the discussion."

Looking forward to your take, in particular, Stefan. I've been following your excellent reviews on http://www.fantasyliterature.com and we share quite a few similarities in taste.

Ack- so behind! Finally got the copy I reserved from the library. Just started last night.

Mawgojzeta wrote: "Ack- so behind! Finally got the copy I reserved from the library. Just started last night."

Great to have you on board again, Mawgojzeta! I'm here for you - have fun with the story! It was written considerably earlier than To Ride Hell's Chasm, but the hallmarks should be apparent.

Janny: The first pages are seeming eerily familiar. I am almost thinking I read this book before! If so, it was likely when it first came out, and likely with only partial attention (my son was a baby then and I generally exhausted in every way). It will be interesting as I continue on to find whether it continues to be so familiar.

Be interesting to find how it plays, if in fact you did read it before. I don't know of another novel that opened this way, though doubtless one may exist somewhere...the idea of a captive protagonist is not new.

The book was fully written a long time before it was published due to the buy-back, and due to the collaborative work I did with Ray Feist.

It was also partially interrupted (more tales from the early years) because I'd turned in my Cycle of Fire as a duology - and the publisher decided it should be morphed into a trilogy. sigh. I had a big fight over that - they wished the book to be "padded" by 200 pages and just split. I said no. If they wished a trilogy out of it, book II had to be completely overhauled and rewritten from the get go to make it a solid story, designed for 3 parts. The battle joined over: want 2 books from one, contract for another book.

I was writing Daughter of the Empire with Ray throughout this spit fight. My agent won. But it meant I had to rewrite the original second part of this into what became Keeper of the Keys and Shadowfane.

When that got finished (it required a full year of work) I picked Whitestorm back up - finished it - and then had to buy it back.

The original short story concepts were created - gawp! - well over a decade before the book finally got finished, and probably fifteen years before it was sold to the publisher who finally printed it. (I never actually paused to add this up, why the !! on my part)

The more I hear about the trials & tribulations of publishing, the more I wonder how anything does get published - especially some of the books I've read. Thanks for filling us in on this, Janny.

Jim wrote: "The more I hear about the trials & tribulations of publishing, the more I wonder how anything does get published - especially some of the books I've read. Thanks for filling us in on this, Janny."

Amen, Jim. Based on Janny's documentation of Hell's Chasm, Whitestorm, and especially The Wars of Light and Shadow, her career has been one after another of struggles, negotiations, buy-backs, musical-chairs editors, and lots and lots of patience and persistance. It truly is amazing that anything other than YR pop stuff like Eragon and Twilight EVER get published. So, for those of you new authors who are having some trouble breaking into the fantasy market, don't feel like the Lone Ranger. Wurts is downright brilliant and well-connected and STILL has trouble getting it done the way she knows it should be. Take heart and, like the Old Indian In Jose Wales, "endeavor to persevere."

Mawgojzeta wrote: "Janny: The first pages are seeming eerily familiar. I am almost thinking I read this book before! If so, it was likely when it first came out, and likely with only partial attention (my son was ..."

Now that I am a bit farther in, the book is no longer familiar to me; just the beginning. I think I at least started this book at one point. Can only guess that either I finished it in a daze or was interrupted and never did finish it.

Anyway.... it is an enjoyable read so far. I am sure it will continue to be.

Jim wrote: "The more I hear about the trials & tribulations of publishing, the more I wonder how anything does get published - especially some of the books I've read. Thanks for filling us in on this, Janny."

Jim - it takes luck for the smoother route.

Some successes begin with an enamored editor who gets company backing for a huge advance. Then the book is engineered for the fast track to success - more hype, more copies printed and distributed, and more effort sustained to get that title seen. Some books with this treatment do fail - but if they do, it is more likely they'll be repackaged and relaunched again till the fervor takes hold.

Books that get a low or middling advance don't get distributed in high quantities and certainly don't get the same marketing pressure. Those authors have to work up from the ranks - it's a longer road with more uncertainties, if sustained success has to be built.

Once that was an industry norm. Now, changes of personnel and corporate decisions come much too fast. The more whopping the corporation, sometimes, the more this is true.

I've had less luck in continuity on the US side, but not in Britain, where I've undergone three mergers and several changes in editor - but always landed on my feet with one who liked the work, which is fortunate.

Charles wrote: "Jim wrote: "The more I hear about the trials & tribulations of publishing, the more I wonder how anything does get published - especially some of the books I've read. Thanks for filling us in on t..."

Charles - what I said to Jim above.

Also - it makes a difference what you are writing. If you are doing a story that plays all the old tried and true archetypes - and if you strike out with the timing to catch the new generation just discovering fantasy (who JUST found this tale, brand new, totally unaware it was done and done and done before) - if you add the new slang or strike the language divide that fits the young - you WILL have a runaway success.

It has been said that a certain VERY FAMOUS author, right now, re-told old myths in graphic format - bingo!

The famous singer who remade gospel music over in popular format - bingo.

The quest tale/the gothic romance - very tried and true - they struck the right note with the young, and there you are.

The one that broke the mold, somewhat, is HP - it carried on into far deeper themes...watch what happens, though, when the next crack hit rewrites THAT one for the next generations....could happen.

If one is writing something that doesn't toe the line with those settled archtypes, it's not as easily placed and must win its own following.

If one is trying to craft a new mythscape - people pick it up and expect to read a story other than one that is on the page.

The truly original storyline is the greater risk - sometimes luck will play a big factor! Since one never knows when 'luck' will hit - staying in the game is everything.

Personally - I don't know (any??) authors who actually laid the brass nuts on the line and BOUGHT BACK...it will have happened - rarely. It was a rather large risk. The work meant enough that I had to try.

The best thing to do when the bias is tough - succeed anyway. Doesn't mean that, any second, the going couldn't be easy! For some, it's a luck run, all the way. You just have to work with what you have, now, because it's all about having the work in hand at the right time, in the right place, to fall into the right situation.

Mawgojzeta wrote: "Mawgojzeta wrote: "Janny: The first pages are seeming eerily familiar. I am almost thinking I read this book before! If so, it was likely when it first came out, and likely with only partial att..."

I'll be intrigued to see what you make of it - like To Ride Hell's Chasm, look for and anticipate that kick at the halfway point when everything turns over to convergence.

You wouldn't be the first reader who came back to my stuff, later on, and discovered what they'd been missing. :)

Jeez, this sounds a bit like the music performing business which I am in. Old stuff that's good often plays quite well with new audiences -- but not as easily and not with the enthusiasm as the newer, more pop-current tunes. There is a good reason that the young are the main target market for most publishers/producers/financial backers/club owners, etc. -- for many young audiences everything is new and enthusiasm is not lacking. Yet,here again, timing and placing (venues are often shockingly different from one another)is mostly luck, until you are very well-experienced. Art is a tough nut to crack, but if you are creatively "possessed",there's no other option that satisfies. HP,(essentially a gentling down of pagan witchcraft or a pumping up of White Wicca) arrived at a time when metaphysical and occult themes had become outrageously popular and somewhat more respectable than in the past. Once "evil" Witchcraft becomes both cute and heroic. The series, The Wars of Light and Shadow, on the other hand, breaks completely new ground in a number of directions, and is still, after all the volumes, way ahead of its time -- the times, with the current emphasis on tolerance and spirituality, are just now really catching up with the themes of that series (just one example -- outright misfits, actively disliked by the society they move within, becoming huge heroes, mostly through self-sacrifice and unbending character -- also ref: Hell's Chasm), and, if good taste prevails in the fantasy-reading population we may well expect to see it take off during the final cycle, which begins with the next book.

I wonder if HP really did break any molds. Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series, The Hobbit, John Christopher's various trilogies, C.S. Lewis, LeGuin, etc... are all about young people growing into magic. Rawlings certainly wrapped it in a ... well, 'magical' package, but I think the core has been done. I think her books thrilled my kids about as much as those I mentioned thrilled me at their age.

Jim wrote: "I wonder if HP really did break any molds. Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series, The Hobbit, John Christopher's various trilogies, C.S. Lewis, LeGuin, etc... are all about young people growing into ma..."

Excellent point, Jim. My main point was re: the timing of HP entering the market -- perfect and very lucky.

Charles, you won't get any argument from me on the timing. My daughter has dyslexia & a learning recall disorder, so she was in special ed for reading. At one of her book fairs (2d grade?), I picked up the first HP book, even though she wasn't interested. I read it, told her she had to because it was SO awesome. She was hooked. Her reading problems changed completely by the 4th book - instead of hating to read & remedial classes, we had to pry her away from books. Now she's in the honor roll at college, studying to be an Ag teacher. Her current reading problem is not enough free time...

Yeah, the timing worked for me!
;-)

P.S. I know that's not the timing you were talking about, but it's the one that counts for me. It was perfect for the 'day' too.

Jim: my girlfriend credits the Harry Potter series with her daughter's incredible turnaround in reading and even grammar. It is great to know that a book can influence young people so incredibly.

Jim wrote: "Charles, you won't get any argument from me on the timing. My daughter has dyslexia & a learning recall disorder, so she was in special ed for reading. At one of her book fairs (2d grade?), I pic..."

Jim and Mawgojzeta,
Okay, yet more of the increasing synchronicity I see everywhere. Both of your "timings" are totally valid, and help to point out another benefit of the simple fact that so much is written for the young. I certainly do not complain about HP's successes, rather praise YR fantasy for its many positive effects. I would still like to see more complex and deeper themes recognized and BOUGHT by more experienced adult fantasy readers. I still read Howard's old Conan tales, but it ain't Stormed Fortress by a long way. Anyway, (as Dylan says) It's All Good!

Valid points, Janny. I find myself reading 'candy' books more often lately because I'm so brain dead after work & lack the free time to read in anything but snatches. I've purposely stayed away from some books I really want to read simply because I haven't felt I'd be able to devote the time. And now, of course, spring has sprung, which means less time.

Jim wrote: "Valid points, Janny. I find myself reading 'candy' books more often lately because I'm so brain dead after work & lack the free time to read in anything but snatches. I've purposely stayed away f..."

I am going to have to respond to Charles and Jim in one post, because my responses overlap too tightly.

Charles - the old myths do work, and work extremely well, and many of the archtypal tales strike the very chord they do because they underpin the entire mass of our cultural beliefs and human conditioning. Why certain tales are told and retold, and beloved by each generation.

BUT - there are moments when something radically original hits and - bends the traditional landscape or shatters a long-held, cherished convention - those moments when a concept arrives and our mythscape evolves - we shift our beliefs to a higher and wider vantage.

There are eras where music - writing - art - freewheel and break new ground. If one looks between the cracks, before and after the eruption of a rigid societal structure - one will encounter works of visionary genius that got lost in the herdbound mentality. Works that came out ahead of their time - or even - behind their time! And got lost.

The risk taken to be the visionary - one might miss the gap into chaos.

Some writers are excellently content to move an individual take over hallowed, old ground.

Some cannot rest with the status quo. They plunge anyway, and hope to become part of the shattering change. The risk is far higher, because there is no niche - no comfort zone. These artists are CARVING it - shoving the edges and blowing the envelope.

That's not the comfort zone! It is gonna clash with conventional wisdom - or run cross-grained to traditional beliefs. This goes past the rebellion of the bad ass/good at heart hero/heroine, but looks out of the limitations that stymie world problems and alters the ground/reslants the confines of dogmatic acceptance.

Some readers get that and are wowed, some are chafed by the plunge, and some just want to duck back into the cottonwool thinking of follow the pack where it's safe.

People may hate the DaVinci code - but - the way it posited certain IDEAS against a backdrop of thriller - I think it was the ideas that struck the right place at the right time - and face it, religion is powerfully driven controversial material - the mass rush of outrage/entrancement created what the author's wife called The Perfect Storm.

That book - whatever you think of it - made me cry for a part of my being that had been crushed all my life - forget the story, forget everything else - it was a concept staged at the right place in time to drive an idea through mass consciousness - that the sacred feminine had been edited out, systematically, and diminished....that, to me, was the heart of that book. No new concept - but posed in a form that people could handle, and not yet have to take seriously.

I still meet people who saw only the thriller.

Harry Potter - yes, it started on very known ground, even, there were writers who did stories remarkably similar....precidents that were quieter in their success, or relegated to the fringes. Read Jane Yolen, Diane Duane, for a few - there's a whole rota of writers who wrote about magical schools and marginalized kids.

Rowling made it cool. She stitched THAT into a familiar, highschool like setting, tossed in some geunuinely inventive crude humor, lent a politial slant that poked sly cynicism at some adult concepts - AND - gave us a love driven story with very endearing characters.

None of these areas broke new ground.

The early volumes were clever and fun. The later ones darkened, and broached some truly scary themes - handled issues that were not safe at all - or inside of the acceptable doctrines. She dared to tread some ugly concepts - and handled the resolution extremely well. None of this was apparent at the start - she matured the view of the stories gradually.

Whether the themes she broached - with her antagonist - were founded on other systems of belief - I'm not versed in those areas at all, really, I haven't the slightest idea. Where she may have borrowed on sources - doesn't matter. There is no story that pulled all these things on the stage with such bold invention.

Bear in mind - her controversial ground is NOT the usual: incest, rape/child abuse - those bits are not present. She used the theme of the orphan - a powerful draw - and the mixup of coming of age - quite traditional approaches - but played a much edgier hand with the plot than many authors, mature or not, dare to imagine.

The mix of charm and terrifying danger created a powerfully moving story. Almost too much so - I'm not sure I can watch the next of the movies - the book lightened the fabric with scenes the film format was forced to cut - until the result distilled the bleak aspects almost too much.

Jim - the candy book is a great lever to reduce stress and relax. When we are tried, we want rest, not exploration. But when we are awake and seeking new ground, then the candy books put us to sleep.

Each has their moment, and their proper place. A book can be just the right window to anywhere.

Janny wrote: "Jim wrote: "Valid points, Janny. I find myself reading 'candy' books more often lately because I'm so brain dead after work & lack the free time to read in anything but snatches. I've purposely s..."

Ah ho! And thank you for the very discerning view. I have always liked HP, read all the books, seen all the movies and liked them all. Yes, I admire Rowling's dealing with difficult themes. I totally agree with you there. But it still isn't the quantum leap forward that I have seen in Wars of Light and Shadow -- the delicate, teetering balance between many political, social, and metaphysical forces, some good, some evil, some neither and many that partake of both Light and Shadow, just gives me a huge mental buzz when I read it. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

Charles wrote: "Janny wrote: "Jim wrote: "Valid points, Janny. I find myself reading 'candy' books more often lately because I'm so brain dead after work & lack the free time to read in anything but snatches. I'..."

Charles - Wars of Light and Shadow is seeking to create something very different, with a very deep and wide scope of vision - you get it, no question.

I hold the conviction that a very large/long work must deliver on many levels, develop many facets, and hold enough richness of content that there is always a new discovery. The trick: each layer must be unveiled in step, or the reader becomes overwhelmed. If you get to the ending, and then, reexamine the content of the first volume and find your past viewpoints turned upside down, or discover a whole vista of different meaning - that is the series that rings in, for me.

A very long series has to deliver on multiple values and pay-offs, or, why bother, and worse, why ask the reader's attentiveness if the revelations are not manyfold?

Mawgojzeta wrote: "Jim: my girlfriend credits the Harry Potter series with her daughter's incredible turnaround in reading and even grammar. It is great to know that a book can influence young people so incredibly."

I would love to know the number of kids turned on to reading by Rowlings! It's a theory of mine - that if schools let kids read what they WANT - whether parental opinion thinks it is junk, or if it's knock off TV series novelizations, or comics, or gaming books - I don't care - content matters zero - interest gets them reading. And once a reader, nothing in life is past reach.

I agree completely, Janny. Jorge Luis Borges once said that, as a child, he was allowed to read whatever he wanted, and never forced to read anything he didn't want to read. It worked out for him!

Must agree with Stefan, Jon, Janny. For YRs, most any reading is a good thing and can lead to great open vistas of intellect and imagination. When I taught the lit. survey course, I let them write on any lit. they liked on several required assignments. Got great results, too.

Also, as regards my comments on HP -- well, I loved the series, even if Rowling is no Joyce or Conrad stylistically. Truism or truth? -- truly excellent writing almost always requires more work for total appreciation. A long, long series AND with a highly refined style/structure certainly require more attention span over a longer time (years). You just have to realize, when you are in the first volume, that the writing promises a huge delivery. To me, how many pages down the way that payoff comes is not really an issue -- if it comes.

Stefan wrote: "I agree completely, Janny. Jorge Luis Borges once said that, as a child, he was allowed to read whatever he wanted, and never forced to read anything he didn't want to read. It worked out for him!"

Enthusiasm is by far the finest teacher.

I wish people would figure that one out.

The unimaginative, rigid structure of our education 'system' wreaks havoc on the best motivator of them all: a child's natural curiosity. Kids are always lead to pursue their natural interests. If the lure of interest was better understood, I think, we'd have far fewer people mature to a life of mediocrity. I am not talking about the arts alone - every field of human endeavor would be the richer for this.

The whole concept came home to me with a bang, senior year in high school and entering college. I wanted to do my senior paper for US history by examining all the Native American systems of tribal government, and seeing how many of those concepts influenced our constitution and sense of individual freedom in this country. My professor stopped that enthusiasm cold - said the idea was too ambitions - do ONE tribe, not all of them. Idiot. Sucked the excitement totally out of it...YES, I'd been a lazy student in his class to date (told him flat, it was boring memorizing dates, I would prefer to draw PICTURES in my margins than excel in his silly excercises. I told him, if I wanted to KNOW a date, I could look it up...why memorize for a test, just to forget it? Pointless. I'd rather ride a horse on a fine spring afternoon, there you go). Well, for this project he HAD my enthusasm...and threw it away.

I went on to a college that allowed students to contract their own education...yup. You set your goals, then CONTRACTED how you were going to learn what you needed to know: chose your courses, picked your reading list, did field work to PROVE and experience your knowledge - this college taught you how to learn - how to teach YOURSELF to find the resource to do anything under the sun. One very quickly found out - if you were the motivator, if you wanted to do this goal, you put two thousand percent more effort into it, automatically, than if you were jumping educational "hoops" that meant nothing except to do grades for somebody else.

We go about it backwards - we don't look at the student's interests and strengths, then let them develop that - we impose these standards and blot out/confuse the natural navigation of self-interest creating the goals and deciding to change or deepen the program.

I did not have to 'invest' 4 years into a degree, specializing in something, only to get out and dirty my hands in the field - and THEN discover I hated the actual career.

The systemized education we give our young makes it very difficult for them to 'switch' to self motivation later in life - they've forgotten their compass along the way/been taught to ignore their spontaneous interests until the awareness has atrophied.

Charles wrote: "Must agree with Stefan, Jon, Janny. For YRs, most any reading is a good thing and can lead to great open vistas of intellect and imagination. When I taught the lit. survey course, I let them writ..."

Charles - we've lost a lot of the richness of language, once the news media and national magazines decided that their copy had to be dumbed down to THIRD GRADE LANGUAGE COMPHREHENSION SKILLS.

Very sad. One word is not the same as another. The beautiful shades and nuance of meaning was arbitrarily scrapped for over-simplicity. And a few loud mouths like to spout this doctrine as though it should be the ONLY way, unilaterally imposed. Bare bones being 'GOOD' and the full range of capability as 'BAD' - or whatever words of judgment are stuck on to suit the trend.

Personally I like variety.

As an artist I want the full range of palette, not a limited choice of colors.

English is particularly rich because it has pulled words from so many divergent sources. It is a powerhouse of amazing conceptual range - and words are power, expressed. They have a long tradition, and I believe that richness adds immensity to the layers of perception placed in a work. Used well, language can transform.

I hate reducing vocabulary just for the sake of dumbing down - because I can always sense and see what has been lost...why let the media's view squeeze the savor straight out of the range of available experience?


But to access that awareness, one may have to take in material outside of popular culture. I note, here, Guy Gavriel Kay's discussion, where he told us he gains much of his inspiration from an enormous love of poetry.

Janny wrote: "Charles wrote: "Must agree with Stefan, Jon, Janny. For YRs, most any reading is a good thing and can lead to great open vistas of intellect and imagination. When I taught the lit. survey course,..."
Clearly, I am even more of a dinosaur than even I thought. Without rich vocabulary, without refined, highly tooled and worked style features (yes, Hemingway's short and simple was a highly refined style -- for HIM), I might as well be sampling the 8th grade Weekly Reader (does THAT still exist, even?). Dummed down-- Ath forfend!