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'Nightingale' by Andrea Bramhall

30/10/2017

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​​When Charlie Porter meets Hazaar Alim her first year of university, she’s instantly smitten. Hazaar has it all: beauty, talent, and brains. What she doesn’t realize is that Hazaar’s future has already been decided, and Charlie has no place in it.

Hazaar desperately wants to break with her traditions and stay with Charlie, but when forced to choose, she chooses her family over love. When she realizes the choice she made is the worst one possible, it’s too late.

Years later, while working in Pakistan as a diplomat and negotiator, Charlie receives a phone call from a woman who says her British sister-in-law is to be killed for the family’s honor and asks if someone can save her.

Charlie and Hazaar are on a collision course with destiny. If they make it out alive, can they believe in their love once again? (Goodreads)

RATING: 5 Stars

When this book was recommended to me by a friend of mine, she said that the novel had stayed with her for days upon finishing it. I can understand why. 

This novel is ambitious in its thematic scope. It explores oft misrepresented elements of Islam, the interconnected and complex nature of religious zealotry and cultural tradition, as well as the oxymoron that is a family that somehow manages to both love and oppress. The author does an excellent job of handling all of these issues. I was particularly impressed by the respectful and well-researched management of Islam. As someone who teaches Studies of Religion to senior school students (though I myself am not religious - so I can't claim to be an expert), I found the discussions between characters that delved into the issue to be extremely well managed. This is the sort of writing I'd like to see more of. The kind that challenges us to think, to feel, to be.

It's also refreshing to read a novel that has a strong element of cultural diversity - without suggesting that everyone within a religious or cultural setting expresses their beliefs in the same ways.  People in Pakistan are a mix of outright altruistic and beautiful (Amira!) and shockingly brutal. And as Charlie points out to Kenzi, it's the same everywhere, though the name given to violence in one place may be different to the name it is given in another. 

The dual timeline in the novel did its job. Switching between 'The North of England - Then' and 'Pakistan - Now', built a great deal of suspense. It drove me crazy sometimes, because I'd want to know what happens next in the other time line. That said, ideas and experiences are unveiled as they should be for the sake of masterful storytelling. 

I only found a couple of aspects that I didn't enjoy overall, and these didn't reduce my ***** rating of the novel.  Personally (and really - this is about reader preference), I didn't find the graphic sex scenes to be in keeping with the tone of the book. Charlie and Hazaar's relationship needed to be firmly explored before the action of the second half of the novel unfolds, yet the almost reverent atmosphere of the entire story made those scenes feel out-of-place to me.  

I'd like to point out the following to readers just in case these factors may make you uncomfortable. The novel includes scenes of torture that are confronting, as torture always would be. The scenes do an amazing job of enhancing the characterisation though, and don't seem to be there just for the sake of "shock value," which helped me deal with them as best as I could. The novel definitely elicited a powerful emotional response from me - that's for sure.  As a parent, I really struggled with the last few chapters. I won't mention anything that'll spoil the story too much, but just be aware that if you have raised kids, you may be like me and feel a bit sick during a couple of the chapters. 

Nightingale is a fantastic, intense, and poignant novel that is well worth reading. 
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Speculative fiction and LGBTQ leads—where, exactly, do these two meet?

27/10/2017

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By Kathryn Sommerlot

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Speculative fiction and LGBTQ leads—where, exactly, do these two meet?
 
But before we get into that, some background. According to “#AmReading,” which did some research into book sales and trends by genre (1), the top five selling genres for the big five publishing houses are Literary Fiction, Mystery/Thriller, Children’s, Non-Fiction, and SciFi/Fantasy in that order. The interesting find was that for indie publishing, which continues to increase in terms of its participation in the book world, the genre sales came back much different: Romance represents 66% of the genre sales, followed by SciFi/Fantasy, Non-Fiction, and Mystery/Thriller. As an added bonus, #AmReading reported that LGBTQ+ books have had a 200% increase in their sales.
 
These results mean that speculative fiction has a big sales percentage, from both the large publishing houses and indie publishing, and that LGBTQ+ audiences are increasingly hungry for written work reflecting themselves.
 
Yet, despite these increases, it remains difficult to find speculative fiction—science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction—that features main characters who just happen to be LGBTQ+ and exist within the plot without their sexuality being the plot.
 
LGBTQ+ individuals have existed forever, and in the context of speculative fiction like sci-fi & fantasy, where the author is building a new world for the story to exist in, there is certainly no reason why LGBTQ+ individuals would not also exist. So why, then, are LGBTQ+ protagonists so hard to find in these genre works?
 
An easy answer may be the breakdown of LGBTQ+ genre sales, where Contemporary Romance and M/M are by far the largest percentage of both books written and books purchased. It’s safe to say that writing M/M Contemporary Romance, then, is a smarter strategy for authors hoping to find a large, eager market. But what about readers who enjoy the excitement of science fiction, or the immersion of history, or the adventure of epic fantasy and still want to be able to see themselves in these stories?
 
Malinda Lo, through the website “Diversity in YA,” has spent several years watching and tracking LGBTQ+ books that are published through the Young Adult genre as the primary category. According to her research (2), in 2014 and counting only books with a primary or main character who is LGBTQ+, there were 47 LGBTQ+ YA books put out by mainstream publishers. She then broke those books down by genre and came up with the following: 51% Contemporary, 36% Science Fiction & Fantasy, and 9% Non-Fiction, with Cross-Genre and Historical both taking half of the remaining 4%. Lo herself has written several books that are genre-first, and LGBTQ+ second.
 
Statistics on other genres prove to be harder to find. Barnes & Noble has a category on their eBook website of “LGBT Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” which lists only 208 books (though it is unclear how many books also exist and have simply not been categorized as such) and does not guarantee that it is a protagonist who is LGBTQ+ rather than merely a side character. And as Kelly Dickinson at “The Hub” wrote in 2014, “Speculative fiction has remained a fairly white, cis-gendered, & straight world for a long time.  The fact that there seem to be more dragons and robots than LGBTQ+ characters in fantasy & sci-fi novels is shameful and disheartening, especially to the genres’ LGBTQ+ fans.” This is still true today.
 
More and more mainstream authors seem willing to add in LGBTQ+ side characters, but there are still too few who allow their protagonists the same freedom. It’s possible that this lack of representation is coming from the big publishing houses, who are perhaps still wary of publishing LGBTQ+ works, but from the data provided by Hurley above, the LGBTQ+ market and readership is rapidly growing, and it seems that publishers would know the same. Is it the authors, then, who delay in giving LGBTQ+ individuals the starring role in genre works? And if so, how can we, as those who crave LGBTQ+ led speculative fiction, prompt more authors to lean in that direction?
 
In speculative fiction, particularly with fantasy and science fiction, one of the first steps to creating a story in the genre is to build your world: your society, your culture, and your fantastic elements, whatever they may be. Then may come the main plot events and the principle characters, both good and villain, and the structure of the story’s arc. By the time so much of the world and plot are pinned down, would changing a protagonist’s orientation, identification, or sexuality really alter what came before it?
 
I would argue that it would not, and that adding in diverse characters enriches narratives rather than detracting from them. In genres where many twists, reveals, and secrets have already been done before, what better way to refresh ideas than doing them in a more diverse and varied way? If you can take the main plot of your favorite speculative fiction novel and change the protagonist’s sexuality or identification, and it does not alter the plot’s trajectory or the end goal, then why do all the main characters need to be cis-gendered and heterosexual? The answer is that they don’t—and they shouldn’t be.
 
Perhaps the best way to express our desire for change in the makeup of speculative fiction is to both read those works that do feature LGBTQ+ protagonists and to write more of our own. By buying and supporting works that are genre-first and LGBTQ+ second, we can establish in publishers’ eyes that there is a market for this, and that we do deserve to see ourselves in speculative fiction works, be it science fiction, fantasy, or historical.
 
 
1-Hurley, A. D. (2017, February 25). Publishing A Book? Genre Makes A Very Surprising Difference In Book Sales. In #AmReading. Retrieved from http://www.amreading.com/2017/02/25/publishing-a-book-genre-makes-a-very-surprising-difference-in-book-sales/
 
2- Lo, M. (2014, December 10). 2014 LGBT YA by the Numbers. In Diversity in YA. Retrieved from http://www.diversityinya.com/tag/statistics/
 
3- Dickinson, K. (2014, June 19). Is This Just Fantasy?: LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction. In The Hub. Retrieved from http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2014/06/19/is-this-just-fantasy-lgbtq-speculative-fiction/

Visit Kathryn's website HERE
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Book Review: Dalí by E.M. Hamill

4/10/2017

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​Dalí is a beautifully written exploration of ethics, gender, grief, and SPACE! 5 Stars.

I won't use up space recounting the basic plot, as you can click the GoodReads link above to see that for yourself. Instead, I'll focus on what I loved about this novel and some of the thoughts it left with me when I'd finished. Below, however, you can see the book information provided by the publisher. You can buy the ebook here.
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Author: E.M. Hamill
Release Date: August 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-947139-57-2
Format: ePub, Mobi, PDF
Cover Artist: Natasha Snow
Category: Literary/Genre Fiction
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Word Count: 85200
Pages: 253
Sex Content: Explicit
Orientation: Pansexual
Identity: Genderqueer
Warning: Depictions of violent death
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Between space rescues, ship battles, gladiatorial bouts, and the sexually charged hand-to-hand-combat scenes, if you're after adventure and action, this book won't disappoint. 
Dalí is a little more action-packed than what I'd normally read, but it worked well for me.

The writing is fabulous and the world-building is even better. Rich, complex, and totally believable, the galaxy of the future mirrors many of the political and social concerns of our own time -- which is always the case with good science fiction. I highly recommend this novel for fans of science fiction and/or adventure. 

This novel works beautifully as a stand alone story, but I can also see how it would easily become a series if the author has that in mind. 
The rest of my review contains spoilers - delving into aspects of the novel that I wanted to  discuss. 

SPOILERS AHEAD
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This book is definitely not a romance, which is not a comment I make as a negative, but something to be aware of. That's part of why this novel is great - it doesn't follow the same old formula that quite a lot of traditional LGBTIQ+ tends to abide by. Anyone who has read my previous reviews knows that I'm not a fan of sci-fi being background for a romance plot. A sci-fi romance is a great story (heck - it's what I myself tend to write) but the genre elements shouldn't be, in my opinion, a convenient backdrop for a story that could've been set anywhere or anytime. That isn't the case with Dalí. 

The relationships were interesting - particularly between the main character and the other changelings - Kai and Dru.  Something about Dru really got to me and I found myself hoping she'd get something of a satisfactory ending to her kidnapping journey. 

My favourite relationship - and this is totally subjective - was between Dalí and Tella Sharpe. I felt that Tella was the only character Dalí slept with who didn't expect them to be whatever sex or gender suited her, unlike the other people Dalí slept with - who wanted them to be only either male or female. I definitely understood why they became so frustrated with Tella and felt so betrayed, given her role in kidnapping the changelings, but I was surprised by how deep that animosity seemed to go.  
Dalí questioned Rhix's ethics, but continued to (mostly) trust him and kept sleeping with him after knowing he traded in goods that could facilitate mass murder, yet they remained so angry with Tella, whose crimes were pretty awful, but also much smaller scale than Rhix's.  Again, this is not a criticism! Humans are like that - we aren't logical in who we do or do not tolerate or forgive.

The complexity of these relationships is still on my mind well after I've finished reading the book. I love books that make me keep thinking, and even make it hard to start the next book I want to read.


On a totally inane note, I loved the Princess Bride references, and surely that comment about "My mother is a lizard" has to be a reference to another 80s cult classic, Willow, right? My only comment here, though, is that I did question characters who were living so far in the future being that obsessed with such films. It felt a bit like Tom's fascination with the 20th Century on Star Trek - Voyager...more of a way for someone on the crew to explore their own love of cars and music? It was harmless, though, and even though my amusement about the references had worn off by about the mid-way point, as a fan of the movie who can quote the whole thing, it was a little bit of fun, even if I did think they didn't suit the context. 

So if the only less-than-positive thing I have to say is about inter-textual references, that's definite nit-picking! I'm really pleased that books like this are being written and published. 
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    ABOUT C.B.

    CURRENTLY ON HIATUS FOR UNIVERSITY STUDY AND WORK. 

    Book reviews, Author Q&As and more as shared by an Australian lesbian. My core interests lie in genre fiction: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror etc.
    ​
    My aim is to help provide more exposure to those books that  may not fit neatly into the usual "lesfic" boxes (EG: pansexual women who engage with different aspects of their sexuality, non-binary characters, books with very little romance etc.) or books that don't conform to the most popular tropes that tend to dominate the LGBTIQ+ publishing world.

    That said, I'll put up pretty much any review that I'd like to share. Most will have some sort of rainbow content, but not all. I am a reader who likes to talk about books -- that's really what this little corner of the web is for, to talk about books.

    ​Email: celestialbooks [AT] rebeccalangham.com.au


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