Hello, good morning, how are you?

Merry Christmas! And Happy New Year! I hope to share at least one more blog post this year, and to start the New Year with one, but with family events surrounding the holidays I can’t predict whether or not that will happen. Regardless, I’m wishing you and yours all the best this season!

Christmas significantly transformed for me when I started dating, and eventually married, my wife. Before, I knew that every year I would be the same, spent with my parents, brothers, and sister for Christmas, perhaps some cousins or grandparents included; now we switch off which year we are with which family. What’s really cool, I think, is that for all that changes between the her family and mine, their different styles of celebration, so much stays the same. Support, love, a spirit of goodwill—I love this season. On the spiritual and family side, I’m not sure any holiday can beat Christmas.

On the purely secular side, though, Halloween always reigns supreme.

And A Nightmare Before Christmas will always be on my watch list for these two holidays.

Anyway, The Failed Technomancer, chapter 19, is live! 64Bit & co. are fortunate enough to have a respite… but will it last?

Discussions—Dragonsteel MiniCon 2023

And for my last panel to review from the November conference, Letter from the Editor?! This was the panel that made me conclude that I needed to graduate from fan conventions for writing, editing, and publishing education—having worked with the editors at LooseLeaf, and taken editing classes at BYU, I knew just about everything this panel had to say before it was said. Not necessarily the Sanderson-specific stuff, of course, but definitely all the general editing principles and industry practices.

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything interesting to glean from this panel, of course.

Brandon Sanderson is one of the most prolific authors of our time—given the average size of his novels, and (I’d argue) the consistent quality, I think there’s a firm argument for him being the most prolific fantasy author ever. I wonder how much of this is directly attributable to his significantly-larger-than-average support team? With (if I remember correctly) five full-time hired editors who work on his materials alone, Sanderson has a lot more infrastructure built up to support his work than most authors could ever dream of. I’m curious if his back catalogue would be nearly as large as it is now if he hadn’t cultivated this great level of support.

Bloggyness Review—The Autumn Republic

I finally finished The Autumn Republic, the final book in Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage trilogy. And… I largely had to force my way through the majority of the book. I had noticed myself losing steam in book two, and the train nearly ground to a halt here.

It’s not that there aren’t good things going on in The Autumn Republic. McClellan crafts a lot of tense action scenes, and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t holding my breath for multiple key scenes in the climax. The book is well-written, and it deserves its above-four-star rating on Goodreads (and other sites). So, if you have interest in a black powder–era fantasy series with powerful mages, regular people with magical tricks, intrigue, a whole lot of violence, and military campaigning, just stop reading here and go give the series a try. It just didn’t stick the landing for me.

First of all—huge spoilers—this book works hard to subvert your expectations, and I didn’t like it. Books one and two focus heavily on building up to a final showdown with the deity Kresimir, and then pulls the rug out from under you by having a different god swoop in, kill Kresimir, and become the final bad guy. In another story this might have worked, but I was genuinely invested in the fight with Kresimir. The second deity—who, granted, doesn’t come out of nowhere, there is some foreshadowing—I had no real attachment to, so when he took over I found my investment in the overall plot drop significantly.

Second, I didn’t enjoy how little my favorite characters were featured in this book. Notably Ka-Poel. “Pole” captured my attention from book one, as a mute lead character is a really unique choice in a book, and I thought Brian McClellan characterized her well. Pole is sassy, has a good sense of humor, and is extremely competent—plus, she is an extremely talented practitioner of the most unique magic system presented in the trilogy. She frequently proves herself to be one of the most powerful characters around, capable of capturing a god in some sort of stasis… and yet she regularly gets overpowered and kidnapped, effectively reducing her to a little more than a McGuffin to go and rescue. Specifically, rescuing Pole was a critical (minor) plot in book 2, and then it becomes essentially her entire existence in this book—which means she isn’t present for most of the book, and also also means that Taniel, another character I loved, repeats a lot of arcs and motions from the previous book. I was disappointed.

Finally, choices in prose and world building elements (roaches in the ice cream and mere personal preferences) that either hadn’t bothered me or that I’d entirely ignored in previous books got to the point where I was sick of it in this book:

• There was more swearing than in previous books. The swearing wasn’t harsher, but it got old and I began to wish for a broader vocabulary.
• While nothing explicitly sexual happens in the prose, I was tired of the innuendo and clear reference to promiscuity with many of the characters—all entirely without any consequences, of course. STDs and unplanned pregnancies don’t happen in this universe.
• While I love my nation, the final political of Adro felt too weirdly like a direct parallel to the United States of America for a fantasy novel. (Granted, this didn’t bug me until the epilogue.)
• Finally—and I think this might be the hottest take I have—I found there to be far too many females characters in this war-and-army-centered novel. It started to shatter my suspension of disbelief.

Before the torches are lit and the pitchforks are raised, let me explain. (This might take a bit.)

Men and women are biologically and psychologically different. These are immutable facts, at least on earth, but readers bring this knowledge with them when reading about humans in fantasy worlds. This doesn’t mean that masculine (or aggressive and physically powerful) women don’t exist, nor feminine (or agreeable and physically unimposing) men, and this doesn’t mean that such characters can’t be featured prominently in fiction—sometimes these unique characters become the most memorable a book has to offer. (Some excellent examples of well-done masculine women include Brienne of Tarth [A Song of Ice and Fire]; or, more recently, Viv the orc barbarian [Legends and Lattes]; and for a visual media example, Vi [Arcane].) But as a baseline, as an average, the natural differences between men and women give men advantages in physical combat that are very difficult for women to overcome.

Here’s a really good X post that goes into the nuances of physical combat in science fiction and fantasy, especially regarding the between the two sexes and the generalized, extremified views people take on the matter. As a summary, despite what I’ve shared above, people (women and men) want to read about women fighting and see women succeed—or at least hold their own. But since women have natural disadvantages in fights against men, the writer has more responsibility to come up with smart reasons why the woman could hold her own or overpower the man.

One of the coolest things about the Powder Mage trilogy is how often it does exactly that. Powder Mages are able to consume black powder and enter a “powder trance” that makes them stronger and faster than normal humans, easily overcoming the biological gap in physical prowess between women and men—Vlora is one such woman. Privileged are… well, wizards, and in magic the biological differences between size and muscle mass don’t matter; Nila (and many others) showcases this. And Fell, who is otherwise a normal human in every way, is explained to have received ultra-elite (and rare) training from the type of school where you kinda become superhuman or you die. In short, there are many interesting and dynamic women in the Powder Mage trilogy who elevate the entire series, who actively engage in physical combat, and who work within the framework Brian McClellan built to extremely believably become terrifyingly deadly. (Ka-Poel, whom I mentioned earlier, is another great example of one, with her assassin needles.)

So why did I state earlier that there were too many female characters in these books?

I’m not talking about most lead or named characters. But most people in the Powder Mage trilogy are just average soldiers. And, for average soldiers, men outperform women in combat. Period. Even in marksmanship, which is why, in the real world, shooting competitions are generally divided by gender. And, not just that, men have significantly more interest in combat (and joining the military) in general. There are women who sincerely want to become soldiers and do well, but they are the exception, not the rule. Except in these books, where it appears that the army is 60% female, and it’s just bizarre. Brian McClellan writes his books like there are no differences between men and women whatsoever, and by the end of the third book I was starting to wonder if he was quietly making a political statement.

(To be exceptionally clear, I am not accusing McClellan of anything, and I think he just wrote the type of book he enjoys reading. I’m just pointing out that I can’t understand why he made the decisions he did.)

Now, this is fantasy. Combat is an area where I prefer more adherence to realism because it evokes a greater emotional response in me. Others don’t care, or specifically prefer fantasy to break from reality in this area. If you are the latter, this won’t affect your enjoyment of these books at all. But for me… the presence of exceptional combative women with well-thought-out-and-explained reasons for being able to excel in this area constantly being juxtaposed with average, ordinary women who don’t feel well thought-out or fleshed out at all… I found it bizarrely lazy. Or, as I mentioned before, I wondered if the author was making some sort of statement.

Anyway, all of the above items combined were enough for me to lose interest in future Powder Mage books, despite genuinely loving the world. I hope I can find another black powder fantasy author who is a bit cleaner (in language, content, and world building), but this genre seems pretty anemic for books and authors as far as I can tell.

If what I wrote above isn’t a no-sale to you—or if you’re made at my comments about female warriors—go read these books. You’ll probably enjoy them a lot more than I did.

Writing Updates

It’s with some sheepishness, after last week’s big and exciting update, that I need to announce the following: I’ve stopped work on The Precious Burden of Joy, despite being about 20,000 words into it.

Remember when I mentioned that I discovered The Precious Burden of Joy was a character drama? I don’t like character dramas. They aren’t what I read, they aren’t what I watch, they aren’t what I think about or enjoy. I do like character drama in other stories, but, when I read, I want adventure, I want wonder, I want to be swept away in high stakes and fantastic worlds. After doing some soul-searching, I realized I wasn’t the right person to write that story specifically.

Now, that doesn’t mean that working on The Precious Burden of Joy was in any way a waste of time. It helped me develop the World of Murid a lot, and it introduced me to several characters that I genuinely love and want to incorporate into future novels. As well, working on The Precious Burden of Joy helped me to discover what I wanted to do and focus on with these books. I want adventure, I want heart, and I want more mashing of fantasy with science fiction.

So I’m skipping several novels that I had planned out for the World of Murid and going straight for one I’ve been dying to write for some time—the one Ithought I had to write several books to get to, a fact that bummed me out. (Turns out, I don’t—I can write the outlines for those books and then use them as histories in my world notes.) This means I’m returning to write about Hazel Halfwhisker the craemus, a character I’m very excited to explore further.

So, that’s my big writing update! I might share scenes from The Precious Burden of Joy‘s incomplete first draft in the “Other” section of Stuff to Read. Let me know if you think you’d have any interest in that.

Send-Off

Talk to me about Christmas! What do you love about this season? Or are you a bit of a Scrooge? Why? Do you have any interesting traditions? I’d like to hear!