Apologies for all my legions of fans who weren’t able to access the website these last few days. The servers on which ianthewriter.com is stored are in Santa Cruz, which has just been hit by a series of power outages, and my webmaster (also known as my dad) and I were on a ski trip for Christmas, so we couldn’t reboot the machine until we got back, and then my dad discovered that the whole machine was borked, so he had to go get a replacement server before my website could go up, so it was a huge fustercluck… That’s the price to pay for not storing your data on an AWS server, I suppose, but it’s worth it if it means I can have my own online space without having to bend the knee to one of the lawful evil gigacorporations that have carved the internet up into their own personal fiefdoms. And hey! Since I haven’t done a post about the Books I’m Enjoying this month, now’s a perfect time to do so before the year ends.
Realm Breaker, Victoria Aveyard
I picked up this series last year after the election. I needed an escape badly at the time, as I’m sure millions of others did, and it was exactly what I needed. Since I’m working on a lot of YA fiction, I decided to revisit this series. It contains dimensional travel, an evil queen, demonic sorcery, magic swords, an epic war against all-consuming darkness, and true love. The author, Victoria Aveyard, said in her acknowledgments that this series was her tribute to all the classic fantasy she’d read growing up, especially Tolkien. Considering that one of my initial reasons for starting writing was that I wanted to be the person who had written Lord of the Rings, I vibed pretty hard with that sentiment. At the very least, Realm Breaker is an excellent comfort read.
InCryptid by Seanan McGuire and the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne
Talking of comfort reads, I’ve always had a soft spot for urban fantasy novels starring snarky, witty protagonists. Blame my best friend Kalila, who got me into Buffy the Vampire Slayer at an impressionable age. I picked up both of these series lately and have been working my way through them in parallel. The InCryptid books are about a human family that studies and defends the many cryptids of North America, and they’re written by Seanan McGuire, who is basically who I want to be when I grow up. The Iron Druid Chronicles are about a two thousand year old Irish druid based out of Arizona and his run-ins with various gods, witches, and malevolent entities. Both of these series go down smooth. I can polish off one of these books in about a day or so, which is what you want, sometimes.
Appendix N: Weird Tales From the Roots of Dungeons & Dragons, edited by Peter Bebergal
I’m firmly of the opinion that it’s impossible to understand any genre or medium if you don’t have a good knowledge of its history. So many fantasy writers and gamemasters don’t seem to realize that the genre has roots that go further and deeper than Tolkien, and so much of that history can make for excellent inspiration for enthralling stories and games. This collection of curated tales from the famous “Appendix N” at the end of the original Players Handbook provides a wide overview of some of the writers whose influence on gaming is often overlooked: Lord Dunsany, Robert Howard, Michael Moorcock, C.E. Moore, and so many others. It’s especially enjoyable to be able to dip into a wholly unique fantasy world for just a short story. Short fiction set in secondary world fantasy settings is rare these days (although some markets, like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, provide an excellent home for those stories), so being able to experience new settings and characters without having to commit to a whole seven-volume trilogy is a nice treat.
A Touch of Jen, Beth Morgan
I love stories about horrible people failing in entertaining, catastrophic ways. Not many people can say that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is one of their comfort watches, but I’m a weirdo in that sense, I suppose. Keep that in mind when I tell you that the characters in A Touch of Jen are some of the most compellingly terrible weirdos I’ve encountered in a long time. This book is absolutely unhinged in the best way. It follows the story of a millennial couple who are both obsessed with one of their former coworkers, a globetrotting jewelry designer and influencer whose every Instagram post they devour. When the object of their obsession invites them on a surfing trip, it sets off a series of cascading incidents that destabilize the lives of every person in their orbit. I won’t spoil the directions that this book goes, largely because I was surprised by them as well. Let’s just say that it takes a lot to catch me off guard in a narrative, and A Touch of Jen did so about five or six times.
Comfort stories are a bit of a theme in today’s post, eh? I suppose that makes some sense. It’s the Fourth Quarter Holiday, after all, a time of cozying up with a blanket and a book, with a cat on top of you and a beverage of your choice at your side. I’ve got one more post planned in the next few days, about my favorite music that was released this year. Hope you’ll stick around to read it! I promise one of the albums is not metal, at least not entirely.
~ Ian (listening to GLORY by Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers)