I Make Up Worlds

First, let me say that Chris Cameron and I share some mutual author friends, so I know him “adjacent,” but we have never had a conversation. Let me also say that while I’m not a fan of his God of War novel about Alexander, I assume he’d equally dislike Dancing with the Lion (assuming he’s even read it). Authors are allowed to have different visions.

So, that stated, I had some pretty serious issues with God of War (GoW), in terms of both his reading of Alexander as well as his historiography. In GoW, he Mary-Sued Ptolemy at the expense of Alexander (and Hephaistion and Olympias, for that matter). Compare his “can do no wrong” Ptolemy (which seems to swallow Arrian’s history whole-hog) with Kate Elliott’s Persephone/Ptolemy in the Sun Chronicles…a much more nuanced portrayal, where—surprise!—Persephone/Ptolemy *lies* when it suits her…like the historical Ptolemy, who was establishing a dynasty, so he carefully curated his history. Basically, Cameron’s historiography is problematic as it doesn’t show much awareness of the tropes and themes present in ancient literature, and doesn’t properly “interrogate” the ancient sources for bias.

GoW is a very “het” novel although I don’t think he considers himself homophobic. Nonetheless, parts of GoW read as homophobic, and misogynistic too. Or it may just be that his sifting of the sources isn’t, IMO, nuanced enough to recognize the misogyny in the ancient sources. I doubt he likes (or perhaps has not even read) Beth Carney on Olympias. And I’m sorry, but calling a character presented as primarily homosexual (Hephaistion) a “bitch queen” can’t be anything BUT homophobic, unless there’s a counterbalance gay character somewhere in the (800-page) text, and there’s not. Having a gay character in another novel elsewhere really doesn’t count (and that gay character has other moral issues).

He has a military history audience, and he doesn’t dare alienate them. I’m not convinced he fully gets the problems in what he’s written for LGBTQ representation OR misogyny OR complex historiography generally.

As for ATG as Hitler, there are OH, so many problems with that. He’s read a little too much Ian Worthington and Peter Green (and Brian Bosworth and Ernst Badian, maybe), then taken it further. ATG was not the ancient Hitler. That doesn’t mean he was necessarily a good guy, or that conquest should be elevated in the modern world. But just as Cameron doesn’t seem aware of the various tropes in ancient sources and their impact on historiography, he also doesn’t seem to understand how to analyze ancient expectations.

There is, IMO, a middle road between simply condemning Alexander on modern grounds, versus undue elevation of Alexander and the “conquest narrative” found throughout the ancient world. Basically, Alexander pursued what he grew up to understand as a noble aspiration. Virtually nobody in HIS world would have critiqued that, only how he went about achieving it. That doesn’t mean we can’t critique it, but critiques that expect ancient people to think like moderns hitch on anachronism.

In honor of the last tiny bit of the 10th anniversary year of the publication of COLD MAGIC, a small end of the year gift to my Spiritwalker readers, up at @booksmugglers

This heartwarming G-rated coda story to the trilogy accompanies an illustration by @KelseyLegit

Please share widely! Trying to reach all Cold Magic readers!

I finally finished this video I've been working on since April. 😩😩😩

I go in on why Still Star-Crossed failed.

I might make a video on sleepy hollow next.

His wife, Yukiko, was also a part of this; she is often credited with suggesting the plan. The Sugihara family was held in a Soviet POW camp for 18 months until the end of the war; within a year of returning home, Sugihara was asked to resign - officially due to downsizing, but most likely because the government disagreed with his actions.

He didn’t simply grant visas - he granted visas against direct orders, after attempting three times to receive permission from the Japanese Foreign Ministry and being turned down each time. He did not “misread” orders; he was in direct violation of them, with the encouragement and support of his wife.

He was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985, a year before he died in Kamakura; he and his descendants have also been granted permanent Israeli citizenship. He was also posthumously awarded the Life Saving Cross of Lithuania (1993); Commander’s Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (1996); and the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2007). Though not canonized, some Eastern Orthodox Christians recognize him as a saint.

Sugihara was born in Gifu on the first day of 1900, January 1. He achieved top marks in his schooling; his father wanted him to become a physician, but Sugihara wished to pursue learning English. He deliberately failed the exam by writing only his name and then entered Waseda, where he majored in English. He joined the Foreign Ministry after graduation and worked in the Manchurian Foreign Office in Harbin (where he learned Russian and German; he also converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church during this time). He resigned his post in protest over how the Japanese government treated the local Chinese citizens. He eventually married Yukiko Kikuchi, who would suggest and encourage his acts in Lithuania; they had four sons together. Chiune Sugihara passed away July 31, 1986, at the age of 86. Until her own passing in 2008, Yukiko continued as an ambassador of his legacy.

You want to know about my motivation, don’t you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. He just cannot help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes, Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent.

People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people’s lives….The spirit of humanity, philanthropy…neighborly friendship…with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation—and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage.

The stone next to him bears a quote from the Talmud; “He who saves one life, saves the entire world.”  

Here’s a small crop of my piece for the Siblings: An Illustrated Anthology Volume II zine!

The Sisters of Court of Fives

by Kate Elliott

I like to call the Court of Fives series “American Ninja Warrior meets Little Women in a fantasy world inspired by Cleopatra’s Egypt.” It combines two of my great loves, epic fantasy and athletics, in an adventure of revolution, love, and family that centers girls both as heroines and, in Jessamy’s case, as a competitive athlete.

Writing a trilogy centered on a single main character (Jessamy) means just that: the spine of the story has to always support her point of view. The reader sees only what Jes sees, and Jes’s experience of the larger ongoing events is restricted to what she directly lives through. She negotiates numerous challenges in the first two books, and I think readers will agree that she fights through even more dramatic and shocking events in the final volume, Buried Heart (coming July 25!). But when I finished writing Court of Fives, I knew I wanted to tell two stories that Jes hadn’t experienced and couldn’t know.

With Night Flower, I tell the story of how Jes’s parents meet and how they come to defy the social conventions of their world.

But what about Jes’s three sisters, Maraya, Bettany, and Amaya? While the Court of Fives trilogy isn’t a retelling of Little Women, it does offer a nod to Louisa May Alcott’s iconic novel about four sisters who come of age in a world that isn’t friendly to their hopes and dreams. “Pretty little sister” Amaya grabs a lot of screen time in Book 2, Poisoned Blade (where we see what she’s really made of), and calm, intellectual Maraya gets her moment in the spotlight in Buried Heart.

And then there’s Bettany, Jes’s twin. People who’ve read Little Women know what happens to her analogous character, Beth. In the Court of Fives world, Bettany also begins a journey that will lead her to a place her sisters can’t follow. Her story, Bright Thrones, is available now as an ebook novella.

This is one of my most personal stories, not because it reflects anything that has happened to me (except for getting a poison oak rash), but because I feel as if I wrote this story with my heart on my sleeve, with both anger and compassion.

I hope you love it as much as I do.

Thanks, Kate! The complex family bonds at the heart of the Court of Fives series are one of the many reasons these books are such immersive and captivating reads. We’re beyond excited to find out how it all ends when Buried Heart comes out in July—and until then, we’ll be re-reading the first two books and bonus novellas in anticipation!

Here’s a small crop of my piece for the Siblings: An Illustrated Anthology Volume II zine!